She jumped, twisted toward him, staring with wide, confused, onyx eyes. Her hand darted from her pocket to a thong tied around her neck, and Jack thought he saw something move in the pocket.

She shook her head, pulling on the slim leather thong around her neck. It snapped but she barely seemed to notice. She was drenched in sweat.

“Who—?”

Before Jack could reply she turned and staggered out of the room. He started to go after her but heard a groan from the bed.

“Dad?” He rushed over to the bed and grabbed his father’s hand again. “Dad, was that you?”

He squeezed the fingers—gently at first, then harder. His father winced, but Dr. Huerta had said he was responsive to pain. After shaking his father’s shoulder and calling to him, all with no response, he backed off. Nothing happening here.

He went out to check on that nurse. Something wrong about her…besides looking sick.

At the nursing station he found a big, brawny, gray-haired nurse who seemed to be in charge. Her photo ID badge read R SCHOCH, RN.

“Excuse me,” he said. “A nurse just came into my father’s room, then turned and ran out. She looked kind of sick and I was wondering if she was okay.”

Nurse Schoch frowned—or rather, her frown deepened. It seemed to be her only expression. “Sick? No one said anything.” She looked around at the assignment board. “Three-seventy-five, right? What was her name?”

“I didn’t get a look at her badge. Come to think of it, I don’t think she was wearing one.”

“Oh, she had to be. What did she look like?”

“Slim, dark, maybe five-three or so.”

Schoch shook her head. “No one like that here. Not on my shift, anyway. You sure she was a nurse?”

“I’m not sure of a lot of things,” Jack muttered, “and that’s just been added to my list.”

“She could have been from housecleaning, but then she would have been in gray instead of white—and she’d still have to have a badge.” She picked up a phone. “I’ll call security.”

Jack wished she wouldn’t—he didn’t want rent-a-cops messing into this—but couldn’t think of a reason he could tell Schoch.

“Yeah, okay. I’ll be back in my father’s room.”

He’d been keeping an eye on the door, making sure no one else went in there. When he returned, he checked his father to see if he’d moved—he hadn’t—then went to the window and looked out at the parking lot. He saw a slim woman in white walking away through the lot. Heat from the late-morning sun made her shimmer like a mirage.

It was her. Couldn’t mistake that long braid. And now she was climbing into the passenger side of a battered old red pickup.