The doctor shook his head. “Too early to tell. Surgery set the badly broken ribs, and sutures took care of the cuts. She’s unconscious, which is the best thing for her right now.” He looked down at the chart. “She couldn’t talk to you even if she was awake. Bastard nearly crushed her larynx.”
He turned away. “We’ll know more by morning. The next twenty-four hours are critical. If she makes it that long, she might be out of the woods.”
Frankie didn’t care about the strict rules Cruz and Sheriff Slater had given her. Her patient was recuperating nicely, his fever was normal, and his wound was healing with no redness or puffiness around the site of the stitches. He was no longer in any medical danger.
As for the other kind of danger, well, she figured they were all at risk there. A killer was running rampant in the area – two killers in her mind. Sitting around Slater’s great room, they’d discussed at length the possibility of two distinct kinds of suspects in the violent deaths of three people, and the attack on Angie Hunt.
The men had nixed the idea, but Frankie there could be one killer playing out his sick fantasies of sexual pleasure. And another one, practical and clear-minded, murdering innocent people to harvest their organs. Why else would some victims be missing organs and others not?
Cruz had called to say Angie was in a coma under heavy guard at the hospital, so there were no answers forthcoming from that direction. Neither Slater nor Cruz had any idea who was behind the illegal organ trafficking. Possibly Anson Stark from his caged cell in prison, but also someone on the outside. A person who definitely had some kind of training in the rudiments of anatomy.
Frankie knew that venturing out on the street was a foolish move, but how else to get answers? How else was she going to determine how seriously injured her father was, lying in ICU at Sutter General Hospital?
She’d decided to leave, and because she didn’t want the hassle of dealing with the two strong-minded and stubborn men insisting on protecting her, she’d do it without telling them. Slater’s old Chevy truck was gone, as was Cruz’s jeep. That left a late-model Ford that Slater kept in the non-attached garage.
She had no idea where the keys were, but searched briefly around the kitchen, inside the miscellaneous drawer that everyone kept for junk, in the utility room for a key peg, and in the garage itself. She found nothing.
No matter. Along with teaching Frankie how to shoot a gun and defend herself against physical attack, her father has taught her how to hotwire a car. A skill her aunt had not appreciated when she learned that Frankie had been sneaking out at night, trying to find out who had really killed her mother.
She was absolutely certain it hadn’t been her father. Just as certain as her aunt, her mother’s sister, had been of Roger’s guilt.
Cole was sleeping when she entered his room, but roused with a light touch on his arm. “I have to go out, Cole, but I’ll be back soon.” She nodded toward the pitcher of water on the nightstand. She’d refreshed it and brought a clean glass, along with a sandwich wrapped in a zippy bag. “Here’s everything you’ll need. Water, food, Tylenol. Don’t get up except to use the bathroom.”
She looked around the spacious room. “You’ll be safe here. If I don’t return when Officer Cruz comes back, tell him – tell him I had to finish up some business.” She patted his arm. “You’ll be okay.”
After giving him another pain pill, she left.
In the garage the Ford’s wires caught a charge and the engine hummed to life.
Good girl.
She backed out of the gravel turnabout onto the two-lane road that led down to Placer Hills and then farther southwest to Sacramento and Sutter Hospital.
Chapter 58
Frankie used her medical identification from Pelican Bay to gain access to the ICU at Sutter General. “I’m his only living relative,” she explained to the fresh-faced correctional officer on guard at the door to Roger Milano’s room.
He eyed her badge suspiciously, but after a glance at the nursing station, empty at the moment, he nodded her in. “Just a few minutes,” he said. “He’s critical.”
“Do you know what happened to him?”
The guard stared at his boots, too young to form the right words to ease the grief of this pretty lady. “Knife stabs. Multiple.” He looked into her gray eyes. She didn’t look scared or repulsed. “He was attacked by a bunch of inmates, uh, I guess you know, at Folsom Prison.” He looked back down as if addressing his feet again. “I’m real sorry, ma’am.”
Ma’am? Frankie guessed she was ancient compared to the young officer at the door. She gloved up and masked her face before entering the ICU room, not wanting to compromise her father’s health. She hadn’t seen her father in months what with her job at Pelican Bay, moving into the cottage in Crescent City, and tracking down the trouble at the prison.