The Maze

clothes from your room. If you feel up to it, go bathe and change. When you come out, breakfast should be here. Lots of protein, lots of iron, lots of orange juice."

    "What's the orange juice for?"

    "To keep you from coming down with a cold."

    He watched her swing her legs over the side of the bed. That hair of hers had come loose from the clasp and was rioting around her face-red hair that wasn't really a carrot red or an orange red or even the auburn he'd thought, but a mixture of this color and that. She had lots of hair. Actually-very beautiful hair. She looked totally different. He backed up a step. "I even put out some female stuff on the counter for you. If you need to shave your legs, forget it. I've only got one razor."

    He was distracting her from the pain in her arm.

    "Oh yeah, Sherlock, before you go haring off to catch another killer, hold on just a second." He disappeared into the bathroom, then came out a few moments later. "Here, take two pills. Doctor's orders."

    She knew the little blue one would take the wretched cutting pain away. Then maybe she could attack that breakfast Savich was talking about.

    "You're eyeing those pills the way the cannibal would the sailor in the cooking pot." He handed her the pills and a glass of water. She was fast getting them down.

    "Why don't you just sit there until the meds kick in. I'll call room service."

    Forty-five minutes later, wrapped in a robe, bathed as well as she could with just one hand, Lacey was seated opposite

    Savich, a fork piled with scrambled eggs very nearly to her mouth. She sighed as she swallowed.

    He let her eat for three minutes, then said, "I didn't tell Assistant Director Maitland that you're an idiot, that in your first situation you didn't follow orders, you taunted the suspect until he threw the knife at you, that you nearly got yourself whacked because of this damned obsession you have."

    "Thank you, sir."

    "Cut the 'sir' stuff. He'll find out soon enough. I still might kick your butt out of the Bureau. That was the stupidest thing I've ever seen, Sherlock." He'd said it all the previous night, but she might have been too dazed to get it all. He needed to pound it in.

    "I wanted to push him to the edge. I wanted him to tell me everything-the why of everything. I don't know if I believe that maze story he told me about his father."

    "It's a fact easily checked. I'll bet you Ralph has already got in calls to Yuma, Arizona. Tell me, Sherlock, is the obsession gone now that you took out the monster? Was your revenge sweet?"

    "Is he still alive?"

    "Yes. They operated on him three straight hours. Chances are he'll make it."

    "There's still a chance he'll croak after we get it all out of him. Do you think that's possible?"

    "I don't plan to let you near him with a weapon."

    She sat back in her chair and sighed. "The pain medicine's worked really well. The breakfast was excellent. Are you going to tell Assistant Director Maitland that I should be suspended or disciplined or cut off without pay, or what?"

    "I told you, I'm still chewing on that. But it just occurred to me this was the only reason you came into the Bureau in the first place, wasn't it?"

    She nodded, chewing on a piece of toast.

    "And your undergraduate degree in Forensic Sciences and your Master's degree in Criminal Psychology, these were all just for this one moment-the very slim chance that you'd get to confront this crazy?"

    "Yes. I never really believed I'd get him, not deep down, but I knew if I didn't try, then I couldn't live with myself. I wouldn't have even had the chance at him if it hadn't been for you. You made it possible. I thank you, sir."

    "I don't like you very much at this moment, Sherlock, so cut the 'sir' crap. If I had known what I was doing, I wouldn't have done it. Just what would I have done if you'd bought the farm?"

    "I guess you would have had to call my dad. That wouldn't have been much fun. Thank you for-"

    "If you thank me one more time for letting you play bait, I'll wrap that sling around your throat and strangle you with it."

    "What's going to happen now?"

    "You're going back to Washington and I'll handle things here."

    She turned into a stone. "No," she said at last. "No, you wouldn't do that." She sat forward. "Please, you've got to let me see this through to the end. You've got to let me talk to Marlin Jones. I've got to know why he killed my sister, why he killed all the other women. You told me I could talk to