His answer didn’t please her. She should have been the queen of something, Mendez thought. Back in the day when monarchs could order people’s heads cut off—like Marissa Fordham’s.

“Maybe you were the one who got tired of her,” he suggested. “She was rebellious. She didn’t show proper appreciation for all you did for her. She knew all the Bordain secrets.”

“That’s absurd!” she said, tears springing to her eyes. She turned to Dixon. “I loved Marissa!”

“Not enough to let her marry your son,” Mendez pressed.

“Marissa had no interest in getting married! She had her art, she had Haley. She was happy with her life! I’m devastated by what happened to her!” she went on. “I don’t know who killed her, but it certainly wasn’t me or my husband or my son!

“Are you forgetting that I’ve been threatened too?” she asked. “Someone sent me that—that—box in the mail! Someone tried to run me off the road! What are you doing about that? Anything?”

“We’ll pursue it if we get a lead,” Dixon said. “There’s nothing we can do right now.”

“You’ll do something when I’m dead on the floor,” she snapped. “That’s a great comfort to me! And I heard that Kemmer girl was found not far from here. This killer is lurking out here and you’re wasting precious time accusing people who had no reason to be involved—”

Mendez’s pager interrupted the tirade. He excused himself and went back to the car to radio in. When he got the message, he ran back, dismissing Milo Bordain from his mind.

“We have to go,” he said to Dixon. “Gina Kemmer is conscious.”

Chapter 91

91

“She’s drifting in and out,” Hicks said as they met at the elevators near the ICU. “She fights for it, she’s with it for a few seconds, and then she goes back under.”

“Has she said anything?” Dixon asked.

“Not that makes any sense. She mumbles when she’s out. Stuff like ‘stop it, go away, leave me alone.’”

“I wonder who she’s talking to?” Mendez asked. “Her assailant? She hasn’t mentioned a name?”

“No.”

“Is her family here?” Dixon asked.

“They left to go have lunch.”

She looked like hell. The rat bites had scabbed over and the bruises were in full bloom. Somehow Mendez figured she would have thought she looked pretty good compared to the alternative. She should have been dead. The shot that had been meant to kill her had passed through her shoulder doing the least amount of damage possible. She had been plucky enough to survive on garbage and tenacious enough to get herself up a ladder with only two good limbs.