She’d always been a law-abiding citizen. Now she heard herself answer, “I don’t want to get myself connected to the Evelyn Morgan case.”
“Agreed.”
“What should we do?”
“Well, you can’t hang around here. Too dangerous. Can you stay with a friend?”
She thought for a moment and couldn’t come up with anyone she could impose upon. Not when she was hiding out from a guy who was probably a murderer. And she was pretty sure Jake could guess what she was going to answer.
When she shook her head, he said, “You’re staying with me.”
Undoubtedly what he wanted.
She swallowed. “Okay.”
“Go up and pack a few things.”
“You know I live upstairs?”
“Yes.”
She didn’t comment as she turned toward the door that led up to her apartment. Jake hesitated, then followed.
She stood for a moment in the middle of the darkened room, feeling paralyzed, her brain in danger of shutting down. Which wasn’t an option.
Grimly she forced herself into action, taking underwear and some practical clothing out of drawers, then throwing a few personal items and some makeup into a small kit.
After she’d stuffed everything into an overnight bag, she looked up to find Jake watching her.
“What are we going to do with the guy down there?”
He thought for a moment. “Take him to another location and turn the tables on him.”
“You mean question him?”
“Right. I’d like to know who he’s working for.”
“If he killed Evelyn Morgan, won’t he be . . . dangerous?”
“I think I can handle him,” Jake said, and she knew from the tone of his voice that he’d taken care of a lot of business she didn’t want to ask about.
When she started for the stairs, Jake held her back. “Stay behind me.”
He hurried down the steps, then stopped short as he reached the ground floor, muttering a curse.
Where the hell was Carter Frederick? Bill Wellington expected a second report from the man, but perhaps it was too soon.
He hadn’t been willing to reveal what he wanted to find out from Evelyn Morgan, but he already had a hunch it might be connected to a cockamamie medical research project the Howell Institute had funded years ago.
To give himself the illusion of progress, he started accessing medical reports from the Crescent City and the surroundingarea. At first there wasn’t anything of unusual interest. Then he began to pick up a strange set of data. On deaths from cerebrovascular accidents among young adults in New Orleans.
There were more than you’d expect in the metropolitan area. And when he checked to see the individuals involved, he found that many of the deaths came in pairs. All of those victims were unmarried couples in their late twenties or early thirties. Young men and women who were found in bed together.
Did Evelyn think that Rachel Gregory and Jake Harper were going to be the next victims? Was that why she’d showed up in New Orleans?
That was certainly a stretch, but why would Evelyn have been trying to contact them? Was there some new kind of brain disease going around Louisiana, and she thought those two had contracted it?
Because a Howell Institute project had made them susceptible?
