Chapter Thirty
She wasn’t dead.
How could he have miscalculated?
He’d estimated her body weight. He’d counted the pills and crushed them into powder, then mixed some into her coffee and some into her pie. He’d even added a shot of heroin to her pie for good measure. He’d been worried she’d taste the drugs, but she’d eaten every bit. He’d rinsed the damned plate and put it in the dishwasher himself.
She should not have survived.
How was she still alive?
Tugging his baseball cap lower on his forehead, he slipped into the secure ICU wing with another visitor, falling into step beside him. He lowered his chin, hunched his shoulders, and averted his face from the ceiling-mounted cameras.
The ICU hallway bustled with bodies. Gathered around a doorway marked with the number three, nurses and doctors suited up as if they were going to Mars. Full body gowns, face shields, double gloves. An alarm clanged, the light above the door flashed. Doctors shouted orders. More than a dozen medical personnel crowded the fishbowl room.
He kept walking, kept his distance.
Blended in.
The hospital staff was busy trying to stop someone from dying. They paid him no attention. Even the staff not involved with the critical patient were distracted, watching the life-and-death drama unfold.
He continued to room eight, walking right past, barely slowing to look inside, and stopped in front of the next room. He stood in the doorway, pretending to watch a shrunken old man sleep, all alone. The curtains over the glass walls of Jenny Kruger’s room were open. He could see inside.
Jenny lay still. Wires and tubes snaked around her. Liquid dripped into an IV line in her arm. A ventilator at the bedside puffed in a steady rhythm, and a bank of monitors kept track of every heartbeat and every breath. Sometimes, medical personnel grew too dependent on those monitors and didn’t come into rooms often enough. He’d been hoping to sneak in during a lull in the nurse’s attention. He nearly flinched as he spotted a woman sitting beside Jenny’s bed, a book open in her lap.
The woman stood, glancing around, as if sensing his scrutiny. She did a quick scan of Jenny’s equipment, then sat back down. Her interest in her book seemed to wane. Her gaze strayed to the door, watchful. In jeans and boots, she was tall, with short blonde hair and a sharp face. A slight bulge under her sweater suggested she might be armed. The suburban hospital didn’t have metal detectors.
Who was she?
She didn’t look exactly like a cop, but she didn’t look like she’d take any crap from anybody either.
Shoving his hands into his pockets, he considered his options.
A janitor in green coveralls pushed a large, wheeled trash receptacle down the hallway. The janitor stopped at each doorway, ducked into the room, and emptied the nonmedical waste into his cart. Coughing into his fist to cover his face, he stepped aside as the janitor emptied the old man’s trashcan.
His fingers closed around the syringe in his pocket. Heroin. Injected into the muscle, it would take some time to work. He would be long gone before Jenny Kruger began to react to the drug in her system. Her body was already compromised. She’d be dead in a few hours. No one would suspect she’d been given an overdose of heroin while lying in a hospital bed.
His plan had been to wait until no one was watching, then slip in and give her the injection. It would take a minute or two, at best. There were always codes and other emergencies that distracted the ICU staff, like the one up the hall. But the blonde woman’s presence screwed up everything.
He could wait until she left the room. She’d have to step out at some point. She must eat.
But that would take time he didn’t have.
He had things to do. People to see. Not that any of them were as important as Jenny.
The minute she opened her eyes—and her mouth—his game was over.
He’d kept his secret for twenty-three years. He sure as hell wasn’t giving up now.
She appeared to be in some sort of coma. There was a chance she could still die without his interference. He couldn’t kill Jenny and the blonde at the same time, not without attracting attention. Especially if the blonde was armed.
An ICU death had to be silent, swift, and stealthy. It needed to look like an unfortunate complication of Jenny’s overdose.
Adjusting his baseball cap, he dropped his chin and walked down the hall. He’d have to come back later.
He left the ICU wing the same way he’d come in. In room three, a nurse pulled a sheet over the patient’s face. The sense of letdown and failure was palpable in the people slowly trickling from the room. A few had tears in their eyes and on their faces. They consoled each other with hugs and shoulder pats.
They’d cared. They’d tried. The patient had still died.
Maybe he’d get lucky and the same would happen to Jenny.
He pressed the silver square on the wall. The automatic double doors opened with a dramatic swoosh. He’d be back. He had no choice. He had to think of some way to make sure that Jenny Kruger never woke up.