You Don't Want To Know - By Lisa Jackson Page 0,183

sure that you would be the first and maybe only suspect.

Lester Reece, Schmester Reece, the cops and everyone else will think it’s you.

Again her stomach convulsed and she nearly dry heaved thinking how she’d been set up. Her breath was coming in short little breaths and fear crawled up her spine. This, the officers taking her to the station on the mainland, was just one more step in someone’s elaborate plan to destroy her.

Who?

Why?

“I . . .” She was going to deny everything, to spill her inner thoughts, to tell them that someone was manipulating everything that was happening to her, but she realized if she started arguing now, she would appear as paranoid as everyone claimed her to be. Both officers were staring at her, and even the tech, carefully sifting through the drawers, looked over her shoulder at her. Be cool! They’re all looking at you under a microscope, waiting for you to make a mistake! “I . . .” Clearing her throat, she met Snyder’s gaze. “I’ll get my coat.”

CHAPTER 44

The search party reached the abandoned asylum just as the wind kicked up, driving the rain and whipping the ocean far below the rocky outcrop for which Sea Cliff had been named. On horseback, on foot with dogs, in four-wheel-drive vehicles and even helicopters, and with several sheriff’s department boats positioned in the bay should Reece decide to take a dive into the freezing tide, the cops surrounded the hospital.

“This time, he ain’t gettin’ away. Not on my watch!” Biggs had announced as the wind nearly tore his hat from his head and the surf pounded the shore. The group had gathered outside the walls of Sea Cliff where the sheriff intended to stay while the search party fanned out inside the complex. The sheriff’s department wasn’t alone. There were also troops from the Washington State Patrol and the Homicide Investigative Tracking System, over a dozen officers and Dern, all chasing the ghost of one man.

The sheriff had originally ordered that Dern was to stand down and wait on the outside, but since he’d come up with the theory of Reece’s location, knew the hospital, had found evidence of someone living within the walls, and had somehow come into possession of the “keys to the castle” as Biggs had called them, he was allowed inside. It didn’t hurt that he had been a cop and was still in the reserves.

“Just don’t get in the way,” Biggs had grumbled, his face red and raw with the cold, his jacket straining around his girth. “We got this.”

Dern held his tongue. If indeed Biggs’s team really did “get this,” then it had been a long time coming and not without Dern’s help. And, Dern suspected, if things went bad, the press would be all over this story, and he would be the fall guy.

This was Biggs’s show.

Denied his service weapon, Dern was given a protective vest and jacket that identified him as a cop, along with instructions to stay in the rear, as a deputy unlocked the gates and the search party broke into two groups. One started with the residences and outbuildings, the other, of which Dern was a part, began at the hospital.

“I heard you were Reece’s brother,” a female cop said as they approached the front entrance.

“Half. Never knew him.”

“Still.” She glanced up at him. “It sucks.”

Dern didn’t comment, and with four other armed cops, they searched the abandoned building. No one said a word as they passed through unused corridors and restrooms where rust was evident and spiders collected in the dark crevices. Up the stairs and down empty hallways and through individual rooms to the floor where Reece had been a resident, the room with a direct view of Neptune’s Gate.

No Reece, of course.

That would have been too damned easy.

They searched the roof.

Empty, the roofing material spotty, a few vents broken, a single smokestack knifing the dismal sky.

But no Reece.

That left the basement.

“If he was here, he probably already took off,” grumbled one of the male deputies, a burly guy with no neck.

“Damned wild-goose chase,” another said. He was short and wiry, with a ruddy complexion and small, suspicious eyes.

Burly snorted. “Biggs is going to shit little green apples if we don’t find him.”

“Shut up!” one of the women officers hissed.

Everyone quieted. Using high-powered flashlights, they searched the subterranean hallways. Narrow, dark, and labyrinthine, the tunnels connected all sections of the complex. In some areas, the concrete had cracked and water had puddled. Other areas