After She's Gone (3 page)

Her heart clutched.

She whipped her head around just as the door shut with a soft thud. “What the—?” Her body tensed and she grabbed the nurse’s call button, but stopped before depressing it when she recognized Steven Rinko.

She let out her breath. Rinko was the weird kid who had been here longer than she and had the ability to move between rooms on stealthy footsteps, the staff rarely noticing. Around thirteen, with a shock of blond hair and skin starting to show signs of acne, he rarely spoke, but when he did, he seemed more genius than mentally challenged. Though usually silent, when prodded, Rinko could tell you every feature on every make and model of car ever designed in America or around the world, or he could rattle off the most insignificant baseball stat about anyone who’d ever played the sport in college or professionally. He hung with a small group of boys who were forever bickering. Why he was at Mercy Hospital, she didn’t know, nor, she supposed would she ever as she planned to spring herself by tomorrow or the day after. Enough with this place. She’d checked herself into the hospital and planned on checking herself out.

Now, Rinko sidled to her bed. He knew how to get around the security cameras, guards, and nursing staff, traveling the halls on stealthy feet, almost a ghost himself. “She was here,” he said in a whispered voice that cracked.

“Who?”

“I saw her too.”

Cassie’s skin seemed to shrink on her scalp as he reached forward and grabbed her hand. She bit back a scream as he turned her wrist over and dropped something into her hand. A bit of red, she saw, then recognized a tiny cross, one of the earrings the weird nurse had worn.

“Where did you get this?”

“The nurse,” he said, and before she could ask him anything more, Rinko was already sliding out of the room on noiseless footsteps, slipping into the hallway, disappearing from view. Her heart clamored as she curled her fingers around the tiny bit of metal, feeling it press into her skin. It was real, and that meant she wasn’t dreaming or hallucinating from the high-octane psychotropic medications that could easily be the reason she blurred reality with lies, fact with fiction, all because she believed something horrid had happened to her younger sister.

Allie, the innocent.

Allie, the sweet.

Allie, the liar.

How had she grown from a naive girl to a self-serving bitch? A once-shy teenager who would now step on anyone in her path to fame? A beloved sibling morphing into an archrival?

Cassie drew in a long breath, fought her jealousy, reminded herself that Allie was missing, perhaps dead.

This was all so wrong—her life, these days.

The little bit of metal in her hand cut into her flesh.

She closed her eyes and let her breath out slowly, calming herself, telling herself that she wasn’t losing her mind, that everything would be all right. She just had to check herself out of the hospital.

“Oh, God,” Cassie whispered, cold to the bone as she opened her eyes to the sterile room.

She was alone.

Again.

So why did the rocker in the corner sway ever so slightly?

 

W
hitney Stone had two things going for her, she thought as she drove through the spitting morning rain. Her first noticeable asset was her looks. She knew it. Everyone knew it. Her features were even, her eyes large and dark fringed, her heart-shaped face compared to the animated Snow White in that ancient Disney flick. Yeah, she looked great. But her second asset wasn’t something so obvious and that was her brain. She was smarter than anyone knew, because she downplayed it. Oh, she came off clever, even cunning and Lord knew people respected her dedication to her job, her doggedness, her ability to sniff out a story and track it down. In a good ol’ boys network, she was one of the few women who had blazed her trail, even if she’d had to do a little lying, a bit of sleeping around, and just a smidge of illegal phone taps and camera work. Otherwise she wouldn’t have made it as far as she had in the cutthroat business of journalism.

Whitney hadn’t only survived or made her way, she’d thrived. Because she’d been cagey and smart. Used her good looks and acting ability to her advantage. Had she slipped in and out of roles?

Of course.

But this . . . this was a little trickier.

She had to be careful because damn it, she wasn’t getting any younger. Now, she needed her career to take off, to go farther. Much farther. She needed to be catapulted onto the national stage and she had just the ticket: Allie Kramer.

Heading into town, she smiled at the thought as her SUV twisted through the Terwilliger curves on the freeway. Speeding past a moving van that was drifting into her lane, she blasted her horn and the idiot at the wheel yanked back, nearly overcorrecting and fishtailing through a final turn. Wasn’t that the same truck she’d followed, with a question printed on the back of the trailer?
How’s my driving?
Well, it was shitty, that’s what it was. If she had a second to spare, she would ease off the gas, let the damned truck pass, then crawl up its backside and take a picture of the stupid question about the driving along with the number to call to report any infractions.

It would serve the moron right.

But she didn’t have time.

She never had enough.

Through her windshield, she caught a glimpse of the Willamette River and the city sprawled upon its wide banks. Bridges connecting the east side to the west were visible through the trees. High-rises had sprung up closer to the heart of the city and she noticed morning mist rising from the water as she spied the aerial tram that connected the waterfront campus of OHSU to the huge hospital built high in the West Hills. Oregon Health and Science University wasn’t too far from Mercy Hospital, where Cassie Kramer was currently a patient.

Again she smiled, thinking of Cassie in a mental ward.

A perfect place for her.

And one more juicy element in her story.

All in all Whitney liked Portland. It currently had a cool vibe ascribed to it, but, truth to tell she was sick to her back teeth of the gloomy weather and the constant traveling from PDX to LAX in Southern California.

She warmed inside at the thought, clicked on her blinker and edged her way toward an off ramp that would dump her near the Hawthorne Bridge with its metal grating and vertical lift, which allowed large ships to pass beneath it.

She was running late to a meeting with a source on the Eastbank Esplanade, a bicycle and pedestrian path on the east shore of the river. The source was supposed to have information on the rift between the missing Allie Kramer, her nutcase of a sister, Cassie, and their reclusive mother, Jenna Hughes. Whitney expected the guy to be a no-show, one more in a series of irritating dead ends, but she wouldn’t let an opportunity pass to gain more information, more insight into the Sisters Kramer and their famous mother.

This was her chance, she thought, as she found one of the few remaining parking spaces, grabbed her microphone and cell, then dodged a speeding bicyclist to wait for the informant.

In the meantime, she made calls and did research, studied the skyline of the west side of the river, where skyscrapers rose against a backdrop of forested hills. After an hour, her irritation growing with each passing minute, she finally gave up. One more time a promising source had turned out to be a dud and she was stood up, once again.

She walked back to her car and flopped inside. As she twisted on the ignition, she decided that she would do whatever was necessary to nail this story and if she had to be . . . uh, creative? . . . so be it. She wasn’t above bending the truth a little, or even staging a little drama.

Within reason.

There were lines she wouldn’t cross, of course. She had her ethics. But she also had a story to tell, a story that promised her a new echelon of fame.

And she deserved it, by God.

Life hadn’t been fair to her, and this time she wasn’t going to let the brass ring slip through her fingers. Not when it was sooo close.

Licking her lips, she plotted her next move.

How far would she go to get what she wanted?

Again, her lips twitched.

Pretty damned far.

 

“But you’re not well, not strong enough to leave,” Dr. Sherling said to Cassie after breakfast. She was a kind woman, who never wore makeup, her white hair a cloud, her cheeks naturally rosy, her skin unlined though she had to be in her seventies. Slim and fit, Virginia Sherling had been a competitive skier in her day, according to the nurses’ gossip. Beneath her bright, toothy smile and soft-spoken, easygoing demeanor lay a will of iron. Cassie knew. She’d tested the psychiatrist several times during her stay here and had witnessed the color rise in the older woman’s face and her slight English accent become more pronounced. Now, however, upon walking into Cassie’s room and finding her packing, Dr. Sherling was calm. At least outwardly as she stood next to the rocker in the room.

“I’ll be okay,” Cassie assured her.

“Have you talked to your family? Your mother?”

Cassie threw her a glance. “Have you?” she asked, double-checking that her phone and charger were tucked inside with her clothes and makeup bag. Everything was where it should be. Except for the bottles of meds that were tucked into a side pocket. No need for those. She grabbed the three bottles, read the labels, then threw them all into a nearby trash can.

The doctor’s lips tightened. “You can’t just stop those,” she said. “You need to taper off. Seriously, Cassie, I strongly advise you wean yourself carefully.” She walked to the trash, scooped up all three bottles, and dropped them into Cassie’s open bag. “These are strong drugs.”

“Exactly.”

“Please. Be responsible.” The doctor’s eyes behind her glasses were serious and steady. “You don’t want to come back here on a stretcher.”

Cassie’s jaw tightened.

“Have you talked to your mother?” she asked again.

The answer was “no,” of course, and Cassie suspected Dr. Sherling knew it and was just making a point.

When the older woman spoke, her voice was softer, more conspiratorial, as if they shared something personal. “Jenna’s concerned.”

For a second Cassie flashed on her mother. Petite. Black hair. Wide green eyes. A once-upon-a-time Hollywood beauty, Jenna Hughes had been a household name years before either of her daughters had tried to follow in her famous footsteps, before a monster, a deranged serial killer, had tried to destroy them all. Cassie shuddered, knew that the terror from all those years before had chased after her, unrelenting. Those memories, the horror, fear, and gore, were the dark well from where her blood-chilling nightmares sprang. For years she’d kept the terror at bay. Until the near-murder on the set and Allie’s disappearance. Now they’d come back again, with a vengeance.

“You entered the hospital voluntarily,” the doctor reminded her softly, as if she could read Cassie’s thoughts. That much was true, though she’d felt pressured into the decision. “You know you have unresolved issues.” A slight rise of the doctor’s white eyebrows punctuated her thought. “Night terrors. Hallucinations. Blackouts.”

“They’re better.” Cassie zipped her bag. Thought about the nurse she’d seen in her room. Not a hallucination; she had the earring to prove it. Still, she’d decided not to mention the visitor; nor would she rat out Rinko. There was no reason to make more trouble.

“Are they?” the doctor asked, her eyes narrowing behind her rimless glasses.

“Mmm.” A bit of a lie. Well, maybe more than a bit, but she nodded, pushing aside her doubts. “I was freaked out after the near-murder on the set. You know that. It’s why I came here. Voluntarily. To sort things out and get my head right.” She stared the doctor squarely in the eyes. “I’m still convinced someone was gunning for Allie.”

“It was an accident,” Dr. Sherling reminded her, a theory Cassie didn’t buy. There was an ongoing investigation after the “incident,” of course; the actor who’d pulled the trigger more shocked than anyone, the prop gun having been tampered with. So how was that an accident? This was the kind of thing that was never supposed to happen. Never. There were fail-safes in place.

And yet, Lucinda Rinaldi, who had miraculously survived after nearly two weeks in a coma, was recovering. She was now out of the hospital and, according to a mutual acquaintance, had graduated into a rehabilitation center on the other side of the river, where she was putting her life back together, all the while contemplating a lawsuit against the production company and anyone attached to
Dead Heat.

Cassie didn’t think so, but then she’d always been one to buy into conspiracy theories. She would keep her thought to herself for now. What she needed to do was get out of the hospital. She’d admitted herself voluntarily, she was going out the same way.

“Thanks,” she said to the doctor, swinging the strap of her bag over her shoulder.

“Seriously, Cassie, I think you should reconsider. Hallucinations? Blackouts? These are very serious issues.”

“Duly noted.” And then she walked out of the room. She wasn’t coming back. Period.

“Remember our appointment next week,” the doctor called after her.

Right.
Cassie hurried past the information and admittance desks. Through an atrium with a soaring glass ceiling, she made her way outside where she felt the cooling mist against her face. She then hastened down wide marble stairs to the waiting cab, where the cabbie was smoking a cigarette and talking on a cell phone. At the sight of her, he abandoned both activities and climbed out of the car to toss her bag into the trunk of a dented cab that was definitely in need of a wash.

She caught sight of Steven Rinko on the front lawn. “Just a sec.” Rinko was a few steps away from a group of young men playing ring-toss.

“Meter’s runnin’,” the cabbie muttered.

“I’ll be right back.”

Cassie cut across the dewy grass to the spot where Steven stood in jeans and a white T-shirt and used a bathrobe as a coat. “You’re leaving,” he said sadly, his gaze traveling to the idling cab.

“That’s right.”

“Will you be back?”

Never.
“I’m not sure. And so I need to know where you got the earring,” she said.

“The nurse.”

“Last night? The nurse you saw?” She caught one of the other teenage boys holding a plastic ring staring at her. He was tall and reed-thin, an African-American with haunted eyes and a sorrowful expression. Jerome.

“Yeah.” Rinko was nodding.

“She was in blue scrubs?” Cassie said, testing him.

He shook his head. “White.”

Her knees nearly buckled. Rinko had seen the same vision she had? Then it definitely wasn’t all in her mind! “Do you know her? Her name? Does she work here?”

“Hey, Butt-Wipe, you playin’ or what?” a third player, with skin that matched his bad attitude, yelled at Rinko. He was scrawny, with a sunken chest and hate-filled eyes, his baseball cap turned backward. “You’re up, Romeo.”

“Shut up, Fart Face,” Rinko said to the kid, then to Cassie, “Look, I gotta go.”

“Do you know her?” Cassie wanted to shake the answer from him.

“Nurse Santa Fe?” He shook his head and shrugged. “No one does.”

“Her name is Santa Fe? Like Santa Claus? Or saint in Spanish? She works here?”

“1972.”

“Hey, Stinko Rinko! You forfeit,” his opponent called just as the cab driver honked his horn impatiently, and Rinko stormed back to argue about the game.

“I do not forfeit, you idiot!”

“Steven! The nurse worked here in 1972? How do you know that?” Rinko wasn’t born in ’72. Nor, for that matter, was she. But the nurse’s outfit could have been from that era.

Another impatient beep of the cab’s horn. “Lady, I don’t have all day,” the driver called.

She returned to the cab and gave him the address before settling into the well-worn seat. As she pulled the door shut, she hazarded one last glance over her shoulder to spy Mercy Hospital, a blend of old brick and new glass, perched on its hill.
Good riddance,
she thought, her gaze drifting up to the fourth floor and the older part of the building where she’d spent the last few weeks. She thought she spied her room, saw a shadow within, and for just a second imagined she spied the taciturn nurse from another generation in the window. Before she could really focus, the cab turned and headed downhill, passing trees that blocked her view of the brick edifice.

She didn’t have much of a plan, just knew that she was getting better in the hospital and that the cops’ search for Allie hadn’t turned up anything so far. Cassie chewed on her lower lip and tapped her fingers against the window of the cab. Where was her sister? What had happened? How had she disappeared? And how would Nurse Santa Fe, or whoever she was, know that she was alive? It seemed unlikely and yet Rinko had produced the earring. God, it was all so bizarre and surreal.