Chapter 23 #2
“A few months ago, I got a note in the mail, anonymous. From these bastards who blackmail everyone. They said they knew, they had proof, and they’d be in touch.
Putting the fear of God into me—it’s what they do, apparently.
” Walter pulled at his hair, and Lana understood why it was such a mess.
“Then Vivien showed up here, saying she’d done some DNA test and she knew.
To be frank with you, she wasn’t making much sense, and—I must confess—I was in a panic.
I gave her some cash and I thought maybe I’d gotten off lightly after all, and that would be that.
But then the blackmailers came for more—only this time, they had a recording of my conversation with Vivien.
So finally, I called the police—I knew it was a risk, but I was desperate.
A policewoman contacted me and said there was little they could do about the blackmail, but they could try to keep Vivien away, so I agreed to a restraining order. ”
“You put the restraining order on her? Of course! Was the cop Keisha Graham, a detective?”
“You know her?”
Lana nodded. She seemed to be a one-woman police department.
“My understanding is that this extortion racket offered Vivien money to get proof, but she refused and reported it to the same detective, offering to help catch them. It’s possible she found out who they were, but vanished before she could tell anyone. ”
“But she recorded our conversation and gave it to them. How could she not have been in league with them? Hold on—you asked about Grace’s birthday…
” He pulled at his hair. “Vivien called me the day before. We were about to transport Grace home in the ambulance, so I couldn’t talk.
She said she wanted to see me—she begged me.
But I said there was no way, given that she’d taped our previous conversation.
She denied it, of course—she really did seem shocked—and then I had to hang up.
She sent me a text message afterward, but I didn’t reply.
Something about having deleted everything.
It slipped my mind, with everything else going on. ”
Lana frowned. So the phone call Vivien made as she left the set—that was with Walter?
Walter’s phone buzzed, and he checked the screen and stood. “I must get back to Grace. My dear, I hope you’re right that Vivien isn’t involved, and I hope you find her. I wish I could help, but…” To himself, he muttered. “Such a mess.”
As he left, a nurse came in, pushing a cart. “Would you mind giving Mr. Lascelles some privacy?” he said. “I need to do some checks.”
Lana walked along the hall in a daze. For all that she’d found out, Vivien kept getting further away.
Part of her wanted to believe her sister had taken the money from the extortion gang and fled, but it didn’t ring true.
Belonging was more important to her than money.
Lana went to grab her phone to call Griffin, but remembered it was in Darnell’s room.
And Griffin… Griffin probably wanted nothing to do with her.
Her eyes watered. She thought they had this authentic connection, but he trusted her as much as he trusted the next superfan. I don’t know you.
And he was right. He didn’t. Because if he saw her for who she really was, he’d never accuse her of such a thing, even with no other likely explanation.
Why would he trust her, given his history?
They were two broken people who couldn’t co-exist in the real world.
They’d had a fling that had come to a brutal but inevitable conclusion. Beginning, middle and end of story.
She blinked hard. As her eyes cleared, she found herself staring into a camera lens.
A pap—inside the hospital. He wore an orange cap—one of the paps who surrounded the car yesterday.
She swiveled. The nurse from the palliative care ward strode toward her, glaring.
“Call security and get that man out of here,” she ordered someone, as he snapped away.
“Come with me.” The nurse grabbed her hand and took her through a door to a stairwell.
“I’ll take you somewhere quiet, where you can collect yourself. This must all be overwhelming.”
Which of the many overwhelming situations did she mean?
They went down a few floors, and the nurse stopped outside a room marked “chapel.” She looked through the window inset in the door.
“Sorry, someone’s in there.” She opened the next door along the corridor and ushered Lana into a small office, modern and neat.
“Take a seat in here—Dr. Kincaid won’t mind.
I’ll check that the hospital is clear of those bastards. Stay put until I come back.”
“Thank you,” Lana checked her nametag, “Ophelia.”
Lana’s watery gaze latched onto a box of tissues behind the desk. First things first, get yourself together. As she was wiping her eyes, she noticed a photo next to the monitor. A wedding photo. The doctor with…
She snatched it up. Was that the detective?
The bride was ultra-slim and her face was in profile, gazing up at the groom.
Was Lana seeing things? That woman showed up everywhere, had a hand in everything, while getting nowhere: dealing with Walter, interviewing Vivien and slapping the restraining order on her, searching her room, asking Julian if he knew what she was researching, volunteering to speak to Lana, investigating Darnell’s accident.
But even if she was married to the doctor, how did that change anything? A strange coincidence?
A phone sat on the doctor’s desk. There was one way Lana could check if it really was the detective in the wedding photo. She went through her pant pockets. The detective’s business card was still there—it had been through the wash, but the number was legible. She punched in the number.
The detective’s distinctive voice answered. “Hey, you. No, no baby yet. Please say you’re calling to tell me our little trap worked… Babe? You there?”
Lana hung up. She pressed both her hands to her mouth. Our little trap? Darnell? The doctor had said they’d rerouted the ambulance here. Did they have something to do with his injury—if he even was injured?
She looked around the office. A printout of the patient list lay on the desk—similar to the one Darnell had found, but updated to include his name.
She located Grace Marbury. Her date of birth checked out—it was indeed her birthday the day Vivien visited.
Lana tried the computer on the desk, but it was locked.
A small shredder sat on a shelf in a corner.
Next to it lay a red binder with an elastic strap.
Lana crossed the room and opened it. Empty.
The shredder was also empty, but a torn piece of paper was stuck in the mechanism.
She eased it out. It was part of a photo, printed on paper.
Two people in a car—one was the detective, holding the red binder like she was handing it over.
The other person’s head and chest were just visible.
“Holy crap,” Lana whispered. There was no mistaking that face. “What the hell?”
Lana mentally cycled through her conversations with the detective—the extortion ring, the celebrity hit squad, Vivien’s supposed conspiracy theory. She found herself staring at the phone. The phone. She straightened.
The detective said she tried to call Vivien multiple times after she went missing.
All my calls were going straight to voicemail.
If that were true, they’d have shown up among the missed calls on Vivien’s phone—but they hadn’t.
What else had she lied about? Had she taken Vivien’s laptop when she’d visited the stoner house?
Had she been running defense all along—trying to shut everything down—Vivien, Lana and Griffin, Darnell?
Lana started opening drawers and cupboards, finding stationery and hospital admin.
When she yanked open the bottom desk drawer, something flew out and skidded across the carpet.
A necklace. Vivien’s necklace. She picked it up.
So Vivien came here with the binder, possibly to see Walter, but he wasn’t here.
And then what? A clammy numbness spread down Lana’s arms. There had to be multiple ways a doctor could make someone vanish, in a hospital.
Or maybe not. She snatched up the patient list again.
That homeless patient in the palliative care ward…
You have a John Doe in here? Griffin had asked the nurse.
But all it said on the door was “Unknown.” She found the entry on the spreadsheet.
Not a John Doe—a Jane Doe. And the admission date?
The day Vivien drove in with the binder.
Again, Lana went to call Griffin and remembered she had no phone. She couldn’t even use the landline—she didn’t have his number. She couldn’t exactly call the cops. But she could check out the Jane Doe. She had to know.
As she left the office, several people were walking along the corridor outside, but no one she recognized, and none paid her any attention.
First, she needed her phone. She ran up several flights of stairs to the intensive care ward.
The doctor was at the end of the corridor, outside Darnell’s room, talking intently to that nurse—Ophelia.
Was she in on it too? Lana backed up toward the stairs—and bumped into someone.
She turned, gasping. It was the pap in the orange cap, camera slung around his neck.
She shoved him through the door into the stairwell.
“Do you know where Griffin is?” she said.
“Uh.”
“Please, I need your help.”
“Uh.”
“Griffin—do you know where he is? It’s urgent. Do you have access to that website that tracks him?”
The guy contemplated her for a few seconds, then checked his phone. “He’s a few blocks away.”
“When he gets here, I need you to give him a message.”
“You need me to what?”
“Tell him ‘Room 341.’”
The guy raised his palms. “I dunno what this is about, but he ain’t gonna listen to me.”
“Just try, please. It’s important.”
His eyes narrowed. “If I do, will you give me an exclusive?”
“If you do, it’ll be the biggest story of your life. Room 341—tell him. And give me your cap.” She snatched it from his head.
“What’s in Room 341?” he called as she ran off.
Lana took a deep breath before she stepped onto the palliative care floor, her hair stuffed into the cap.
A couple of nurses in blue uniforms sat at the nurse’s station, looking over paperwork.
She walked past, the cap pulled low, checking the room numbers.
Room 341 was one of the first. She pushed open the door.
As it swished shut behind her, the warmth drained from her face.
Vivien.
Lana ran to the bed, unable to breathe. Like Darnell, Vivien was unconscious, with a tube down her throat, and was attached to multiple monitors. No obvious injuries. Lana grabbed her hand. So cold. But her chest rose and fell.
She’d been here all along? Lana had called all the main hospitals in the entire state to check if there was a Jane Doe matching Vivien’s description, but hadn’t thought for a second that Vivien might be here, in a hospital to the stars.
A man’s voice murmured in the corridor—the doctor, coming Lana’s way. Seconds later, the door opened and he strode in, followed by Ophelia. She pulled the door closed and drew a curtain across, blocking the little window. Lana released Vivien’s hand.
It wasn’t Darnell they were trying to trap. It was her.