Free Pursuit by Karen Robards

security button as he had blown past her. She was of Asian descent, with short, smooth hair and a shapely figure. Using a gauze pad, she wiped the blood from Jessica’s hand as she spoke. The scent of alcohol hit Mark’s nostrils, and he made a face at the strength of it. It had to sting, but if it did she wasn’t reacting. The tear wasn’t long, and it didn’t look deep. But it was jagged and still oozed blood.
    For whatever reason, the IV needle had definitely parted from her flesh in a violent fashion.
    “Yeah, he couldn’t have been in here doing bad things to your IV,” the orderly agreed, passing a blue plastic ice pack to the oldest nurse, who with a quiet word to Jessica applied it to the back of her head. “I saw him, too. I think that means he’s got a quadruple alibi.”
    “What made you think it was me?” Mark eyed her curiously. Did he have a twin running around somewhere that he didn’t know about? Or had it really been just a hallucination after all, with maybe her subconscious plugging in his face because he had found her and she therefore associated him with the crash?
    She didn’t answer. Her eyes seemed unfocused suddenly, as if she were no longer really seeing him, although she continued to look right at him. After a long moment she inhaled deeply, then winced as if breathing in like that had hurt. Her eyes regained their awareness, narrowing on his face, and her body tensed. Her hands clenched tight around the blanket she still gripped.
    “Mrs. Cooper?” Her voice was scarcely louder than a whisper.
    Mark hesitated. His instinct was not to add to her distress by giving her more bad news so soon, but the impression he got was that she knew the answer even as she asked the question. What exactly had she seen? Why was Mrs. Cooper—why were any of them—in that car? He needed to know the answers like yesterday, so backing off was not an option, whether he wanted to or not. This was the perfect opening—his cue to find out how much she knew about the circumstances surrounding the First Lady’s death, and to shut her up if the answers weren’t what they should be. What she knew would determine what he did about it, of course. Buying her silence was always an option, and pointing out to her how unpleasant things could get for an up-and-coming lawyer who stepped on the toes of some of the most powerful people in the country was the unfortunate corollary to that, the stick to the carrot, as it were. A job, a really good job paying really good money, could be found for her locally or far from Washington, whatever and wherever she wanted. He was in the position to grant her a number of things. All she needed to do was “forget” whatever she knew, if indeed she knew anything at all, and refuse to talk to the press. The Coopers and their loyalists had many ways of rewarding those whom they considered their friends—and just as many ways of punishing their enemies.
    Which was the part that was bothering him.
    Under the circumstances, though, he really didn’t think that was what was going on here. He couldn’t believe anybody in the Texas mafia, as the President’s mostly homegrown ring of closest advisers was informally known, would resort to trying to have her killed. To conceal the First Lady’s drug addiction, which would certainly be embarrassing and hurtful to the family if revealed but would probably, ultimately, win sympathy for the President who had tried to deal with it? Nah. Anyway, at this point, this girl just wasn’t a threat: Nobody had a clue whether she was aware of Annette Cooper’s problems at all. And even if she was, he was ninety-nine-point-nine percent sure that buying her off would be the solution of choice. The fact that Jessica had thought he was her attacker boded well for the hallucination theory. Anyway, Lowell at least hadn’t sent anyone to kill her, because if so he wouldn’t also have sent Mark to deal with her. As Lowell was well aware, Mark was many