He grinned. “I’d enjoy detailing some of them, but I can’t make you late.”

“Late?”

He worked his fingers into a small tear in the seam where the silk lining was stitched to the leather, then reached for Brynn’s hand and turned it palm up.

“Before Lambert and the Hunts get to you, you’ve got to get this to Violet.”

In her palm lay the bubble-wrapped vial of GX-42.

Chapter 19

6:41 p.m.

Deputies Wilson and Rawlins watched Nate Lambert back his Jag from his reserved parking space and drive out of the garage.

Replacing the formed foam inside the box hadn’t been as easy as removing it. Once that was done, apologizing for their mistrust and for wasting more than half an hour of the doctor’s valuable time, they had insisted on seeing him out of the deserted office building and safely on his way.

Rawlins waited until Lambert’s taillights were no longer in sight, then remarked to his partner, “This may go down as being the worst Thanksgiving ever.”

“You’d rather be at home with a wife on the warpath and puking kids?”

“Maybe. Because this sucks.”

Wilson snorted a mirthless laugh. “Not often do I have this much egg on my face. I would have sworn we’d find some kind of contraband.”

“Me, too. And you know what? I think our friend Dr. Lambert thought we would, too.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah. It looked to me like he was as shocked as we were to come up empty.”

“I know he wasn’t glad to see us on his doorstep,” Wilson said. “But was he afraid of being caught red-handed at something illicit? Or was he just being an asshole?”

“He’s definitely an asshole. But when I produced that search warrant, he looked exactly like my nephew did right before yakking the crab dip.”

Wilson thought on it. “It was the same expression Brynn O’Neal had when we made her unlock the box.”

“That’s another thing. What’s up with her? Why did she lie to Lambert about her car?”

“To make a clean getaway.”

“Yes, but why?” Rawlins persisted. “This morning she was itching to get back here to him and their patient.”

“That’s what she said, but that’s not what she did. She ran off with Mallett. I’m telling you, this whole thing—” Wilson broke off, walked a few feet forward, then knelt on one knee in the parking space next to Lambert’s and looked more closely at the spots on the concrete floor that had drawn his attention. “Blood.”

Rawlins joined him to take a look. “Relatively fresh.”

Wilson called attention to the name on the wall. “In Dr. O’Neal’s parking space.”

It wasn’t a copious amount of blood, but the quantity didn’t signify as much as its being there at all. The two deputies tracked the intermittent drops as far as the exit, but once beyond the cover of the building, the trail had been washed away by rain.

“Whoever was bleeding walked out of here,” Wilson said.

“Then what?”

“Hell if I know. Maybe somebody just got a nosebleed.”

Rawlins turned to Wilson, looking skeptical. “Is that what you really think?”

“No.”

“Me neither. Based on everything else that has happened, I think we ought to bring in Atlanta PD.” He glanced around, spotting the security cameras mounted at strategic points in the ceiling. “We should have a video of what went down here. I’ll call it in. You get a home address for Brynn O’Neal. We’ll start looking for her there.”

They were walking quickly toward the SUV when Rawlins’s cell phone rang. “Probably the wife demanding a divorce.”

But it was Myra. Rawlins put her on speaker. She cut to the chase. “Two things. Thatcher went off duty, so Braxton took over for him at the hospital. He just called. Brady’s bum heart—”

“He has a bum heart?”

“Everybody knows that,” she said with exasperation. “It’s giving them some concern. Vitals-wise, he’s lost a lot of ground. His cardiologist is on his way to the hospital as we speak. Marlene’s fit to be tied.”

“Hell,” Rawlins said, exchanging a worried frown with Wilson. “What’s the second thing?”

“The license plate number on that black Mercedes.”

“The café’s camera angle was wrong. We didn’t get it.”

“That camera didn’t, but the one at the hardware store did.”

“Across from our department?”

“Slow day, so I drummed up a project. I had all the cameras downtown checked for pictures of a black Mercedes. It was parked around back of the hardware store for over an hour just before dawn.”

“While we were questioning Dr. O’Neal and Mallett.”

“Um-huh. I don’t think that’s a coincidence.” She paused, then, “Is Brynn in trouble?”

“We’re trying to ascertain—”

“Don’t feed me that cop crap, Rawlins. Talk to me like a person. I’ve known that girl since before her mama died. I don’t want anything bad to happen to her, now she’s made something of herself.”