Lucidity

Chapter 16 - Friends of Friends

No shit. Patient going missing from a hospital—might be grounds for some jackass lawyer to sue everyone in sight. “No friends or family to file a missing persons report?”

Emberek shook his head, obviously frustrated with the way the conversation was going. “You don’t understand. This woman lives alone for the past four years, never leaves her house, she’s agoraphobic. Has been ever since her husband was murdered and she was assaulted. I found the EMS run report—you accompanied her to the hospital. I was hoping you might remember something that would give us a hint where she might go.”

“Sure, what was the name?”

“Patient’s name is Grace Moran, her husband was—”

“Jimmy Moran,” Sean finished for him. He hadn’t thought about the Moran case in years, but the details were immediately clear and present. Sean had hated that case. It was all so senseless. Not even anything like drugs or money or booze to blame it on.

At least he’d closed the Moran case. Even if the doer wasn’t locked up like he should be. Damn lawyers and headshrinkers had seen to that.

“Grace Moran is your patient? She has a brain tumor? Is it serious?” Stupid question, when was a brain tumor not serious? Still, he couldn’t believe it was happening to Grace Moran of all people.

“She’ll die if she doesn’t get the surgery,” Emberek told him. His voice broke a bit, as if he and Moran were involved in more than a doctor-patient relationship. Sean glanced at the physician. Emberek wore the expression of a teenager in love.

“How do you know Moran? Was she a patient of yours?”

Emberek shook his head. “I’ve never met her.” He explained about the neurosurgery presentation, about his interview with Moran’s housekeeper, Ingrid, how he’d tracked down Moran’s only other admission at Angels of Mercy.

“So you don’t know anything about how Jimmy Moran died?”

“It happened before I moved here. The housekeeper said he was murdered. Did Grace—did she kill him? Is that why she became a prisoner in her own house?”

Grace, Emberek had said. Christ, the kid had it bad.

Talk about crazy—Emberek had never even met the woman. Still, he cared enough to try to help her. Sounded like Moran could use all the help she could get.

Sean cleared his throat, remembering the night of the murder, his first interview with Moran. His gaze caught on his bulletin board. Photos of smiling children were plastered over it, layered on top of each other, most without a happy ending, either missing or dead.

Sean got to his feet and grabbed his jacket. He needed some fresh air before court and he didn’t want to talk about the Moran case here.

Not in front of the children.

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The clatter of a woman’s heels on linoleum intruded into Lukas’ awareness. He blinked, the ceiling tiles above him returning to focus. Grace? Had she come back to free him?

He’d been dreaming of their first meeting. The way her fingers, so small, yet so strong, gently palpated the bones of his hand, then eased his pain by crafting a splint that fit perfectly, protecting his bruised and injured hand in layers of fiberglass and warm, soft felt.

Those blue eyes of hers, the curl of her lips as she smiled and listened to his lies about breaking his hand while working on his black belt in Karate, trying to smash concrete blocks. Ah, and her smell. That enticing combination of pure feminine mystery mixed with the vanilla of her shampoo and the cinnamon of the donut she’d recently eaten. Sheer ambrosia.