OBSESSION (The Bening Files (Novella) Book 4) (16 page)

“Thank you.” Davis sent Amanda a heated glare. Held it. “Your mom visited the home. End of story. Can we move on now, Nettles? Or are you gonna lose your head over nothing?”

Was Robinson right? “Depends on your definition of the word.”

“You want an English lesson, Nettles?”

“Why’d you cuff Dexter?”

Something dark flitted across her face. She looked away. “That’s something you’ll have to ask him.”

Before Amanda could sort through the confusion rolling through her, a shape emerged from the opposite end of the road. The movements were jerky as the person approached. A hoodie covered a lanky frame, an arm pressed to the left side of an abdomen. Darkness colored the area and spread across delicate fingers. The rain mixed with the reddish solution. Blonde hair poked from the sweatshirt. It fell backward as the figure—a woman—looked up. Her features were stark white. Her mouth moved without sound.

Amanda rushed toward her as she began to fall. Caught her seconds before her head would have met unforgiving asphalt. The dark splotch extended around a swollen abdomen.

A bloody hand closed around Amanda’s jacket. Dark, wide eyes latched on to her. “She promised… Save my baby.”

CHAPTER ELEVEN

DAVIS HAD DONE something to Dexter. Robinson was sure of it. Something beyond cuffing him to an inanimate object in Robinson’s foyer. That much was obvious in the surly attitude his childhood friend sported, unlike anything he’d witnessed from the normally calm and collected chaplain before.

“The lab was able to recover two latent prints from the other bowie knife Amanda found, along with Erin McCormick’s DNA.” Jordan’s voice was grim on the other side of the phone. “Matched Eileen’s prints.”

The care center had no record of her leaving the facility that day. “And the other?”

“I’m having the lab retest the sample.”

“Why?” Robinson glanced inside Paige’s hospital room as he passed by. The teen doodled in the journal Dexter had brought up from the gift shop when he’d come—sans handcuffs.

He hadn’t said anything about it. Robinson didn’t plan to mention it. Yet.

“It belongs to Juliana Knight.”

“What?” Robinson’s voice carried across the hall. A few nurses glanced in his direction. He moved away from Paige’s room. “Please tell me Dexter’s sister is not mixed up in all of this somehow.”

The silence on the other end of the line said more than words. Juliana ran Knight’s Rescue Mission. Last he’d heard, she’d helped over five hundred homeless people rejoin society, had counseled unaccounted-for troubled teens and volunteered at local women’s shelters.

This picture was wrong. In more ways than one.

There was an explanation. There had to be. “Her prints weren’t on the second knife, correct?”

“None that we found.”

Okay. He paced past the door again. Had to think. “You said one of Erin McCormick’s friends knew she was expecting and thinking about terminating the pregnancy, correct?”

“Yes, but the interesting part is that neither girl’s parents knew. And they were both in the second trimester with slender builds.”

Not an easy condition to hide.

“Both sets of parents say they communicated regularly via phone and in person. So tell me how Erin and Nora ended up dead and in rags?” That was the opposite of what Knight’s Rescue Mission did. Tenfold.

“If Amanda can get information on if either woman was seen or not, then we’ll have more than hearsay to go on.”

And a better look at a motive for their possible serial killer.

“Have you heard from her?”

“Not yet.” She’d been gone almost two hours. The radio silence wasn’t atypical, but a niggling sense of something—danger, anxiety, foreboding—had been prickling the back of his neck for the better part of that time. “Why?”

“Word is, this morning, Sergeant Brink stopped by the care center where Eileen stays to collect the clothing she wore the day Nora Flemming was found. She wasn’t there. It sounds like the staff was in a bit of a panic.”

“What?” They hadn’t called him. Did Amanda know?

“I take it you haven’t heard anything about it?”

His heart picked up speed. If Eileen wasn’t at the home, she could be anywhere. “I gotta go.”

“Hold up. The ME also discovered what appeared to be biomarker evidence of brain amyloid depositions, which is congruent with—”

Of course. “AD.”

“Most of the time these clinical trials include people over a certain age.”

“Wait.” He shook his head as if Jordan were next to him. “Back up. Clinical trials?”

“Erin McCormick has a family history of the disease and was an asymptomatic carrier of autosomal-dominant mutations in the Alzheimer’s genes. Nora Flemming just had early onset, much like…”

Eileen Nettles.

“I’d imagine pregnancy would put a halt to the trial?” An inky emotion settled in his gut. “Whose is it?”

Silence reigned a beat. “Sandra Porterville’s.”

“Okay.” He took a breath. Something wasn’t right. “I need more details. Anything you can get your hands on regarding any of her activities. Especially those of her clinical trial. I want dates, names. Anything. And call Juliana. Figure out where she is and what she’s been doing.”

“Here’s the kicker, Robinson. Sandra Porterville is a contributor to Knight’s Rescue Mission. And so is—was—Eileen Nettles.”

###

DR. SANDRA PORTERVILLE was performing surgery. A head trauma, caused from an accident.

While Robinson felt for whoever was on her table, it hadn’t stopped him from using his credentials and—after a lengthy discussion with the chief of surgery—forcing his way inside, mask held over his face.

And the chief—a tall, dark-haired man without an ounce of humor—was directly behind him. “Dr. Porterville, we’ve got the FBI here.”

Sandra didn’t even look up from the microscope positioned above the draped patient. She worked as if she didn’t sense anything amiss inside the room.

“Is this an eye for eye sort of thing, Mr. Robinson? I visit you, you visit me?” She presented her palm to the nurse beside her. An instrument was instantly placed there and she continued working.

“A visit usually implies something of a friendly nature.” And the boiling in his veins was anything but.

“Really?” Her cool blue gaze flicked toward him, almost a dare, before going back to her microscope. “And here I’d hoped you wanted to wish me luck.” Her words were careful, her lips barely moving. “I’m trying to preserve a life. This young man stepped out in front of a car and saved a woman’s life.”

“So,
he’s
worth saving?”

An almost imperceptible tightening occurred around the corners of her eyes. “Of course.”

“That why you have business cards for a local abortion clinic on standby? Sort of seems out of your scope of practice.”

A couple of the nurses sent each other discreet glances. Sandra didn’t flinch. “Sometimes those actions are necessary. If I’d followed through in that area, you wouldn’t even be here.”

Robinson ground his molars together. She hadn’t wished his wife dead. He hadn’t heard that. Refused to.

“Life would be much simpler, I suspect.”

He wasn’t here to fight for Amanda or Paige. Not right now. Didn’t need to engage in an argument where she’d never surrender. “You routinely donate to Knight’s Rescue Mission. Why?”

“Why does anyone throw money to a cause?”

Hopefully, because they deemed it right. Necessary. “Their core values are in conflict with yours. You value life only when it suits your needs. Or when you presume a person is worthy.”

Though he couldn’t see her mouth, he noted her eyes crinkling at the corners. A small sardonic laugh left her. “I’m a doctor, Mr. Robinson. I’ve taken my Hippocratic Oath.”

He rocked back on his heels. “I suspect it was surface deep at best.”

She stilled. Took a breath. “Goodbye, Mr. Robinson. Don’t call me when that situation you’ve got going on upstairs implodes on you.”

A hand found his arm, tugged him backward. He resisted against the chief’s hold. “What’s your interest in Knight’s Rescue Mission?”

“I made a bargain.” Each word was punctuated. “One Alzheimer’s riddled brain. Lots of money. Giving it to charity isn’t illegal, is it Mr. Robinson? That’s where Eileen wanted the funds to go.”

He remained silent.

“She’s my ticket to solving AD.”

“Not if I have anything to say about it.” The words came from somewhere behind him. Robinson turned to find a tall blond man pointing a SIG Sauer in his general direction and that of the surgery chief now in front of him.

“Sir.” The chief held up his hands.

Robinson reached for his gun. The chief took a swift step back at the same time. His elbow connected with Robinson’s sternum.

Pain exploded through his body. Had him doubling over like a teen taking a hit to the crotch. A piercing, white silence engulfed him, followed by a
pap-pap-pap
.

Something toppled into him. Forced him to the ground face first.

A guttural scream sliced into his brain. Metal clanged against the floor. He struggled upward from a fog of pain. The hard planes of his gun pressed against his right hand.

“You don’t have to do this, Seth.” Sandra’s voice came out in a squeak. The gunman had one of her arms twisted behind her back. He used it to propel her forward and toward the exit.

If Robinson could prop himself upward, he’d take the shot. He placed both hands under his body and pushed. Agony tore through his chest in a hot rush. The man on top of him slid to the floor.

Robinson raised his gun and fired as the automatic doors closed. The man—Seth—flinched and swung around.

Sandra’s eyes met his, full of fear. Her mask was halfway down her chin, a welt forming on one cheek. A small cut oozed blood.

The doors opened again. Seth leveled his gun on Robinson.

###

IT DIDN’T MAKE sense.

Upon arriving at the hospital, Amanda had scrubbed her arms until they were beet red. Even so, she could still feel the ooze of blood on her hands, the warmth as life slid out from a woman slowly bleeding out.

One whose words had been choppy and mixed up, pain evident in her pale face. She’d stumbled toward them. Had ample time to see both Davis and Eileen Nettles before falling into Amanda’s arms.

Amanda gripped the blood-stained card she’d taken from the woman’s hand. The clinic’s details were still visible beneath the red. The pleading tone of her voice was still fresh as she’d begged Amanda to save her unborn child. That kind of woman didn’t seek aid at an abortion clinic.

“Here.” Jordan Bening handed her a cup of coffee he’d gotten from the machine in the surgery waiting area. “You talk to Robinson?”

She nodded. It was a brief phone call that would’ve been better served in person without rushed bits of information coming from both of them. “When I brought my mom back to the center yesterday, they didn’t mention anything about her leaving the building the day prior.”

Did that mean something had happened that she wasn’t aware of? Maybe. They hadn’t called her today.

“You’re soaked to the bone, Amanda. You and Davis should go change. Take your mom with you.”

Eileen Nettles sat in the corner with a blanket over her shoulders, Davis next to her with a magazine. The younger detective hadn’t said much since they’d arrived. Her face was drawn and pale. And she hadn’t flipped a page in the reading material in several minutes.

Jordan’s pregnant wife sat on the other side, her foot tapping a hasty beat against the tiled floor. Eileen said something that had them both smiling.

When Amanda had tried to clean the blood from the older woman’s hands, her mother had lost the bit of lucidity she’d had at the scene of the accident.

Suddenly Amanda was an unknown evil the woman couldn’t trust. And Davis was the only one she could.

Amanda sipped her coffee, warmth spreading through her for the first time in a few hours. “Any word on our vic?”

“She’s still in surgery.” A grim look crossed Jordan’s face. “Doesn’t sound like they were able to save her baby.”

She shifted. Resisted the urge to pace the area. Amanda ran the back of one hand across her mouth and tried not to let the suffocating sadness grip her. The woman would survive, but not without internal and external scars.

“Did either Erin or Nora’s family know about the clinical trials?”

“Shocked. Same as you.”

They had to have been involved long before conceiving, which would have terminated the trial—if either woman planned to keep her baby. Sandra was self-centered, direct and often about whatever end goal suited her, but would she purposely end these woman’s lives?

For the trial to be a success, she needed a living specimen, didn’t she?

If there’d been more time, she might have asked her mother those questions. Might have inquired what the deal with Davis was. And how Juliana Knight might come into play.