Blood Money

“Not to my knowledge,” the reporter said. “As I said at the top of the report, this is late-breaking news. We are told that Celeste Laramore’s parents arrived from out of town early this morning, but virtually no information had been released about the young woman’s condition until just a few moments ago.”

“What a horrible, horrible thing for those parents,” said Corso. “Tell me this: Do we have any further information on who might have done this?”

“Faith, that is an equally startling part of this development. After BNN broke the news that she is, in fact, in a coma, I immediately followed up with contacts at Miami-Dade Police. While no one in the department is speaking on or off the record about a possible suspect in this attack, sources who would talk to BNN only on the condition of anonymity did provide a shocking insight into how Celeste Laramore ended up outside the women’s detention center last night dressed like Sydney Bennett.”

“Let me stop you there,” said Corso, “and remind viewers that I spoke exclusively with Celeste’s roommate on the air last night; she told me they had been at a Sydney Bennett look-alike contest on Miami Beach.”

“Well, that story may be unraveling,” said the reporter.

“What do you mean?”

The gleam in the journalist’s eye gave Jack cause for concern. The reporter continued:

“BNN has learned that the defense team for Sydney Bennett may have actually hired Celeste as a decoy to distract the crowd. The plan, sources tell us, was for Sydney Bennett to slip away unnoticed while the media and the crowd focused their attention on the look-alike.”

On screen, Faith Corso’s mouth was agape. Jack nearly fell off his barstool.

Corso continued in a tone dripping with contempt: “That is the most cowardly and despicable ploy I have ever heard. The very idea of putting a college student in a situation like that just so Shot Mom could slip away off- camera and hop on an airplane to Fiji or Cancun or wherever she’s hiding and sipping pina coladas while her lawyer hawks her book-well, that is just criminal in my mind.”

“Yes, I would say that Sydney Bennett’s lawyers will be facing some very tough questions in the coming day or two.”

Corso broke for a commercial. Jack lowered the volume and apologized again to the couple seated next to him for the news intrusion. Seconds later his phone vibrated with an incoming call. He checked the number. It was the FBI-in a manner of speaking. It was Andie. The BNN reporter had been absolutely right: Sydney’s lawyer would be facing some tough questions.

Jack stepped away from the bar and took his fiancee’s call in the relative quiet of the back hallway that led to the restrooms.

“Hey, love. What’s up?”

“I just got off the phone with Ben Laramore. He called here at the house.”

“Laramore? I presume that would be. .”

“Celeste Laramore’s father. His daughter is at Jackson in a coma.”

Jack collected himself, feeling for the family. “What does he want?”

“To talk to you. Man to man.”

“When?”

“Tonight. He wants you to come to the hospital.”

Jack sighed. “I guess I owe him that much.”

“You’re not going. This case is out of control. For all you know, the poor man is so distraught that he wants to shoot you dead.”

“If that’s what he wants, he’ll find me sooner or later. It’s important to meet with him and tell him face-to- face that this story about hiring his daughter to be a decoy is nonsense.”

“How do you know it’s nonsense?”

“Because I didn’t do it.”

“How do you know someone else didn’t? Like her parents, her brother, some old boyfriend?”

That guy who met Sydney at the airport.

Jack let a woman pass on her way to the restroom, then continued. “I need to tell Ben Laramore that I didn’t do it. And I want to assure him that if somebody on my team was involved, I’ll get to the bottom of it. That’s the right thing to do.”

“Fine. Then I’m coming with you.”

“What?”

“Trust me. He’ll respect you more if you show up with an FBI agent. Especially if she’s your fiancee. And armed.”

Jack could have pointed out that he’d done just fine as a lawyer for fifteen years without FBI protection, but he didn’t argue.

“I’ll pick you up in ten minutes,” she said, then ended the call.

Chapter Eight

You should never have gotten involved in this case,” said Andie.

They had made it all the way to the parking lot before she said it. Jack figured it was all the media trucks outside the hospital entrance that had finally triggered the told-you-so comment. It wasn’t typical Andie.

Andie Henning was unlike any woman Jack had ever known, and not just because she worked undercover for the FBI. Jack loved that she wasn’t afraid to cave dive in Florida’s aquifer, that in her training at the FBI Academy she’d nailed a perfect score on one of the toughest shooting ranges in the world, that as a teenager she’d been a Junior Olympic mogul skier-something Jack hadn’t even known about her until she’d rolled him out of bed one hot August morning and said, “Let’s go skiing in Argentina.” He loved the green eyes she got from her Anglo father and the raven-black hair from her Native American mother, a mix that made for such exotic beauty.

He hated when she tried to manage his career.

“You’re violating our agreement.”

The “agreement” was for the sake of their relationship: Jack didn’t question her undercover assignments; Andie didn’t judge his clients.

“Sue me,” she said.

The crowd outside the University of Miami Jackson Memorial Hospital was a fraction of the turnout for Shot Mom’s release from jail, but it was still sizable. Hard-core Shot Mom haters had gathered in circles of support outside Jackson, keeping vigil and occasionally joining hands to pray for the full recovery of Celeste Laramore. It was just minutes before the eleven o’clock news broadcasts, and at least a dozen reporting teams were jockeying for position and preparing for live updates from the hospital.

“Better find another way in,” said Jack.

Andie steered past the crowd at the main entrance and drove to the ER on the other side of the building. A pair of squad cars were positioned in the driveway, beacons flashing. Jack presumed they were there to redirect the vigil keepers and the media toward the main entrance so that the ER could actually deal with tonight’s share of nearly a quarter-million visits annually. Andie found a parking spot, and they walked inside.

Jackson was Miami’s premier public hospital, which meant that in addition to its stellar reputation for groundbreaking research in everything from cancer to spinal injury, it was also a workhorse for the world of Medicaid and no health insurance. The ER waiting room was a virtual cross-section of lower-income Miami. An old Haitian woman hung her head into a big plastic bucket that reeked of vomit. A homeless man with no legs slept in the wheelchair beside her. A single mother comforted a crying baby as her four other children played leapfrog on the floor, shouting at one another in Spanish. A drug addict in withdrawal paced back and forth across the waiting room, talking to himself. Anything less than a bullet to the head meant hour upon hour of waiting. Free treatment from some of the best doctors in the world was their consolation.

Jack started toward the admission desk to ask how to get to the intensive care unit, but Andie stopped him.

“I seriously doubt that Mr. Laramore wants you up there,” she said. “Let me call and see if he wants to come