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Nothing.
God, dear God, where was she?
He went back to his place, driving like a madman in case she’d somehow materialized somewhere in those empty rooms, but she hadn’t.
Where could she have gone? Who would possibly know? That woman at the bar that night. Edna? Barbara? Brenda. That was it, but how in hell could he find a woman named Brenda in a city the size of Dallas?
“Think,” he said aloud, “think!”
There had to be someone who’d know what she would do, where she would go...
Her doctor.
He would know.
But who was he? Where was his office? Dammit to hell, why didn’t he have that information?
Maybe she had an address book. An appointment calendar. If she did, maybe the doctor’s name and address would be in it.
Travis went through Jennie’s things. Tore her stuff apart. Found no address book or appointment book or anything else.
Wait a minute. Would the medicines she took have the doctor’s name on the bottles?
He knew where she kept the tablets. Some were in a little silver pill box she carried in her purse. The rest were in his medicine cabinet.
Yes. There they were, but the only thing on the labels were the unpronounceable names of the meds, and the name and phone number of the pharmacy that had filled the prescriptions.
There were a frightening number of prescriptions.
He phoned the pharmacy. Spoke his way up the chain of command but nobody would tell him the doctor’s name or anything beyond the fact that the law protected a patient’s privacy.
There had to be a way...
Travis pumped his fist in the air.
There was. His pal. Ben Steinberg. Surely he could get the name of Jennie’s guy out of the pharmacy staff.
He thought about phoning, decided against it, got in his car and raced to Ben’s office, caught him just as he was leaving.
“Ben. I have to see you.”
“Travis? Are you sick?”
“No. My friend is sick. My friend...” Travis swallowed hard. “The woman I love gets these terrible headaches...”
“Ah.” Ben smiled. “Well, tell her to phone my office and—”
“You don’t understand.”
Ben looked at him. “Man,” he said quietly, “you look like hell.” He hesitated. “Okay. Come into my office and fill me in.”
* * *
Travis did.
When he finished, Ben’s expression was grave.
“Did she say what kind of brain tumor it is?”
Travis shook his head.
“All she’d tell me was that she was—that she was—”
Ben nodded. “Yeah. Okay. You need to find her but I don’t see what I—”
“If I find her doctor, maybe he can tell me where she’s gone.” Travis reached in his pocket, took out a vial of tablets, handed them to his friend. “I called her pharmacy. They won’t give me the doctor’s name. But they’ll give it to you.”
Ben nodded again. He thought about ethics, and patient confidentiality, and the fact that a woman named Jennifer Cooper had made it clear she didn’t want the man who loved her to be with her as she died.
Mostly, though, he thought about the fear, the desperation in the eyes of an old friend.
Then he reached for the phone.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
IN THE END, finding Jennie’s doctor didn’t help.
Peter Kipling didn’t know where she’d gone, either.
“I wouldn’t break patient confidentiality if I actually knew,” he said, “but I’d at least tell you she was safe.”
But she wasn’t safe.
His Jennie was desperate and alone, probably in excruciating pain, with a death sentence hanging over her.
Hours later, an exhausted Travis finally stumbled into the bar where he was supposed to have paid a pleasant visit to his brothers.
They saw him come through the door, signaled him to their booth...and turned grim-faced when they got a closer look at him. His face was gray, his hair was standing up in little tufts.
He looked like he’d aged a dozen years.
“What’s happened?” Jake said sharply.
Travis looked at them.
“Are you sick?”
“No. I’m not sick. It’s my Jennie who’s sick.”
His brothers exchanged looks. His Jennie?
“She’s missing.” Travis sank into the booth. “I’ve been looking for her for hours but I can’t find her.”
Caleb and Jake exchanged another look.
A lover’s quarrel? Something more serious?
“Listen,” Jake said slowly, “if she doesn’t want to see you—”
“She’s gone, Jacob. She’s vanished.”
“What do you mean, vanished?”
“Vanished,” Travis said wearily. He put his elbows on the table, rubbed his hand over his eyes. “I can’t find her anywhere.”
Caleb’s jaw tightened. “I have contacts,” he said. “The police. Some private guys I’d trust with my—”
“You don’t understand.”
“No,” Jake said gently, “we don’t. How about explaining?”
Travis grabbed the beer bottle that stood in front of Jake. He took a long, thirsty swallow. Then he put it down, looked from the concerned face of one brother to the equally concerned face of the other, and did exactly that.
It took ten long minutes.
When he’d finished, his brothers were silent. It was the kind of silence that means nobody can think of anything useful to say.
Finally, Caleb cleared his throat.
“Telling you we’re sorry won’t cut it.”
Jake nodded in agreement. “What we need is to do something that will help you. And your girl.”
“Jennie,” Travis said. “Her name is Jennie.”
“Jennie. Of course.” Caleb rubbed his forehead. “I need her full name. Her cell phone number. Her address. The department she’s in at the university.”
Travis shook his head.
“I told you,” he said, his voice hoarse with exhaustion, “she’s turned off her phone. She isn’t at her apartment. I checked her office on campus. She’s gone.”
“I understand,” Caleb said carefully. “Still, give me the info. Everything you know about her. Places she likes. People she knows. Where she’s from.”
“Yeah. Okay.” Travis gave a sharp, sad laugh. “It’s something to do, anyway.”
Caleb took a small notebook and a pen from his pocket, shoved them both toward Travis.
“I want the name of her doctor. His phone numbers. And Ben’s number. I haven’t spoken to him in years.”
Travis nodded as he jotted down the things Caleb had requested.
“Trav?”
Travis looked at Jake.
“When I was hospitalized in D.C., you know, after I was wounded...I got to know some of the other patients. One was this Special Forces guy. He had a—he had a brain tumor.”
“Jennie’s is inoperable. The tests—”
“Yeah. So was his.” Jake paused. “But there was this neurosurgeon...His family brought him in as a consultant. The next week, they moved the Special Forces dude out of Walter Reed. I don’t know where they took him, but a couple of months later, there he was, stopping by for a visit, and he looked like a new man.”
“Jake. What’s this have to do with—”
“Maybe nothing. Maybe everything. I have the guy’s number. Why don’t I give him a call?”
“Holden says the neurologist treating Jennie is the best in Dallas.”
“I’m going to give my friend a call anyway, okay?”
Travis nodded. “Sure,” he said, but his eyes were dull with discouragement.
Another silence. Then Caleb slapped the table top and rose to his feet.
“Okay. Let’s get started.”
Jake rose, too. So did Travis. He looked from one of his brothers to the other.
/> “I feel so useless...” His voice broke. “There must be something I can do.”
“There is,” Jake said briskly. “Go home. Eat something. Get some sleep. You need to stay strong, for Jennie. And stay put, just in case she comes looking for you.”
“Hell. You’re right. I never thought of...” He took a long breath, then exhaled it. “Call me. Both of you. Even if it’s only to tell me you haven’t come up with anything, okay? Just—just keep in touch.”
The brothers embraced.
“Don’t give up hope,” Caleb said softly.
“Caleb’s right,” Jake said. “This is a long way from over.”
“Yeah,” Travis said, but they all knew he was lying.
* * *
It took Caleb less than two hours to find Jennie through his network of contacts.
He phoned Jake with the news as he drove to Travis’s condo.
“She’s on a flight to Boston, where she’ll change planes for Manchester, New Hampshire.”
“Excellent,” Jake replied. “That’ll put her within spitting distance of Boston Memorial.”
“What’s Boston Memorial?”
“A major hospital—and the place where that Special Forces guy tells me the world’s most prominent neurosurgeon is running a hush-hush experimental program.”
“Why do those words scare the crap out of me? Hush-hush. Experimental.” Caleb, who was driving far too fast, swerved around a truck. “Even that phrase, ‘the world’s most prominent neurosurgeon...’ According to who?”
“According to whom,” Jake said, automatically correcting his brother’s grammar which was, Caleb know, a really good sign that Jake was feeling upbeat, even hopeful. “According to my guy, and I believe him.”
