Page 59 of Drop Dead Gorgeous

“One of the nurses? You’re sure?”

“Yes,” I whispered emphatically. “Not in the ER, on the floor. She came into my room, chatted, ripped my bandages off—”

“Blair, where are you?” he interrupted.

“Mall. Different one.” Now I had to think the incident at the other mall had been happenstance, because that was before I’d met Nurse Nutcase.

“Come to the station, right now. We need a description, more to go on than we have so far, and I can barely understand you. I’ll meet you there.”

The Fates were against me. It was absolutely not meant for me to find material for my wedding gown, to get my errands accomplished, or to get Sally and Jazz back together. On the other hand, not getting killed certainly had to be a priority.

In my need to get cell service, I’d gone out the nearest exit instead of the one where I’d entered, so I went back into the mall and walked to the other end. When I entered the parking deck, once again I found myself checking for white Chevrolets. I started to get angry with myself, then realized she was still out there; I couldn’t afford to assume there was no way she could find me. There was always a way, if she was determined enough.

I drove to the police department, took the elevator up. Wyatt was in his office, the door open. He was on the phone, but looked up and saw me, waved me in. He also beckoned to Forester, who came in, too, and closed the door behind him. Wyatt got off the phone, then turned that green laser look on me. “Start at the beginning.”

I took a deep breath. “I finally placed her. She’s a floor nurse at the hospital. She came into my room, was really friendly, chatted for a while, but she kept ripping my bandages off, and she was really rough doing it.”

He looked angry, his jaw working a little. “Did anyone else see her?”

“Siana was there.”

“Describe her.”

“About my age, maybe a little older. It was hard to tell. Very pretty, with greenish hazel eyes. Brown hair, but it was a bad dye job. She must have bleached the dye out afterward, which is really hard to do, and that threw me off when she turned up at the fire scene as a blonde.”

“How tall?”

I swallowed to ease my throat. “I don’t know. I was lying down, so I don’t have a frame of reference. But she was slim, built really well. And she…” I started to say she had really long eyelashes but an elusive picture was trying to form in my mind, another face swimming into focus. I gasped. “I saw her in the fabric shop, too, after I got out of the hospital. I thought she looked familiar then. But her hair was different that time, too. It was red, I think, a dark red.” She had been following me around, and not just in a Chevrolet. Glancing at Wyatt, I knew from his grim expression that the same thought had occurred to him.

“Wigs,” said Forester.

Wyatt nodded. “That’s what it sounds like.”

“The blond hair could have been a wig,” I said. “It was covered with a hood so I couldn’t tell. But the brown hair in the hospital wasn’t a wig, it was her hair, and it was dyed. Trust me.” My whisper was going; I started coughing at the end of that speech. The laryngitis was something else I could lay at her door, and though it was minor in comparison to burning my condo, not being able to talk was a pain in the ass. If I needed to scream or something, I’d be S.O.L. When you think of the situations in which you might need to scream, having a voice suddenly becomes more important.

“I’ll contact the hospital,” said Forester, “see if we can get photos of everyone who was working—when?”

“First shift, last Friday,” supplied Wyatt. “Fourth floor, neurological wing.”

“We might not need a warrant,” said Forester, but without much hope. “But this hospital tends to get pissy on privacy issues.”

“I get pissy on attempted murder issues,” said Wyatt, his tone icy.

I wondered what he could do if the hospital administration balked at providing photos without first being served with a warrant, then remembered that, courtesy of his previous celebrity status, he could pick up the phone and talk to the governor anytime he wanted. Wyatt could affect fund-raising, appointments, any number of aspects that were pertinent to a hospital. Way cool.

Forester left to get on the phone with the hospital and Wyatt turned his attention back to me. “Was the first time you saw her while you were in the hospital?”

“So far as I know.”

“Can you think of anything you said that might have set her off, anything she said that can give us any idea what’s going on here?”

I thought back over the conversation and shook my head. “I mentioned I was getting married in less than a month and didn’t have time for a concussion. She said something about when she was planning her own wedding, how crazy the last month was. She asked if I liked your mother, said it must be nice to have a mother-in-law you liked, from which I gathered she doesn’t like hers. She thought I’d been in a motorcycle accident, because of the road rash. Just…conversation. I said I was hungry and she said she’d have a tray sent up, but she never did. That’s it. She was very friendly.” I did some more coughing, and looked around for a pad to write on. I’d strained my throat enough. If I kept this up, I’d be right back where I’d started.

“That’s all the questions,” he said, getting up and coming around the desk to haul me to my feet, his arms closing around me. “Rest your throat. We’ll get her now; that’s the lead we’ve been needing.”

“It just makes no sense,” I whispered. “I don’tknowher.”

“Stalkers don’t make sense, period. They form illogical obsessions in an instant, and a lot of times the victim has done nothing more than be polite. It isn’t your fault, and there’s nothing you could have done to prevent it. It’s a personality disorder. If she changes her appearance that often, then she’s looking for something, and you’re probably everything she wants to be and isn’t.”

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