Blood Debt - By Tanya Huff Page 0,107

trou?ble leaving, but since he considered his presence here a solution, albeit an impulsive one, to the problem of standing in the hall, he had no intention of leaving too soon.

Electronics aside, the layout of the units seemed identical to the mirror-image layout in his building next door. He moved silently down the hall, wonder?ing where on earth the owners had found the four-foot gargoyle in the entry.

Sifting through the stack of mail balanced incongru?ously on the stone guardian's head, he discovered that Carole and Ron Pettit had a number of esoteric inter?ests. Amused, he set the correspondence back on its perch and murmuring, "They'll be sorry they missed me," went on into the master bedroom. The red silk sheets and truly astounding variety of candles perched on every available surface came as no surprise. Black, he discovered pushing through two neat rows of cloth?ing in the walk-in closet, came in more shades than he'd previously imagined.

Resting his forehead on the wall adjoining Dr. Mui's condo, he could feel a life in the next room.

Sleeping.

Not having bothered to read the contractor's speci?fications provided when he bought his own unit, he had no idea how the walls were made but even if he could get through them, he couldn't do it without wak?ing not only the doctor but the tenants above and below.

Then he smiled. While not in the habit of climbing headfirst down castle walls, he should have little trou?ble going from balcony to balcony, even with the doc?tor's solarium in the way. They couldn't possibly have video coverage on the balconies; too many people in Vancouver preferred to avoid tan lines.

As he turned away, he heard a phone ring next door.

The sleeping heartbeat quickened. Henry leaned back against the closet wall.

She hated being woken up in the middle of the night. Shift work was one of the reasons she'd left the hospital. A minor reason granted, but a reason. Still, old training died hard, and she came instantly awake. "Dr. Mui."

"I found your orderly dead on my property. The cottage is empty."

Switching on the bedside lamp, she stared at the clock. Three A.M.

"Did you hear me, Doctor?"

She pulled the phone a little away from her ear before he deafened her. "I heard you, Mr. Swanson. What about the donor?"

"There was no one else here! Just a dead body!"

"Please, calm down. Hysteria will do no one any good." How could that idiot have gotten killed? she wondered. He's going to ruin everything! "Have you called the police?"

"The police? No, I, uh... " He took a deep breath, clearly audible, and his voice steadied a little. "I found it and came back to the cottage and called you."

Then the situation wasn't an irretrievable disaster. She began to pull coherent thought out past her imme?diate reaction. Either the detective had greater re?serves than had appeared or the friends who'd left him at the clinic had managed the impossible and tracked him down. It didn't really matter which. Sulli?van was dead, the detective was gone. But the detec?tive's friends were proven unwilling to go to the police and so, apparently, was the detective, or the police would be at the scene already.

"Dr. Mui? Are you still there?"

Rolling her eyes, she wondered where he thought she might have gone. "I suggest, Mr. Swanson, that we cut our losses."

"You suggest we what?" He was beginning to sound as though he were reaching the end of his resources. That was good; a man with no resources was much easier to manipulate. "But the police... "

"If you'd intended to call the police, you'd have already called them. As you called me, I suggest you take my advice. Go back to the body and bury it."

"And what?"

"Bury it. Sullivan had neither family nor friends. If he disappears, no one will notice but the staff at the clinic and I can handle them."

"I can't just bury him!"

"Neither can you bring him back to life. Since he's dead and we don't want the police or the public discovering what we've been doing, I suggest you find a shovel."

"I can't bury him here! Not here."

She counted to three before replying. "Then put him in your car and take him out into the mountains. People disappear in the mountains all the time."

"Where in the mountains?" He was almost whim?pering on the other end of the line. "You've got to come here. You've got to help me."

"Mr. Swanson, Richard Sullivan was over six feet tall. I'm barely five foot two. I don't see