Free Third Degree by Greg Iles Page A

pocket and passed them to Warren, who shoved them into his own pocket. She hated to give them up, but she couldn’t risk him searching her and finding the clone phone in her back pocket. Danny was probably trying to call her right now. He would be sitting in the clearing on his four-wheeler, expecting to see her Acura come rolling between the big oak trees. He’d wait awhile, thinking she was only running late. Then he would start to worry. She had to contact him. A sickening wave of nausea hit her, and she tensed against it. As it passed, she got an idea about how to text Danny.
    “I want your computer, too,” Warren said. “Where is it? In the kitchen?”
    The blood drained from her face. There were things in her computer that could destroy her. Danny, too. “I’m going to throw up,” she groaned.
    She ran for the master bathroom.
    “Goddamn it!” Warren cursed, jumping up and rushing after her.
    She ran all the way to the toilet cubicle, hoping that Warren would stop in the bedroom, but he didn’t. He stood over her as she fell to her knees and put her face in the toilet bowl. She had no choice now. Retching loudly, she stuck her finger down her throat and brought up what remained of her breakfast.
    Warren didn’t flinch. He’d seen things in his medical career that made a little vomit look like a picnic. She was terrified that he would notice the flat, rectangular bulge of the second Razr in her back pocket, but he suddenly walked out of the cubicle. She heard him rummaging in the medicine cabinet on his side of the marble-floored bathroom. Could she risk texting Danny now?
    “Is the Imitrex in there?” She coughed. “Did you find it?”
    “I’ve got it. Come lie on the bed, and I’ll give you the shot. Stay away from the bathroom windows. I noticed Mrs. Elfman nosing around out there this morning.”
    Laurel’s throat constricted in terror. She prayed that the e.p.t box still lay behind the hedge beneath the bathroom window.
    “Hurry up!” Warren said irritably, suddenly standing above her again. “You’re done, aren’t you?”
    “I’m still nauseated.”
    “The sooner the better, then.”
    He grabbed her pants right above the pocket that held the Razr. As she screamed and tried to protect the phone, he yanked down her waistband and jabbed a needle into her hip. After what seemed a savage twist, he yanked it out again.
    “Ow!”
she cried. “What’s wrong with you?”
    “Me? I’m ‘cold, logical, held-in, almost sterile.’ ” He slapped the spot where he’d injected her, something nurses did to distract patients from the pain of injections—usually
before
the needle went in—but his slap was hard enough to bruise. “Tell me who wrote that shit. Tell me who else has been looking at that ass.”
    His voice had a proprietary edge. “No one! I told you.”
    “When was the last time you fucked him?”
    Laurel tried to stand, but Warren seized her neck and pressed her back down. In twelve years of marriage he had never laid a hand on her in anger. Fresh fear twisted her insides. “Warren, that hurts! Please think about what you’re doing.”
    “You want to talk about pain? That’s funny. I don’t need to think about this.”
    “Yes, you do. I haven’t cheated on you. I’d never do that to you!”
    “You’re a liar.” He shoved her against the toilet, then walked away again.
    She scrambled to her feet and ran to her side of the bed. There was no point in trying to flee the house unless she could slow him down first. Pulling back the comforter and sheets, she crawled under them and pulled them up to her neck.
    “Get up,” Warren said from the foot of the bed. “I want to check your computer.”
    “Go get it, then. I’m going to lie here until the aura goes away.”
    “If I leave you here, you’ll climb out the window.”
    Damn right I will.
“Ten minutes in the dark, Warren. Please. If the aura stops, I’ll do whatever you want.” She closed her eyes. “You can lie