Free Killer Commute by Marlys Millhiser Page B

cotton. She couldn’t understand a word. Had they understood a thing she’d babbled? The panic tingles were so much worse now that she couldn’t really see, either. She feared they’d stop her breathing next. She tried to keep the panic out of her voice so she could convince them of the urgency here.
    â€œNo, you see, you, Maggie, Mrs. Beesom, and Libby are in grave danger if these twits come looking for the cash tonight. And why wouldn’t they? The LBPD is going to come to the same conclusion I have and the perps will have to act fast.”
    The aid who came to take her tray seemed delighted to find a resident who could eat that sludge and put her beaming face into Charlie’s and nodded when her patient ordered scrambled eggs, coffee, and more toast for dessert. This hearing-impaired Hollywood literary agent and mother would need all the strength she could muster.
    â€œI mean if these people are capable of using explosives, they’re capable of blowing up the whole compound to find what they want—or do it out of spite because they can’t. They could hold the neighbors hostage, even torture them if they suspect they know anything about the cash.”
    Her friends mumbled meaningless sounds, patted her hands to make any kind of contact, while she gobbled down another dinner.
    â€œThey could be Asian gangs who steal from, torture, and murder their own because they know these fellow Cambodians, Humongs or whoever keep so much cash in their houses because they don’t trust governments or banks. If they’ve heard about Jeremy’s cash supply.”
    But her friends rose and Larry patted her on the head like Jeremy did Jessica and Tuxedo. Maggie wrote in large letters on a hospital note pad, We’ll come back tomorrow. I’ll bring your glasses. Stop worrying. Everything’s going to be fine. Get some sleep.
    Yeah, right.
    Charlie slid the bills under her pillow and stuffed the pills a nurse gave her into her cheek.
    The minute she was alone in the dark, she spit out the pills, grabbed the cash and her sweatpants, T-shirt, and Keds out of the metal locker and her lens case off the nightstand, and closed herself in the bathroom.
    Her best friends hadn’t believed her. There was only one thing to do.

CHAPTER 11
    N OW THAT SHE was one, Charlemagne Catherine Greene would never make fun of a handicapped person again. The whole trip sneaking out of the hospital was terrifying without enough sound to gauge boundaries, to hear if someone followed.
    At least she could hear a little, she kept telling herself the whole way, tears of self-pity trying to wash out her contact lenses, making her stupid nose run—at least it was still on her face. She’d had time during her escape to check out her face and everything seemed to be pretty much there. She still had Hairy Granger’s scratch on her cheek and a bruise on her forehead where she’d hit the sidewalk. Nothing permanent there, at least.
    Her body worked fine now that she knew she was alive, even after two dinners of hospital sludge. How could anybody wreck scrambled eggs? Nothing bled there that she could find. It was just the almost absence of sound—more tantalizing maybe than no sound at all because you did hear a trifle bit that suggested the part you didn’t hear was what made sense of life.
    First things first, Charlie babe. Get yourself home in one piece.
    She walked boldly into the reception area and asked the guy at the desk to call her a cab, expecting some orderly thug to overtake her at any moment while she waited. But when the cab arrived she could give the cabby her address, had cash to pay him, could see him talking and gesturing to the windshield, but she didn’t have a clue what he was saying.
    Charlie worked up the courage to tell him, “I’m deaf and I haven’t learned to lip-read yet.” It was so final, so awful to admit out loud. Made her want to throw up. That