"I looked through at least seven charts. Every one of those deaths was a surprise. Sudden respiratory arrest. Sudden cardiac crash. Amazing how surprised a nurse can sound with just the words 'patient had been stable until arrest.'"

Timmie had almost made it past that first jolt of fear. This stopped her dead in her tracks. Last chance to escape the inevitable, and Barb had closed the door. There were people dying, and other people covering up the fact. Not a huge surprise in a hospital. It happened. Nobody liked to admit mistakes, especially when mistakes tended to cost lives and millions in litigation. But this...

This.

Timmie sighed, closed her eyes. "Fuck."

Barb looked way down at Timmie the way a mother does when her child first realizes that the world isn't a place Santa Claus would live in after all. "Let's get you home," she suggested. "We can finish the editorial portion of this program then."

Timmie started walking again, but the questions began to circle relentlessly. If that guy hadn't wanted the list, what had he wanted? If there were deaths being covered up, just who was committing them? And who was covering them up?

Timmie stood there shivering while Barb unlocked the Volvo's door, and all she could think of was that she wanted to sleep. For hours. Days. Weeks. Amazing how predictable the body was. When in danger, run. Or hide. Or both. Down at the end of the lane, one of the security wagons was trolling for problems. Timmie didn't pay a lot of attention.

"I'm going to have to talk to those nurses up there tomorrow," she said, thinking specifically of one very dedicated nurse. "They'll know..."

Something. She'd been about to say it. She lost the word somewhere in the millisecond of time it took to see the security guard waving hello to Barb as he trundled past. The guard with the thick black hair and potbelly.

The guard with the cat's-eye-and-gold ring on his left pinkie.

Well, no wonder, Timmie thought as she stood there gaping like a Kansas farmer in Manhattan. She'd been right. It hadn't been a cop. It had been somebody who played one on his job. A security guard. From the hospital.

"O-o-o-h, shit," she muttered, struggling not to make eye contact or run. Probably a good thing. The look the guard shot her on the way by left no doubt that he was here to make sure she didn't recognize him.

"Oh shit what?" Barb asked, throwing the bag with Timmie's clothes in the car and holding the door open for Timmie to follow.

Wondering how it could be that nobody else seemed to be able to see her shake, Timmie tried to grin. "I'll tell you later at the house."

* * *

"Think," Barb demanded an hour later as they sat sprawled in Timmie's living room with sodas and ice packs. "You have something somebody in that hospital wants pretty badly."

"Nothing!" Timmie insisted again. "Not if they haven't changed the M and M sheets."

"He didn't hurt you in any way."

"No. I think he just wasn't good enough at his job to lift my bag earlier." She hoped he just wasn't good enough. "He probably saw that running-a-car-off-a-road stunt in a Sylvester Stallone movie somewhere."

"Seems pretty stupid."

"So did he."

Barb finished her soda like a shot and grimaced. "So, what do we do now?"

Timmie pushed herself off her chair and tried not to groan. She was not a very good victim, especially when she ached. She was a worse target, though. "I need to catch Conrad before he disappears with that list. Maybe he's spotted something I missed."

But Conrad had already disappeared. All Timmie had to talk to was his answering machine, which pleaded for her to make him a happy man with a message and then wished everyone a musical "Ciao, bambini."

Timmie left her message. Standing there doing it, she saw that her answering machine was blinking and instinctively hit the Replay button. There was a message to call her insurance company and the leftover one from Murphy, who had wanted to warn her about new phone threats. Then there was one other.

"What games are you playing now, Timmie?" an aggrieved male voice demanded, making Timmie flush so hard her head spun again. "You telling the courts I gave Meghan drugs? Got her drunk? I've had a little trouble and you get righteous and vindictive. Well, I have my rights. I'm here, I'm going to see my daughter, and then I'll show everyone just what pain you've caused me. Think about it, Timmie."

Timmie just stood there as the machine beeped, clicked, and went silent.

"Obviously the ex," Barb suggested dryly. "He does have the West Coast concession on rationalization, doesn't he?"

Well, at least it washed out the fear for a while. Timmie was so angry she could hardly speak. "The pain I've caused him?" she demanded, not realizing how much she sounded like Barb had with the court order in her hand. "The games I've played? He's got almost three million stashed away somewhere and I haven't seen a penny's child support since he walked out the door, and he's dragged me through court for thirteen months just to do it, and I'm playing games with him? How dare he!"

She was trembling now. Barb, her own rage buried along with her ex, leaned back and smiled. "He's a man. That's how dare he. Because, like most men, he's never grown up. And you want to know why? I've thought about this a lot lately, you know."

Not in the mood to be anybody's straight man, Timmie just glared.

Barb grinned. "Because we never wean them off the breast, that's why."

The doorbell didn't even ring. The door just flew open and hurried footsteps echoed in the hallway. Timmie had been expecting Meghan. But unless Megs had graduated to size thirteen large overnight, this wasn't Megs. It wasn't. Like the perfect punctuation to a senseless conversation, there stood Murphy.

Timmie couldn't help it. She laughed. She laughed so hard her ribs hurt where the seat belt had bruised them, and she had to sit down. "I never thought of it that way, Barb. You're right."

"About what?" Murphy demanded, panting.

"That you never grew up," Barb said over her shoulder.

"If I'd grown up, I wouldn't have been a reporter," Murphy assured her, then turned to Timmie. "You okay?"

Timmie smiled more than she'd intended. "I look worse than you. I got staples."

He faltered to a halt right at the edge of the section of floor where he'd spent the other night sprawled. "I got more."

"You win. What are you doing here?"

He grimaced and leaned over, hands on knees, panting a little. "You kidding? There's a police scanner at the paper. The minute Sherilee heard who was involved, she made it a point to call me personally. She still smells an expose. Is this expose material, or did you just fall asleep at the wheel?"

Amazing how many words he could fit between panting breaths. Timmie motioned him to the couch. "You sure you jog?"

That made him glare. "You know how much fun it is to run with busted ribs?"

"What about that fancy-ass Cabriolet you have?"

Barb finally lost her temper. "Just sit down, for God's sake. You're both idiots."

So Murphy sat down, and Timmie gave him the Cliff Notes version of her amazing feat of aerodynamics. She also filled both of them in on what her mother had said about Restcrest and Conrad had said about the deaths. Which led her inevitably back to her aborted ride home.

"But who's doing it?" Timmie asked. "Who told that guy to get... whatever it is he was after?"