“Hey, sleepyhead.” He closed the phone, rose, and came over to the bed with a warm smile. “How you feeling?”

“Fine.” She didn’t feel like telling the truth, not now.

“That was your dad, checking on you.” He sat on the bed and stroked her hair back from her forehead. “Good news. He’s fine. He’s joined forces with some people he seems to have faith in. I gotta believe he knows what he’s doing.”

“He does.” She felt relief wash over her. A professional, her father knew who to trust and who to run from.

Perez leaned over and gave her a soft kiss. “So all we have to worry about now is you.”

Suddenly a burst of laughter came from the open door, and they both looked up in time to see a stout nurse in patterned scrubs bustle into the room, her hand extended palm-up. “Give it here, buddy!” she said to Perez. Her voice was louder than was polite, but she was laughing.

“No way.” He laughed, too.

“We had a deal,” the nurse shot back, and without missing a beat, she grabbed the cell phone out of his hand. “Your husband works too damn hard,” she said. “I told him he can’t use his phone in the hospital. Now I’m confiscating it.”

Perez rose, mock-frowning. “Who are you supposed to be? Nurse Ratchett?”

“You know, your poor husband hasn’t eaten since yesterday lunch,” the nurse said. “He won’t leave your side.”

“Aww.” She felt a pang of guilt. The nurse couldn’t know that Jack was guarding her in case the killer came looking for them.

“All the other girls are crushing on him, but I’m impervious to his charms.”

“Impossible,” Perez said with a smirk.

She was feeling safer now that it was morning and her father was OK. Plus the hospital was waking up, the hallway increasingly noisy. “Jack,” she said, “why don’t you go get some breakfast? Take a break.”

“No, I’m fine.” He dismissed her with a wave but the nurse grabbed his arm.

“Go, get out. I have to check some things on your wife, and I’d throw you out, anyway.”

Perez said, “You OK, Charley?”

“Yes. Please, go. Eat something.”

Perez nodded, then eyed the nurse with amusement. “Gimme my phone, Ratchett.”

“When you come back.”

“But I need to make calls.”

“Go and take a break.”

“Sir, yes, sir.” Perez mock-saluted as he left.

“So how are you doing?” the nurse asked. She had a pleasantly fleshy face, with animated blue eyes and a freckled nose, and she wore her wiry, reddish hair back in an unfashionably long ponytail.

“Fine, I guess.” She wasn’t about to open up about her feelings to someone she hardly knew. The nurse tugged over a rolling cart, slid out a digital thermometer, and replaced its plastic tip.

“Open wide.”