Mission Road (Tres Navarre #6)(66)

Even with a bandaged ear, Sam was in an excellent mood. He ate three cinnamon rolls with bacon and had two cups of coffee.

He thought Maia was one of his operatives. He kept asking her questions about clients. Maia did her best to fabricate good answers.

Mrs. Loomis talked about her children—two boys, both grown and moved out of state. Her husband the policeman had died when the boys were very young. She’d raised them on her own, hadn’t seen either of them now for several years.

“That’s a shame,” Maia said.

Mrs. Loomis spooned scrambled eggs onto their plates. “Oh, it’s not so bad. I miss them . . . but mostly I miss them being young. They drove me crazy so many years. I can’t help getting nostalgic.”

Maia must’ve looked perplexed, because Mrs. Loomis laughed. “You’ll understand when you have a child, dear.”

When. Not if.

A decade ago, Maia would’ve protested. She’d fended off many such comments, resented the assumption that because she was a woman, she would someday be a mother.

The last five or six years, those comments had become fewer and fewer.

Maia was almost grateful to hear someone make the assumption again. It sounded . . . optimistic.

Maia ate her eggs. She tried to push away the image of her father grieving, his years of anguish and worry finally breaking him, turning his bones brittle as surely as the disease that had taken his ten-year-old son, Xian, wrapped in funeral white.

Maia knew she had to get going, but she didn’t want to leave the comfort of the kitchen. She felt safe here, part of the makeshift family of Tres’ foundlings.

She thought about her own apartment in Austin, the view of Barton Creek out the kitchen window. She’d only been away from it twenty-four hours, but she had trouble picturing what it looked like. She had even more trouble thinking of it as home.

“Undercover work on the loading docks today,” Sam told her. “Be careful nobody finds you out.”

“I’ll be careful,” she promised.

She met Mrs. Loomis’ eyes. The older woman smiled as if she’d just seen a photo from her own past—something simple and poignant, with faces of children who had long since grown.

“IS DR. GAGARIN IN ICU?” MAIA asked, using a random name from the hospital directory.

The hospital receptionist looked up. What she saw: an Asian woman in an expensive black pantsuit, a stethoscope in her pocket and a confident, impatient expression—a woman who was used to having her questions answered. “I don’t know, Dr.—”

“Never mind,” Maia said. “I’ll go up myself.”

“I can page—”

“No, thank you. No time.”

Maia strode down the hallway to the elevator.

Nobody stopped her.

Maia wasn’t surprised. She’d played doctor numerous times. Never once had she been challenged. She liked to think that was because of her great acting skill, but she feared it had more to do with hospital security. They weren’t any better than police stations.

Maternity wards were the worst. Maia had already put that on her list of things to worry about, six months from now . . .

The elevator opened on the third floor.

As Maia feared, no police officers were stationed outside Ana DeLeon’s room.

Sunday morning, off-duty cops could make big bucks directing traffic for the local churches. It wouldn’t have taken much to convince the uniforms to take off this shift.

Maia walked toward Ana’s room. Halfway, she froze. At the far end of the hall, by the nurse’s station, Etch Hernandez was standing with his back turned, talking to an orderly.

If he’d already done something, if Maia was too late . . .

Morning sickness snaked its way through her stomach. She fought down the nausea and slipped into the room.

Ana’s heart monitor showed a strong pulse. Her eyes were closed. She still looked wasted and pale, but the improvement over yesterday was striking.

Her face had some color to it. Her chest rose and fell with regular breathing.

Maia suddenly felt foolish.

Perhaps she’d been wrong about Hernandez. He’d been here before her. He hadn’t done anything. Would he be in the hallway, casually chatting with an orderly, if he was planning murder?

Maia went to the bedside and held Ana’s hand. Ana’s gold wedding band felt warm against her skin.

Maia prayed Tres had gotten her phone message. It had been a desperate, stupid thing to do—trusting White’s daughter, but Maia had been shaken. She’d felt a compulsive need to explain Tres—to protect him. And she’d sensed something in the young woman’s voice—a receptiveness. God, if she was wrong . . .

The DNA match would be announced anytime. It wouldn’t be long before someone in White’s household heard the news.

The pain in Maia’s gut was getting worse. She wanted to lie down, curl into a ball, but she couldn’t give in to it—especially not this morning.

Ana’s eyes moved under her lids, as if she were dreaming.

“You’ll be okay,” Maia told her shakily. “You’re a tough lady.”

She heard footsteps coming down the hallway.

Maia slipped behind the bathroom door and aimed her cell phone camera through the space between the hinges.

Etch Hernandez came into the room.