“Lieutenant Boxer, badge number twenty-seven twenty-one,” I barked into the phone. “Get an EMS unit to Maiden Lane and Grant. Make it now!”

Chapter 4

SAN FRANCISCO MUNICIPAL HOSPITAL is huge—like a city in itself. Once a public hospital, it had been privatized a few years back, but it still took more than its share of indigents and overflow from other hospitals, treating in excess of a hundred thousand patients a year.

At that moment, Keiko Castellano was inside one of the curtained stalls that ringed the perimeter of the vast, frantic emergency room.

As I sat beside Yuki in the waiting room, I could feel her terror and fear for her mother’s life.

And I flashed on the last time I’d been inside an emergency room. I remembered the doctors’ ghostlike hands touching my body, the loud throbbing of my heart, and wondering if I was going to get out alive.

I’d been off duty that night but went on a stakeout anyway, not thinking that one minute it would be a routine job, and the next minute I’d be down. The same was true for my friend and former partner, Inspector Warren Jacobi. We’d both taken two slugs in that desolate alley. He was unconscious and I was bleeding out on the street when somehow I found the strength to return fire.

My aim had been good, maybe even too good.

It’s a sad sign of the times that public sympathy favors civilians who’ve been shot by police over police who’ve been shot by civilians. I was sued by the family of the so-called victims and I could have lost everything.

I hardly knew Yuki then.

But Yuki Castellano was the smart, passionate, and supertalented young lawyer who had come through for me when I really needed her. I would always be grateful.

I turned to Yuki now as she spoke, her voice choppy with agitation, her face corrugated with worry.

“This makes no sense, Lindsay. You saw her. She’s only fifty-five, for God’s sake. She’s a freaking life force. What’s going on? Why don’t they tell me something? Or at least let me see her?”

I had no answer, but like Yuki, I was out of patience.

Where the hell was the doctor?

This was unconscionable. Not acceptable in any way.

What was taking so long?

I was gathering myself to walk into the ER and demand some answers, when a doctor finally strode into the waiting room. He looked around, then called Yuki’s name.

Chapter 5

THE NAME TAG over the pocket of his white coat read “Dennis Garza, MD, Dir. Emergency Services.”

I couldn’t help noticing that Garza was a handsome man—midforties, six foot one, 180 or so, broad-shouldered, and in good shape. His Spanish lineage showed in his black eyes and the thick black hair that fell across his forehead.

But what struck me most was the tension in the doctor’s body, his rigid stance and the way he repeatedly, impatiently, snapped the wristband of his Rolex, as if to say, I’m a busy man. An important, busy man. Let’s get on with it. I don’t know why, but I didn’t like him.

“I’m Dr. Garza,” he said to Yuki. “Your mother probably had a neurological insult, either what we call a TIA, a transient ischemic attack, or a mini-stroke. In plain English, it’s a loss of circulation and oxygen to the brain, and she may have had some angina—that’s pain caused by a narrowing of the coronary arteries.”

“Is that serious? Is she in pain now? When will I be able to see her?”

Yuki fired questions at Dr. Garza until he put up a hand to stop the onslaught.

“She’s still incoherent. Most people recover within a half hour. Others, maybe your mother, take as long as twenty-four hours. Her condition is guarded. And visitors are off-limits right now. Let’s see how she does tonight, shall we?”

“She is going to be all right though, right? Right?” Yuki asked the doctor.

“Miss Castellano. Take a deep breath,” Garza said. “I’ll let you know when we know.”

The door to the ER swung closed behind the unpleasant doctor, and Yuki sat down hard on a plastic chair, slumped forward, lowered her face into her hands, and began to sob. I’d never seen Yuki cry before, and it killed me that I couldn’t fix what was hurting her.

I did all that I could do.