The Blue Nowhere

phones at the hospital went down about a half hour ago. Repairmen’re working on it now. Your husband got through on the radio we use for talking to, you know, our ambulances.”
    Jennie had her cell phone in her purse but she’d seen a sign on the wall warning that you couldn’t use mobiles in the hospital—that the signal sometimes interfered with heart pacemakers and other equipment.
    The guard looked around the room and then pulled a chair close to the bed and sat down. She didn’t look directly at the young man but she sensed him studying her, scanning her body, as if he were trying to look into the armholes of the dotted gown and see her breasts. She turned to him with a stern glare but he looked away just before she caught him.
    Dr. Williston, a round, balding man in his late fifties, walked into the room.
    “Hello, Jennie, how’re you this morning?”
    “Okay,” she said uncertainly.
    Then the doctor noticed the security guard and glanced at him with raised eyebrows.
    The man answered, “Detective Bishop asked me to stay with his wife.”
    Dr. Williston looked the man over and then asked, “You’re with hospital security?”
    “Yessir.”
    Jennie said, “Sometimes we run into a little trouble with the cases Frank’s working on. He likes to be cautious.”
    The doctor nodded and then put on his reassuring face. “Okay, Jennie, these tests won’t take too long today but I’d like to talk to you about what we’re going to be doing—and what we’re going to be looking for.” He nodded at the bandage on her arm from the injection. “They’ve already taken blood, I see, and—”
    “No. That was from the shot.”
    “The . . . ?”
    “You know, the injection.”
    “How’s that?” he asked, frowning.
    “About twenty minutes ago. The injection you ordered.”
    “There was no injection scheduled.”
    “But . . .” She felt the ice of fear run through her—as cold and stinging as the medicine spreading up her arm from the shot. “The nurse who did it . . . she had a computer printout. It said you’d ordered an injection!”
    “What was the medication? Do you know?”
    Breathing fast now, in panic, she whispered, “I don’t know! Doctor, the baby . . .”
    “Don’t worry,” he said. “I’ll find out. Who was the nurse?”
    “I didn’t notice her name. She was short, heavy, black hair. Hispanic. She had a cart.” Jennie started to cry.
    The security guard leaned forward. “Something happened here? Something I can do?”
    They both ignored him. The doctor’s face scared the absolute hell out of her—he too was panicked. He leaned forward and pulled a flashlight from his pocket. He shone it into her eyes and took her blood pressure. He then looked up at the Hewlett-Packard monitor. “Pulse and pressure are a little high. But let’s not worry yet. I’ll go find out what happened.”
    He hurried out of the room.
    Let’s not worry yet. . . .
    The security guard rose and shut the door.
    “No,” she said. “Leave it open.”
    “Sorry,” he responded calmly. “Your husband’s orders.”
    He sat down again, pulled the chair closer to her. “Pretty quiet in here. How ’bout we turn up that TV.”
    Jennie didn’t respond.
    Let’s not worry yet. . . .
    The guard picked up the remote control and turned the volume up high. He clicked the channel selector to a different soap opera and leaned back.
    She sensed him looking at her again but Jennie was hardly thinking about the guard at all. There were only two things in her mind: the horrible memory of the stinging injection. And her baby. She closed her eyes, praying that everything would be all right and cradling her belly, where her two-month-old child lay, perhaps sleeping, perhaps floating motionless as it listened to the fierce, frightened drumming of its mother’s troubled heart, a sound that surely filled the tiny creature’s entire dark world.

CHAPTER 00100001 / THIRTY-THREE
    F eeling stiff, feeling irritated, Department of Defense agent Arthur Backle moved his chair to the side so that he could get a better view of Wyatt Gillette’s computer.
    The hacker glanced down—at the scraping sound the agent’s chair made on the cheap linoleum floor—then back to the screen and continued keying. His fingers flew across the keyboard.
    The two men were alone in the Computer Crimes Unit office. When he’d learned that his wife might be the killer’s next target Bishop had sped to the hospital.