Free Death Match by Lincoln Child

headed. Follow me.”
    Lash swung in beside the resident.
    â€œAre they patients of yours?” Chen asked.
    â€œProspective.”
    â€œHow’d you hear about it so fast? They just got here five minutes ago.”
    â€œWhat happened?”
    â€œSuicide pact, according to police. Pretty thorough job of it, too. Radial vein, opened lengthwise from wrist to forearm.”
    â€œIn the bath?”
    â€œThat’s the strange part. They were found in bed together. Fully clothed.”
    Lash felt the muscles of his jaw tighten. “Who found them?”
    â€œBlood came through the ceiling of the condo below theirs, and the owner called the police. They must have been there for hours.”
    â€œWhat’s their condition?”
    â€œJohn Wilner bled out,” Chen puffed. “Dead on the scene. His wife is alive, but just barely.”
    â€œAny kids?”
    â€œNo.” Chen glanced down at the sheet. “But Karen Wilner is five months pregnant.”
    Ahead, the nurse with the crash cart disappeared behind a drawn curtain. Chen followed, Lash at his heels.
    The space beyond was so crowded that at first Lash could not see the bed. Somewhere, an EKG was bleating out a dangerously fast pulse. There was a torrent of voices, talking over each other, calm but urgent.
    â€œHeartbeat’s at 120, out of sinus tach,” a woman said.
    â€œSystolic’s at 70.”
    An alarm sounded abruptly, adding its drone to the babel.
    â€œHang more plasma!” This voice was louder, more insistent.
    Lash slipped along behind the blue-garbed figures, back against the curtain, working toward the head of the bed. As he squeezed into position between two racks of diagnostic equipment, Karen Wilner finally became visible.
    She was like alabaster, so pale Lash could see an incredible tracery of starved veins around her neck, across her breasts, down the sweep of her arms. Her blouse and bra had been cut away, and her torso swabbed clean, but she was still wearing a skirt and it was here the whiteness ended. The fabric was soaked through with blood. Twin IVs, turned wide open, were notched into her inner elbows: one of plasma, the other of saline. Below these, tourniquets were placed around her forearms, and doctors were at work, trying to suture the ruined veins.
    â€œWe’ve got vasospasm,” said a nurse, one hand to the patient’s forehead. Karen Wilner’s eyes remained closed, and she did not respond to the pressure of the nurse’s hand.
    Lash slipped in closer, knelt down beside the motionless face.
    â€œMs. Wilner,” he murmured. “Why? Why did you do it?”
    â€œWhat are you doing?” the nurse demanded. “Who is this guy?”
    The bleat of the EKG machine had slowed to a lazy, irregular rhythm. “Bradycardia!” a voice called. “Pressure’s down to 45 over 20.”
    Lash drew closer. “Karen,” he said, more urgently. “I need to know why.
Please
.”
    â€œChristopher, move away,” Dr. Chen warned from the far side of the bed.
    The woman’s eyes fluttered open; closed; opened again. They were dry and even paler than her skin.
    â€œKaren,” Lash repeated, placing a hand on her shoulder. It felt like marble.
    â€œMake it stop,” she said, the words more breath than voice.
    â€œMake what stop?” Lash said.
    â€œThat sound,” the woman replied, almost inaudibly. “That sound in my head.”
    Her eyes slipped closed again, and her head lolled to one side.
    â€œWe’re losing her!” a nurse cried.
    â€œWhat sound?” Lash said, bending closer. “Karen,
what sound
?”
    He felt a hand land on his shoulder, pull him back. “Away from the bed, mister,” said an orderly. His eyes glittered black above the white gauze of his mask.
    Lash retreated between the racks of equipment. The EKG was now droning a high, incessant note. The nurse scrambled forward with the