Split Second Read Free Page B

he’s not going to stop. He’s arrogant.”
    Lucy nodded slowly. She agreed with Sherlock.
    As Lucy and Coop walked back to their workstations, talking quietly, Sherlock said to Savich, “Why’d you put Lucy and Coop together? They don’t care much for each other. You can tell that by their body language. Look at the distance between them.”
    “That’s why I put them together,” Savich said matter-of-factly. “They need to learn to get along. They’re both excellent agents, and I wouldn’t want to lose either of them. They’ve got to learn to respect each other, protect each other, or else one of them will have to go.”
    “I’d hate to lose either of them. I wonder why they don’t get along well? They’re the new guys in the unit; you’d think they’d have bonded simply because they’re the rookies.”
    Savich said, “I asked Ruth what was going on between them, and she said she’d heard Lucy call Coop a dickhead—quote/unquote—because he dangles too many women on his string.”
    “Hmm, I hadn’t heard that. Do you think it’s true? You think he’s some sort of idiot playboy?”
    Savich shrugged, opened his office door, and ushered her in. “I’ve never seen anything in Coop’s behavior that’d make me think so. He’s got a good brain, he’s committed, a good team player, and I can usually kick his butt at the gym.” He grinned at her, flicked a finger over her cheek. “So, what’s not to like?”
    Sherlock laughed, hugged him a moment. She leaned back in his arms, studied his face. “It’s only been two days since the shooting at Mr. Patil’s Shop ’n Go. Are you all right, Dillon?”
    “Mr. Patil will make a full recovery, Dave Raditch and his kids are dealing okay with the shock, and yes, I’m fine as well. Look, Sherlock, I’m handling things, okay?”
    Mr. Hardnose. She looked at him for a long time, and finally she nodded slowly. “Yes. All right, then.” She kissed him fast, then left his office to discuss with Ollie Hamish his bizarre case in Biloxi, Mississippi, where some shrimp fishermen seemed to be on a rampage, killing off their competition.
     
     
    Lucy and Coop were studying the composite sketch of their murderer, tossing ideas back and forth, when Lucy’s cell phone rang. It was a Dr. Antonio Pellotti at Washington Memorial Hospital. Her father had suffered a massive heart attack and wasn’t expected to live.

CHAPTER 4
    Washington Memorial Hospital
Thursday night
     
    Lucy sat beside her father’s bed in the CCU and counted each breath. Dr. Pellotti had told her when they wheeled him out of the cath lab, honest grief in his voice, since he’d known her father for years, “They managed to open up his left coronary artery and found a large part of his heart was beating very poorly. We’re having to support his blood pressure with drugs. We’re not sure how much longer he’ll breathe on his own. We’ll discuss options when and if a respirator is necessary.” He’d taken her hands in his. “He may be in and out, Lucy, but I promise you he’s in no distress. He’s on morphine.”
    How did he know her father wasn’t in distress? Lucy wondered now. Her father couldn’t tell them anything one way or the other. And when someone wasn’t conscious and was barely alive, where were they? Looking down at themselves lying there, helpless, wondering what was next? Praying they’d come back? Or were they asleep in the nether reaches of their mind, really unaware of anything at all?
    Lucy stared at her father’s face through the oxygen mask, all lean lines and seams and so much thick, dark hair, only streaks of white at his temples. She’d had dinner with him on Tuesday night, her vibrant, handsome father, laughing over a federal regulator who’d overdrawn his own personal account and was raising hell about it. But now he looked old, his flesh slack, as if his life itself was leaching out of his body.
    But he wasn’t old, he was only sixty-two, at the top