White Lies Read Online Free PDF Page B

and
the surprisingly good coffee. It wasn't great coffee; it truly wasn't even good
coffee, but it was better than he'd expected. The next batch might not be as
good, so he wanted to enjoy this one as long as he could. Not only that, he
didn't know exactly how to bring up the subject he'd been skating around all
during lunch, but he had to do it. The Man had made it plain: Jay Granger had
to stay. He didn't want her to identify the patient and leave; he wanted her to
become emotionally involved, at least enough to stay. And what the Man wanted,
he got.
                  Frank had sighed. "What if she falls in
love with him? Hell, you know what he's like. He has women crawling all over
him. They can't resist him."
                  "She may be hurt," the Man had
conceded, though the steel never left his voice. "But his life is on the
line, and our options are limited. For whatever reason, Steve Crossfield was
there when it went down. We know it, and they know it. We don't have a list of
possibilities to choose from. Crossfield is the only choice."
                  He hadn't needed to say more. Since Crossfield
was the only choice, his exwife was also the only choice by reason of being the
only person who could identify him.
                  "Did McCoy buy it?" the Man had
asked abruptly.
                  "The whole nine yards." Then Frank's
voice had sharpened. "You don't think Gilbert McCoy is—"
                  The Man interrupted. "No. I know he
isn't. But McCoy's a damned sharp agent. If he bought it, that means we're
doing a good job of making things look the way we want."
                  "What happens if she's with him when he
wakes up?"
                  "It doesn't matter. The doctors say he'll
be too confused and disoriented to make sense. They're monitoring him, and
they'll let us know when they start bringing him out of it. We can't keep her
out of his room with-' out it looking suspicious, but watch it. If he starts
making sense, get her out of the room fast, until we can talk to him. But
there's not too much danger of that happening."
                  "You're stirring that coffee to
death." Jay's voice broke in on his thoughts, and he looked up at her,
then down at the coffee. He'd been stirring it so long that it had cooled. He
grimaced at the waste of not-bad coffee.
                  "I've been trying to think of how to ask
something of you," he admitted. Jay gave him a puzzled look. "There's
only one way. Just ask."
                  "All right." He took a deep breath.
"Don't go back to New York tomorrow. Will you stay here with Steve? He needs you. He's going to
need you even more." The words hit her hard. Steve had never needed her.
She had been too intense, wanting more from him, from their relationship, than
he had in him to give. He'd always wanted a slight distance between them,
mentally and emotionally, claiming that she "smothered" him. She
remembered the time he'd shouted those words at her; then she thought of the
man lying so still in the hospital bed, and again she felt that unnerving sense
of unreality. Slowly she shook her head. "Steve is a loner. You should
know that from the information you have on him. He doesn't need me now, won't
need me when he wakes up, and probably won't like the idea of anyone taking
care of him, least of all his ex-wife."
                  "He'll be very confused when he wakes up.
You'll be a lifeline to him, the only face he knows, someone he can trust,
someone who'll reassure him. He's in a drug-induced coma... the doctors can
tell you more about it than I can. But they've said he'll be very confused and
agitated, maybe even delirious. It'll help if someone he knows is there."
                  Practicality made her shake her head again.
"I'm sorry, Mr. Payne. I don't think he'd want me there, but I wouldn't
stay anyway, if I could. I was fired