LITMIR.BIZ

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before she could achieve the well part. She was shaking from head to toe and was on the verge of losing it.

      Jason already had his standard-issue police Glock drawn, and he whipped his aim around the room. Ready to fire at the intruder.

      But no one was there.

      On the far end of the room, the window was open and the gauzy white curtains fluttered in the night breeze. It would have been a tranquil scene if a would-be killer hadn’t just used it as an escape route.

      Jason raced to the window, and while still maintaining his vigilant cop’s stance, he checked outside. Cursed again. He used his cell phone to request assistance. His hard voice echoed through the room and her head.

      “Are you okay?” he asked, hurrying back to her.

      Lilly tried to take a quick inventory of her body. “I think so.” But she had no idea if that was true.

      “We can’t stay here,” Jason informed her.

      He reached down and scooped her into his arms. Not a loving act. Far from it. Clutching her against his chest, he rushed her out of the room. Probably in case her attacker returned.

      A truly horrifying thought.

      She didn’t want the person to get away, but Lilly wasn’t ready for round two, either. She was, however, ready for an explanation, and she was fairly sure that Jason was the person to give it to her.

      “Earlier you were stalling about telling me something,” Lilly said. Her teeth began to chatter and she suspected she might be going into shock. Great. As if she didn’t have enough to deal with. Well, the shock would have to wait. She needed answers. “And I think that ‘something’ is important, that it has to do with what just happened.”

      “Yeah.” Jason took her up the hall and to the deserted nurses’ station.

      “Yeah?” she repeated, amazed and frustrated that he’d dodged her question once again. “The time for stalling is over, don’t you think?”

      Jason deposited her onto a burgundy leather sofa in the small lounge just behind the nurses’ station. The cool, slick leather didn’t help with the chills that had already started.

      With his own breath coming out in rough, frantic gusts, he glanced down at her. Just a glance. Before he turned his attention back to the doorway. Standing guard. Protecting her. Or rather, trying to.

      “W-well?” Lilly prompted, curling up into as much of a fetal position as her stiff muscles would allow. “Don’t you have something to tell me? Wait—let me rephrase that. You have something to tell me, so do it.”

      He nodded, eventually. “Your car accident probably wasn’t an accident.”

      She watched the words form on his lips. Tried to absorb them. Couldn’t. It was next to impossible to absorb that someone wanted her dead, especially since she couldn’t recall anything about what had happened to her nineteen months ago.

      “And what about tonight?” Lilly asked, afraid to hear the answer. “What happened?”

      “This obviously wasn’t an accident, either.” Jason’s jaw muscles stirred as if they’d declared war on each other. “Whoever tried to kill you nineteen months ago—I think he’s back.”

      WHEN HE SAW the lanky, blond-haired detective making his way up the hall toward him, Jason ended the call with his lieutenant and stepped out of the doorway to Lilly’s new room. He wanted to give his fellow S.A.P.D. peace officer his undivided attention. Unfortunately, it would be next to impossible to do that because of what the lieutenant had just requested.

      Or rather, what the lieutenant had ordered him to do.

      Talk about the ultimate distraction. That order kept repeating itself through Jason’s head, and he doubted it’d go away any time soon. Especially since he had no clue as to how he could carry it out.

      “Please tell me you have answers,” he said to Detective Mack O’Reilly. Jason kept his voice low so he wouldn’t wake Lilly. To get her to fall asleep, it’d taken nearly a half hour of questions and assurances from him that she was safe. Jason didn’t want to go through that again until he could make good on those assurances.

      If that were even possible.

      O’Reilly shrugged. “I have answers, but I don’t think you’ll like them. There’s only one surveillance camera in or around this entire place. It’s in the parking lot and static, fixed in only one direction.”

      Jason tried not to curse. “Let me guess—the wrong direction?”

      “You got it. It was aimed at the center of the parking lot. Someone came up from the side and, while staying out of the line of sight, smashed the lens with a rock. All we got for a visual was a shadow. The crime-scene guys are dusting both the camera and the rock for prints, but it looks clean. Whoever it was probably had on gloves.”

      Definitely not good. Jason had hoped for a sloppy crime scene, even though deep down he’d known it wouldn’t be. Whoever was behind this was brazen. Yes. Determined—that, too. Maybe even downright desperate.

      But not sloppy.

      Jason had personally gone over every inch of Lilly’s room and hadn’t found even trace evidence.

      “How about the rookie guarding Ms. Nelson’s room?” Jason asked. “Did you find him?”

      O’Reilly nodded. “He was in the utility closet at the end of the hall. Duct tape on his mouth, hands and feet. He has a goose-egg-size lump on his head, and someone had used a stun gun on him, but he can’t remember being knocked out.”

      Probably because the guard had fallen asleep.

      This time, Jason didn’t even try to contain his profanity, but it was aimed just as much at himself as it was at the guard. When Jason had checked on him about a half hour prior to Lilly’s attack, the guy had looked a little drowsy. Jason had asked if he’d wanted to be relieved, but he’d said no, that the double espresso he was sipping would keep him awake all night.

      Yeah, right.

      Jason wanted to kick himself. Hard. How could he have let this happen?

      He’d been positive that nineteen months ago someone had tried to kill Lilly. That’s why he’d had a guard assigned to the convalescent hospital in the first place. What he should have anticipated, however, was that one guard wouldn’t be enough. After all, the person responsible for this latest attempt on Lilly’s life had no doubt been the one who’d forced her off the road and left her for dead.

      Getting past one guard in the middle of the night obviously hadn’t been much of a challenge. Murdering Lilly wouldn’t have been a challenge, either, if Jason hadn’t returned to the hospital to talk to Lilly’s doctor about additional security measures for the facility.

      Ironic.

      While he’d been discussing the need for extra security, someone had been breaching it. And Lilly had nearly paid for that breach with her life.

      “So far, no witnesses,” O’Reilly continued. “But we’re canvassing the neighborhood. Something might turn up.”

      Not likely. It was late. Midweek. The small downtown hospital was surrounded by specialty shops that mainly did business from ten to six o’clock. That meant there probably weren’t a lot of potential witnesses milling around to see someone escaping through a window.

      “I gave one of the detectives the names of two suspects, Wayne Sandling and Raymond Klein,” Jason explained. “Both are former attorneys. About two years ago, Lilly uncovered some information that caused them to be disbarred.”

      What she’d uncovered, though, wasn’t an offense that would have earned them jail time. While Sandling and Klein had been working as advisors to the city council, the two had somehow managed to get a construction company a lucrative contract to renovate historic city-owned buildings.

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