*  *  *

There was an enormous hassle when Nakamura got to Michelle's apartment building.  First, the guard looked him up and down, noting the filthy torn clothing of a man who appeared to have lost a serious bar-room brawl, and refused to let him in when no one answered at Michelle's apartment. 

Nakamura walked back to his car and used the car phone to  call the private guard he had placed in Michelle's hallway for a reference to enter the building, but there was no answer.  The other guard he had posted to patrol the building did not answer his phone either.  Nakamura walked around the building's perimeter searching for him.  The man was gone.

Nakamura paused, wondering what to do when he saw a car enter the underground parking garage.  The gate rolled up and the car went through.  He waited about five minutes until another car was entering and then snuck in under the gate.  He waited until the last possible moment so the motorist wouldn't see him.  He just made it, his stiff body rebelling so that he fell and had to crawl under crab-like.  He barely made it through before the metal banged to the ground and he wrenched his sprained ankle, pulling it through with only millimeters to spare.  He cursed and waited until the tenant that he followed in, whistling and jangling keys, was entering the building to act like he had just parked there too.  He was finally inside.

Something was ominously wrong here, he thought, as he made his way to Michelle's door.  His own private security guards were missing.  That loud breathing had been creepingly sinister over the phone lines to Michelle's apartment.

He repeatedly rang and knocked to no avail.  He seriously contemplated breaking down the door and was looking around for something big to ram it with.  Then he remembered that Michelle and Heather had traded keys in case of emergency.  He would go to the hospital and see if Heather had Michelle's key.  She might have an idea where Michelle was, too.

He felt like he was wasting too much precious time already and decided, hell with it, he would go out the fastest way.  When Nakamura walked past the guard at the entrance the man started yelling, "Stop.  Stop, right now.  I'm calling the police."

"Go ahead," Nakamura said.  Make my day, he thought, and kept moving.

The guard was still waving his arms and yelling like a maniac when Nakamura got in the car and screamed away, spreading rubber for twenty feet.  He kept checking the rear view mirror for the law, but the idiot guard evidently hadn't called them.  No wonder someone had been murdered there.

When he got to Honolulu General Hospital's imposing Information Desk, the nurse stationed there took one look at him and gave him directions to the emergency room.  When she finally understood he had come to see a patient, not as one himself, she told him severely that it was after visiting hours.  He could call the patient, but he could not go up and see her at this time.  The nurse gave him the hospital telephone prefix and the number to Heather's room.  When he dialed there was no answer.

He could feel the frowning countenance of the nurse watching his back suspiciously as he loitered at the telephones near the hospital entrance.

At least now he had Heather's room number, Nakamura thought.  He would wake her up.  He waited until the desk nurse was busy with some charts and slunk quickly down a side hall.  He had no idea where he was and the hospital was enormous.  They had moved Heather's room from Intensive Care where she had been the night before.  He followed confusing signs, loping quickly toward the Burn Center.  Once he had passed the night nurse at the front desk, though, there were friendly janitors and orderlies who guided him, seemingly understanding his urgency.

Heather's room had a window in the door and he peeked inside before entering to make sure she was decent.  What he saw was a nurse bending over Heather.  He decided to wait.  Then he looked in again.  The nurse's back was toward him and she was still bending over the bed, but what he had seen out of the corner of his eye, during that first glance, was one tiny frantic movement from the bed.  His second look into the room caused him to slam inside, banging the door against the wall. 

The nurse turned her head, still bending over, but the room was small and Nakamura saw that Heather was now perfectly still under a pillow the nurse was holding over her face.

"Hey," Nakamura yelled.  "What're you doing?"

"Therapy.  Get out."

Nakamura hauled the nurse back by the collar of her uniform so forcefully that she landed across the room and banged into the wall.  He turned around and pulled the pillow up.  Heather did not seem to be breathing.  She was lying, white faced and totally still.

Suddenly the woman pretending to be a nurse was on Nakamura's back, clawing for his face from behind, her legs gripping his hips frantically.  He tried to twitch her off and tend to Heather, but the woman was tenacious.  He had to peel her arms away.  He realized she was really drugged up and dangerous when she repeatedly came back ferociously, teeth barred and nails hooked into claws.  He had to be more rough than he wanted to be with a woman.  Finally he slugged her in the jaw.  Then he turned around again.

Heather had not moved an inch and was so motionless she looked like a tiny doll lying in the hospital bed.  He tried her pulse and felt nothing.  He was too late!  He looked for the bell to call a someone and couldn't find it.  Shit, call buttons were always attached somewhere.  He didn't have time to look.

Nakamura quickly forced Heather's jaw open and cupped his hands around her mouth and nose, blowing inside forcefully.

"Hey!  Stop that."

Nakamura jumped back in shock.  Heather was looking up at him with big surprised eyes, taking in enormous gulps of air.  "We have to stop meeting like this.  I feel like 'Sleeping Beauty.'"

Nakamura couldn't help smiling.  "Actually, Michelle did the mouth-to-mouth last time.  I'm the one who broke your ribs."

Heather coughed a few times.  "Oh.  I think thanks are in order, anyway.  For both times."

"Faking?"

Heather nodded and sat up, wincing, to look at the unconscious woman on the floor.  "I can hold my breath a long time.  Only chance was faking her out.  Last time I saw her she was naked.  Dancing in Omar's Witch's Circle."

"I thought I recognized her."

"You sure arrived at a lucky time."  Heather was now panting deeply and quickly, seemingly swallowing up air.

Nakamura nodded.  He didn't particularly want to call the police, but couldn't think of any alternative.  The woman had been trying to kill Heather. 

"I have to get out of here.  Fast.  She's obviously working for Omar.  What happened to your face?"

"My car exploded.  A rather strange occurrence.  So I got worried that Michelle might be in danger."

Heather was busy throwing off the covers and moved to a sitting position on the side of the bed.  She started pulling off a bandage that held the intravenous tube in place on her arm.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm going with you.  Omar probably expects that little babe to report in," Heather said, nodding at the unconscious woman on the floor.  "When she doesn't, he might try something else.  Would you help me with this?  I'm a little squeamish about needles."

"You can't just walk out."  Nakamura kept objecting as he helped remove the needle very gently, taking care to pull it out at the correct angle.  "You have to rest.  You've been badly hurt."  Then it dawned on him exactly what she had planned.

"Shh.  Someone might peek in at any moment," Heather cautioned, nodding toward the window in the door.  She hopped off the bed and bent over the unconscious woman.  Even with the broken ribs, Heather had enough pain killer inside so that she hardly felt the twinges.  She started stripping the nurse costume off the comatose white haired witch.  "Help me.  She's too heavy for me to turn over."

The nurses uniform was enormous on Heather.  It was much too long but she belted it snugly and was ready to go.

Nakamura picked up the unconscious woman and placed her in the bed, covering her to the nose with sheets and blankets.  Luckily she had blond hair.  He looked at his handiwork with satisfaction until he noticed that the plastic bag on a metal stand was emptying at an alarming rate. 

He found the plastic tubing and pulled it up frantically over the side of the bed.  Without the resistance of a human body, the needle was dripping liquid rapidly.  No way was he going to try for a vein to stop the flow.  He removed the covers again and used the plastic tubing to tie up her arms securely.  That effectively stopped the flow from the needle.  It would have to do.

They exited the building without anyone making a comment; one limping, the other a little bent over and holding her side, each helping the other walk.