Timmie wished with all her heart that she could tell Alex how he'd saved her life. "Thank you," was all she could manage.

He laughed. "If you really want to say thanks, have dinner with me."

"What the hell did that mean?" somebody in the trauma room screeched.

Timmie almost turned to answer that she didn't know. Then she realized that they were talking about the code. Not Alex, who had just asked her out.

Her.

Jesus, suddenly she felt twelve again. Traumawoman, the forensics fairy. All shot to dust by a question from one guy with drop-dead eyes and a history of being a gentleman. "Uh..."

Alex shrugged, as if he were feeling just as uncomfortable. "It's bad timing, I know. But we haven't gotten a chance to catch up. And I'd really love to talk to somebody about something other than DRGs and Medicare funding. Please?"

"Hey, hey, where are you going?" another voice demanded, farther away.

Dinner, Timmie wanted to say. No matter what Murphy thought, because she was hiding the proof of Alex's innocence under her coat. Besides, Murphy had never spent his summers watching Alex Raymond from afar. A girl could learn a lot about a guy from afar.

"Sure," she said. "Give me a call, okay?"

His smile was everything a little girl might have imagined.

"Stop! Stop, damn it!"

This time the voice came from not ten feet down the hall. Timmie turned to find that one of the day nurses was headed her way, hot on the heels of a scruffy-looking teen who was barreling toward her like a loose horse. Only this horse was carrying a wrapped instrument tray under his arm like a tight end, and the nurse, an even scrawnier guy with a four-pack-a-day endurance challenge, couldn't keep up.

"Stop him!" the nurse bellowed, just too late.

The kid slammed the tray into Timmie's stomach like a cow catcher and then tried to run right up her chest. Timmie instinctively dropped what she was holding to grab him. The kid kicked. Timmie bit and bit hard.

She only got jacket. He screamed anyway, and the kid, Timmie, and Alex cartwheeled over into a skidding heap on the newly polished floor.

"She bit me!" the kid howled in Timmie's ear. Timmie couldn't breathe. Alex had an elbow in her back and his face in her neck.

"She bit me!"

"Shut up," the nurse demanded, hauling him free of the mess. "Or I'll bite you again, you little prick."

Timmie couldn't seem to move. She was flat on her back with a diaphragm that had been surprised into nonperformance and a hundred-and-eighty-pound physician on her hip.

"Timmie?"

The nurse, a guy named Eddie with buckteeth and more gold chains than Cindy, bent over her, his laughter more of a gasp. The kid bent alongside him, rubbing his well-padded arm.

"Timmie?" Alex echoed, readjusting his position so that he was over her somehow. "Honey, you all right?"

Timmie couldn't speak. She couldn't much think. So she nodded, and finally, with a lurch, her diaphragm rewarded her with a gasping breath. "Yeah."

"Here," Eddie said, handing something down to her. "You dropped these."

Her files. Her secret, hidden, dangerous files. That did it for lounging on the floor. Timmie made it as far as her butt, where she sat next to Alex, who was trying to right his suit.

"What's going on?" somebody demanded behind her. Somebody who sounded suspiciously like Angie.

Hand still out with the sheaf of papers toward Timmie, Eddie looked up. "Stupid little SHPOS here tried to steal an instrument tray."

Timmie gurgled, gasped, grabbed the papers before Angie could see them. Repositioned her sweatshirt just enough to hide them.

"Why?" Angie demanded.

"Great roach clips," Timmie allowed with a grin.

For the first time, the teen grinned along with her.

Alex frowned. "Shpos?" he asked.

"Subhuman piece of shit," Timmie told him, arm tight to her side as if protecting sore ribs.

The kid lost his grin. "Hey!"

"You all right, Ms. Leary-Parker?" Angie asked in the kind of voice that let everyone know how long-suffering she was.

"Fine."

Angie squeaked as she turned on her heel. Eddie grinned like a yenta, and the kid muttered about abuse. Alex climbed to his feet and held out a hand to pull Timmie up. She took it, still wondering why the hell Alex Raymond would possibly ask her to dinner.

* * *

Two miles away Daniel Murphy was smiling, too. But for an entirely different reason. He'd spent the morning out in Victor's neighborhood finding out that nobody, after all, had paid much attention to who had been at Victor's house before the fire. TVs had been tuned to Oprah and Barney, and dinner was on the stove. It wasn't until the next-door neighbor heard the smoke alarm while barbecuing that anybody thought to look that way.

Dejected, Murphy had sat himself down at the Stone Age computer back at the paper and waded his way through the life and times of Alex Raymond. He'd searched NEXIS/LEXIS, and he'd tapped into one of the credit bureau lines he'd borrowed from once or twice. He read how Alex Raymond was a golden boy of golden parents in a golden little town in the Midwest. He read how the golden boy got scholarships and had ambition and compassion in equal amounts. Eagle Scout and senior class president of Puckett High. Top of his class in premed, top third in med school. Gifted, smiling, committed to the welfare of old people everywhere.

There was even a piece in there about his mother, the brewery heiress who had fallen tragically ill in her early fifties and succumbed shortly thereafter to Alzheimer's disease.

It was enough to turn a reporter's stomach.

And then Murphy's day brightened. The golden boy had a tarnish.

Three years ago, in Boston, where he'd so diligently schooled and trained, he'd helped set up another Alzheimer's prototype unit. An experimental site coadministered by his now-famous partner, the nerd researcher Dr. Peter Davies. Pictures were included of two smiling, white-coat-clad physicians who looked like Jekyll and Hyde in person. Raymond the bright light, Davies the dark loner.

Only the two of them evidently hadn't gotten it right that time. The unit folded, and they declared bankruptcy, leaving behind some seriously displeased creditors and more than one cranky customer. They had given the press the usual, "a great idea that needs better funding" line, and then split town.

And four years before that, they'd done the same in Philadelphia. The pictures looked younger, brasher, more hopeful. The results were dismally the same.

And now, they were the toast of Puckett with the same song and dance.

Murphy smiled. It wouldn't hurt to get in touch with somebody involved in the other Alzheimer's units. See what might have happened, what tastes were left in what mouths. It might not even be a bad idea to venture deep into the bowels of Price University labs and see just what the dark, intense Dr. Davies looked like now that he was working on a possible third strike.

It might even be a good idea to ask Leary out to dinner. Just to ask what she'd found out. And then he'd tell her what he'd found out. For the first time that day, Murphy laughed.

Chapter 12

"What difference doe that make?" Timmie demanded when given the news two days later.

"What do you mean, what difference?" Murphy retorted, now close to seriously enjoying himself as he walked down the hall alongside her. "Money and power and status. Tough stuff to give up, Leary."