Sidney Sheldon's After the Darkness (26 page)

S
HE HEARD VOICES.

“Linda? Linda!”

“Still no response. She's flatlining.”

“Shock her again.”

Grace wondered,
Who's Linda?
She felt the weight of the paddles pressing on her ribs, then an indescribable pain, like a kebab skewer being driven into her heart.

She fainted.

 

S
HE WAS IN A PALE GREEN
room with a gray, checkered ceiling. There were needles in her arms. Someone was talking to her. A nurse.

“Linda?”

Grace remembered. She'd had to abandon Lizzie Woolley and move on to another of her fake identities.
I'm Linda Reynolds. I'm a thirty-two-year-old waitress from Chicago.

“Welcome back.” The nurse smiled. “Do you know where you are, Linda?”

“Hospital.” Grace's throat was so dry and sore, the word was barely audible. “Water.”

“Sure.” The nurse pressed a call button. “Just hold on a couple more min
utes. The doctor will know whether it's safe for you to drink right now. He's on his way. Is there anyone else I can call for you, honey? A relative or a friend?”

Grace shook her head.
Nobody.

She fell back to sleep.

 

S
HE WAS IN
E
AST
H
AMPTON AT
a July Fourth party. She was six years old. Her father had scooped her up in his arms and placed her on his shoulders. Grace felt like a princess in her powder-blue, ruffled party dress, with red, white and blue ribbons in her blond hair.

One of her dad's friends called out to them. “Hey, Cooper. Who's that gorgeous young lady you're with?”

“Only the prettiest girl in New York.” Cooper Knowles grinned. “When you get married, Gracie, it'll be to a king. You'll have the world at your feet, my angel. The world at your feet!” He tugged on her new blue party shoes. Grace laughed.

The laugh turned into Lenny's laugh. They were on the terrace at their home in Palm Beach. Lenny was reading the newspaper.

“Look at this, Gracie.” He chuckled. “You see what they're calling me. ‘Leonard Brookstein, King of Wall Street!' How does it feel to be married to a king?”

“It feels wonderful, my darling. I love you.”

“I love you, too.”

“Linda. LINDA.”

The spell was broken.

“This is Dr. Brewer. He's on our psychiatric team. He's just gonna have a little chat with you, okay?”

 

D
AYS PASSED
. D
OCTORS AND PSYCHIATRISTS CAME
and went. DIY abortions were a dime a dozen, sadly, but Linda Reynolds's case was unusual enough to attract attention.

“Pennyroyal poisoning? What the fuck is that?”

“Some crazy herb. Women used it for abortions in medieval times. But it's gruesome. Ingesting the essential oil can cause renal failure, acute uterine hemorrhage. Seizures.”

The doctors told Grace it was a miracle she had lived. The pennyroyal had done its job of killing her baby, but her liver would be permanently weakened. Grace didn't care. She tried to cry for the baby, to feel sad for it, but she couldn't even do that. She knew if she looked back, she would crumble. All that mattered was that she was alive, recovering, growing stronger. She could feel it in her body. Soon she would be able to get out of here. Her work was not yet done.

 

I
N THE HOSPITAL CORRIDOR
, J
UAN
B
ENITEZ
whispered to his friend José Gallo.

“Es ella. Estoy seguro.”

José poked his head around the door of Grace's room. “No way.”

Juan and José were both janitors. Not much exciting ever happened during their workdays, mopping the hospital halls. But that was no reason for Juan to go making things up.

“
Ella es horrible.
Ugly,” said José. “Grace Brookstein
era hermosa
.”

Juan was insistent.
“Les digo que, es ella. Quieres que la recompesa o no?”

José thought about it. He
did
want the reward. Badly. But he and his family were all in the States illegally. He didn't want to be the guy who called the NYPD out on a wild-goose chase.

He looked at the patient again. With her newly shorn, peroxide-blond hair, her pain-lined face and cold, listless eyes, she had none of the radiance of the beautiful young woman he'd seen on TV. And yet there was a resemblance…

 

T
HE DOCTORS HAD TOLD
G
RACE SHE
could walk around the room if she felt up to it. The electrolyte drip had been removed from her arm. Gingerly, Grace swung her feet to the floor. After a week in bed, her legs felt like Jell-O. The pennyroyal had given her seizures, one of which had torn a muscle in her calf. She hobbled to the window.

In the parking lot below, a young couple was taking their newborn baby home. The father was wrestling with a car seat, a look of terrified anxiety on his face, while his wife calmly looked on, rocking the child in her arms. Grace smiled sadly.

What a lovely, normal, happy family. I'll never have that.

There was no time to dwell on her wistfulness. A police car pulled into the lot, then another, then another. Suddenly there were cops everywhere, swarming into the building like termites. Grace felt her heart rate jump.
Are they looking for me?

A blond head emerged from one of the squad cars. Even before he looked up, Grace recognized his stocky, football player's physique.
Mitch Connors. So they
are
here for me.

Adrenaline coursed through her body.

Think! There must be a way out.

 

M
ITCH
C
ONNORS GOT INTO THE ELEVATOR.
He was so tense he could hardly breathe. As if the prospect of finally catching Grace weren't overwhelming enough, he'd spent the past three days looking into John Merrivale's cover story for the day Lenny Brookstein disappeared. He had so much to tell her. So much still to do.

“Seal off all exits and entrances. I want guys on the emergency stairs, in the kitchens, the laundry, everywhere.”

“Excuse me!” A furious chief resident stuck her arm in the elevator just as the doors were closing. In her early fifties with short gray hair and a steely don't-fuck-with-me expression, she gave Mitch a piece of her mind. “What the hell is going on here? This is a hospital. Who gave you permission to come storming in here like this?”

Mitch flashed her his badge, simultaneously pressing the button for the sixth floor. He should have alerted the hospital authorities, but with a tip this good, there was no time for niceties. “Sorry, lady. We have good information that Grace Brookstein is in the building. If you'll excuse me…”

“I won't excuse you! I don't care if Elvis Presley's in the building. My job is to save lives. You have no authority…hey! Get out of there!” Turning around, the chief resident saw four uniformed cops pushing open the swing doors to the OR. Seizing his chance, Mitch physically pushed her out of the elevator. The last thing he saw as the elevator doors closed was the furious doctor running toward him, shaking her fist like a cartoon villain.

Grace had better be here. If she wasn't, he was in big trouble.

 

“L
INDA
R
EYNOLDS
. W
HICH ROOM IS SHE IN
?”

The staff nurse on the desk hesitated. “We're not supposed to give out patients' room numbers. Are you a family member?”

Mitch flashed his badge. “Yeah. I'm her uncle Mitchell. Where is she?”

“Six-oh-five,” said the nurse. “It's at the end of the hallway on your right.”

Mitch was already running. He burst into the room, gun drawn. “Police! You're under arrest!”

A terrified orderly put his hands in the air.

“Jesus! What did I do?”

“Where is she? Grace.” The man looked blank. Mitch corrected himself. “I mean Linda. The patient. Where did she go, damn it?”

“Bathroom,” the orderly stammered. “Three doors down. She'll be right back.”

 

G
RACE LOOKED AT THE GRATE COVERING
the ventilation shaft. It was two feet square
. The same size as the crate I escaped from jail in.

As she climbed onto the toilet seat, then up onto the cistern, tears of pain filled her eyes. Her left calf was in agony. She bit down hard on her lip to stop herself from screaming and reached up with both hands. Dislodging the grate was easy. As she pushed it aside, a shower of dust fell into her eyes, temporarily blinding her, but there was no time to stop and recover. Digging her nails into the ceiling, Grace hauled herself up, squeezing her tiny frame into the ventilation shaft like dough into a pasta maker. Carefully, she replaced the grate behind her. Dust still stung her eyes like acid, but it didn't matter. Ahead of her was nothing but darkness. Inch by inch, she pulled herself forward into the void.

 

M
ITCH WALKED INTO THE LADIES' ROOM.
There were three cubicles, all of them empty.

He turned to leave, then stopped. Walking into the middle cubicle, he ran his finger across the top of the toilet seat. The dust was as thick as
sugar icing. Mitch traced a letter
G
and looked up.
Could a human being fit in there?

Back in the corridor, he yelled into his radio.

“I need to see plans of the ventilation system. Blueprints. Where do those tunnels go?”

The chief resident stepped out of the elevator and pointed at Mitch. “There! In the blue shirt.” Three burly security guards rushed toward him. Seconds later Mitch found himself being manhandled toward the emergency stairs while the resident looked on, arms folded, smiling with satisfaction.
Talk about a ballbuster.

“For God's sake! I'm a police officer. Do you
realize
what I could do to you guys for this? Let me go.”

The biggest of the guards murmured, “You kidding, right? Do
you
realize what
she
could do to us if we let go of your ass? Trust me, Officer. You ain't got no idea.”

 

G
RACE'S VISION WAS CLEARING
. S
HE SAW
light, faint rays at first, but they gradually got stronger. The tunnel forked left and right. The light was coming from the left.

Grace moved toward it.

 

“I
SWEAR TO
G
OD, IF WE'VE
lost her because of this
bullshit,
I will personally see to it they don't let you loose on a patient again with so much as a Band-Aid.”

It had taken fifteen minutes for Mitch's boss, Lieutenant Dubray, to fax the necessary warrants and consents to the hospital. Only once she had them in her hands did the chief resident order her heavies to let Mitch out of her office.

“Don't try to scare me, Detective.” She laughed. “Haven't you embarrassed yourself enough for one day?”

Mitch was about to hit back when one of his subordinates burst in.

“Blueprints,” he panted, unrolling paper onto the desk.

 

G
RACE LOOKED DOWN THROUGH THE GRILLE.
The room was empty. This time it was tougher to wrench the ventilation panel free. Squeezed into the shaft like raw meat in a sausage skin, she was having a tough time getting any traction. Finally, with sweat from her efforts pouring down her back and chest, Grace pulled out the grille and eased herself down into the room below. The light was so bright it took a few seconds to get her bearings. She looked around.

I'm in an X-ray room.

She wondered how long it would be before the technician showed up with the next patient.
Do they always leave the lights on, or did someone just step out for a minute?
Voices outside the door answered her question. Two men were talking. Grace watched their shadows grow larger.
They're coming in!

 

M
ITCH STUDIED THE BLUEPRINTS
. T
HE VENTILATION
shaft had nine grilles on the sixth floor, each of them a potential exit. Mitch dispatched men to each one. The bad news was he'd lost fifteen minutes. The good news was there was no way out of the building, nor could somebody crawl between floors. It was a case of “what goes up must come down.”

“What's the closest exit to that ladies' room?”

The officer traced the tunnel with his finger.

“That would be…right here. X-ray and MRI room.”

Mitch started running.

 

T
HE GRILLE IN THE
X-
RAY-ROOM CEILING
was still hanging open. Grace hadn't bothered to try to cover her tracks.
She knows she's running out of time.

“I don't understand it,” said the technician. “I've been here the whole time. I stepped out for literally thirty seconds. But if she got in here while I was gone, she'd have had to come past our reception desk. Liza would have seen her for sure.”

“Hmm. So would my men,” said Mitch. He scratched his head. “Is there any other way out of here?”

“No.”

“No service elevator? Fire stairs? No window?”

“No. Look around you, Detective. This is it.”

Mitch looked around. The technician was right. The room was a smooth box, empty apart from the humming X-ray machine and the circular MRI tube.
Nowhere to run, nowhere to hide.
Then suddenly he saw it. In the corner. A laundry hamper, full of used scrubs.

Heart pounding, Mitch dived in, pulling out used scrubs like a starving man hunting for food scraps in a Dumpster. In seconds, the floor was littered with blue hospital gowns and face masks. But no sign of Grace.

He tried to keep the disappointment out of his voice.