Persona Read Online Free PDF Page B

parties unknown, here on Paris soil.”
    Daniel felt a little sick. But the receptionist had blanched, so he raised his eyebrows at her, spread his hands. What did he care if the IA descended? It wasn’t his hospital.
    â€œJust a moment,” she said, reaching for her phone.
    He glanced at the television. He wanted to know what the man’s face looked like when he was giving a party line like this. He’d probably been in on it.
    Samuelsson looked utterly calm, the front of one of his three-piece Impressive Suits utterly smooth, and he was reading off a piece of paper to a room of stone-faced photographers wearing their national colors and dutifully recording.
    â€œDue to the nature of her injuries,” Samuelsson read, “Ms. Sapaki’s prognosis is, at the moment, unknown.”
    He glanced up into the camera, just for a moment, then back at the paper. He kept going, and there was a murmur through the audience, but as Samuelsson was talking the receptionist was hanging up and telling Daniel a room number and waving him through a door that needed a buzzer, and Daniel was trying to keep his voice even as he asked her as archly as possible to let him know when the police had arrived, and his pulse was so loud in his ears he probably wouldn’t have heard whatever Samuelsson had to say.
    [ ID 29963, Frame 7: Daniel Park in black coat, walking through security doors of Hôpital François du Lac, looking over his shoulder at broadcast of Magnus Samuelsson giving press conference regarding the shooting of Suyana Sapaki. ]
    Daniel couldn’t afford to look worried and he’d forgotten what being casual looked like somehow, so he walked the length of the corridor without turning his head until he reached Suyana’s room, and pushed open the door without knocking. Seemed like the kind of thing an IA type would do.
    She was already sitting up, and he recognized her expression—the flash of ambivalence before she went in to romance the Americans, resigned but desperately thinking of a way out—before she saw him.
    Then there was an expression he couldn’t place, just for a second, before her face closed shut like it always did when cameras were on her.
    It occurred to him that she might have been making alternate plans, and she’d call out to the nurses any second to get rid of the guy she’d blackmailed and who wouldn’t leave her alone.
    But she didn’t call out. She didn’t say anything. She watched him, eyes narrowed, braced for the worst.
    A lot of questions fell out in front of him, any of them worth a hundred thousand euros if he got an answer. Who shot you? Do you think Magnus Samuelsson knows who shot you? Who’s the friend you never met? Are you so short on friends that you’re surprised I came back?
    Are you all right? Do you know what’s happened to you, while you were in here alone?
    He settled on, “There’s something you need to see.”
    Ã—  ×  ×  ×  ×  ×  ×
    This channel was predictable—they were replaying the whole statement with inconvenient breaks so studio commentators who had no idea what was happening could talk with great authority about it.
    Suyana watched the introductions with no expression. If Samuelsson had arranged to have her killed, it must not upset her much. Maybe they’d worked together after all, setting up the publicity stunt of the year. Maybe she’d set it up herself and cut Samuelsson out of it. He was beginning to think she had it in her to arrange quite a bit.
    Eventually, they watched as Samuelsson, unflappable behind the safety of the mic, issued her sentence.
    â€œDue to the nature of her injuries, Ms. Sapaki’s prognosis is, at the moment, unknown.”
    When Magnus glanced at the camera and down, Suyana sucked in a breath through her teeth. Daniel watched a dozen things flicker across her face and vanish.
    Then she said,