Free Eclipse by Hilary Norman

through that door and on his way to the hospital, nothing short of restraints capable of stopping him.
    â€˜Do you know,’ Delgado asked, ‘if my daughter saw her mother after . . .?’
    â€˜We don’t know that yet, sir,’ Sam said.
    â€˜It’s just . . .’ Delgado stopped again.
    â€˜Just what, sir?’ Martinez asked.
    Delgado took a breath. ‘You should probably know that my daughter being confused is sadly nothing new.’ He paused. ‘Much like her mother.’
    Coming to it now, Sam realized. Whatever this man had been holding back.
    â€˜Go on, please,’ he said.
    Delgado shook his head. ‘It seems wrong, speaking about my wife now.’
    â€˜It might help us find the person who did this to her,’ Martinez said.
    Delgado took another moment.
    â€˜The truth is, she was sick.’ He paused again. ‘In her mind.’
    Sam waited, then asked: ‘In what sense, sir?’
    â€˜In a sense that seems horrifically connected to . . .’ Delgado stopped, covered his face with both hands, shuddered, then dropped his hands onto his knees. ‘That thing – that nightmare – with her eyes.’
    Sam and Martinez both waited.
    â€˜My wife had a phobia,’ the other man said.
    Black Hole’s drug of choice clicked into Sam’s mind.
    Into his partner’s too, he saw that in Martinez’s sharp, dark eyes.
    Diazepam.
    Prescribed for all kinds of things from muscular pain to anxiety.
    And sometimes, perhaps, for phobias.
    â€˜It has been such a great pleasure,’ Stefan Mainz told Grace, kissing her hand. ‘I look forward to the next time.’
    The pleasure had been hers, Grace had assured him as they’d all taken their leave in the hotel driveway.
    It was just after ten, and she felt a sense of relief. Dinner had been enjoyable, but during the evening her thoughts had veered to the possibility that Thomas Chauvin might show up in person, which would have been embarrassing. She’d thought, too, for a second time, about the faint chance that he might have set up that ‘accident’ on the tramline, and she knew it was absurd, but it had been odd that his leg had been fine just moments later. And it troubled her a little that she hadn’t mentioned that suspicion to Sam, but she hadn’t because it had patently been nonsense, and she might have worried him unnecessarily, and in any case, she would tell him about it and the flowers when she got home . . .
    â€˜Don’t forget your bouquet,’ Natalie had reminded her in reception.
    Grace wondered now why she had not simply told her dinner companions about the encounters with Chauvin, which would have amused them all, perhaps set them hypothesizing.
    A desire for privacy, she supposed.
    In the event, he had not appeared, and she supposed that the flowers were a nice gesture of gratitude, that it was a shame, really, not to be able to thank him.
    But tomorrow, thankfully, Grace was going home.
    At five-thirty, at Miami General, Sam and Martinez were still waiting to talk to Felicia Delgado. Her doctor had confirmed that she was physically unharmed, but appeared to be in a state of deep shock.
    Her father was at her bedside now, but the teenager had not spoken either to him or to anyone else.
    Her condition added to the probability that she had found her mother’s body.
    Though until she spoke, there would be no way of knowing if she might not have seen something even more horrific.
    Some
one.
    For all they knew, Felicia Delgado might be a witness.
    The first known witness to Black Hole.
    Joe Duval for the FDLE and the investigative teams from the other jurisdictions were all standing by.
    â€˜We need to take this gently,’ Sam had said to Duval a while ago. ‘Meantime, I’d like it if we could have someone watching her room.’
    Duval had nodded. ‘I’ll get on that.’
    â€˜Weird thing,’ Martinez had said