Page 87 of A Deeper Darkness
“All right. I’ll see you in a few hours. Take the pain medicine, okay?” She touched him briefly on the cheek. “Thank you for saving my life.”
He smiled, and she noticed how that simple act transformed his tired face. “You’re welcome. Get some rest.”
He turned to leave, then stopped. “Sam…I…”
“Yes?”
“Nothing. Never mind. Sleep well.”
“You, too, Fletch.”
She shut and locked the door behind him, then lay down on the cot. As tired as she was, sleep was the last thing on her mind. She needed to call Eleanor and let her know what was going on, but she hated to run the risk of waking her. Like Sam, Eleanor didn’t sleep well, but Susan and the girls were at the house. She didn’t want to wake them up, either. She put it on her mental checklist to do in the morning and rolled onto her side.
Tomorrow she might meet the mysterious Xander, and find out why Donovan had been killed.
Was she ready?
Because it was looking more and more like Donovan was involved in something less than savory. And she didn’t want her memories of him to be sullied.
She didn’t want her memories, period.
Chapter Forty-Four
Washington, D.C.
Dr. Samantha Owens
Sam was surprised by knocking on the door. She realized she had actually fallen asleep, despite thinking there was no way she could. She looked at her watch—it was five in the morning. A full three hours of rest. Joy.
“Just a minute,” she called. She’d slept in her clothes but taken off her bra. It took her a second to find it, on top of Fletcher’s cup of pens and pencils. He would have loved that. Last night, before he left, she had the feeling he was about to say something of a more personal nature than she was ready to hear. She was glad he changed his mind. Hurting Fletcher was the last thing she wanted to do. He seemed like a really great guy, but she wasn’t close to being able to think like that about him.
She shimmied into the lace and wire and straightened her shirt. She had a red welt on her stomach from the tape they’d used to keep the mike in place. She must have been allergic to the adhesive.
She pulled the door open. Fletcher greeted her, looking amazingly rested, with a cup of steaming coffee in his hand.
“Drink up. It’s time to roll.”
She accepted the cup gratefully and took a deep sip. It was good, better than the usual police station fare.
“Did you make this?”
“Yeah. I have a stash. And a French press. Life’s too short to drink bad coffee.”
“Amen to that.” She finished the cup. “I’m ready when you are.”
She followed him out of the offices and down the stairs to the garage.
A full tactical team awaited them. Sam took one look at the group of unsmiling men bristling with weapons and adrenaline, and shook her head.
“Fletch, you’ve got to be kidding. This is going to scare him away.”
“Sam, this is nonnegotiable. Whitfield must be treated as a murder suspect. We’ve had boots on the ground up there for two days looking for him, and haven’t had a trace. The man’s a ghost. I can’t take the chance that you might get hurt. Or anyone else, for that matter. Like it or lump it, the team comes along.”
The team came with a driver. Fletcher motioned to the backseat of an unmarked sedan, and Sam joined him, glad he wasn’t going to try and be a man about things and attempt a cross-country drive one-handed, on no sleep and a gunshot wound. She would have been forced to drive herself, and damn it, she was tired.
The sky was still shadowed, the sun just beginning to peek over the horizon. Traffic hadn’t picked up yet. It was like they had the city to themselves, an eerily empty town of half a million slumbering under their noses.
They shot out of the city, crossed the Roosevelt Bridge and headed west on the George Washington Parkway. Sam loved this road, loved its leafy canopy sheltering the gentle curves as the Potomac River undulated beside them. It only took ten minutes to hit the beltway, then they looped around to 270 heading to Frostburg. The drive was going to take three hours. Sam settled against the door and shut her eyes. Maybe she could get a few minutes of sleep on the way.
