Читать книгу Veil Of Fear - Judi Lind - Страница 11

A jolt of rage, heavily laced with fear, shuddered down Trace’s backbone. Until now, he hadn’t truly believed Mary was in real danger. He’d attributed her vague feeling of being followed to premarital jitters. Nor had he taken the note left under her door too seriously, dismissing it as a spiteful but harmless missive from her former boyfriend. No, from the moment Bob Newland had phoned him, Trace had expected this assignment to be mere baby-sitting duty.

He’d done his job, of course. Taken the usual precautions. But in Trace’s experience, only rarely did an anonymous note writer come out of the shadows to harm his prey.

Poisoners, however, were different. Far more twisted, and in Trace’s mind, far more evil. Usually closely associated with the victim, a poisoner was a deadly cold bastard who could stand and watch his target writhe in agonizing pain.

A trickle of sweat beaded down Trace’s cheek. Praying that Mary was wrong, that her stalker hadn’t made that horrible leap to attempted murderer, Trace leaned closer. With a gentle hand, he swept a damp strand of golden hair off her forehead. “Why do you think you’ve been poisoned? Maybe it’s just nerves. You’ve been under a terrible strain lately.”

Mary pushed his hand away and sat up. Her face was pale, ghostly pale and her lower lip trembled. As if overcome with the effort of sitting, she dropped back against the pillow. “It was the candy. I...I ate just a few pieces and became horribly ill. It had to be the candy. I was feeling fine before.”

Trace frowned. “What candy?”

Mary lifted an arm and pointed toward the living room. “Camille brought me a box of candy. Splendora Chocolates. My favorite.”

Dropping her hand, Trace leapt to his feet and bounded into the living room. A few moments later, he stalked back into the bedroom, bearing the gold-foil box. “I’ve called for an ambulance. It should be here in a couple minutes. How are you feeling?”

“Better, much better. Maybe...maybe I don’t need to go to the hospital.” To her amazement, Mary realized it was true. Now that the horrible surges of nausea had passed, she was feeling stronger by the minute.

Trace ran his fingertips along the ridge of her jaw, feeling the clamminess of her flesh. Mary’s voice was stronger but her skin was still ghastly white, tinged with rings of blue and lavender beneath her eyes. Trace shook his head vehemently. “We’re not taking any chances.” He laid the box of chocolates on the bedside table. “How did you receive this?”

Mary closed her eyes. “I told you. Camille Castnor.”

Trace’s eyebrows furrowed in surprise. “The senator’s wife?”

“Uh-huh. They’re both good friends of Jonathan’s. We see quite a lot of them.”

“When was the package delivered? How? A hotel clerk? Messenger service?”

Screwing her face into a frown, she raised herself onto wobbly elbows, tucking the sheet under her chin. “You’re not listening to me. I told you already. Camille brought them herself.”

Trace picked out a piece of dark chocolate candy and raised it to the light so he could examine it more closely. He didn’t see any signs of tampering, but a tiny puncture left by a hypodermic needle would be easy to erase. The poisoner had only to heat the candy slightly and smear the slick chocolate over the small hole. No one would suspect a thing.

He tossed the candy into the box and turned his attention to Mary. “This doesn’t make sense. If Mrs. Castnor wanted to poison you, she wouldn’t bring the candy herself.”

Mary scooted up against the headboard and pulled the blanket over her bare legs. “Camille? Oh, Trace, I can’t believe she’d do anything like this. I mean, why? And, for crying out loud, she’s a senator’s wife! She’d never risk the headlines, even if she hated me.”

“Does she?”

“Hate me? No, of course not.” Mary paused for a long moment, considering the outlandish suggestion. Camille wasn’t exactly her closest friend...but why would she want to harm her? Just because Camille and Jonathan had once dated was no reason for Camille to—

Mary’s troubling thoughts were interrupted by a pounding at the front door, immediately followed by a long blare of the doorbell.

“Must be the ambulance,” Trace said. “I’ll let them in.”

* * *

FOR MARY, the next two hours passed in a blur of white uniforms, bright lights and unpleasant medical procedures.

The paramedics took her vital signs and had a brief, whispered conversation with Trace. One of the technicians approached the bed and with a reassuring murmur, inserted an IV needle into the tender flesh on the top of her hand. Acting quickly yet gently, the two men lifted her onto a gurney. Within minutes, Mary was staring up at the vaulted, gilded ceiling of the hotel lobby as they wheeled her through.

Catching the eye of the day manager, Mary watched him recover from his shock and grab a telephone. No doubt he was calling Jonathan who would be chagrined at his fiancée being a public spectacle in one of his hotels. Get over it, Jonathan, Mary thought, dropping a hand over her eyes to shield them from the bright sunlight as the paramedics pushed the gurney out through the glass double doors. She had more to worry about right now than Jonathan’s injured dignity.

Could it really be true that someone had tried to kill her? Now that her queasiness had finally subsided, the idea seemed impossible. Ludicrous. Yet deep in the darkest recesses of her heart, Mary knew her first reaction had been right.

It was too much of a coincidence that only moments after eating a few pieces of chocolate, her stomach had turned inside out. Mary had never had a nervous stomach and there was no reason to assume that this violent attack of nausea had been suddenly brought on by “nerves.”

Even Dr. Keller, the young resident in the emergency room, was openly skeptical. Nonetheless, he sighed deeply and ordered a full battery of tests.

Fortunately, Mary’s earlier bouts of vomiting saved her from the indignity of having her stomach pumped. Several more doctors came into the curtained cubicle and probed and poked every conceivable inch of her body. A lab technician entered with a metal basket filled with medieval instruments of torture, then departed after obtaining a healthy sampling of Mary’s blood.

Finally, the room was quiet and she was alone.

Mary fidgeted on the narrow examining table, wishing they’d given her a better-fitting gown or a sheet. Every tiny movement exposed some portion of her anatomy.

She looked around the sterile cubbyhole and felt unaccountably lonely. Suddenly, she realized that she’d lost track of Trace in the flurry of medical activity. He’d probably been banished to the waiting room. She was surprised how much she missed his warm comfort. His calm, reassuring voice.

Then, the curtain surrounding the bed moved and Trace was beside her, as if he’d felt her need. He reached down and took her hand.

“How’s it going, kiddo?”

Mary shrugged. “I’ve been better.” Now that her stomach was relatively calm, she didn’t feel sick. Or even frightened. She felt embarrassed. Foolish at having made such a fuss.

Lying here, under the bright glare of the emergency-room lights, her fears of poisoned candy seemed...melodramatic. Who could possibly want to harm her, anyway? No one.

Jonathan was right. In all probability, it was Mark Lester who had been following her around like a sulking teenager. And no doubt, it was Mark who’d slipped the note under her door. But try to kill her? No, she couldn’t believe that. Her imagination had simply got the best of her.

All she wanted now was to get into her clothes and slink out of the hospital with as little fanfare as possible. Clothes! With a groan, Mary remembered that she’d stripped down to her underwear after being taken ill. What was she going to wear home?

Again, as if in direct response to her thoughts, Trace dropped a brown paper bag on the foot of the narrow bed. “Just in case the doc decides not to keep you overnight, I brought you some stuff to wear home.”

Mary ignored his eerie mind-reading ability and rummaged gratefully through the bag. If Trace hadn’t kept his wits about him enough to gather her a pair of slacks and T-shirt, she’d be leaving the hospital in her bathrobe.

That provoked another disconcerting thought. What if the media got wind of her trip to the emergency room and plastered a photo of her on the cover of every supermarket tabloid? “REGENT’S FIANCéE CLAIMS SHE’S BEING STALKED BY CRAZED POISONER!”

Mary shuddered as she imagined Jonathan’s reaction to such sensational press. The best thing to do was get out of here before anyone discovered she’d been hospitalized.

Looking up at Trace, she couldn’t contain the surge of anxiety in her voice. Her words fell over one another in her haste to get them out. “Can we leave now? I—I didn’t mean to make such a fuss. I mean, I’m sure that I overreacted,” she rationalized, feeling a little guilty for her gluttony. Eating chocolate for breakfast would make anybody sick.

Trace shook his head. “I don’t know that you did overreact.”

A sudden chill crept through Mary’s body. What was he saying? What did he know that she didn’t? Whatever it was, Mary wasn’t at all sure that she wanted to hear it. In a self-protective gesture, she wrapped her arms around her chest. The crinkling of the paper gown was the only sound in the small cubicle.

Finally finding her voice, she asked, “Why do you say that?”

Still holding her hand, Trace ran the edge of his thumb over her trembling fingers. “I checked with the front desk before I came to the hospital. They don’t know who that candy was from. It suddenly ‘appeared’ on the counter early this morning. Mrs. Castnor saw the box sitting there when she stopped at the desk to see if you were in. She offered to bring it up. Since the clerk knew her, he didn’t think there could be any harm.”