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CHAPTER 20
Tate was true to his word.
Kara didn’t know how he’d managed it, but the security guard was no longer posted at the door to Jonas’s room. The folding chair was vacant, a jacket slung over the back, a magazine left on the floor near an empty paper coffee cup.
She didn’t wait.
Knew she didn’t have much time. She’d used up precious seconds yanking on her clothes, all of which she’d found in a closet in her hospital room.
Then, barely daring to breathe, she’d slipped past the nurses’ station without being seen. Only one of the nurses was at the desk and she’d been on the phone, staring at a computer screen, deep in conversation about a patient, her back to Kara, her head bobbing as she’d listened to someone through a headset. As she nodded, she twisted a lock of long dark hair and studied some chart.
Kara eased into the hospital room and found her brother lying faceup on the bed, his eyes at half-mast, bandages over one side of his head, bruises showing beneath both eyes. His gaze slid groggily to the side. He blinked as if in slow motion, his dark eyebrows drawing together as he attempted to focus on her. He licked his lips slowly as if it was a great effort. “Kara?” His voice was a rasp. Barely audible.
“Hey. I’m here.”
Tubes ran in and out of his body, an IV stand was nearby. A monitor was suspended over his bed, a black screen displaying his vital signs and logging his heartbeats. His skin was sallow above his beard.
“I . . . I . . .” He forced his gaze to the window, where the sky was sullen and dark, the coming night brooding while snow was falling, collecting on the sill, as the heart monitor gave off soft beeps. “I . . . need . . . get out.”
She took stock of the tubes and wires, the pallor of his skin, the bandages and dull sheen in his eyes, and heard the steady beep of the heart monitor. “I don’t think I can do that.” She inched nearer the bed. “You need to get well. Heal.”
His gaze locked with hers for an instant. She saw the anger etched in the set of his jaw, silently arguing with her. His voice when he spoke was a rasp. “They’re gonna try to pin this on me, too. They’ll never let me out.” His jaw tightened. “But . . . but I didn’t do it. I didn’t kill Merritt, and I didn’t kill Dad and Sam and . . . Oh, shit.” His mouth tightened and his eyes narrowed on her. “You put me in that place,” he accused, and her heart sank. “Your testimony.”
She wanted to defend herself, to say that she only answered the DA’s questions honestly, that the way they were peppered at her and her confusion as an eight-year-old on the witness stand contorted her testimony, twisted her words, but she didn’t. She’d tried to explain long ago and Jonas had turned a deaf ear to her explanations, to her apologies. The expression on his face suggested his attitude hadn’t changed. If anything, it had hardened.
A cart rattled in the hallway and Kara jumped.
Soon, very soon, the missing cop would be discovered, or he’d return and Kara would be trapped in Jonas’s room. Time was running out.
“Did Merritt say anyone was after him?”
Jonas just stared. “What do you mean?”
“Who would kill him?”
“I don’t know. He had other clients. Maybe one of them or—” He lifted a hand, then let it fall. “Someone he pissed off. I don’t know.”
“But it has to be connected, right? To what happened at the house that night. That’s why he wanted to see you.”
“Maybe.”
“It’s too much of a coincidence that the day you’re released someone kills Merritt. Why? Did he know something? What did he tell you? Why did he want to meet?”
“He didn’t say. He didn’t get the chance.”
“But you had your own reasons for going,” she said, remembering how Jonas had said he thought Merritt, along with Aunt Faiza, had drained the estate. “You wanted a reconciliation, right? You wanted to see if there was any money in the estate.”
“Yeah.”
“How . . . how did you know there might not be?”
“Just little things Margrove said. Nothing explicit, but just remarks he made about how expensive it was to keep the case alive, how much it costs for you and your education, how some investments had gone south. I wanted to see for myself. I expected a complete list of every dime he’d spent over the last twenty years.”
“Did he know that?”
“Yeah, and he backpedaled, you know, talking about how ‘grateful’ I should be to be getting out, that kind of thing.” He was seething again, and she heard noises outside his door. Voices. She looked around the room, searching for a spot to hide. Found none. She was about to bolt when the voices receded, but her nerves were strung tight.
“Okay, I’ve got to go,” she said quickly, easing toward the door when one last thought struck her and she paused, turned back for a second. “Have you heard from Marlie?”