LITMIR.BIZ

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she said steadily. “And me.”

      Mike Reilly shifted his seat on the edge of her desk. “Could be a tailgater,” he said to Tom.

      Nell looked at them hopefully. “What’s that?”

      “Somebody walks by, looks over your shoulder while you’re punching in the code,” Mike explained. “It’s easy enough to pick up.”

      “You got a security camera on the inside?” Tom asked.

      “No,” Nell admitted. In the acute-care room, an older woman was moaning, disoriented and in pain. Nell heard Billie’s attempts to comfort her, to make her lie still for an exam.

      “A larger pharmacy with a walk-in narcotics vault would have a camera monitoring the inside. But we just have the cabinet. And the camera is positioned to record people approaching the pharmacy window from the outside.”

      “Okay.” Tom closed his notebook. “We’ll take a look. In the meantime, you might want to change the code sequence on that punch lock.”

      A crash sounded from across the hall. Billie yelled for help with the restraints. Mike Reilly looked uncomfortable.

      “We don’t want to keep you,” Tom said. “I’ll give you a call in a couple of days, do a follow-up.”

      Nell blinked at him. Surprised. Deflated. “That’s it?”

      “We’ll file a report,” Tom assured her. “Let the assignment sergeant know in case your theft fits a pattern in the area. He might send out a detective. But the amounts you’re missing… We’ll check, but it’s not an index crime. Looks to me like you’ve got a problem with personal use.”

      Nell went cold.

      “Not you, personally,” Mike Reilly said. “Just, you know, somebody with access. You didn’t notice if the doors or locks were tampered with?”

      “No,” Nell said faintly. Her heart pounded. Her mind raced. Somebody with access. Ed, whom she’d promised a job? Melody, whom she’d promised a second chance? A volunteer doctor? A nurse? “Nothing like that.”

      “Well, we’ll look into it,” Tom said. “Want to show me that security camera? Even with the bad angle, you might have something on tape.”

      He sounded doubtful but kind, like a surgeon explaining a patient’s chances of surviving a risky operation.

      Nell led the way toward the pharmacy feeling numb. Someone she worked with, someone she trusted, someone she’d helped was stealing drugs from the clinic pharmacy. For personal use, Tom had said.

      She turned the corner. Joe Reilly stood in the work aisle, leaning over the counter to talk to Melody King.

      And things teetered from bad and slid to worse.

      “Joe?” Mike Reilly sounded pleased, but puzzled. “What are you doing here?”

      Joe pivoted stiffly on one leg.

      Nell took a deep breath. She was not going to panic. Yet.

      She forced herself to compare the two men, as if she could assess the threat to her clinic on the basis of their family resemblance. They didn’t look alike. Mike Reilly was bigger, blonder, broader than his brother. Beside him, Joe looked lean and tough and scruffier than ever. But something—the shape of their heads, the angle of their jaws, the set of their shoulders—marked them as brothers. And something else, a weariness, a watchfulness, marked Joe as the older one.

      “Hello, Mike,” he said quietly.

      “He said he had an appointment,” Melody piped up.

      Both men ignored her.

      “You listening for my car number on your police scanner again?” the cop asked.

      If it was a joke it fell flat.

      Joe shook his head. “I didn’t know you were here. What’s going on?”

      Tom Dietz pushed up his hat brim with his thumb. “Nothing you need to worry about. Police blotter stuff.”

      “Yeah, you stick to the big stories,” Mike said. “Are you here to see Nell?”

      Nell started. She’d told Mike Reilly she knew his brother. But that was all. Had the young officer somehow picked up on the tension between them? Or was he just used to his big brother hitting on every woman that breathed?

      I thought the purpose of this dinner was to get to know one another better.

      If that’s what it takes.

      Joe’s face was impassive. “I’m here on a story.”

      Tom looked from Joe to Nell. “What kind of story?”

      Nell stepped forward. The less the two Reilly brothers compared notes, the better. And yet something about Joe’s careful lack of expression tugged at her heart. “I contacted the Examiner to ask if they would send a reporter to profile the clinic. With all the recent budget cuts, we could use the publicity.”

      Mike’s eyes widened. “You’re doing a—”

      “Feature piece,” Joe supplied grimly. “For the Life section. Yeah.”

      “Oh.” Mike shifted his weight, clearly uncomfortable.

      Because he’d assumed Joe was having a personal relationship with his subject? Nell wondered. Or for some other reason?

      “Well, that’s great,” Mike said finally, heartily. “You’re lucky,” he told Nell. “Joe’s a great writer. He won an AP award for his series on the looting of Baghdad, you know.”

      She hadn’t known.

      “Nell isn’t interested in my résumé,” Joe said.

      But Mike continued as if his brother hadn’t spoken. “After he got hurt, he laced up his boot and kept right on reporting.”

      Nell felt a flutter of concern. “You were injured?”

      “It wasn’t a war wound,” Joe said. “I fell.”

      “Some looters pushed him down a hospital stairwell,” Mike explained. Nell sucked in a distressed breath. “That didn’t stop Joe, though.”

      Joe thrust his hands into his pockets. “Yes, it did. It just took me a while to wise up to it.”

      “He was in the hospital for a couple of weeks when he got back,” Mike confided. “Getting his ankle patched up.”

      A couple of weeks? For a broken ankle?

      Nell glanced at Joe. He was clearly not enjoying this turn of the conversation.

      “Sounds serious,” she said.

      “Tedious,” Joe corrected. “I’m fine now.”

      “You will be when you get that other surgery,” his brother said.

      “I’m fine,” Joe said again, flatly.

      A long, loaded look passed between the two men.

      Mike snorted. “Yeah. Fine. That’s why you’re in Chicago writing PR copy for a cut-rate health clinic instead of overseas covering the action.”

      Nell stiffened at the good-natured insult.

      Joe’s face didn’t reveal any reaction at all.

      “O-kay,” Tom said. “We’re about done here. I’ll just have a few words with Ed in the pharmacy and let you folks get back to—”

      Writing PR copy for a cut-rate health clinic.

      “—your business,” Tom finished. “Mike?”

      “Gotcha.” He said goodbye to his brother, winked at Nell and sauntered after his partner.

      “Are you all right?” Nell

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