Critical Impact. Linda Hall

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      She remembered suddenly about the nurse call button. Sara had said she had clipped it beside her left hand. Was it still there? She grasped for it, somehow found it, and pressed it over and over again.

      She felt she was going to lose consciousness when she dimly heard from the PA beside her, “Anna—it’s Nurse Sara, I’m on my way.”

      The pillow and the doctor in green had vanished by the time Sara arrived.

      “Someone tried to smother me!” Anna blurted out, tears running down her cheeks.

      “What!”

      “Someone was just in here. All in green. And he tried to smother me with a pillow.”

      Sara went out into the hallway. A few moments later she was back again. “I didn’t see anyone in the hallway, Anna. There’s no one else here tonight. It’s a very quiet night.”

      “But there was someone. It was a doctor and he put a pillow on my face.” Anna couldn’t breathe. “He was wearing all dark green and a mask, like a surgeon.”

      Sara sat down beside her and put her hand on Anna’s left arm. “Anna, there’s no one here. One of the side effects of the amount and type of pain medications you’re on is the feeling of being smothered sometimes. I’ll talk to the doctor about it in the morning. In the meantime, would you like me to sit with you for a while?”

      “I would. Thank you.”

      With tears stinging her eyes, Anna finally drifted off to sleep. Had someone really been here? Or had it been a dream of the worst kind?

      THREE

      “Your best guess—you guys think what happened at City Hall was an act of terrorism?” Stu poured himself a cup of coffee. He was pretty sure the coffee in the pot had been sitting on the counter in the Whisper Lake Crossing Sheriff’s Office for at least five hours. But since yesterday, Deputy Stu McCabe, Sheriff Alec Black and Deputy Liz Corcoran had been too busy to even rinse out the coffeepot after batches. To make it more palatable, Stu stirred in two spoonfuls of powdered creamer and three spoonfuls of sugar. He stood beside the window and stirred his coffee while he looked at the TV van parked outside.

      “I do,” Liz answered, looking up at him. “Anybody who sets off a bomb is a terrorist. Plain and simple.” According to Liz, who had recently moved to Whisper Lake Crossing, all crimes had to do with terrorists, gangs or drugs. “It can’t be any of these weirdos on the anonymous tip line,” she said, holding up the phone. “I just talked to a guy. Says he’s the bomber. Says he’s also single-handedly responsible for assassinating JFK.”

      “I hope you took down his name.” Alec looked up from his desk and over the tops of his skinny reading glasses. “Anybody who calls in is a potential suspect.”

      “I know, I know…” She went back to the phone, holding up a yellow pad half-full of notes, numbers and details.

      As any police officer knew, a tip line tended to bring out all the crazies from the woodwork, yet each tip had to be written down, analyzed and followed up on.

      Alec and Stu and Liz had been at this for twenty-four hours and all they seemed to have succeeded in doing was getting the national media here in full force. Even now, a national news van, complete with a satellite dish, was parked out front. A well-dressed anchor-woman holding a microphone was being filmed, and the Whisper Lake Crossing Sheriff’s Department was the backdrop for this scene.

      Most of the media action was centered ten miles south at Shawnigan, Maine, where forensics and bomb specialists were still sifting through the rubble. But since Anna Barker and Mayor Johnny Seeley were from Whisper Lake Crossing, this town was also prominently in the news.

      The mock disaster was to have been for the entire county of Whisper Lake, which included the communities of Whisper Lake Crossing, Shawnigan at the southern tip and DeLorme in the north.

      Of course, the disaster drill had been canceled due to the real disaster, something that the media was finding both ironic and newsworthy.

      Stu decided that he’d had enough of a walking-around break. Time to get back to work. All morning he’d been trying to track down the elusive Peter Remington, former boyfriend of Anna Barker.

      Anna had left California, “escaped,” she told him, from an ex-boyfriend who had “threatened” her. She’d given him Peter’s contact information, but the e-mails bounced. Stu had left countless messages to no avail.

      Alec looked at Stu. “Any more on Anna Barker? You going to see her today?”

      “Planning to. After I make a few more calls here.”

      Because Stu had been the one who had found and rescued Anna, Alec had decided that he should be the one to keep in contact with her. This was fine with Stu. She was the pretty, dark-haired woman with the sad face who mostly kept to herself. She always looked so perfectly polished and therefore out of his league.

      When the explosion happened and he’d seen a woman fall, he’d had no idea it was her. His adrenaline had kicked in and he ran to help. It had done something to his heart when he discovered it was her underneath that rubble.

      But even with the scratches and gashes on her face, she looked beautiful to him. He had been saddened to learn that she’d been so hurt by a jerk in California. A jerk he was now having no luck tracking down.

      He searched the guy’s name on the Internet and came up with accolades on his great special effects. The company he worked for had even been nominated for an Academy Award once. Stu had run the guy’s name through the police databases they had access to and come up with no information. He had no criminal record.

      Stu sat down and called the studio in California where Peter worked.

      “No,” a gruff female voice answered. “Peter Remington isn’t here. Who wants to know?”

      Stu introduced himself.

      “The police? Maine? He in some kind of trouble?”

      “We need to talk with him about something.”

      “All I can say is if you find him, you can tell him to get his sorry self back here. He’s the only one who knows the correct bomb sequence and we can’t pro duce this scene without him. He’s holding up editing. He’s holding up production.”

      Stu straightened in his chair. “What do you mean by bomb sequence?”

      “For the movie. He’s the one who’s putting it all together.”

      “So Peter Remington knows a lot about bombs?”

      “He’s the best.”

      “And you don’t know where he is?” Stu was taking rapid notes.

      “Nope. Not a clue.”

      Stu thanked the woman and got her to promise to call him if Peter did show up.

      Well, well, thought Stu.

      He was finishing up his notes when a movement in the doorway СКАЧАТЬ