"Gardner, Lisa - The Other Daughter" - читать интересную книгу автора (Gardner Lisa)
"No!" Melanie's fear of hospitals outweighed her fear of pain. She snapped her head up and promptly winced. "Give me ... a minute."
Her savior was not impressed. "Jesus, lady. You go walking with a seedy-looking stranger-what were you thinking?"
"Nothing, obviously." Melanie pressed the heels of her hands against her eyes. The man was absolutely right, and she resented him for it. With no other choice, she finally risked opening her eyes.
It was hard to see in the dark. The gas lamp caught the man's features only in half wash, illuminating a square jaw, lean cheeks, and a nose that had been broken a few too many times. Thick dark hair, cut conservatively short. Lips pressed into a grim, unyielding line. She recognized his uniform. Great, she'd just been saved by one of her own waiters.
She closed her eyes again. Nothing like being caught at her worst by someone who could spread stories.
"Are you going to live?" the waiter asked sharply.
"Possibly. It would help if you'd lower your voice."
He seemed contrite for a moment, then ruined the impression with his next words. "You shouldn't have let him drag you off like that. That was a stupid thing to do. Did he want money?"
"Who doesn't?" Melanie staggered to her feet, needing to move, to just . . . move. Unfortunately the ground shifted beneath her, the trees bobbed.
The waiter had to grab her arm. "You keep trying to stand and we're going to have to start a suicide watch for you. Vision?"
"White dots."
"Hearing?"
"What?"
"Prescription meds, right?"
"In the house," she murmured, and tried to take a step. Her legs collapsed. The waiter caught her. She floated limply on his arm, suddenly beyond caring.
Please, please let me go home!
No, honey. You don't want to go home. It's not safe . . .
The man muttered something about foolish women, then swung her up in his arms. She leaned against his shoulder. He felt solid and firm and strong. He smelled like Old Spice.
Melanie buried her face against his neck and let the world slip away.
SPECIAL AGENT DAVID Riggs was not happy. First, because he wasn't fond of rescuing damsels in distress. Second, because he was going to take a lot of heat for rescuing this particular damsel.
"We're eyes and ears only at this stage. This is a very delicate investigation. Don't fuck it up."
Riggs was pretty sure Supervisory Agent Lairmore would consider following, intervening, and now carrying Melanie Stokes to be a fuckup. He was supposed to be shadowing her father. He was supposed
David shifted Melanie more comfortably in his arms and crossed the street. She was smaller than he would've guessed, having watched her dart around the house all evening like a firefly. She never slowed down and hardly even seemed to need a gasp of air. He'd watched her do everything from heft boxes of mangoes to mop up a spill. He'd also noted that she circled back to the living room half a dozen times to discreetly check up on her mother.
Now she was leaning her head against his shoulder in a way a woman hadn't done in a long, long time. He didn't know what to make of that, so he turned his mind sharply to the file he had on the Stokes family and the few things it told him about Melanie Stokes. Daughter, adopted at the age of nine after being abandoned at the hospital where Dr. Stokes worked. A bit of a media buzz portraying her as a modern-day Orphan Annie. She'd graduated with a B. A. from Wellesley in '91 and was active in various charitable organizations. One of those I-want-to-give-something-back-to-the-world kind of people. Nine months earlier she'd become engaged to Dr. William Sheffield, her father's favorite right-hand man, then ended it a mere three months later without ever giving a reason. One of those my-business-is-my-business kind of people. She helped take care of her mother, who, as Larry Digger had pointed out, had never been the same since the murder of her first daughter. One of those you-mess-with-my-family-you-mess-with-me kind of people. Whatever.
Nothing in the files indicated that Melanie Stokes was the daughter of a serial killer, though David had found the reporter's list of coincidences extremely interesting. Then again, David couldn't decide what he thought of the reporter. For all his bluster, Larry Digger's hands had been shaking toward the end. The man had probably skipped his nightly pint of bourbon to make contact. No doubt he was drowning in it now.
Melanie moaned as the house lights hit them both.
"Don't throw up on me again," David muttered.
"Wait . . ."
"Are you going to be sick?"
"Wait." She gripped his jacket. "Don't . . . tell anyone," she muttered intently. "Not ... my family. I'll pay you . . ."
Her eyes were clear. Big and earnest and a startling color, somewhere between blue and gray.
"Yeah, well, sure. Whatever you want."
She sank back down into his arms, seemingly satisfied. David pushed into the foyer and everyone spotted them at once.
"What's going on here?" Harper Stokes immediately strode toward them, William Sheffield in tow. Then Patricia Stokes came flying, sloshing orange juice on her designer dress.
"Oh, my God, Melanie."
"Bedroom?" David asked, and ignoring everyone's gasps and questions, headed up the stairs. "She mentioned having a migraine."
Harper swore. "She should have Fiorinal with codeine in the bathroom. Patricia?"
She darted ahead three flights and burst from her daughter's bathroom, pills and water in hand, just as David laid Melanie down on a rumpled bed. Immediately he was pushed aside by her family, Harper anxiously picking up his daughter's hand and checking her pulse. He took the water and held it to his daughter's pale lips to wash down the pills. Patricia followed with a damp towel, gently bathing Melanie's face. That left William Sheffield, who hovered self-consciously in the doorway. It wasn't clear to David why the former fiancщ was even in the room.
"What happened?" Harper demanded. He checked
his daughter's pulse again, then took the towel from < his wife and positioned it across Melanie's forehead. "Where was Melanie? How did you end up with her?"
"I found her in the park," David said. Apparently the answer sounded as vague to Harper as it did to David, because the surgeon shot him a look. David returned the stare.
Of all the people in the room, David knew the most about Dr. Harper Stokes-he'd spent the past three weeks compiling a file on the man. Considered a brilliant surgeon by many, he'd recently been anointed the top cardiac surgeon in a town known for its surgeons. Others alleged he was an egomaniac, that his zealousness to heal had more to do with the recognition it brought him than honest interest in his patients. Given the growing Hollywoodization of hospital surgery, David found that a tough call to make. Most cardiac surgeons these days were after fame or fortune. After all, there were NBA athletes courted less aggressively than a good, charismatic surgeon who could bring in the bucks.
The only thing different David could find out about
Dr. Harper Stokes was his background. In a day and
age when a surgeon's career track started at the age of
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