But the human wasn’t hollering now. He just stared as the Dark One pushed away another female in a white coat while drawing back her leg for another kick at the She.
Not with me here, Shadow thought. With a rumbling battle cry coming from deep in his throat, he leaped to the attack, claws flashing.
The Dark One drew back with a cry as he raked his way along her ankle. Then she turned to aim a kick at him. He jumped out of the way, riposting with an attack on her other foot. The She rose up, angry, and tried to join in. But she moved clumsily, favoring one side.
Snarling, the Dark One ignored them, swinging to attack White Coat, who made a lot of noise. Not a wise choice, turning her back on Shadow. He launched an attack from the rear, this time slashing the human up behind the knee. Reflexively, the Dark One kicked backward, and Shadow caught a glancing blow. He flew back to land in a heap, knocked onto his side. Quickly, he scrambled to his feet and shook himself. Good. She hadn’t hurt him.
But the brief distraction allowed the Dark One to close in on him. She limped slightly, but that wouldn’t stop her from another kick . . .
Then, with a loud rattle, curtains suddenly swept open.
*
The billowing fabric in Room 114 blocked the view, but Sunny clearly heard Dr. Gavrik shouting, “What are you doing here?” The noises of feline and human anger and pain pretty much filled in the rest of the picture for Sunny’s imagination. How often had she heard Dr. Gavrik crabbing about the waste of resources the facility’s therapy animals represented? The notoriously nasty doctor wouldn’t have much patience for a pair of them playing around underfoot. From the sound of shoe striking flesh, Gavrik had given one of the cats a painful welcome.
Was that Shadow?
Sunny had no idea how her cat had turned up here—had he somehow hitched a ride with Mike?—and now he’d followed his nose and hooked up with Portia, his dream girl. But Shadow wasn’t a therapy animal trained to get along with all kinds of people. If Dr. Gavrik attacked, Shadow would strike back. Sunny finished her sprint, rushing into the room, yanking the curtain aside. Dr. Gavrik was fighting, all right, but with Camille, trying to get a hypodermic needle out of her hand. The aide staggered with one leg drawn back, facing Shadow. She looked like a soccer player poised to score a goal—but with a gray furry body instead of a ball.
On the bed, Ollie Barnstable lay blinking his eyes as if trying to decide whether he was awake or still asleep. One arm lay out of the covers, an alcohol swab on his forearm. The cats must have come flying in to interrupt the doctor just as she was sterilizing the site to draw blood.
“Camille!” Sunny called sharply, trying to draw the woman back from kicking Shadow. “What are you—”
“Watch out for the needle!” Dr. Gavrik called, even as Camille flung her off to crash into a visitor’s chair.
As if in response, Camille changed her grip from the three-finger hold for an injection to gripping the barrel of the hypodermic in her fist, stabbing at Sunny.
“Hey! A little help here!” Sunny yelled in Will’s direction as she quickly back-pedaled.
But that help came from an unlikely source. Portia launched herself in a clumsy attack, her claws catching uselessly in the leg of Camille’s surgical blues. But Shadow, more practiced at street fighting, hurtled himself onto the back of the aide’s leg. She stumbled, off balance, her stab at Sunny falling short.
Now Will and Mike came into the room. “What’s going on here?” Will demanded in his best cop voice.
“That one was trying to inject the patient!” Dr. Gavrik struggled upright. “She could kill him!”
Will tried to grab Camille’s wrist, but the girl was strong, tearing free. Portia made plaintive noises, her claws apparently caught in the blue cloth, dragging behind Camille.
Shadow gathered himself for another charge, a low, unpleasant growl coming out of him.
Sunny’s voice didn’t sound much more civilized as she spoke through gritted teeth. “Give it up, Camille.”
Instead, the aide charged for the door, ready to stab Sunny or go right through her.
Shadow went for Camille’s leg again, and Sunny went for her face, landing a solid punch on the aide’s cheek. It left Sunny’s hand numb, but Camille spun around, the needle flying from her hand.
Mike came forward to grab it, but Will waved him off. “We need her fingerprints on it!”
He had a job subduing the furious woman. She fought him all the way while he got her arms behind her, pinning her to Mr. Vernon’s empty bed as he put a pair of handcuffs on her wrists.
“Camille.” Sunny tried to rub some life back into her numbed hand. “Why?” She wasn’t asking about the attack on Ollie, or even on her. Obviously they had caught an angel of death, the cause of the bump in mortality statistics . . . and Gardner’s killer.
“Why?” Camille snarled, glaring over her shoulder. “Haven’t you seen this place? They charge four hundred bucks a day to hold a bed for somebody. I don’t make that much in a week—and that’s before taxes. I’d have been better off finding a job with a landscaping company. The work is just as back-breaking, but there I might get appreciated.”
She heaved herself upright. “I put myself into debt, training for this job. Thought I’d be helping folks and moving up from minimum wage. Instead, the pay’s lousy, and the work is worse. Still, I stuck with it. I could put up with people puking on me or wiping their butts. It was the eyes I couldn’t take—having them look right through me. They thought I was invisible? Fine. I’d make them disappear. Who’d notice a couple of extra strokes around here? Especially at night, when everyone has twenty people to take care of.”
“An air embolism in the artery,” Dr. Gavrik said. “It would seem very much like a stroke.”
“Yeah, you didn’t catch it, did you, Doctor?” Camille made a mockery of the title. “It was one thing, getting my own back on the nasty old ladies, but Scatterwell, he was evil.” She turned to Ollie. “And he made all the trouble, bringing the cops in. He knew something, was gonna to talk with the sheriff. I had to go for him—had to shut him up.”
Hearing a gasp behind her, Sunny turned to see Rafe Warner and Frank Nesbit staring into the room.
“Did you guys hear that?” she demanded. “I’d call that a pretty explicit confession.”
19
It was several days later when Ollie Barnstable finally got to enjoy the gardens at Bridgewater Hall. Will Price pushed his wheelchair, and Sunny strolled along beside. A lot had happened. Frank Nesbit had taken Camille Thibaud into custody, where she’d given a detailed, clinical account of her activities in the nursing home. It made for some sensational newspaper reading and TV news viewing.
“She started off just making patients sick,” Will explained. “Then she figured she could come in and be the hero. That really didn’t get her anywhere, though . . . except to show how easy it would be to kill a patient right under everybody’s nose.”
“Camille was on the very bottom of the totem pole, earning peanuts, in debt, afraid of losing her job, powerless. I could see why she wanted to strike back.” Sunny noticed an uncomfortable expression on Ollie’s face.Yeah, it’s not too far from my own situation. Her reporter’s alter ego was grimly amused. Maybe he’s afraid I’ll be sneaking up on him with a pillow. Aloud, she went on, “Stress can do some pretty weird things to people.”