Page 61 of Rapture's Edge (Night Prowler 3)
Gregor slumped back against the pillows, clammy with relief. She wasn’t hurt. But where was she now?
“The car you arrived in, on the other hand, was not so lucky.” She chuckled and moved around to the other side of the bed to check the readouts on the heart monitor and the amount of pale liquid left in a plastic bag hanging from a hook on a rolling pole. There was a length of clear tubing from the bag to his arm, a piece of white tape over the vein on the back of his hand where the tubing was attached with a needle. “Antibiotics,” she said, seeing his look. “Just to make sure you don’t get any infection from the wound.”
The door swung open. He and the nurse turned to watch Agent Doe, leaning on a cane, enter the room, followed by the two uniformed officers. The three of them sent him baleful glares.
“Well.” The nurse shot Gregor a meaningful glance. “My name is Lily. I’m on until nine o’clock. If you need anything, just push that red button on the remote beside the bed and I’ll be in momentarily.” She brushed past the men and let herself out, closing the door behind her.
Gregor said into the following silence, “Agent Doe. We meet again.” He glanced at the two unsmiling gendarmes. “Where’s my good friend Édoard? Our little reunion won’t be the same without him.”
Agent Doe’s knuckles were white around the curved handle of the cane. His jaw worked, but his cold, cold eye revealed nothing. “He’s at your building as we speak.”
There was a lump in the mattress the size of a cat that was pinching a nerve in his lower back, but Gregor refused to shift his weight to relieve the discomfort. “Oh?”
Doe grew a smile that would have looked at home on Hannibal Lecter. “Do you have any idea how long the prison term is for operating a bordello?”
So they’d found it. Gregor said flatly, “Five years to life. Or so I’m told.”
“Ah, but you are correct! Your lawyer must be very intelligent. Though not intelligent enough to dissuade you from engaging in such a reprehensible activity. Pity.”
Gregor did have an intelligent lawyer. A genius lawyer, in fact, who charged fifteen hundred dollars an hour and had drilled into his brain never, never to admit anything, even if caught standing over a decapitated body with a bloody machete in one hand a
nd a severed head in the other. Which in Gregor’s case was not entirely outside the realm of possibility.
“Actually, I only know that from television. It’s amazing what you can learn from those—”
“—crime shows,” Doe finished for him. “Yes, you said so before.” His ugly smile grew mocking. “You certainly do watch a lot of television.”
The two officers snickered. Gregor and Doe stared at one another, deadlocked in silent animosity, until Gregor made a motion with his hand.
“What happened to your eye?”
Doe stiffened. The smile leached from his face, and he shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “I am not after you, MacGregor, you should know that up front so you can make your decisions going forward accordingly.” In answer to Gregor’s plain expression of disbelief, he said, “I am after far bigger fish, and if you assist me in that regard, all charges against you will be dropped.”
“I thought you weren’t with the police. How can you have the authority to do that?”
Ominously, he said, “My organization is above the police.”
Gregor’s interest was piqued. “Is it now? And here I thought no one was above the law.”
“Enough money can put you above anything, even God Himself.”
Without explaining further and apparently tired of standing, Doe snapped his fingers and one of the officers brought him a chair from the corner of the room. He settled himself into it—lips pinched, legs stiff—and then waved a hand, dismissing them. They looked at one another for a moment before leaving the way they’d come. Gregor saw them take up position outside his door, noticed they both wore sidearms.
The police were acting as his very own armed guards. Even more interesting.
“Speaking of God, are you a religious man, MacGregor?”
Gregor blinked over at him and watched as Doe withdrew a cigarette from his inner coat pocket, lit it, and drew the tip into flame. His deep, satisfied exhalation sent out a cloud of smoke.
“I assume there’s a point you’re trying to make, Doe. Make it.”
Doe chuckled. “Neither am I, as it happens. But there are things we don’t understand in this world, wouldn’t you agree? Things beyond our comprehension? Things…you may have even seen yourself. In the very flesh.”
Gregor stared at him, giving nothing away.
“Have you seen the video of your quite spectacular arrival at the hospital? No? Hmm. Well, it’s actually not that interesting”—his one good eye, icy blue, peering at him from behind round spectacles, grew positively arctic—“when you compare it to the video we retrieved from the security cameras at your building. Amazing system you have there. State of the art, I’m told.”
“Doe—”
