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Cath slammed the minibus brakes and scanned the hospital parking lot in front of her. “What?”
“You barely missed the curb.” Mitch braced both arms on the bar protecting the first row of seats.
“I didn’t hit it.” She ground her teeth. In space-precious New Orleans, nobody created parking lot entrances wider than necessary to accommodate a compact car.
“Don’t worry. I’ll drive back.”
They had already discussed why Mitch couldn’t drive her bus, but she wasn’t even thinking about leaving. First, she had to find out what had happened to Bea.
“Will you stop micromanaging?” Silence. She glanced over her shoulder at his crossed arms and pained expression. “Please.”
If Mitch hadn’t been on her tour and acted when he did, she would never have escaped those men. Even after she’d screamed, they could still have thrown her into their van and sped away. She’d thanked him five times and had asked him to either get on the VIP Tour bus or walk back to the French Quarter. But oh, no, he’d insisted on coming with her.
The hospital had only said Bea needed to see her. Nothing about why.
Cath clenched the living daylights out of the wheel and crept along the aisle. Ten minutes passed before a truck pulled out of an oversize space and she parked.
Mitch steered her toward open space as soon as she locked the bus, watching the shrubbery as if he expected masked men to jump out at them. She couldn’t deal with that now and had already filed the kidnapping in the worry-about-it-later folder.
“Fourth floor.” She whirled away from the emergency admit desk a few minutes later and led Mitch to the elevators. An electronic bong sounded, the occupants filed out, and he followed her into the empty car.
“Hold the door,” a woman’s voice called. Seconds later, a middle-aged woman pushed an elderly man in a wheelchair into the elevator in a cloud of garlic. The rest of her family—all four of them—crammed inside too. The doors refused to close, and Cath flattened against Mitch’s broad chest. “Sorry.”
She held her breath, acutely aware of the rise and fall of his chest against her back. The doors finally slid open and the family left. She stepped to one side of the empty car and sucked in air. “I’m not claustrophobic, but for a while I thought I might asphyxiate.”
Either from the press of bodies or from plastering herself against his rock-hard body.
“Roger. From the garlic.”
“Maybe the patient they’re going to see is a vampire.” The doors opened on their floor, and they moved from garlic breath to a stinging antiseptic odor. She checked the room numbers and swiveled to head in the opposite direction. A nurse came out of her bookkeeper friend’s room. Cath stopped her. “How is she?”
The nurse clutched an electronic tablet to her chest and pursed her lips. “She needs to rest.”
“I’m here because she asked for me, and I need to talk to her.” Cath peered through the half-open door and caught sight of a patrol officer’s blue shirt. Her stomach dropped, but she put on her best face. “I see she’s already got company.”
The nurse held up her free hand. “I told the police ten minutes. The same applies to you.” A patrolman and a plainclothes detective stood beside a bed where Bea lay, looking much older than sixty-five years. She wore a small butterfly bandage on her forehead, and a stand beside the bed held various monitors. A sick feeling swirled in Cath’s stomach.
“Hey. It’s me.” She walked closer. “What are you doing here?”
Bea’s face brightened. “Resting mostly.”
“I’m getting her statement now.” The patrolman looked down at his report. “You said you were in the back room when the men burst in?”
“I was in the back room.” Bea sounded like herself, but there had to be more. “The delivery man had just left, and I was about to go lock the street door when two big bruisers burst into the office.”
Cath gripped the bed rail, the cold from the metal chilling her bones.
“It was so frightening. Their masks—” Bea pressed a hand to her chest.
“Mardi Gras masks? Ski masks?” the detective asked.
“The knit kind that covers up your head and face.”
More masked men? The same two? Cath sent Mitch a can-you-believe-it look.
“They wanted to know where you were, Cath, but I pretended I didn’t know. Then they threatened to kill me if I didn’t tell them. I had to tell them about the tour. Sorry.”
Whoever these men were, they didn’t mind scaring an old lady. “Did they hurt you?”