Deadly Double Read online

  Beautiful pearl-shaped tears leaked from the woman’s thick lashes as she once again wrestled against an invisible force. He wondered about the demons that chased her in her sleep, and then put the thoughts aside.

  “Everything is going to be okay,” he assured her, then slid his arms beneath her body.

  Instantly, her eyes flew open, and the unmistakable look of fear filled them. His arms feel away as their gazes met.

  Her horrific scream filled William’s ears a fraction before a good right hook clocked him across the chi. His head snapped to the side and crashed against the window.

  The screaming morphed into a mad wail and grew distant within seconds.

  William blinked but had trouble shaking the stars from his eyes and the pain from his temples. When his vision cleared, she was gone.

  “Christ!” He scrambled out of the SUV and was instantly drenched by the night’s sudden heavy downpour. “Wait! Come back!”

  Racing after the wailing escapee, William felt his heart hammering inside his chest when he realized that she wasn’t heading back down the gravel road, but into the thicket of trees where God only knew what lay in wait.

  “Josie,” he yelled, chasing after her and quickly receiving a solid whack across the cheek from a limp tree branch. He flinched at the raw sting but kept moving.

  It was a marvel how fast she moved barefoot across slippery leaves and sharp, jagged rocks popping up sporadically from the earth. Surely, she couldn’t see where she was going, because the rain and darkness made it impossible for William to make out anything.

  Then the wailing stopped.

  She’s hurt.

  His fear helped accelerate his pace and allowed him to dodge through the wet, heavy maze with surprising agility. “Please, God, don’t let it end like this,” he prayed.

  From his peripheral vision, he saw a flash of white lying on the dark ground. His heartbeat nearly stopped. “No,” he moaned weakly, and raced toward the disheartening sight.

  Dropping to his knees beside her, William reached out to turn her still body over for inspection, prepared for the worst.

  Gently, he rolled her over. The slow rise and fall of her chest sent a wave of relief trough his tense body.

  Lifting his head, he squinted up against the rain to see a thick tree branch and assumed that it was the cause of her being out cold.

  Gathering her close, he lifted her into his arms and struggled through pure hell to hind his way back to his brother’s mountain hideaway home.

  Detective Ming Delaney woke to a light tap on her shoulder. While stifling a yawn, her eyes took in her husband Conan’s bodybuilder frame and amused expression.

  “One of these mornings, I would actually like to wake up with you next to me.” He leaned down and kissed her forehead.

  Confused, she straightened in her chair and her stiff joints popped like a sky full of firecrackers on the Fourth of July.

  “What time is it?”

  “Seven.”

  “A.M.?”

  “As usual,” he responded with a wry smile as he passed her to head for the kitchen. “Coffee?”

  “Yeah, sure.” She raked her fingers through her curtain of ink-black hair and pressed her hand against her chin so her neck muscles would ease into place. Seconds later, the wonderful aroma of coffee wafted out to the dining room and caused a smile to curve the corners of her lips.

  “Maybe if I put the coffeemaker in the bedroom, it would solve all of our problems.”

  “We don’t have any problems.” Ming rolled her eyes as she stood up from the chair and removed her gun and badge from the table. “I’m taking a shower.”

  “Glad to hear it.” He poked his head around the breakfast bar. “You want pancakes or waffles?”

  “Surprise me,” she said, flashing him a wink and a smile before disappearing into the back bedroom. Once there, she peeled off layers of clothes and turned on the shower to full blast.

  For Ming, heaven was a showerhead with ten different control settings. She couldn’t count the number of times a puzzling case came together during an Herbal Essence moment.

  However, she paid a price for being obsessed with her work. Her husband could testify to that. Though she would also argue that he was known what he was getting into when he married her, it didn’t stop her from feeling guilty.

  Their marriage was hard enough when considered that both of their families opposed the union. Throughout Ming’s life, her father praised all the opportunities America offered but he in no way condones a daughter of his marrying outside her race.

  And as for Conan’s family, they pretended to be the so call opened minded ones who always used terms like “you people” and “well, over here in America.” Her poor husband spent more time apologizing for his family’s arrogance than anything else. Holidays with the Delaney and Lee families could be best described with one word: hell.

  Reaching for the shampoo, Ming allowed her thoughts to travel back to work and the Thornton case. Usually, the death of a wanted felon wouldn’t raise too many eyebrows down at the department; but the how and where Daniel Thornton died had Ming suspecting that this wasn’t simply a drug deal gone bad.

  Yet, those close to Thornton had a severe case of ‘hear no evil, see no evil.’ And the man’s girlfriend was committed to Keystone Mental Institute shortly after his death.

  Ming couldn’t help but believe that the incidents were too coincidental to be ignored.

  Shutting off the shower, Ming acknowledge a tinge of disappointment for not discovering any new clues in the case, but her Herbal Essence routine didn’t perform its magic every morning.

  Donning her favorite pink robe, Ming, wet hair and all, went to join her husband in the kitchen. But before she could settle down to her stack of buttermilk pancakes, the phone rang.

  “Placing any bets?” Conan asked, peeking over his morning paper.

  “It could be for you,” she said, with little conviction. She grabbed her coffee and headed over to the wall unit near the refrigerator. “Maybe it’s your mom complaining about my lackluster domestic skills again.”

  He chuckled. “What domestic skills?”

  “My point.” Ming smiled as she lifted the receiver. “Hello.”

  “Lee, I hope I didn’t wake you.”

  Ming rolled her eyes at the sound of her partner Tyrese’s voice. “What’s up?” There’s no point insisting that he stop calling her by her maiden name. He would just pretend to forget.

  “You’ve finally got your wish,” Tyrese chirped.

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Keystone. We have a homicide...and a possible kidnapping. Thornton’s girlfriend seems to have managed a disappearing act.”

  Ming stiffened. “I’m on my way.”

  “What are we going to tell the sister?” Dr. Rae Coleman asked Marcus Hines, Keystone Mental Institute’s practice administrator. “I say we wait until we talk to our lawyers.”

  “Already one it,” Marcus said, pacing the worn patch of carpet in front of his desk. If he weren’t already balding, he would’ve been pulling his hair out for the past few hours. Instead, the few hairs horseshoed around his pale head were graying by the second.

  Usually a quiet and reserved man, Marcus knew his quiet charm was what won him points with doctors and patients’ families. Staring at an Ecosphere and listening to a Frank Sinatra CD usually relieved work-related stresses.

  Not that day.

  “What is the police saying?”

  “At the moment, I don’t know any more than you do.”

  “Which is nothing.”

  “Bingo.”

  Rae clasped her hands behind her back while her forehead wrinkled. “Poor Meredith. I just can’t believe no one saw anything.”

  “We’re pretty sure everything happened during a going-away thingy for one of the employees. Everyone claimed they visited the cafeteria for no more than a few minutes at a time for cake and ice cream.”

&nbs
p; “Just long enough for some crazy person to murder one of our prominent doctors and snatch a patient.”

  “Assuming the two incidents is related.”

  “How can they not me?”

  Marcus shrugged and felt his lower abdomen bubble with anxiety. There was no sense in trying to take anything for it. There was no sense in trying to take anything for it. No pharmaceutical company had developed a powerful enough drug to placate his rattle nerves.

  When a light rap sounded at the door, his heart plummeted to his knees in fear of more bad news. At the rate he was going, he would have to check himself in as a patient before the day was out.

  “Come in,” Rae instructed, when Marcus failed to do so.

  Dr. Ambrose Turner gently pushed the door open. His brilliant head of flaming red hair was always a focal point for attention, second to the intriguing blue of his eyes. “The press is here,” he said in his usual think English accent.

  Marcus didn’t know how he managed it, but he gave Ambrose a quick nod and watched as he disappeared back behind the door.

  “Boy, that was quick,” Rae mumbled, and adjusted the black-rimmed glasses that made her look like an intense owl.

  “Too quick,” Marcus added, returning to his desk—maybe guzzling a bottle of Mylanta would bandage his intestinal problem.

  “Should we talk to Ms. Ferrell before she actually hears about her missing sister on the news?”

  He glanced over at Dr. Coleman, halfway wishing he could stuff a sock down her throat in order to stop her from stating the obvious. “Yes, I suppose we should.”

  “But before we talk with our attorneys?”

  Marcus took a deep breath and trained his full attention on her. “It seems that we have little choice in the matter, Dr. Coleman. Now, I hate to delay you from your patients any further…”

  “No, no. This is definitely more important…”

  “There is nothing more important than the care of our patients, Dr. Coleman,” he said, forcing steel and patience, of which he was bankrupt, into his voice. “I’m rather surprised to hear you say such a thing.”

  A rush of burgundy bloomed against Dr. Coleman’s creamy cocoa complexion as she raised her five-foot-two frame from her chair.

  On any other day, the morning would have been a routine dance of harmless flirtation between the two, but this implausible crisis changed all of that.

  Rae’s reluctance to leave was nothing more than a sad attempt to gather enough juicy detail to crown her queen of water cooler gossip for the day,

  “I guess on that note, I’ll leave you to deal with Ms. Ferrell on your own.”

  Marcus’s temples throbbed at the woman’s name. The woman was more than a handful, especially since she opposed her sister’s transfer to the facility in the first place. He could practically smell the pending lawsuit.

  “I’m more than capable of dealing with Ms. Ferrell,” he said, and winced at the hollowness of his words.

  Dr. Coleman laughed. “Sure you are.” She headed for the door, but before her hands landed on the knob, there was another knock.

  “Come in,” Marcus shouted. His irritation was at an all time high.

  When Dr. Turner’s burning bush reappeared, Marcus suspected the good doctor was actually eavesdropping.

  “Yes, what is it?”

  At Dr. Turner’s grave expression, Marcus braced himself to hear that the police had discovered that another doctor had been murdered and stashed in the trunk of their car, but instead Ambrose delivered worse news.

  “Ms. Josephine Ferrell is here to see you.”

  Chapter 4

  William didn’t dare go to sleep.

  Instead, he spent the first few hours in his brother’s home, tending to the needs of his patient. So far, the hardest part was changing her out of the wet hospital gown and into a full-length flannel number he found in his sister-in-law’s dresser drawer.

  His professionalism was challenged while he glanced at a body he once knew intimately. Even now, as she lay sleeping, he was drawn to her fragility and innocence.

  William stared at her full lips and could feel his body give into a magnetic force, but shame was an equally powerful weapon in his arsenal, and he backed away.

  He sighed and rechecked the dilation of her eyes, satisfied with his assessment of a mild concussion.

  Once he’d finished tending to the cut along her right brow, he went to change out his disguise and clean up.

  All the while, his mind never strayed far from the woman in the other room. He exhaled in a heavy breath and hung his head low beneath the steady stream of hot water.

  “Josie,” he murmured, as water trickled down around his face. The sound of her name had a way of ripping open a wound he’d long thought healed. More than a decade had passed since he experienced pain with such intensity.

  “A man should never wear his heart where his robs can’t protect it,” His father’s voice rang clearly in his head.

  William didn’t listen the first time around, but conceded that at this point in his life it was sound advice.

  Scrubbed clean, he finally shut off the shower and slid into one of his brother’s robes. Minutes later, he was back beside her bed, staring at a face seemingly untouched by time. His eyes lifted to the full-length mirror on the other side of the bed to stare at his own reflection.

  Time had done a number on him.

  Though good genetics, at thirty-seven, William possessed a full head of dark, wavy hair; though there were growing shocks of gray along the temples. He had the long hours at Grady Hospital to thank for the permanent thin grooves etched around his eyes. Character lines, someone told him. For years, he had dealt with people commenting about his strong resemblance to George Clooney, except for the color of his eyes. Where the popular actor’s were a dark brown, William’s were a bright baby blue.

  What would she see when the drugs finally wore off? How would she feel?

  Expelling a weary breath, he stood and crossed the plush carpet for his leather duffel bag and withdrew something else he’d snatched from Keystone: a medical chart.

  Another look at the name on the chart and an avalanche of questions, possibilities, and doubts buried his good intensions. Suddenly, he had a vivid image of prison bars clanking with a note of finality.

  “Stop it,” he commanded. “You’re doing the right thing.”

  He returned to the chair next to the bed, made another quick assessment of Josie’s vitals, and settled back for a good read.

  “Michelle Andrews,” he read, and was unable to stop his glance from briefly sliding over to the bed. Patient transferred from Northside Hospital after stabilization of an apparent suicide attempt. His eyes lingered on the word “suicide.” In now way did it describe the woman he knew. It was like trying to force a large square box into a small triangle. It just didn’t fit.

  Toxicology reports lethal levels of lithium, Prozac, and Tefretol. William shook his head and struggled through the rest of the report. Hair strands from subject are inconclusive to history of abuse. Patient shows a lack of awareness to time and place and often shows high levels of agitation when called by her name. Behavior may be due to mental illness.

  William lowered the chart and thought back on his first day at Keystone Institute six weeks before and remembered his reaction when he’s walked into Ms. Andrews’s room. It was perhaps the first time in his life that he was rendered speechless. When Dr. Turner inquired if he was okay, he forced his professional mask on and resumed his work. But in the days that followed, he couldn’t get Michelle out of his mind and her striking resemblance to Josephine Ferrell.

  Closing his eyes, the sights and sounds of Paris some sixteen years afo welcomed him back like an old friend....

  Rushing to get out of the rain, William and five of his closest friends ducked into Le Petite Opportun. They were looking for a jazz club and were pleasantly surprised that they had stumbled onto a nice one.

  “Hey, looks like getting lost w
as a blessing in disguise,” Bernard Watson announced with a beaming smile.

  Bernard’s girlfriend, Brenda, rolled her eyes. “Nice try. Seeing that you’re the one that got is lost in the first place.”

  “There’s a method to my madness,” Bernard assured.

  The rest of the groups, William, Ryan, and Eddie, laughed and rolled their eyes before turning and seeking a table large enough to seat them all.

  A bass started up with a smooth melodic beat that had William immediately tapping his feet, and when the gentle tickle of the ivories came into play his mind searched for the name of the haunting tune.

  Unexpectedly, the soft, silky voice of an angel flowed over a microphone. William’s eyes flew to the stage, where a gorgeous caramel beauty held him spellbound.

  Willow weep for me. Willow weep for me. Bend your branches down along the ground and cover me.

  Despite being dressed in all black, the sultry singer’s hourglass figure was obvious in a tight turtleneck and form-fitting stretch pants. Her eyes remained closed as she continued to belt out the tune. It was as if she’d experienced every word of that sad fable of lost love and, as a result, he was sure that everyone in the room felt it.

  At the tug on his arm, he lowered himself into a chair without taking his eyes off the stage.

  Her lush lips were something to behold, but it was the gentle flutter of her lashes that caught his attention. Given the depth of which she sang, he wanted them to open and reveal the mirrors of her soul or tears to slide from them.

  A hand waved in front of his face, forcing him to blink.

  “Looks like someone is on the prowl again.” Brenda chuckled and wiggled her eyebrows playfully at William. “I guess this means he’s gotten Sammy out of his system.”