“You heard from the chief, that your hunch about Henry’s having a son was right?”
“Not now, Connor. Right now it just doesn’t matter.”
Connor racked his memory for some clue Marsh might have said in the past about where he kept his backup piece. The man wasn’t ready to go through another midnight on his own. It didn’t matter if this was tiredness or grief; it was simply the fact Marsh was no longer acting in predictable ways. He’d disappeared for over twelve hours and never said where he had been. Connor couldn’t take another slice of the worry. Not about Marsh. He pulled into the hospital parking lot. “I’m coming up with you.”
Marsh nodded. “How was she, Caroline, when you saw her earlier?”
“Tired beyond words, pretty weak. But you wouldn’t know it for her eyes and the way she wanted to know answers to her questions.”
Marsh gave a small smile. “That’s true to form.”
“Hold on.” Connor stopped his partner and opened the back door. He lifted out a big bunch of flowers. “They’re from you. I already stuffed another dozen roses into the vases around her room earlier. She got a kick out of them.”
“Thanks, Connor.”
He squeezed his partner’s shoulder. “Rag on me, get angry, even sweat a few tears, but just don’t go disappearing again, okay? I’ve been around you too long-I don’t know what to do when you’re not there to bug me.”
Marsh blinked, then smiled. “Yeah, that would be a bummer. Tomorrow afternoon, Connor. I’ll look at everything you’ve been able to tug together.”
“I’m holding you to it.”
Connor knew the way to Caroline’s room and punched buttons on the elevator. “Watch out if she offers to let you taste what Scott brought her. Whatever he smuggled in would put a guy back into the hospital. Some mint sugar thing that would make your eyes roll back it’s so sweet.”
Marsh chuckled and shifted the flowers to straighten his jacket and turn back the collar on his shirt.
“You look okay, like you slept in the clothes, but okay.”
“Thanks a lot, buddy; they were clean and from the closet this morning.”
“Then you don’t look so good.”
Marsh snorted and pointedly waited for Connor to exit the elevator first. “I hate hospitals.”
“I seem to remember,” Connor replied, relieved to hear the complaint return.
Marsh leaned over the bed to kiss Caroline’s cheek. “You look like paste, friend. What are they doing to you in here?”
She smiled up at him. “You should look in the mirror. Thanks for coming; I ordered Connor to bring you by.”
“He did. These are for you.” He rested the stack of flowers on her chest so she could enjoy them without moving her head. “Amy’s worried about you, but I told her you had steel in your insides and the bullet kind of bounced back out.”
She giggled and groaned. “You’re as bad for me as you ever were. You doing okay?”
“Getting smothered with that question,” he replied without replying and took a good look at her. She’d been a lot closer to dead than anyone had been putting into words. There wasn’t much life in her body beyond the eyes, too much blood lost, too much weakness. He just held her cold hand and smiled at her. “It’s not doing you any good to pretend you are laying here unable to get up when we both know you could be out dancing a waltz right now. You want me to bring over breakfast in the morning so you don’t have to eat the hospital concoction you get offered and maybe whip you in a game of checkers while we ignore the morning news?”
Her eyes laughed. “Just don’t bring one of your spicy skillet creations and have me stuck here an extra week.” Her hand tightened on his. “Yes, come over. I need to see your craggily face annoying me.” She coughed and closed her eyes against the pain.
“Bullets are a pain in the-”
She interrupted his words with a laugh. “I think it was the surgeon’s knife that hurts more.” She looked over his shoulder. “Take him home, Connor, after you feed him something, and shove a couple sleeping pills down his throat.”
“Right, as if anyone would dare try.” Connor smiled back at her as he dropped a heavy hand on Marsh’s shoulder. “We’re going and you’re going to get some sleep.”
“Probably. I like the drugs they have here. Sleep gets to be more floating,” she remarked, smiling even as her eyes closed again.
“Come on,” Connor said softly.
Marsh waited for one more minute until he was sure Caroline had slid back toward a sleep that wasn’t full of bad images, then kissed the back of her cold hand and picked up the flowers to slide them into a vase. Old friends couldn’t die on a guy; it was too much of a pain to say good-bye. At least Caroline was surviving this.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“SHOW ME THE CALL-IN LOG AGAIN, CONNOR.” Marsh held out his hand for the binder, trying to focus on the overall picture of the last forty-eight hours while keeping one ear on the television newscast.
SWAT had busted down the door of the place the guy had been staying two days ago only to find the apartment cleaned out. They were at least getting closer to the man in time.
His head hurt from crying too much, and his heart was too heavy to take a conversation on what was coming next after having spent an hour with Marie on the funeral arrangements. Three days, and he was going to be putting Tracey into the ground. He didn’t think he’d be eating in the next two days the way the nausea of that thought lingered.
“What time did you say that call came in on the room they went and raided?”
Connor flipped back a sheet. “Eight twenty-two.”
“There’s another one in here roughly the same time; a grocery store clerk thought she saw a guy matching the description buying a two liter of soda and a can of peanuts. She remarked that he crossed the street after he left rather than getting in a car.”
“Where?”
“Marble Road. That’s what, northeast?”
Connor reached for his coat. “Let’s go ask in person. I’m going brain-dead reading this stuff.”
Marsh considered the idea a wild-goose chase but reached for his own coat. Connor had been doing all the shoving on this case for the last forty-eight hours; it was time he saw some fresh air even if the lead wasn’t all that solid.
“Where is she?” Luke asked softly, taking a seat on the cold city bench of a bus stop next to Sam.
His friend merely shifted the newspaper he was reading. “You’ll see her coming down the fire escape at that brownstone east of the bank in about two minutes, I think.”
“What did you do?”
“Had one of my guys go knock on the door as a deliveryman. She won’t answer it, but she’ll rightly assume she might not want to be there in the next few minutes.”
“Interesting place she chooses as a safe house, dead in the center of town and within walking distance of the gallery.”
Sam smiled. “She’s got moxie. I’ll give her that. And it cost me a clean five hundred to get that much of a lead on her. She’s inspired some loyalty on the street.”
“She’s not going to be pleased to see me, so you might as well head on.”
Sam winced. “Forget it; we just got spotted and lost her at the same time.”
Luke turned to see a jogger turning the corner at the end of the block.
“So much for her using conventional exits. She must have gone up to the roof and over to another building
