became overpowering. And there was something else in the air, too. Something even more volatile…
She rounded the arch that led to reception and saw Vida leaning over an open file drawer. Vida was pouring something into the drawer, right onto the papers. It was alcohol, Nell realized. Rubbing alcohol from one of the brown push bottles they used in the exam rooms. Twenty other file drawers stood open to various lengths.
“Vi?” she said softly.
Vida jerked erect and whirled, but relaxed when she saw it was only her sister.
“What are you doing?” Nell asked.
“TCB, honey. In a flash. Like Elvis always said.”
“What?”
Vida laughed. “Taking care of business in a flash. I forget how much younger you are sometimes.”
“Not that much,” Nell said, very afraid and not quite sure why.
“A lifetime, baby girl. I thought I told you to clear out.”
“I had a bad feeling. Like I get sometimes, you know?”
Vida looked down at the file drawer and sighed.
Nell scanned the room, and what she saw sent her to the edge of panic. Empty alcohol bottles were all over the room. Most stood in a row on the floor by her computer, but some lay atop the file drawers. A red metal gas can stood right beneath Vida’s desktop. If someone lit a match in here, they would all die in a giant fireball.
“Why are you doing this?” Nell asked.
“No other way.” Vida opened another bottle of alcohol and dumped its contents into a drawer full of patient records. “We’re having a fire sale. Everything must go! No exceptions!”
Her laughter had a hysterical edge that scared Nell. “Is this why you went to the store today?”
“Mm-hm. We didn’t have enough alcohol. But they had loads of it at Walgreens. I had to sneak it in, inside an old Dell computer box. The Medicaid people have somebody watching the back door. They’re waiting for their pit bull to get here.”
“Pit bull?”
Vida’s humor evaporated. “You need to go, baby. Now.”
“But…how can you light this stuff without killing yourself?”
Vida’s smile was cagey. “I go down to the switch box and shut off the main breaker. Then I come back here and plug the computers and copiers back in. One more trip down the hall, flip the breaker on, and
“How do you know about this kind of stuff?”
“I had a boyfriend who did insurance jobs. Torch jobs, you know? Remember Randy?”
Nell vaguely remembered a scrawny, unshaven Cajun of indeterminate age.
“But we don’t have time for nothing fancy,” Vida said with regret. “You do the best you can with what you got.”
Nell stepped farther into the room. “There are still patients in the back, Vida. I saw somebody on the way in.”
“Just a couple. I’ll take them out with me.” Vida tossed the empty bottle on the floor. “A heroic rescue will make it look more like an accident. As if anything could. But we try.”
“Where’s everybody else?”
“I sent them home. Told them we’d had a computer crash and couldn’t keep up with billing or insurance. They were out of here like a shot.”
“And Dr. Auster?”
“He’s getting that stuff out of Warren’s house, like I promised he would.”
Nell felt a warm rush of gratitude. “Vi…why don’t we just get out of here? You’ve got money squirreled away, I know you do. Let’s
Vida smiled dreamily at this fantasy. “I’d love to, sweetie, but I can’t. I’ve put in with Kyle, and I’m going to stick by him all the way. If we get through clean, he’ll have to stick by me.”
Nell closed her eyes, nearly overcome with sadness. “But he
Vida’s smile stretched so tight that Nell thought it would crack at the corners. Then it changed to a grimace. Nell heard a man’s voice behind her. She turned.
A black-haired man wearing a gray suit stood in the hall door. He looked like a lawyer or maybe an FBI man-what they looked like on TV anyway.
“Afternoon, ladies,” he said in a deep, Yankee-sounding voice. “Where’s Dr. Auster?”
“Gone,” said Vida. “We’ve been having some trouble with our computers. I think he might’ve gone to RadioShack for some parts.”
The newcomer’s eyes roamed over the computers and open file drawers. He must have seen the alcohol bottles, but he didn’t mention them.
“Ladies, I’d like you to walk slowly toward me and step out of the room. I want to talk to you for a few minutes. Nothing serious. Please don’t make any sudden movements on your way out. We’re all in grave danger at this moment.”
Vida looked back at him with an almost playful smile. “You think?”
“Just step away from the wall, Ms. Roberts. And please join me in the hall.”
Vida almost preened like a cat being petted. In some perverse way, Nell knew, it gratified her sister that they knew her by name.
“Are you Biegler?” Vida asked.
“That’s right.”
“The pit bull with a tick up his ass?”
Biegler signaled to someone out of sight down the hall. “I haven’t heard that one, but I wouldn’t doubt they say that about me.” He looked at Nell. “Would you step into the hall, miss?”
Nell felt the man’s voice pulling her toward him. It was so calm and reasonable. He seemed nothing like a pit bull. More like a good, steady Labrador. Nell moved slowly toward him, her eyes imploring Vida to follow.
But Vida would not be led. Nell realized that her sister must have noted long before she did that Biegler wasn’t holding a gun, and that even if he were carrying one, he could not use it for fear of setting off the bomb that the fume-filled room had become.
“You want to take me to jail, don’t you, Mr. Biegler?” Vida said in a challenging voice.
“That depends. If you’ll cooperate with us in trying to achieve a just resolution, you might be able to avoid punishment altogether.”
Vida laughed harshly. “You mean if I squeal on Kyle Auster, you’ll give me a get-out-of-jail-free card?”
Biegler sighed and backed deeper into the hall. “Something like that. It depends on exactly what your role in all this has been.”
Nell saw something change in her sister’s eyes. Then Vida murmured, “Run, baby girl. Run.” Nell screamed, but Vida was already reaching into her pocket. She took out her cigarette lighter, a blue Bic, and held up her thumb. Strong arms seized Nell and dragged her toward the door. Someone charged up brandishing a gun, and then a muted roar sucked the air from Nell’s lungs.
Laurel sat cross-legged on the floor behind the couch, watching Kyle Auster. Warren had forced his senior partner to sit on the hearth with his back against the marble fireplace. Warren himself was pacing the great room and periodically checking the progress of Merlin’s Magic on the laptop. Thankfully, the children had not appeared. Laurel figured Warren’s bizarre behavior upstairs had frightened them enough to keep them out of sight until someone else came for them. It hurt Laurel’s heart to think of Beth terrified, but Grant would comfort her. He happily picked on his sister every day, but if anything truly hurt or upset her, he immediately went into a protective mode.
Laurel felt a strange kinship with Kyle. After all, they both wanted the same thing, short term. Escape. Beyond that, Auster was trying to keep both himself and Warren out of jail, which made sense to her. But Warren seemed to be in the grip of some sort of guilt reaction to whatever had been going on at the office. He was like a
