principles.”
“Good.” Werfell’s patrician face and manner were not conducive to
debate. “Then you’ll wait until she wakes naturally.”
Frustrated, still trying to think why Werfell looked familiar, Peake
said, “But we think she can tell us where to find someone whom we
desperately must find.”
“Well, I’m sure she’ll cooperate when she’s awake and alert.”
“And when will that be, Doctor?”
“Oh, I imagine.. . another four hours, maybe longer.”
“What? Why that long?”
“The night physician gave her a very mild sedative, which didn’t suit
her, and when he refused to give her anything stronger, she took one of
her own.
“One of her own?”
“We didn’t realize until later that she had drugs in her purse, a few
Benzedrine tablets wrapped in one small packet of foil-” “Bennies,
uppers?”
“Yes. And a few tranquilizers in another packet, and a couple of
sedatives. Hers was much stronger than the one we gave her, so she’s
pretty deep under at the moment.
We’ve confiscated her remaining drugs, of course.”
Peake said, “I’ll wait in her room.”
“No,” Werfell said.
“Then I’ll wait just outside her room.”
“I’m afraid not.”
“Then I’ll wait right here.”
“You’ll be in the way here,” Werfell said. “You’ll wait in the
visitors’ lounge, and we’ll call you when Miss Kiel is awake.”
“I’ll wait here,” Peake insisted, scrunching his baby face into the
sternest, toughest, most hard-boiled look he could manage.
“The visitors’ lounge,” Werfell said ominously. “And if you do not
proceed there immediately, I’ll have hospital security men escort you.
Peake hesitated, wishing to God he could be more aggressive. “All
right, but you damn well better call me the minute she wakes up.”
Furious, he turned from Werfell and stalked down the hall in search of
the visitors’ lounge, too embarrassed to ask where it was. When he
glanced back at Werfell, who was now in deep conversation with another
physician, he realized the doctor was a dead ringer for Dashiell
Hammett, the formidable Pinkerton detective and mystery novelist, which
was why he had looked familiar to a dedicated reader like Peake. No
wonder Werfell had such a tremendous air of authority. Dashiell
Hammett, for God’s sake. Peake felt a little better about having
deferred to him.
They slept another two hours, woke within moments of each other, and
made love again in the motel bed. For Rachael, it was even better this
time than it had been before, slower, sweeter, with an even more
graceful and fulfilling rhythm. She was sinewy, supple, taut, and she
took enormous and intense pleasure in her superb physical condition,
drew satisfaction from each flexing and gentle thrusting and soft lazy
grinding of her body, not merely the usual pleasure of male and female
organs mating, but the more subtle thrill of muscle and tendon and bone
functioning with the perfect oiled smoothness that, like nothing else,
made her feel young, healthy, alive.
With her special gift for fully experiencing the moment, she let her
hands roam over Benny’s body, marveling over his leanness, testing the
rock-hard muscles of his shoulders and arms, kneading the bunched
muscles of his back, glorying in the silken smoothness of his skin, the
rocking motion of his hips against hers, pelvis to pelvis, the hot touch
of his hands, the branding heat of his lips upon her cheeks, her mouth,
her throat, her breasts.
Until this interlude with Benny, Rachael had not made love in almost
fifteen months. And never in her life had she made love like this,
never this good, this tender or exciting, never this satisfying. She
felt as if she had been half dead heretofore and this was the hour of
her resurrection.
Finally spent, they lay in each other’s arms for a while, silent, at
peace, but the soft afterglow of lovemaking slowly gave way to a curious
disquiet. At first she was not certain what disturbed her, but soon she
recognized it as that rare and peculiar feeling that someone had just
walked over her grave, an irrational but convincingly instinctive
sensation that brought a vague chill to her bare flesh and a colder
shiver to her spine.
She looked at Benny’s gentle smile, studied every much-loved line of his