One Wrong Move Read Online Free PDF Page A

babysat her daughter, Lara, when I was in high school. I didn’t recognize her at first this morning, because it’s been years, and she was so thin, and she’d been beaten. But she had nothing against me. She had no reason to hurt me. She was my friend!”
    The tall, elegant black woman doctor whose name tag read DR. TULLY harrumphed, clearly not counting on that. “In any case, we’ll still cover all our bases with the testing. But it’ll be a few weeks before we can have definitive results for the HIV test.”
    Nina couldn’t stop shaking her head. “It wasn’t like that. I can’t explain. It wasn’t like she was holding a needle on me demanding money or anything like that. She would never do that.”
    “How can you be sure of that, Ms. Christie? Didn’t you tell us yourself that you couldn’t understand a word she said?”
    Nina couldn’t articulate it, but she couldn’t stop shaking her head. Sticking her with a dirty needle on the street, it was so base, so squalid, so nasty. So not the Helga Kasyanov she remembered. Helga had been elegant, brilliant, confident. Mom had leaned on her back then, a lot. But then again, Mom had tended to lean. After too many years with Stan, she couldn’t stay upright on her own for long.
    No, there had to be another explanation. She just couldn’t imagine what it might be. “She spoke English when I knew her,”
    she repeated stubbornly. “Perfectly, with no accent. Plus seven or eight other languages. Maybe she had some brain trauma to her language center?”
    Dr. Tully harrumphed again. “Why don’t you concentrate on your own problems, Ms. Christie, and don’t concern yourself with—”
    “Her problems are my problems at this point,” Nina snapped, and then bit her tongue. “Sorry,” she muttered. “I’m very tense.
    And the fact that she recorded what she was saying means she was at least trying to communicate with me. I have to get that translated. How long will it be before the tests give you some idea of what that stuff might do to me?”
    “Not long.” Dr. Tully frowned. “You’re not showing any symptoms at the moment, and the fainting could be attributed to shock. But you’ll need to stay a while longer under observation before I can let you go.”
    Nina let out a careful breath. “How is Helga now? Has she woken up? Has she said anything?”
    Dr. Tully shook her head. “Still unconscious.”
    “Well, the driver, then. Maybe he can—”
    “The cab driver dumped both of you at the Urgent Care and fled the scene,” Tully said, her voice hard. “He won’t be of any help to you.”
    “I have his plate number, and my friend’s ex-FBI buddy got someone to run his plates, so I know his name and address!” she said triumphantly. “His name is Yuri Marchuk, and he lives on Avenue B, in the East Village. I’ve been trying to find Helga’s daughter, Lara. She could translate the recording, and if I can find the driver—”
    “You’re agitating yourself.” Dr. Tully’s brow creased. “Try to stay calm. We’ll talk later when we have more information.”
    “Information is exactly what I’m trying to get,” Nina said, through gritted teeth. “Look, if she wakes up and starts to talk, tell me, OK?”
    “Certainly.” Dr. Tully’s voice was cool. “Later, then.”
    Nina let out a jerky breath as the door to the examining room clicked closed. Agitating herself, her ass. Talk about understatement. Every part of her jiggled and clattered against every other part. She slid off the examining table, her phone rattling in her shaking fingers. Her friend Lily’s number was still up on the display.
    Thank God for Lily. She and Bruno and all their super-tough, macho McCloud friends had leaped right into emergency mode on her behalf, and she hadn’t even met them yet. Awesome people. She loved them already. Lily had already called her three times from Portland. They were the ones who had procured the address of the cab driver, in record time.