Alan felt like his world had ended all over again. He didn’t have a single patient in the ER, but he wished every bed would fill so that he would have something to keep him from thinking about himself. Or Phoebe.

He’d been such a fool. He’d let himself believe again. He’d gone out on a limb with a woman that any sane person could have told him was trouble, and he’d let himself care for her, and he had been well and truly hooked. Sucked all the way in.

He’d fallen because Phoebe had been a great lay, he told himself. That was all. She’d been willing to really put some effort into her scheme, whatever her scheme might have been. To get his money? To get him to marry her? Whatever — it didn’t matter anymore, did it? Brig had saved him from himself, saved him from being taken by yet another woman who wanted to use him.

And he had never been less happy to know the truth in his life.

He kept seeing Phoebe smiling at him. Kept hearing that brief, startled laugh of hers when he said something she thought was funny, like she had forgotten that anything in the world could still be funny and was delighted to rediscover this whole misplaced part of her universe. He could still feel her pressed against his chest, asleep, warm and solid and sweetly and delicately curved. Nothing flashy about her, no supermodel features and no oh-my-God curves — but she had radiated. She had shone. She had been like a ray of sunlight sparkling through clouds for just an instant before disappearing again, and he’d found himself holding his breath and hoping that he would catch another glimpse of her light.

And all the while, he’d been courting Janet the Second.

Sucker. Sucker. He was such a sucker. He should just stay the hell away from women. Maybe find some amenable lab tech who’d give him quickies in a closet or something, just to keep himself from getting so sex-starved that he got stupid. That he lost his vision and started fumbling blindly after anyone who touched him and made him feel good and who had been born with a face that could pretend innocence while plotting betrayal.

From now on, he decided, he would avoid relationships that had any potential strings. He would avoid illusions. He would embrace Brig’s philosophy, that women were fun for the first five days and hell in descending layers thereafter.

He came out of his funk with the feeling that something was wrong and turned toward the ambulance doors to find Brig charging through them, looking like a shot of Death with a Hell chaser.

Alan started toward him. “What’s the matter with you?”

“I called the FBI,” Brig said, “to see if they’d done any background checks on Phoebe Rain either recently or before, when they were investigating her husband and the shooting. And I got Toeller, the agent she called the other day. And this FBI agent was about to jump out of his skin because he’s been trying to call Phoebe for the last couple of hours and he can’t reach her. Any chance she’s here?”

“After what I said to her?” Alan shook his head. “What do you think?”

Brig said, “The DNA samples didn’t match.”

“What?”

“The DNA samples didn’t match on the guy who died. They weren’t Michael Schaeffer’s DNA. The guy who is dead isn’t her husband.”

Everything that had happened since Alan had talked on the phone to Brig rewound in an instant. Phoebe the scheming bitch dissolved like the Wicked Witch of the West hit by water, and Phoebe with the angel’s smile stepped out of the smoke. “How the hell — what — they had fingerprints.”

“The Schaeffer family has been covering up a big lie. Somehow, someone used the same laser skin resurfacing technique that plastic surgeons use to remove wrinkles and... some sort of lesions from faces...”

“Precancerous lesions.”

“That sounds right. Toeller — the FBI agent — managed to get a forensics guy to the funeral home to stop the family from cremating the body, though it was a close fucking call. The forensics guy took a look and was able to piece together what had happened. Best guess is that Michael Schaeffer started coming out of his coma early on, and one member of the family or someone close to the family didn’t want to see him charged with the murders he’d committed. So the accomplice found some indigent in a coma and offered to cover his hospitalization. The FBI hasn’t managed to identify the body yet or figure out who Michael’s accomplice was. However, the person on the inside hired someone talented to remove the impostor’s original fingerprints and then, with templates from Michael’s fingers, to burn on new ones. The results aren’t perfect; the forensics guy could tell what had been done by looking at the fingers with a magnifying glass. But those prints were good enough to fool the FBI’s computer.”

Alan was staring at Brig, but seeing Phoebe abandoned by everyone she should have been able to count on, alone in her house, with her murderous ex-husband given a clear shot to walk right in and kill her.

“The FBI thinks the family may have been considering this possibility early on — that they probably made preparations almost immediately. When they started seeing Michael coming out of his coma, they complained of incompetence at the hospital where he was receiving care and arranged for a private ambulance to take him to a private institution. Somewhere. At that one point, there was a complete break in continuity — all new doctors, new nurses, new techs. There was literally no outsider left who could point out that the man who left in the ambulance was not the one who arrived at the new facility. And apparently those records that went with Michael suffered some tampering en route. New sets of X-rays, new sets of lab work. Everything that arrived with the John Doe fit what the new doctors were supposed to be seeing.”

Alan transferred patients all the time. “It would be difficult to do,” he said. “But only from a logistics standpoint. Not in fooling anyone. If the chart is there and all the signatures are on it, we treat the damned thing as gospel. The patient is almost secondary.”

Brig growled, “The whole thing had to cost the family a fortune. The FBI is hoping to track down the forgers, the attendants and ambulance drivers, the money. But the bastard had connections.”

“Criminal defense lawyer.”

“Right. Had a few friends among his clients.”

“So the FBI thinks he rehabbed at home.”

“Or in Europe somewhere, or South America, or God only knows where. He was a successful criminal defense lawyer.”

Alan shuddered. “And the Schaeffers were going for cremation of the stand-in to cover their tracks. Get the ashes, scatter them, and Michael is good and gone forever.”

“Looks that way.”

“So Michael Schaeffer is likely in Fort Lauderdale right now. And everything Phoebe has been saying is true.”

“I don’t know. There’s the detective report she had on you. There’s her arrest record. I don’t know what’s true.”

“I do. We abandoned her. That’s what’s true.”

“Yeah. That’s true.”

Alan turned and slammed his fist into the nurses’ station wall. And pain enveloped his hand, his wrist, and his forearm. Waves of nausea doubled him over, and without warning he lost everything he’d eaten all day into the nearest trash can.

“Alan?” Brig said. “Thanks for not putting that fist into my nose.”

Alan grabbed a paper towel and wiped his mouth. “Was my first thought, actually. Should have gone with it.” Alan took the Ace wrap that a nurse silently offered him, and the water and Motrin another held out. “Wouldn’t have done as much damage to the hand.” He started wrapping the palm and back of his hand, and the pain hazed his vision. “I’m a fucking idiot. I knew she wasn’t conning me.”

“We’re trying to find the truth right now,” Brig said. “Our guys are door-to-door in the neighborhood, asking about her. I have an APB out on her car. We haven’t turned anything up yet. Can you think of anyplace she might be?”

Alan leaned against the nurses’ station, closing his eyes against another wave of nausea. “No clue. I can’t think of a thing. You think he has her?”

“I don’t know,” Brig said. “He might.”

“I’m calling Morrie. He’ll cover for me. I have to get out of here. I’ll help you find her.”