Out of the pit, he let her slump to her side, her legs, from the knees down, dangling inside the opening. Two more rungs and he jumped free of the ladder.
Now that they were in better light, he dropped beside her and lifted her arm, examining the place where needles had been inserted. Somebody had shot her full of drugs.
“Who did this to you?” he asked, his voice tight, his fingertips passing lightly over the damaged skin.
“The candy man,” she said thickly, laughing softly to herself.
She raised a hand to touch the side of her face, to touch a bruised cheekbone, a gesture that made his chest feel tight, that broke his heart. With her hand still hovering limply above her cheek, the vacant look in her eyes became more focused. “Daniel?” she asked in surprise. “’S-that you?”
He lifted her legs out of the way and closed the door. Then he scooped her up and walked through the barn, out into the blinding sunlight.
She let out a gasp and brought up a hand to shield her eyes. “So bright,” she said. “As bright as heaven.”
“Keep your eyes closed,” he told her softly but firmly.
He checked to see if she was listening. Her eyes were wide open. “Are you looking at the sun?” he asked, horrified. “Don’t look directly at the sun. Close your eyes, Cleo.”
She either heard him, or once more succumbed to the overload of drugs running through her veins. Whatever the reason, her eyes drifted closed and stayed that way until they reached the truck, where he quickly secured her in the passenger seat.
Hardly able to detect a rise and fall to her chest, he headed in the direction of Egypt and the nearest hospital. It seemed like a hundred miles, the frantic, heart-pounding ride spent with Cleo drifting in and out of consciousness, Daniel holding the accelerator to the floor while the old truck hovered somewhere between sixty-five and seventy.
At the emergency-room door, he honked, skidded to a stop, cut the engine, and jumped out. As soon as his feet hit the ground, he circled the truck. He scooped her up and carried her through the double automatic doors, falling into an old, familiar role. “Kidnap victim,” he explained as two nurses met him in the hallway. “She’s been pumped full of something-I don’t know what.”
A gurney appeared. He put her on it. A blood pressure cuff went around her arm.
They had some trouble finding a vein. “She’s dehydrated,” the nurse said, rubbing and slapping, finally drawing blood.
The on-call physician showed up, quickly assessing the situation. “Slight miosis and respiratory depression. Naloxone,” he ordered. “Slow drip, so she won’t get sick.”
They wheeled her away, leaving Daniel standing in the empty hall.
He kept forgetting he was a cop, that he was supposed to be the one in control. Dazed, he put in a call to Jo, telling her to contact the state police. Then he found a chair and dropped into it.
He stared at the floor, skin tight, eyes gritty. He needed to call Cleo’s brother. But he didn’t know anything yet. As soon as he knew something, he would call. God, he couldn’t think straight.
A nurse appeared with a clipboard.
“She’ll be okay?” he asked.
“She’s getting fluids and Naloxone, so she should come around pretty quickly. Now for the fun part. I have all these tedious question to ask, just the standard, basic stuff.”
He gave them as much information about Cleo as he could, which wasn’t much more than her first and last name. He didn’t know if she had insurance. “I doubt it,” he said. “But the Egypt Police Department will pick up the tab.” It wasn’t his place to make such a decision, but he was pretty sure he could talk Jo into it, and she could talk the board into it.
“Allergic to any medications?”
He didn’t know.
“Next of kin?”
He didn’t know that either. “Her brother, I guess.”
“Religious preference?”
He didn’t know.
“Previous surgeries? Mental illness, depression, anything going on in her life that could affect what’s happening now? When we were changing her into a hospital gown, we noticed a scar on her abdomen. Has she had a cesarean delivery?”
Daniel jumped to his feet. “I don’t know! Christ, quit asking me this shit. I don’t know!”
Chapter Twenty-Four
The next morning, Daniel stood a few feet from the bed, arms crossed, letting Jo fuss over Cleo. Cleo was sitting up, a tray of half-eaten food pushed aside. Her color was better, her face a little more filled out. But she still didn’t look good, didn’t look healthy. An IV bag hung from a metal frame while a monitor digitally registered her pulse rate.
“We don’t want to bother you with this right now, dear,” Jo began, taking Cleo’s free hand in hers. “But we have to know who did this.” Jo was dressed in her police outfit, from the shiny badge to her shiny black shoes.
Muted sunlight fell across Cleo’s face, making the dark circles under her eyes more pronounced. She looked from Jo to Daniel, then back to Jo. Daniel saw her uncertainty, and wondered at it. What didn’t she want to say? What was holding her back?
“Cleo,” Jo urged gently, “you must tell us, dear.”
Cleo pulled her hand free and leaned against the pillow behind her back. She turned her face to stare out the window. From the second-story room, the only thing that could be seen was an occasional pigeon. She might have looked calm, but the digital readout on the flashing pulse rate monitor jumped from 90 beats per minute to 120.
In a flat, emotionless voice, she said, “Burton Campbell.”
Daniel saw Jo stiffen, heard her gasp.
Leaving Cleo to gaze blankly into nothing, Jo spun around, grabbed Daniel by the arm, and pulled him from the room and down the hall, out of earshot of Cleo.
“Don’t you breathe a word of this,” she whispered, her eyes intent. “ Burton Campbell! If this got out, think how bad it would make the town look.”
“What if he did it?”
“That’s the most preposterous thing I’ve ever heard. I’ve known Burton Campbell for over twenty years. He comes from good family.”
“And that makes a difference?” Daniel asked.
“You know as well as I do that Burton Campbell didn’t kidnap that woman in there.”
“Do I?”
“You want to believe her because you never liked him.”
“Maybe I always had a feeling about the guy.”
“You believe he did it?”
“Yes.”
“Then you’re a bigger fool than I am. What reason would he have for doing such a thing?”
“That’s what we’re going to have to find out.”
“This isn’t Los Angeles. Don’t you think I know how bored you’ve been here? You’re just looking for excitement. Well, this kind of thing doesn’t happen in Egypt.”
“You want to keep your town on that top-ten list so badly that you can’t see a serious crime when it’s right in front of you.” That was the problem with small towns. Keeping up appearances was a priority even if it meant ignoring the obvious.
“There’s been a crime all right, but Cleo Tyler committed it,” Jo said. “Can’t you see this was orchestrated to make us look bad? Isn’t it too convenient the way she told us exactly what was going to happen to her before it happened? That’s because
