"Gerald said that you'd told him to bring Mrs. Baker back to her room, and that you would watch her for a while as a favor to that detective. She's his grandmother, right?"

"Right." Frustrated, she wasn't even sure where to begin. "But I didn't-" Nika regrouped and tried again. "Didn't you think that was a little odd, his coming here and just commandeering the woman on my supposed say-so?"

Judy appeared torn between the question and holding her patient's head. "It's not my place to think anything's odd. I just go by the rules unless I'm told otherwise. Keep a low profile, keep your job," Judy recited in a singsong voice.

Considering the state of the economy of late, Nika could understand where the nurse was coming from. But even so, there was such a thing as making sure all actions were on the level. Why hadn't she just stopped to check by placing a call to the Geriatrics Unit?

With a sigh, Nika focused on her next move, finding Gerald before, G.o.d forbid, the orderly did something that couldn't be undone.

"How long ago was he here?" It couldn't have been that long ago, she reasoned, because she'd been down here less than half an hour ago.

Judy set down the plastic tub and shrugged. "Five, ten minutes, something like that." She barely disguised her annoyance. "I wasn't timing it."

Nika was having trouble hanging on to her temper. "Which way did he go?"

"Through the doors," the nurse retorted, then added impatiently, "and into the elevator, I guess." The patient began making gagging noises again. Judy grabbed the container and held it up for the woman. When she spoke, the nurse hardly sounded like herself. She was trying to talk without inhaling. "What's the big deal?" she asked.

The answer would have to wait. Nika was already hurrying out of the dim room, pushing open the doors with both hands. She made a beeline for the first phone she saw. It was on the corner of the hospitality receptionist's desk.

Dispensing with formalities, Nika s.n.a.t.c.hed up the receiver and started dialing. "I need to make a call to the Geriatrics Unit," Nika said when the woman looked at her in surprise. "It's urgent."

She shifted her weight from foot to foot, impatiently waiting for the on-duty nurse to pick up. It felt like two eternities had gone by before she heard a female voice on the line. "Geriatrics, this is Sally."

"Sally, this is Dr. Pulaski. Did Gerald come up with Mrs. Baker yet?" She crossed her fingers, hoping for a positive answer. Hoping that she was just overreacting and that the orderly was just trying to be helpful. He always had been before.

"No," the nurse answered, turning the single syllable word into one that had several syllables at its disposal.

"Are you sure?" Nika stressed.

"Of course I'm sure. I've got an un.o.bstructed view of Mrs. Baker's room from here. Gerald didn't come back with her. She's not in her bed." And then she made a funny little noise as she remembered something. "Oh, that cute detective wanted me to tell you-"

But Nika had already hung up.

Where could the orderly have gone with Mrs. Baker, and why? At this point, the "why" seemed rather obvious, but she didn't want to believe it. Gerald Mayfield was one of the most cheerful, most dedicated people she'd ever met. Try as she might to recall otherwise, she'd never seen the man without a smile on his face. Moreover, he was always looking to do more, to go not just the extra mile, but the entire distance if need be.

Could someone like that really be responsible for the recent rash of deaths?

She couldn't get herself to believe it-and yet, what else could she think? There was no reason for him to take it upon himself to remove a patient from the recovery area on his own-or to lie about it.

Right now she didn't need to think, Nika told herself. She needed to track the orderly down. He shouldn't be that difficult to find. It wasn't as if he could just disappear with Cole's grandmother. The man was pushing a gurney, for G.o.d sakes. How much more conspicuous could he be?

The line, "Hide in plain sight," flashed through her head. Seeing an orderly pushing a gurney with or without a patient in it was a common sight. No one would even notice.

Nika felt her heart inch its way up her throat. It wasn't the kind of lump that came about when someone was being sentimental. It was the kind that fairly screamed of fear.

Where had the orderly taken Cole's grandmother?

She tried to think like her quarry. If his intent was to eliminate the woman, his best bet was to do it in an unoccupied room. There simply weren't any on the first floor. All the O.R. suites were booked. That meant that Gerald had to have gone up to one of the other floors.

But which one?

For a split second, Nika thought of getting on the loudspeaker and paging him, but that would only alert him. Or maybe, please G.o.d, it would make him stop long enough for her to be able to catch up to him.

Still, she couldn't take that chance.

Going with her previous hunch, Nika began the search by dashing up the stairs to the second floor. Once there, she ran to the nurses' station.

"Did you see an orderly pushing a gurney with an unconscious old woman on it?" she asked eagerly.

G.o.d, did that ever sound melodramatic, she thought. Especially since she was breathing rather hard as she asked the question.

The nurse told her that she hadn't seen anyone pushing a gurney onto the floor. Gerald hadn't gotten off on the second floor.

She was about to run up to the next floor to ask the nurse there if she'd seen Gerald when it suddenly occurred to her where Gerald would have gone. It was the perfect place. The eighth floor could be counted on to have empty rooms. The floor was reserved for the wealthy and for visiting dignitaries who thought nothing of paying for the privilege of having a hospital room that could pa.s.s as one of the higher-end hotel suites.

Turning back to the nurse, she said, "Listen to me. I need you to call Detective Baker and tell him to meet me on the eighth floor." She rattled off Cole's cell number from memory quickly.

Confused, the nurse stared at her. "Who are you?"

"Dr. Pulaski. Nika Pulaski," she emphasized, since there were so many doctors in the hospital by that last name already. At last count, besides her, there were six. "Please tell him it's urgent."

The nurse obviously had her own interpretation of what she meant by the word "urgent."

"If they catch you up there fooling around in one of the empty rooms, it's grounds for dismissal," the nurse warned her.

"How about if they catch me preventing a murder?" Nika countered.

The nurse's jaw dropped open and she immediately began dialing the number she'd been given.

Though she really didn't want to, Nika was forced to take the elevator. Eight floors were a bit too many to run up and still be of any kind of use once she reached the suites. She was tense the entire ride up.

She deliberately took the freight elevator, thinking that Gerald would want to avoid detection as much as he could. Getting off the elevator car, she braced herself and immediately began looking for the orderly and Cole's grandmother. There were twelve s.p.a.cious suites on a floor that could have accommodated thirty single care units. Each suite had its door closed. Taking a deep breath, Nika started opening them, peering into each suite without first knocking or announcing herself. She didn't want Gerald forewarned.

She went through the first six in short order, finding two of the rooms occupied by patients who were less than pleased to be paying exorbitant fees just to have their privacy invaded. Nika left hasty apologies in her wake as she hurried to the next suite.

Disheartened, not to mention exceedingly worried, she started on the second six.

She found Gerald and Cole's grandmother in the next to the last suite on the floor.

Her heart hammering, she entered the room quietly. Even so, the orderly sensed her presence. She saw his shoulders instantly tensing the moment she eased the door open.

Her first thought was to keep him calm-and to buy time until Cole showed up.

In a gentle, soft voice, she asked, "What are you doing, Gerald? You got off on the wrong floor."

From what she could see, he was fussing with the IV drip, but it didn't appear that he'd taken it off the rack yet. "I'm taking care of Mrs. Baker. Making her comfortable."

"I'm her doctor, Gerald. I didn't leave any instructions for you to follow."

"Not your instructions I'm following," he told her, his tone mild. Distant.

"Then whose are they?" she asked, inching her way toward the orderly. At this proximity, she could see that he had a syringe in his hand.

Her heart began hammering harder. She was right. Gerald was the one killing the patients. But why?

She needed to distract him, to keep him from using that syringe.

"G.o.d's," he answered simply.

"G.o.d told you to kill those people?" Nikka kept her tone even, as if she was just trying to understand what he was telling her. She knew she needed to keep his confidence, to make him feel as if he could trust her.

The orderly nodded. It was clear by his manner that he felt he was doing something n.o.ble. Something sanctified.

"G.o.d doesn't like people to suffer." He was smiling as he looked down at the sleeping face of the woman he was determined to help find peace. "I'm separating them from their suffering."

Nikka took another small step forward. The orderly was taller and heavier than she was, but she was hoping that if she had to, she could literally throw him off balance. She'd have the element of surprise in her favor.

"Mrs. Baker isn't suffering," she pointed out softly.

"Oh, but she will be," he told her, his voice sorrowful, as if he could already feel the old woman's pain. "She'll suffer horribly. Once the cancer advances."

"We don't know that she does have cancer," Nika gently reminded him. "That's why the tissue sample was sent to the lab. So they could a.n.a.lyze it."

But Gerald shook his head. "It's cancer. I know it's cancer," he insisted. "I can tell."

She pretended to be impressed. "How can you tell, Gerald?"

His voice grew raspy as he recalled. "She looks just like my mother did when she came down with pancreatic cancer." There were tears in his eyes as he looked at Nika. "At the end, she begged me to kill her. I don't want Mrs. Baker to suffer like that." He brushed his hand along the woman's silver-gray hair. "I want her to go peacefully. She deserves that."

"What about Mr. Peters? He didn't have cancer. He wasn't dying of anything. Why did you pick him?" Nika tactfully used the word "pick" rather than "kill" because it was far less confrontational that way. She didn't want Gerald to become angry or defensive. She wanted him to think she was his friend.

The answer was the same. "To keep him from suffering," Gerald said.

Nika looked at him. It wasn't much of a stretch for her to pretend to be confused. "I don't understand."

Gerald sighed, as if he couldn't fathom why she didn't see what was so clear to him.

"Mr. Peters was being sent back to the nursing home. Do you know what those places are?" he demanded, a flash of anger in his eyes. "They're holding zones for people just waiting to die. He was a hero, a policeman who saved lives. He didn't deserve to be thrown aside like that. Like some rotten leftovers," he concluded bitterly. And then, just as suddenly as he'd scowled, Gerald was smiling again. "Now he's better off."

Somehow, she needed to get through to him. To make Gerald stop before he killed Cole's grandmother.

"You can't make those decisions for people, Gerald. I was going to help Mr. Peters find a roommate so he could share the expense of having his own place again."

"No, you weren't," the orderly accused petulantly. "You're just saying that to make me feel guilty. Well, it won't work! I saved Mr. Peters from suffering!" he insisted angrily.

Ignoring her now, Gerald began to uncouple the IV so that he could insert the syringe into it. The moment he took down the IV, Nika went to grab his wrist. Just then, she heard a noise behind her.

It all happened so fast that it was almost a blur. One moment, she was reaching for the orderly's wrist, the next, he'd yanked her off balance, and had a choke hold on her. With his arm around her throat, Nika felt as if the orderly was crushing her larynx as he dragged her to him, his eyes riveted to Cole.

She felt the sharp tip of the syringe against her neck. Nika had no doubt that he would use it. And if he did, she estimated that she was less than a handful of heartbeats away from death.

Cole had his weapon out, holding it with both his hands to keep it steady. The muzzle was aimed directly at the orderly's head.

"Let her go, Mayfield," he ordered.

"And have you kill me? Sorry, not really one of the better offers I've gotten. What I'm doing is right," he insisted, his voice sounding as if it was about to crack. "They don't suffer. They die with dignity, not rot away, piece by piece. Can't you understand that?" Gerald demanded angrily, then his eyes widened with determination, the hand with the syringe rising just a little, as if he was about to strike. "Come one step closer and I'll kill her."

It turned out to be the last thing he said.

Gerald died with a look of shock on his face, a single bullet hole right between his eyes.

"Don't move another step closer," Cole said at the same moment that he fired his gun. While he was in college, he'd never missed a Sat.u.r.day at the firing range. Being a dead shot had been important to him. Now he realized why. It was as if fate had been preparing him for this one moment.

To save the woman who had, without his permission and almost without his knowledge, become so important to him.

Nika thought her legs had turned to liquid-until she used them to run from the crumpling body. Mercifully, they still worked.

"You got my message," she cried, relieved.

Rather than say something to confirm that, or to give voice to the fact that, quite possibly for the rest of his life, he would be grateful beyond words that he'd managed to save her in time, Cole vented the incredible swirling turmoil within him.

He exploded at her.

"Who the h.e.l.l do you think you are, some kind of superhero? You can't just go running off to confront a guy who's killed at least a dozen people-if not more." Reports were coming into the precinct from more than a half dozen facilities, all of which had employed Mayfield at one time or other-and all which, coincidentally, had more than their share of patients dying at the time. "You wait for me," he shouted.

Relieved or not, she wasn't about to stand there and be yelled at. She wanted to be comforted, not upbraided, d.a.m.n it. "If I'd waited, most likely your grandmother would have been dead by now," she retorted.

"And if I hadn't come in just when I did, you would have been dead by now!" he countered, not adding that he realized that he wouldn't have been able to recover from that kind of a blow.

Her eyes narrowed, small slits firing laser beams. "Maybe you would have preferred that," she snapped.

He stared at her incredulously. What the h.e.l.l was she babbling about?

Tucking away his weapon, he threw up his hands. "All right, it's official. You're crazy."

How dare he say that? Especially since, if she was crazy, he and his mercurial behavior had made her that way.

"Well, that's not your problem, is it? Gerald's your killer-he confessed to me-so the case is solved. And from all indications, your grandmother's going to be just fine." Nika had no idea how she knew, she just did. "That means that you don't have to put up with me anymore." She turned away from him, afraid that angry tears were about to come spilling out. She didn't want him thinking that she was crying over him-even though she was.

He grabbed her arm, swinging her around to face him. "Stop making up my mind for me, Veronika. Maybe I want to."

Maybe her anger was shutting down her mind. She had no idea what he was saying. "What? Want to what?"

She was going to make him spell it out, he thought, annoyed. Okay, then if that's what she wanted, that's what she was going to get.

"Maybe I want to put up with you," he shouted back at her. When she widened her eyes like that, he found it hard to maintain his anger. "G.o.d d.a.m.n it, woman, you are the most infuriating person I ever met-and I've never felt as alive as I have when I'm with you."

She looked at him, stunned. "Then why are you shouting at me?"