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CHAPTER
80
TAPSHAW LOOKED WEAK AND SHAKY. Her eyes fluttered open and then closed.
Devine studied her vitals on the monitor and noted that her oxygen levels were improved, but not nearly back to normal. She was very thin and probably didn’t have a lot of robust reserve to overcome this easily.
He sat next to her bed and held her hand and watched her slight chest rise and fall.
“I’m so sorry this happened, Jill,” he said. First she had lost the investment from Chilton and Mayflower Enterprises, and now she’d almost died. And it was probably all connected to what Devine was looking into. With Will Valentine as the unknown factor.
“Is . . . o- . . . kay, T-ravis.”
“I saw your information on the email, Jill. I saw that you traced it to Will.”
“W-Will . . . e-ma. . . .”
It now occurred to Devine that that was the reason Valentine had made a run for it and tried to kill them all. He had somehow discovered that Tapshaw had found him out.
“I’ll follow up on that, Jill. Don’t worry about that. We’ll find him. I promise. But I think I should contact your family. I know your mom lives in California. But what about your dad? And your brother, Dennis? Do you have contact info for them on your phone? Or in your room?”
He knew he couldn’t get on her phone or laptop without her passwords.
She mumbled something incoherent and then fell back asleep.
He glanced at her monitor, where everything seemed to be holding its own but didn’t seem to be improving. He wished her color looked better.
He left her there and ventured to Helen Speers’s room.
Only she wasn’t there.
“She checked herself out AMA about two hours ago,” the nurse told Devine when he made inquiries.
“ ‘Against medical advice’?”
“Yes, but I think she’ll be fine. She was already recovering nicely when she was brought in. She’s a very fit young woman. The other woman is a lot frailer and she’s also anemic. We’re watching her closely.”
“Did Speers say where she might be going? We room together.”
“She didn’t.”
He wondered if Speers and Valentine had met up. And if they had, why.
I might have enemies on both flanks right in my own camp.
* * *
He went to work the next day and sat beside Burners who were openly weeping in front of their computer screens. Word had obviously gotten around that the firm was going under.
He had contacted Caltech, because he remembered that was where Tapshaw’s mother taught, and left a message for her explaining a little of what had happened. He had heard nothing from Speers.
He then received a text from Montgomery, and they arranged to meet later in the city.
When he got to the café in Tribeca she was already waiting. He filled her in on what had happened at his town house.
“Oh my God,” she exclaimed.
“So, two of my roomies are now missing. And Valentine wasn’t there when the gas got turned on.”
