In a Heartbeat Read Free Page A

nervous about men in blue littering his posh lobby. Well, tough. This was more serious than a few rich folks getting upset. Ed Vincent was almost a dead man.
    He opened the drawers, sifted through the few personal things in there, the kinds of things any man kept in his bathroom—electric razor, spare toothbrushes, condoms. . . . Camelia wondered whether the spare toothbrushes were for his female overnight guests—and he was glad that Ed practiced safe sex.
    He went through the drawers in the enormous walk-in closet that would easily have accommodated one of his kid’s bedrooms. He hated going through a man’s things, hated prying into his life, but this was his job. And he was nothing if not thorough. But this time, thoroughness got him exactly nowhere.
    The print man told him there were very few prints because the place had been thoroughly cleaned, and the uniforms found nothing of significance, though they went through every pocket of every garment, as well as every cupboard and drawer. It beat Camelia how the man could live without a trace of clutter. There was even nothing in the refrigerator, not even the rich-bachelor token bottle of champagne. He just didn’t get it. If it were not for the clothes in the closet, he would have sworn that nobody lived here.
    Sighing, he called it a wrap. “Thanks, guys,” he said as they departed in the soundless elevator. Then he walked back into the closet and studied the small safe set into the wall. It would take a locksmith as well as a warrant, and he got on his cell phone to try to organize both.
    He was thinking of his small, immaculate home in Queens. Kind of lived in, a touch worn after four kids. But it was a real home. This was merely a shelter from the storm. A cave.
    After that he called Claudia, just to say hi and ask what she was up to. Not that he was controlling or anything, he just liked to know where his family was. Claudia believed it was a spin-off from his job. The Permanent Detective, she called him, with that nice silky laugh of hers.
    She would hate this place, he thought as he waited for the elevator. Give her the creeps. It was less like a home than any hotel room, and he wondered again about Ed Vincent, the man. Who he was. And what he was.

7
    There
was
a place between life and death, Ed knew it now. It was called “limbo,” and it was the most frustrating place to be, halfway between earth and heaven. It felt more like hell, with all the worries and problems of life and none of the ease and relaxation of death.
How
dare they do this to me.
    He thrashed wildly in the narrow hospital bed, and the watchful ICU nurse hurried to his side. Her patient was just three hours out of O.R. His status was critical. She checked the ventilator that kept him breathing, checked the drains in his chest and the tubes feeding fluids into his veins. She watched the monitor for a minute, then looked again at her patient. He was still now, though his breathing sounded as labored and raucous as a tractor engine.
    He was big, six-four, broad-shouldered, rugged, but right now he looked far different from the great, handsome bear of a man she had seen on TV, at the opening of one of his new Vincent Towers buildings in Manhattan.
    She looked at her watch. It was midnight, and the doctor on duty would be doing his rounds soon. Plus, no doubt Mr. Vincent’s own medic, Art Jacobs, would also make an appearance.
    She checked her other intensive care patient, a woman just out of the O.R. after an emergency quadruple bypass following a heart attack earlier that evening. Each nurse in ICU had two patients under her care. This second one had gotten a break. She would live. Her first patient, Mr. Vincent, might not be so lucky.
    There was nothing else she could do for either of them right now. She walked back to the nurses’ station, where a wall of monitors displayed each patient’s current state, took a Diet Coke out of the refrigerator, and sank thankfully into a chair. It was