Fatal Reaction (37 page)
Authors: Gini Hartzmark
“Yes, I do. I think that was her one mistake, at least with Danny’s murder. She made a couple more with Childress.”
“Such as?”
“Such as mixing her ID card up with his. She had to have it in order to make it look like he’d left the building, but obviously, in her hurry to get rid of the evidence, she switched the two. The names are so similar, and both of them are all covered up with radiation tags, you can see how it would be easy to do.”
“I thought Borland said he checked the inside of the cold room before he taped it shut.”
“He did. But he had Michelle check it after him. All she had to do was ask Childress to come into the cold room with her to check something and then stab him with the hypodermic full of animal tranquilizer. I’m sure that when Dr. Gordon gets her final test results back, she’ll discover he was given enough to stun an elephant. Once Childress was out, all Michelle had to do was drag him off behind one of the piles of boxes. Nobody would see him unless they actually walked into the cold room, looking for something on one of the shelves.
“Then all she had to do was slip out of the building at some point and move his car. She didn’t have to take it to the airport then, only somewhere out of sight. With any luck maybe someone will remember seeing her. I guess what really bothers me most about all of this is how clever she was. When you think about it, there really isn’t that much evidence...” I said.
As we approached Hyde Park I realized the shock was finally wearing off and I was starting to hurt in all sorts of places.
“Don’t worry,” Elliott assured me as we pulled up to the emergency room entrance. “Now that the cops know where to look, they’ll get enough to bring a case against her. Joe’ll see to it. Besides, look at the bright side,” he said, as Claudia rushed through the double doors and pulled open the passenger door to shovel me into a waiting wheelchair. “There’s no way she’ll be able to beat the rap for assault.”
CHAPTER 29
Elliott stayed with me while I waited to be X-rayed, and watched as Claudia stitched me up. He fetched me water and held my head so that I could sip it through a straw. As Claudia sewed, Elliott told her the story of what had happened, which she listened to without comment, frowning intently over her work. The only really bad part was when they set my arm. It hurt so much that I screamed, but in the end I got to choose the color of the cast which was some small consolation. I picked black because it goes with everything—I am my mother’s daughter, after all.
The sun was starting to come up on another day when Elliott finally took me home. By then I was so full of pain medication and limp with fatigue that simple things, like the stairs and finding my keys in the bottom of my purse, seemed impossibly hard and beyond my grasp.
In the end I allowed myself to be undressed like a child. Elliott winced at the sight of the bruises on my shoulders and back and proclaimed himself amazed that I hadn’t broken any ribs. While he went off in search of ice packs, I slid gratefully between the sheets.
“You should go to bed,” he said, helping me pull the few remaining hairpins from what remained of my French twist.
“I am in bed,” I replied groggily.
“I meant with me,” he said, kissing me chastely on the forehead.
“That’s very smooth,” I replied dreamily. “Do you always proposition women who’ve been beaten up? I’m sure you get lots of girls that way.”
“I don’t want lots of girls. I want you.”
“All I want right now is to go to sleep,” I murmured.
“I don’t mean right now.”
“I don’t know how I feel about that,” I said finally.
“Perhaps you won’t know until you try,” he replied, kissing me one last time before standing up to go. “I think sometimes you just have to do the experiment.”
If you liked
Fatal Reaction,
don’t miss the other Kate Millholland novels:
PRINCIPAL
DEFENSE
Kate Millholland may be an heiress, but she works hard for her money as a mergers-and-acquisitions lawyer in Chicago’s most aggressive firm. When Azor, the high-tech, high-profit pharmaceutical company founded by her sometime lover, Stephen Azorini, faces a takeover, Kate will do anything to stop it from happening.
But the stakes rise even higher when Stephen’s teenage niece, Gretchen, is killed. Everyone knows that if Gretchen’s shares go to the corporate raider, Stephen will lose everything—so Kate plunges into an investigation of murder.
by GINI HARTZMARK
Published by Ivy Books.
Available at your local bookstore.
FINAL OPTION
When lawyer Kate Millholland arrives at the home of Bart Hexter, one of Chicago’s most powerful players in the futures market, she finds him behind the wheel of his Rolls-Royce, clad only in a pair of red silk pajamas, with two bullets in his head.
Topping the list of suspects—including his wife, his mistress, his personal assistant, and his children—is Kate, whose scheduled meeting with the dead man makes her the prime candidate for murder.
by GINI HARTZMARK
Published by Ivy Books.
Available at your local bookstore.
BITTER BUSINESS
At the request of a colleague, Chicago attorney Kate Millholland agrees to represent the Cavanaugh family’s company, Superior Plating & Specialty Chemicals—and discovers that the family is as corrosive as the chemicals it produces.
She never expects to uncover the sordid, fatal secrets that bind the Cavanaughs together—the least of which is murder.
by GINI HARTZMARK
Published by Ivy Books.
Available at your local bookstore.
GINI HARTZMARK attended the law and business schools of the University of Chicago and was a business and economics writer. She has written articles on a variety of topics for the
Chicago Sun-Times
, the
Chicago Tribune
, and a number of national magazines. She is the author of the Kate Millholland novels:
Principal Defense, Final Option,
and
Bitter Business
.
Ms. Hartzmark and her husband live in Arizona with their three children.