Edge of Black. J.T. Ellison

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СКАЧАТЬ said a little prayer for her own student, Brooke Wasserstrom, who at last check was holding steady in the intensive care unit. Sam hoped that her quick actions meant Brooke had a decent chance of survival, but without knowledge of what they were dealing with, all they could do was treat, and pray.

      A congressman, a student and a market researcher.

      Three strangers, brought together at the hand of a madman. What had they done to deserve death as a punishment?

      Now, Sam, you know that this isn’t a healthy line of thinking. Random things happened. There aren’t always answers as to why people have to die. Why their number has suddenly come up. They were obviously in the wrong place at the wrong time. She could fully comprehend that. She knew that they weren’t connected in any way law enforcement could use their deaths to track their killer. A terrorist attack is a random event.

      Random. Chosen without method or conscious decision.

      She hadn’t chosen for her family to die. That had been random, too.

      She shook them away, the voices of her dead, and refocused.

      A random act.

      Then why did someone send a text to Congressman Leighton blaming the morning’s events on him?

      The only real evidence they had was the text. It could be the key. Leighton could be the key.

      Not Dr. Loa Ledbetter, a small brilliant redheaded beauty with a gaping slit in her chest, nor Marc Conlon, too young to even have grown fully into his bones, his sagittal suture not entirely fused.

      Quit personalizing, Sam.

      What Sam was interested in was why those three, out of all the people exposed and the two hundred exhibiting symptoms, were the only ones who died.

      Ledbetter was dead on arrival at GW, after being found collapsed on the floor of the ladies’ room at her office by one of her staffers.

      Conlon died in an ambulance on the way to the hospital. He’d gone into cardiac arrest at the top of the stairs of the Tenleytown Metro.

      Neither had a history of lung disease; that was reserved for the congressman. Neither exhibited signs of illness, their initial blood work had been normal, and neither had a history of ill health.

      Their families could give more information. Sam was itching to talk to them.

      But this wasn’t her investigation. She’d been brought in to do a task, used for her discretion and talent, not to run off trying to explain the unexplainable.

      Except she knew every puzzle had a solution.

      Someone wanted Leighton to feel responsible, yes, but dead? Perhaps that was just chance. Perhaps that was a fluke. And there was absolutely nothing that said the text-sender was the same person who’d indiscriminately put a foreign substance into the air ducts at the Foggy Bottom Metro and made so many people ill. It could just be a pissed-off constituent who wrongly blamed the congressman for a completely random event.

      There she was, back to the arbitrary again.

      Fletcher had brought her into this investigation when he asked her to post Leighton. He wasn’t dumb; he knew she’d press for more information, for a chance to help. She wasn’t constricted by the rule of law here. She was a private citizen. She’d sworn a different kind of oath, one that she believed in, one that bound her to care for the sick, to have special obligations to the public she served. She could do whatever she chose, so long as she worked within the bounds of her ethics and didn’t break the law.

      She was starting to feel a bit tingly.

      She debated for exactly ten seconds before writing down the addresses of the other victims, folding the paper into halves, then quarters, and stashing it in the pocket of her trousers.

      It was damn good timing, too, because she’d barely raised her palm from the linen when Dr. Nocek came into the room, followed by Fletcher.

      “You ready, Doc?” Fletcher asked. He looked worried and rumpled and tired. His beard was just starting to make its appearance, and lent him a vaguely menacing air. Next to the taller, more collected Nocek, he looked a bit like a brawl just waiting to happen.

      Sam gathered her bag and sweater. “I’m ready. How are things on the Hill?”

      “Fucked.”

      That’s all she got. Nocek raised an eyebrow in her direction, and she responded by giving him a warm hug. “I’ll see you soon. We’ll have dinner.”

      “I would like that very much,” he said, and she sensed the sadness in him. Nocek was a widower, not fully used to going home alone in the evenings. On a day like today, after all the hoopla, the fear and adrenaline, having only ghosts to talk to could be hard.

      She squeezed his arm and said, “Call me if you need anything,” then followed a glowering Fletcher from the room.

      The longest day she’d had since she left Nashville was finally drawing to a close.

      Chapter 10

      The streets were still eerily deserted, the dark skies interrupted by the scream of jets. Fletcher was silent until they hit M Street. Sam knew better than to try and drag information out of him; he’d share when he was ready. They got stuck at the light at Wisconsin, and he finally started talking.

      “Leighton’s chief of staff is giving me the runaround,” he grumbled.

      Sam smiled. “Isn’t that his job?”

      Fletcher glanced at her, saw the amusement etched on her face. It provoked a smile of his own, and he relaxed a bit.

      “Yeah, I suppose it is. Fingerprints on the inhaler belong to him. That matches his statement that when he came into the office and saw the congressman down, he retrieved the inhaler and gave it to his boss.”

      “Okay. So where’s the issue?”

      He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel, then ran his hands through his hair. “I don’t know. I’m tired as hell. I’m getting put on the Joint Terrorism Task Force.”

      “That’s good, right? You’ll be able to see this through to the end.”

      “Maybe. We’ll see. They might have me running around town with my dick in my hand.”

      She cleared her throat, trying to hide the laugh.

      “Sorry, Sam. That was crude of me.”

      “You’re fine, Fletch. The image was priceless.”

      He laughed with her then, and the light turned. He took a right, then a left, and she was at her door a moment later. There was a pause, awkward and three beats too long. He looked like he wanted to say something important, but refrained. Instead, he shook it off and said, “Get some sleep. You did good today.”

      “Thanks, Fletch. You, too. Call me if you need anything else, okay? And if they get the results back on the toxin, let me know.”

      “Will СКАЧАТЬ