Timmie's scowl was heartfelt. "Thanks. You've really narrowed it down."

"I'd also find out why these people in particular died. What do they have in common?"

"They were all Restcrest patients... I think. I'm asking Barb Adkins to do some checking on the computer for me to make sure."

Conrad lifted a finger in exception, and Timmie noticed the perfectly manicured nail. "Even if all the victims were Restcrest patients, not all Restcrest patients were victims. Why these?"

Timmie nodded. "Maybe the families can tell me. I'll talk to them. I'm also doing a couple of shifts at Restcrest."

Conrad grimaced for her and patted her arm, knowing perfectly well what that meant. "Bellissima, you come see me. I'll comfort you. In the meantime, why don't I just trundle this little gem of a list off to my friends in the FBI and see if they have something familiar in their famous computer?"

"Ooooh," Timmie answered, her eyes lighting for the first time. "A pattern? You'd do that for me?"

"I'd slay neurosurgeons for you, mi amore. Now, eat your pasta. The garlic will protect you from doctors." And he laughed, as if everything they had discussed were light and silly.

Timmie couldn't remain quite so sanguine. "Don't be too noisy about it, Conrad. I don't know who's all involved. I know it's enough people to spare at least three of them to beat up a reporter who's helping me, and some of them might have been cops."

Conrad nodded vigorously and attacked his soup, his attention still on the printout. "Well then, we'll be as quiet as church mice until we find something. And then I'll personally call some very trustworthy people and have them sweep in like the Valkyrie and clean up that town. How's that sound?"

"Distressingly operatic."

Conrad dropped his spoon. "You must love opera, bella donna. Don't break my heart."

Timmie found she could laugh again. "Conrad, I'd rather sit through a four-day hemorrhoidectomy marathon."

First Conrad grimaced, hand to chest. Then, in typical fashion, he threw back his head, laughed, and finished his soup.

* * *

By the time Timmie began to wend her way back home, she was humming. She had an ally. Not that Murphy wasn't an ally, but Conrad was a known quantity. He was an official with enough pull in the state to take care of matters once they were brought to his attention. He'd given her hope that she could get out of this fairly unscathed. All she had to do was survive a shift over at Restcrest, a furtive dig through the lives of patient families, and her regular shifts down in ER with Angie, one of which she was due for in less than three hours.

That three hours gave her enough time to take the scenic route home. Instead of whizzing out the very uninspiring Highway 70 with all the other harried commuters and over-the-road truckers, she turned off onto Highway 94 and drove the north bank of the Missouri River.

It was worth it. The sun was high and the clouds moving fast. The fields still held their green and rolled away toward a horizon of trees that sparkled with their last clinging leaves. Farm buildings gleamed where they sat tucked into the folds of land, and around some corners, the Missouri appeared, glistening and grand and silent.

Once away from the heavier suburbs, the road twisted and climbed and dropped like a rural roller coaster, the only sounds filtering past Timmie's rock and roll birdsong and church bells. Altogether a lovely reward for the trip. Timmie cranked up the radio, this time to accompany the choreography of the road, and reacquainted herself with the joys of a stick shift.

She wasn't really paying attention to other traffic unless it was somebody she had to pass on the two-lane road, or a car she didn't want to demolish coming the other way. So when the black Bonneville showed up in her rearview mirror, she noted it and downshifted to set up for the next corner. The Bonneville moved closer. Timmie saw a sign for the Herman wineries and thought about taking Meghan on a Katy Trail bike ride and stopping over. She heard Willie Nelson on the radio and turned it up even louder, the perfect companion for a back road. She'd just noticed that she had a long clear ribbon of road ahead when something smacked into her car.

"Son of a..."

Cyrano lurched, shuddered, swerved. Timmie tightened her hold on the wheel and lifted her foot off the pedals just long enough to see what had happened.

The Bonneville had hit her, right in the ass. Timmie thought of stopping. Getting out and yelling at the jerk. She thought of slowing and just letting him pass if he was so bent on it.

He wasn't. She realized that in the split second before the Bonneville rammed her again. Harder. Smack against the right rear fender so she'd swerve right off the road down toward the river.

Her adrenals kicked in like afterburners. "Shit!"

It took a little maneuvering, but she regained control and accelerated. Timmie tried hard to see into the car, but its windows were tinted. A guy, she figured, because most women didn't handle cars like that. Which was probably why this guy thought he could just take her out in the middle of the afternoon on a country road. He probably figured he had a nurse in an old French car, what could it take? One or two good hits, she'd be over the edge.

And then what?

Which was when it hit her that he very possibly wanted her dead. He certainly wanted her disabled. He'd backed the Bonneville away a bit. For another try, Timmie realized suddenly when she heard the growl of a couple hundred horses revving up. The son of a bitch really was trying to run her off the road.

It made her smile. The guy had picked the wrong road and the wrong girl. If this had been a straightaway, she wouldn't have stood a chance. That car had at least a hundred horses on her. It was newer, and it was sure as hell heavier. But this stretch of Highway 94 was nothing but curves and hills, which made the driving just as important as the horsepower. And if there was one thing Timmie knew after besting just about every canyon road and interstate in Los Angeles County, it was how to drive.

"You want me, asshole," she said, sucking in a breath and spitting on her stick-shift hand, "you come get me."

With an apology to Cyrano's old engine, Timmie slammed him into second and took off. Cyrano screamed like an outraged woman. The road ahead bent on itself like a frying snake. Howling with the kind of sheer, stupid glee she hadn't felt in months, Timmie took it like a rocket. Swooping over the hills, she tracked across both lanes as she set up the apex of each corner to make its cleanest turn, one hand on the wheel, one on the stick shift, her right foot rocking constantly between brake and gas as she double-clutched into each turn and then eased up to let her gas foot have the fun along another stretch of clear road.

She kept her focus on the road ahead rather than the road behind. Unless this guy was road-race trained, he wouldn't keep up with her. But she didn't want to run down some unsuspecting grandma just trying to get to her daughter's. And the way the hills folded up against one another, it was tough to judge too far, especially doing seventy.

The Bonneville fought valiantly against gravity. Its wheels screamed. Timmie thought she could see the brakes smoke on more than one turn. She heard more than one squeal of protest from overdriven tires. Which meant, she figured, that the guy driving wasn't the cop who'd gone after Murphy. Cops drove better than that. A cop would at least have made it a tight contest.

Timmie spent a millisecond too long assessing her pursuer, missed her line around a tight turn by inches and almost ended up on two wheels, saving herself with a little heel-toe action as she double-clutched down into a tight S turn that had a twenty-mile-an-hour warning sign on it. Timmie took it at fifty.