completely mitigated any threat his size might suggest. Her cheeks warmed as she realized he was waiting patiently for her to speak.
"... ask him how he came to be in that room."
Except they already knew that.
"Do you, uh, own a red T-shirt?"
He nodded.
"Did you wear it to work today?"
He nodded again. "I never wear my uniform to work, it gets sweaty. I bring a clean uniform in a bag."
"A bag."
Huge hands sketched a rectangle in the air. "Like a garment bag."
"A garment bag." Potter looked at her partner and saw he was leaping to the same conclusion. From the highway it was entirely possible that a man in a red T-shirt carrying a garment bag could look like a man in a red T-shirt carrying a body. Especially when there was no body.
"Once you've found the room, and the man, and found out what he's doing there, I have every faith in your ability to deal with the situation."
She frowned. What situation?
"Hope we didn't get that guy in too much trouble." PC Kessin turned back onto Mt. Seymour Road head?ing toward North Vancouver. "That doctor wasn't someone I'd want to cross. Man, I hate that 'I'm the next best thing to God Almighty' most doctors put on. Make you wait forty-five minutes in their waiting rooms like you've got no life of your own, but just hear them howl if we're more than three seconds get?ting to a call." Scratching at his mustache, he shot a glance into the passenger seat. "What's bugging you?" Potter, who'd been silent since radioing in the false alarm, shrugged. "I was just thinking; we never actu?ally saw that garment bag."
"... and you're followed to the disposal site by a police officer from a city half the country away. To?night, two visitors drop in, leave their captured friend where they find him, and send the local police out to have a look around on no better pretense than they supposedly saw you carry a body in here this after?noon while they were passing." Dr. Mui steepled her fingers and peered over them at Sullivan. "Now, what does that say to you?"
He sighed. She never asked him a question she didn't already know the answer to. "That we're busted?"
"No. Detective Celluci's friends don't want to be?come involved with the police."
"Not very good friends, leaving him tied to a bed."
"They expected the police to find him, and then we would have been, as you so crudely put it, busted."
"You told me to lie down on the bed... "
"To cover the obvious fact that someone had been lying there. And I told you to put him in the back of your vehicle," she added caustically, "because we didn't have time to put him anywhere else."
He knew that. "So what now? Do I bring him back in?"
"No. His friends, whoever or whatever they are... " She frowned, hating ambiguity. "... found him here once, and if they find him again, they won't leave him. You'll have to take him to one of the guest cottages." Reaching into her drawer, she pulled out a single key on a leather fob and tossed it across the office. "Use the one farthest from the house."
Sullivan deftly caught the key and shoved it in his pocket. "Mr. Swanson won't like it."
"I'll deal with Mr. Swanson."
The soft brown eyes looked no less mild as he sug?gested, "I could kill him."
"The detective? Don't be ridiculous, Richard. He has two perfectly healthy, very large kidneys-a per?fect match for one of Mr. Swanson's buyers that I'd considered to be unmatchable given his size and that our usual source tends toward the undernourished. Alive, he can do some good."
"Should I stay with him?"
"Yes, you'd better. Be sure you park your car where it can't be seen from the house. I'll go over and ex?plain things to Mr. Swanson in a couple of hours, as soon as I've finished here."
Pushing upward through layer after layer of sticky cotton batting, fighting to keep it away from his face, forcing himself to keep moving toward a distant light, Celluci managed to get his eyes open just long enough to catch a brief glimpse of trees and cedar siding be?fore darkness descended again. Vaguely aware of movement, he remembered he'd been captured, knew he should struggle but couldn't seem to make his body obey.
A mattress compacted underneath him, releasing a faint scent of honeysuckle as he flopped back against a pile of pillows.
Obviously, he was no longer in the hospital.
As rough hands