Trail of Secrets. Sandra Robbins

she entered. She spotted her purse and was about to reach for it when she froze in place. Fear shot through her body like a bolt of lightning. The nurse wasn’t administering any kind of aid. Instead, he was holding a pillow over her uncle’s face.

      With a loud scream, she sprang on the man’s back and grabbed him around the neck. His body jerked in surprise, and he twisted to free himself. “What...?” he yelled as he reached up and grasped her hands.

      Callie screamed again and clawed at the surgical mask covering the man’s face. It slipped from his mouth, and Callie glimpsed a jagged scar down the right side of his face. The mask slipped farther, and she caught sight of a star tattoo on his neck.

      The attacker hunched his shoulders and heaved with enough force to knock Callie from his back. She sailed backward and hit the wall with a loud thud. The man whirled, pulled a gun from his waistband and aimed it at her. Before he could pull the trigger, Marshal White appeared in the doorway, his gun drawn.

      “Hold it right there!” he yelled.

      The attacker whirled and pulled the trigger. The sound echoed off the walls, and Marshal White slumped to the floor. The shooter lunged for the door, jumped over the marshal’s body and sprinted down the hallway. Callie rushed to the door and caught sight of him as he ran through the exit at the far end of the hallway. Realizing she wouldn’t be able to catch him, she turned back in time to see the two nurses who’d been cowered against the wall outside the other patient’s room straighten up.

      One of them pushed to her feet and glanced at her coworker. “I’ll check the marshal and the judge. You call security and get us some help.”

      The other one ran to the nurses’ station and picked up the phone while the one who’d spoken knelt next to Marshal White. She looked up at Callie. “What happened?”

      “There was a man in scrubs trying to suffocate my uncle. If I hadn’t come back for my purse, he’d be dead now.”

      The nurse nodded and called out to the other one. “The marshal needs to get to surgery right away. I’ll check Judge Lattimer.”

      Callie stood in the cubicle, unsure what to do as nurses and security guards poured into the unit. She glanced from her uncle to the marshal on the floor before she picked up her purse and sat down in the chair where it had lain.

      Around her it seemed as if some kind of ordered chaos erupted. Nurses bent over her uncle, checking his vitals. A gurney appeared beside the marshal, and within minutes he was whisked away to surgery. A security guard stood behind the nurses’ station, barking orders into a mike attached to the lapel of his shirt.

      She rubbed her hands over her eyes and shuddered. When was this nightmare going to end? One of the responders glanced up from checking her uncle and jerked her head toward the door. “You need to wait outside until we finish here.”

      Callie took a deep breath, straightened her shoulders and shook her head. “I’m not moving from here until there’s someone else from the U.S. Marshal’s office at that door. If it wasn’t for me, my uncle would be dead right now.”

      The nurse started to respond, but then she just smiled. “I guess you’re right. I wouldn’t want to leave, either. Is there anyone we need to call for you?”

      “Detective Seth Dawtry is waiting for me in the E.R. I’d appreciate it if someone would ask him to come up here.”

      “I’ll take care of it,” the nurse said.

      Callie watched her walk to the nurses’ station before returning her attention to her uncle. The picture of a man with a pillow over her uncle’s face flashed in her mind, and she began to tremble. For the second time since her plane had touched down in Memphis, someone had tried to kill her uncle. After what Seth had told her about Uncle Dan’s cold case, she knew it had to be the reason behind the attempts.

      She rose, walked over to the bed and grasped her uncle’s hand. “Uncle Dan, what have you gotten yourself into?”

      * * *

      Seth ended the call to Captain Wilson and slipped his cell phone back in his pocket. It hadn’t taken long to find out that Dan’s SUV had been transported to an all-night tow service in midtown. Captain Wilson said Callie’s bags had been taken out of the car and were waiting in the business’s office to be picked up. Now if she would just come on, he might be able to get her settled at her uncle’s and get himself home in time for a little sleep before going back to work in the morning.

      He glanced at his watch and frowned. He hadn’t expected Callie to be gone so long, but he could understand her reluctance to leave her uncle. Perhaps he should have gone back upstairs with her. Dan might have taken a turn for the worse.

      He yawned and had just dropped down in a chair when a voice blared over the intercom system. “Security stat! Security stat!”

      Seth bolted to his feet and let his gaze sweep the room. He knew what that alert meant. Security was shutting down the hospital because of a threat somewhere. Could it have something to do with Dan?

      At that moment, a hospital security guard ran into the waiting room and stopped at the receptionist’s desk. “Have you seen a man in scrubs run through here in the past few minutes?” he demanded. Before she could answer, Seth pulled out his badge and ran over to the man.

      “What’s happened?”

      His eyes scanned the badge before he responded. “Someone tried to kill a patient in the Critical Care Unit.”

      A groan rumbled in Seth’s throat. He ran from the room and raced to the stairs. He didn’t have time to wait for an elevator. When he burst into the fourth-floor hallway, his knees grew weak at the activity outside the unit. Bleary-eyed people huddled in small groups in the waiting room. He’d been here enough on the job to know they were family members who spent long nights as close to injured loved ones as they could get. Nurses scurried around, and two security officers guarded the entrance to the Critical Care Unit.

      He ran toward the guards with his badge held high. “Detective Seth Dawtry, MPD. Has something happened to Judge Lattimer?”

      One of the men held up his hand, and Seth skidded to a stop next to him. “There’s been an attempt on his life. His niece interrupted it and called for help, but when the marshal who was guarding him intervened, he was shot and has been taken to surgery.”

      Seth’s heart constricted. He glanced into the waiting room in hopes of seeing Callie, but she wasn’t there. “Where’s Judge Lattimer’s niece?”

      The security guard inclined his head toward the unit. “She’s in with her uncle. Do you want to see her?”

      “Yes.”

      The man opened the door, and Seth rushed in. Callie, her purse clutched in a death grip, sat in a chair at the foot of her uncle’s bed. She turned a tear-stained face toward him as he entered. “What happened?”

      He listened in disbelief as Callie related the events of the past few minutes. When she finished, she shook her head and groaned. “They almost succeeded this time, Seth. Uncle Dan was just seconds away from death.”

      Her body trembled, and he reached for her hand. “Then we have to be thankful you left your purse. Have you heard anything from the marshals yet?”

      As if in answer to his question, the door to the unit swung open, and Rob Grant rushed into the room. He stopped next to Seth. “I was on my way here when I received a call that the judge had been attacked and our marshal had been shot.”

      Seth nodded. “They’ve taken your marshal to surgery, but Dan is okay.” He glanced at Callie. “This is Rob Grant. He’s the U.S. Marshal for our district. Rob, this is Callie Lattimer, Dan’s niece.”

      Rob reached for Callie’s hand. “I can’t tell you how sorry I am about this, Miss Lattimer. Hospital security tells me you saved your uncle’s life. You never should have been put in that position. Can you tell me more about what occurred?”