“Onward to Nurse Carla.”

They found her at the nurses’ station, scanning a chart, whistling “Silent Night.” “Oh, yes,” she said, “all the staff know and like Weldon. He’s a very good son—considerate, kind, always visits his father. To think that he’d strike his father—nope, I just can’t believe that. It had to be an intruder.”

“What does Weldon look like?” Dane asked.

Carla Bender thought for a moment. “He’s real blond, practically white-haired, and he’s pale—like he doesn’t go outside enough. I joked with him about it once and he just laughed, said his skin was real sensitive and he didn’t want to get skin cancer. You know, Agent Carver, anything his father needed, Weldon always okayed it without hesitation. Good son. I just won’t believe that he struck his own father down.”

“I don’t think so either,” Velvet Weaver said as she came out of a bathroom down the hall. “Weldon’s really nice, soft-spoken, and I’ve never seen him as being remotely capable of any violence. And what could the old man possibly do to him to make him go into a rage and strike him?”

Dane showed her Weldon’s photo.

“Yep, that’s Weldon.”

Nurse Carla agreed.

They spoke to orderlies, to two janitors, to a group of gardeners. Everyone knew Weldon DeLoach, but no one had seen him anywhere around the time his father was struck.

“I really wish that just one person had seen Weldon,” Dane said as he steered Nick back to their new rental car, a Pontiac compact. “Within a mile of this place, that would be close enough.” He sighed.

“If it was Weldon, he was super careful. Or he was wearing a disguise, like the one he just might have worn in San Francisco.”

Dane didn’t say anything, just drove toward LA, ideas flying about in his brain, none of them leading anywhere except fantasyland. He kept his eye out for Harleys.

Nick finally fell asleep a little before midnight and was promptly hurtled back to that night in Chicago when the dark sedan had tried to run her down. Her dreams skipped to the man she’d seen leaving her condominium, the man who’d set the fire. Then, suddenly, she was staring at the man on the Harley, firing nonstop at them.

Oh God, oh God. She gasped and bolted straight up in bed, panting. It all came together. She realized suddenly that all three were the same man.

All three times, the man was out to kill her, not because she was an eyewitness to Father Michael Joseph’s murder, but because the man was sent from Senator Rothman, who wanted her dead. Odd how it had all come together in a nightmare, but she was completely certain of this.

She quietly got out of bed. She pulled off her nightgown. She put on her clothes, her shoes. She looked at the adjoining door, drew in a deep breath, and quietly turned the knob.

She heard Dane breathing evenly in sleep. She didn’t think she breathed at all as she stole over to the bureau and took Dane’s car keys out of his jacket pocket. She saw his wallet on the bureau and took a credit card. And finally, his SIG Sauer, and an extra clip. She looked back toward him. He was still sleeping.

She looked back at him one last time, then quietly closed the adjoining door again. He’d already been shot trying to protect her. She simply couldn’t bear the thought of him dying—like his brother—a senseless, vicious death. She simply wouldn’t put him in harm’s way. She was a target and, as long as she was with him, so was he, for the simple fact that she knew to her soul that if she were threatened, he would give his life for her.

There was simply no way she could bear that. No way at all. Besides, she had a plan. If it failed, she could disappear again. She slipped out the door, quietly closing it behind her.

It was Savich, in a room three doors away, on the edge of sleep, who heard a car’s engine rev not far from their rooms. He was out of bed and standing naked in the Holiday Inn doorway, watching Dane’s rental car disappear out of the parking lot.

TWENTY-NINE

Sherlock sighed. “Does she have any money?”

“She can’t have much,” Dane said. “And that means that she’ll hitchhike. Oh damn, I take that all back. Nick’s not an idiot. Let me check.” He ran back into his room. After a couple of seconds he called out, “Does anyone have any handcuffs?”

“Not on me,” Savich said.

Dane was back in a moment, breathing hard. “When I catch up with her, I’m not going to rely on reason anymore. It’s time for brute force. Remind me to get some handcuffs from Detective Flynn. Here’s the deal. She didn’t just steal the car keys, she also has my AmEx and my SIG Sauer.” He stopped, looked momentarily baffled. “Why did she sneak out? Nothing’s really changed. Why?”