Stealing Time Read Online Free PDF

partner she'd had in Mike, then lost on purpose because she hadn't wanted to mix business with pleasure. So much for integrity and scruples. She was on her own. Thank you, Lieutenant Iriarte.
April studied Heather Rose's battered face. Where were her parents, her protectors? "Heather? Can you hear me?" she said softly. "I'm April Woo. I'm here to help you."
No answer from the unconscious woman.
"Heather, we need to find the baby. Where's the baby?"
Heather did not stir. April felt the cold brick of fear in her belly. "Come on back, girl. We need your help here."
It was no use. Heather wasn't coming back.
April tried in Chinese. "Wo shi, Siyue Woo. Ni neng bang wo ge mang ma?"
No response.
Finally, April turned to leave the room. "Whoever did this to you, I'll get him," she promised.
Back in the waiting room, Heather's husband was standing in front of his chair. Baum was talking to him and writing down what he said.
"I want to see my wife."
April gave him a look. "She's unconscious."
"That's what you say. I want to evaluate her myself."
April studied him, this man who kept tabs on his wife and felt qualified to evaluate her himself. She made a note to herself to keep tabs on him.
Popescu's cheeks were gray, like a dead man's. He glanced at the two cops who'd stuck by his side since he'd come in. Duffy and Prince lounged against a wall as if they were used to hanging around for long periods of time with nothing to do. A baby on someone's lap on the other side of the crowded waiting room started to wail. She was trained to think like a cop: when faced with a mystery, think dirty. She was thinking dirty about Anton Popescu.
Then another brick hit her. If the baby wasn't Heather's, whose was it? Who was this man Heather had married, and why was he lying about why he went home at the early hour of three-thirty?
He caved abruptly. "Fine. If I can't see my wife, I want to go home now."
"We'll take you," April said. There wasn't anything they could do for Heather here.

CHAPTER 5
O n the return trip to the apartment, Baum and April sat in the front seat of the unmarked Buick. Popescu sat in the back. At Central Park South, two uniforms were out directing traffic. Roadblocks were up on Seventh Avenue, and only one lane was open to cars. The noise of honking horns and cursing New Yorkers was phenomenal. It was now 6:45, the height of the dinner and pre-theater hour. Thousands of people in taxis and limos were stuck on their way to Lincoln Center to the west and Carnegie Hall to the south.
"Oh Jesus!" Popescu cried when he saw the jam of police cars, emergency vehicles, and press vans parked in front of his building, clogging Seventh Avenue all the way down to Fifty-seventh Street. The uniform at the neck of the bottle opened traffic for the Buick and waved it through immediately. Woody sardined the car in the driveway and turned off the motor. As April got out, a strong perfume from the garden confused her senses.
Looking dazed, Popescu emerged from the car.
Somebody among the crowd of media hacks and gawkers shouted, "Who's that?" and the press with cameras was galvanized. People ran at the car with minicams and still cameras, yelling questions over the blasting horns. Several uniforms came forward to contain them. Baum took Popescu's arm and hurried him toward the building. The cameras rolled and clicked for the late news deadlines.
"Oh shit. Oh Jesus." The blood had returned to Popescu's cheeks and nose in a rush. Baum propelled him into the lobby. He stuck up his hand to hide his face, and that was how he appeared later on the eleven o'clock news, his arm raised as if warding off blows.
Looking terribly important, Lieutenant McMan was talking on his radio to uniforms and detectives and managing the crowd of disgruntled tenants who couldn't get home. He wagged a finger at April as soon as he saw her. She moved toward him, glancing at the doorman, who was now back at his post. The man's name tag read Carlos. Carlos was a skinny Latino