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“Forget it. The interstate’s partially closed.”
“What?” She glanced up at him. “Closed?”
“Um-hmm. A section of the road is shut down. Because of the storm. The Gorge is a mess.”
“You’re kidding.” But she could see from his expression that he was earnest, and she knew that sometimes in winter, blizzard-like conditions of freezing rain or ice or snow could cause the highway skirting the Columbia River Gorge to be closed.
He glanced at her iPad. “Google ‘road conditions.’”
She did. Of course he was correct. “Well, crap.”
“Look. You can crash at my place until we find something. It’s no big deal.” He tossed her a smile—the first real one she’d seen, white teeth flashing in the dark interior, his face partially illuminated by the dash lights. “And you lucked out. There’s room available and I’m dog friendly.”
“Very funny.”
“Yeah,” he agreed, his grin fading just a bit as he angled through an alley to connect to a street that paralleled the river, “I thought so.”
* * *
It practically took an act of Congress for Thomas and Johnson to be allowed into Jonas McIntyre’s room and when they got there, the patient was reticent, refused to talk.
“We just want to know what you were doing up at Merritt Margrove’s mobile home,” Thomas explained, but McIntyre, if he did hear them, didn’t say a word. He never made eye contact with them and appeared almost comatose lying on the bed and hooked up to all kinds of hospital equipment.
It was an act.
According to the staff, Jonas McIntyre had conversed with the nurses and, it seemed, his sister. The reports were that Kara McIntyre left AMA, against medical advice, in a hurry, and a couple of the nurses on this floor had seen her duck into an elevator, presumably after speaking to her brother while the guard on duty had been called away to deal with the commotion downstairs.
It all seemed fishy, and Thomas had the uncomfortable feeling that he’d been set up somehow. He just hadn’t figured out how.
He tried one last time. “Listen, McIntyre, we just need to know what you were doing up at Margrove’s trailer. What you saw. Who you saw. Why you were up there in the first place. A simple statement.”
No reaction.
Not so much as a flicker in his eyes.
He barely blinked.
Thomas’s back teeth gnashed in frustration. Jonas could hear him. He knew it, but the guy, even in pain in a hospital room, wasn’t budging. Twenty years in a prison had taught him how to hide any emotion, to keep his emotions in check.
Thomas glanced across the bed to Johnson, who gave a quick shake of her head indicating they were fighting a losing battle. She was right. He knew it, but it pissed him off.
“Okay, let’s go,” he said, and started for the door. In the hallway the guard was arguing with a petite woman in her thirties with two-toned hair that fell to the middle of her back, pouty lips and pale blue eyes that were flashing fire. “I told you, I’m his girlfriend!” she said, tossing the hair over her shoulder. “I need to see him.”
But the guard, who had been reprimanded for leaving his post earlier, wasn’t standing down. “No one sees him.”
“I’m practically next of kin!”
A nurse was on her way. “We can’t have this,” she said. “The patient needs his rest.”
“The ‘patient’ is my boyfriend and he’s not under arrest or anything, so I need to see him. He’s a free man the last I heard.” She was wearing black tights, heavy military-style boots, a sweater that just covered her rear, jean jacket and a huge looping necklace comprised of wooden beads and a dangling wooden cross that resembled a rosary. Maybe it really was a rosary. He couldn’t tell.
Thomas stepped in and introduced himself. “You say you’re Jonas’s girlfriend?” he said. “What’s your name?”
“Mia.” She folded her arms over her chest and jutted her chin, defiance emanating from her in waves. “Mia Long. I want to see Jonas.”
“Not possible.”
“Under what law?” she demanded.