She could see that they could wind up debating over this all day—and she didn’t have all day, so she deliberately changed the subject.
“Didn’t you say something about having someone on the police force check into Claire’s whereabouts, make sure she’s all right?” she reminded him.
“Yes, my partner,” he told her. “I’m on it,” he said, taking out his cell phone before he got into his vehicle. He nodded toward her ever-present laptop. “Give me whatever particulars you have on this woman so I can pass it on to Fredericks.”
Krys obliged, flipping open her laptop. She tucked the cover under the keyboard so that Morgan could read any information he needed as if it was written on a regular pad.
As Morgan read aloud to his partner, Krys continued scanning the area in the hopes that Claire was just running late and would turn up at the last possible moment.
Morgan had barely finished giving Fredericks the most pertinent information about the absent whistleblower when he heard his partner mutter something inaudible under his breath.
Straining to hear, Morgan asked, “Anything wrong, Fredericks?” He thought his partner was about to beg off looking into Claire’s whereabouts, saying that he was currently swamped.
There was a pregnant sigh on the other end. “Well, about that person you said you wanted tracked down—” Fredericks began, then paused.
“Yes?” Morgan coaxed, waiting.
“I’ve got some good news and some bad news,” Fredericks said. “Which do you want first?”
Morgan frowned to himself. “That was fast,” he couldn’t help commenting, still keeping his back toward Krys. “I’ll take the good news.”
“We found her.”
“You found her?” Morgan questioned. “You mean Claire Williams?” he asked, confused. “You found Claire Williams?”
“Yes,” his partner confirmed.
It didn’t seem possible. “But I just asked you to look for her less than a minute ago,” Morgan protested suspiciously. “How could you have found her?”
“That’s the bad news,” Fredericks told him. “She’s dead. A couple of hikers found her body in the park earlier this morning.”
“Are you sure?” Morgan asked as he glanced over toward Krys.
“I’m sure,” Fredericks answered. “She had her ID card on her.”
The moment he had looked in her direction, Krys became alert. She instantly cut the distance between them, her heart slamming against her chest. She’d seen that look before. It reeked of apprehension.
“It’s Claire, isn’t it?” she asked. Then, before he could say anything, she filled in the crucial piece of information herself. “She’s dead, isn’t she?”
Knowing what that would mean to her, not to mention that this was about another human being, he would have given anything to be able to deny her assumption. But he couldn’t.
“Yes.”
“When?” she asked, struggling to get past the sick feeling in her stomach.
He told her what Fredericks had told him. “This morning. I don’t have a time of death yet, but her body was found this morning in the park.”
Guilt pierced her like the business end of a saber. “Because she was coming to give me the specific details about her doctored test results. She’s dead because of me,” she cried. “This is my fault.”
“No, it’s not,” he insisted. “This is the fault of whoever killed her—and whoever ordered that she be killed, not you.”
But she wasn’t buying his excuse to whitewash what she had brought about. “None of which would have happened if I hadn’t pushed this,” she insisted, angry tears filling her eyes.
Fredericks was saying something to him. He couldn’t listen to two people talking to him at the same time. “I’ll be there as soon as I can,” Morgan told his partner, then ended his call. He shoved his phone into his pocket. “C’mon,” he told Krys. “I’ll feel a lot better getting you to the police station so I can have a squad of cops guarding you.”
She wasn’t about to get sidetracked, or allow fear to stop her. “This article is more important than ever now. I have to make sure it gets out,” she insisted. “I owe it to Claire.”
“Nobody is telling you not to write it,” Morgan told her. “But it won’t hurt to be cautious. A few more days isn’t going to make a difference.”
She didn’t agree. “The drug is due to be out on the open market in a week. There’s a huge demand for it. Who knows what kind of damage it might do if what Claire had told me was right? And, for that matter, who knows what sort of desperate measures someone in the company is willing to go to in order to ensure that it won’t be taken off the market?” she asked him.
Guilt was mounting up within her, making her feel sick. She had never dealt with anything like this before and it was hard to keep from breaking down.
“Right now, my main concern is keeping another person from getting killed, namely you,” Morgan told her. “Now stop arguing with me and get into the car.” He held the door open for her.
Krys took in a deep, shaky breath and did as he asked. She desperately tried to see an upside to this. She could only think of one. “I guess this rules out Bluebeard trying to kill me.”
Morgan didn’t totally agree. “Maybe yes, maybe no.” His response surprised her. “This could all be a coincidence,” he told her.
She stared at him, confused. “You’re going to have to be clearer than that.”
“Maybe this Bluebeard does want revenge because you’re responsible for ruining his perfect scheme. Meanwhile, someone killed Claire because she was about to blow the whistle on the drug trials and that could wind up costing the company a fortune.”
This was just getting worse and worse, she thought. “All I know is that I feel like Typhoid Mary, spreading death in my path without even realizing it.”
He had to stop her before she got too carried away blaming herself. “Don’t be too hasty donning that hair shirt just yet.”
“Are you telling me you think I’m being some sort of a martyr?” Her voice rose
