J.R. Ward the Black Dagger Brotherhood Novels 5-8 - J. R. Ward [177]
He checked his watch. Eight o’clock. He had to imagine Jane would be home soon—
The garage door to the condo next to Jane’s trundled up with a whining sound, and a real yawn of a minivan backed out. Its brakes made a little squeak when it reached the ass end of its K-turn, then the driver put it in forward gear.
V frowned, his instincts coming to attention for no apparent reason. He sniffed the air, but he was upwind of the vehicle and couldn’t catch a scent.
Great, so he was paranoid, too—which, along with his ambient anxiety and the narcissistic behavior he’d been popping lately, meant he had most of the DSM-IV covered tonight.
He checked his watch again just for the hell of it. Two minutes later. Great.
When his cell phone rang, he answered it with relief, because he was looking to pass some time. “I’m glad it’s you, cop.”
Butch’s voice was off. “You at her place?”
“Yeah, but she’s not. What’s doing?”
“There’s something going on with your computers.”
“As in?”
“One of the tracers you laid down over at the hospital’s been triggered. Someone went into the medical file of Michael Klosnick.”
“No big deal.”
“It was the chief of surgery. Manello.”
Man, V hated the sound of the guy’s name. “And?”
“He searched his own computer today for the pictures of your heart. Looking for the file Phury corrupted while we were evac’ing you, no doubt.”
“Interesting.” V wondered what had gotten the guy’s attention…some printout of the photographs that had a date/time on it, maybe? Even if there was no notation as to the patient, that Manello guy was probably smart enough to trace it to the OR and figure out who had been on Jane’s table. On one level it was no BFD, because the medical record showed that Michael Klosnick had checked out AMA following surgery. But still…“I think I should pay a visit to the good doctor.”
“Um, yeah, I’m guessing we might want to outsource that one. Why don’t you let me handle it.”
“Because you don’t know how to erase memories, do you?”
There was a pause. “Fuck you. But good point.”
“Is the guy logged on now?”
“Yeah, he’s in his office.”
Messy to do a confrontation in a public place, even if it was after hours, but God only knew what else the doc would get into.
Shit, V thought. Look what he had to offer Jane: Secrets. Lies. Danger. He was a selfish, selfish bastard, and what was worse, he was ruining Phury’s life just so he could ruin hers.
A car turned onto the street, and as it went under a light he saw it was her Audi.
“Fuck,” he said.
“She’s come home, huh?”
“I’ll deal with Manello. Later.”
As he hung up, he wasn’t sure he could do this to her. If he left now, he’d still have time to get to the Other Side before Phury took the Primale vow.
Shit.
Chapter Forty-one
Jane backed into her garage, put the Audi in park, and just sat there with the engine going. On the passenger seat beside her were the results of the CAT scan Manello and she had sneaked in. Big all-clear. No evidence of tumor or aneurysm or anything out of order.
She should have felt relieved, but the lack of explanation bothered her because her thought processes remained slow and cumbersome. It was almost as if her neuropathways had to work around some kind of obstacle in her head. And her chest still hurt like a bitch—
A man stepped into the beams of her headlights…a huge man with dark hair and a goatee and leathers. Behind him the landscape was blurry, as if he had stepped out of a fog.
Jane immediately burst into tears.
This man…this apparition…he was her shadow, the thing in her mind, the haunting presence that she knew yet couldn’t recognize, that she mourned yet couldn’t place. It all made sense—
On her next breath pain lanced into her temples, a horrible crushing burden.
But instead of rolling through her, it dissipated, just floated off, leaving not even a sting behind. In its wake images came to her, images of her operating on this man, of