Family Counsel (The Samuel Collins Series Book 2) by Debra Trueman Page A

room and dining
room, so he’s got to be in this wing,” I said.  “I say we take Mrs. Silva for a
little ride.  What do you think?”
    Maddie’s eyes twinkled.  “You’re brilliant!”
    “I know.”  I leaned down and addressed Mrs. Silva.  “How would you
like to take a little tour of the place?”
    The three of us tagged along behind Mrs. Silva’s chair and we
wheeled up and down the hall, looking at name tags and checking out any room
that housed a male patient.  It was easier than I thought, since the majority
of patients were of the fairer sex, and on top of that, many of the rooms were
empty. 
    But after a while, we were running out of rooms and the Faker
still had not surfaced.  With two rooms left, I was feeling that we had bombed
in the initial phase of our plan.  The sour grape look had returned to
Felicia’s face.  Maddie took one room and Felicia took the other.  Maddie came
out first, with a look that confirmed my feeling.  She shook her head just as
Felicia came out of the last room.
    “I think I found him!” she whispered.
    “You’re kidding!” Maddie exclaimed, and the two of them clasped
hands before going back into the room.  I left Mrs. Silva in the hall and
followed my accomplices into a room that the name tag indicated belonged to Rafael
Mendez. We approached the bed cautiously and peered over the bed rail.
    “Oh my God.  What have they done to him?” Maddie said.
    The guy was lying on his back with his head slumped to the side
at an irregular angle.  He was wearing a ridiculous Gilligan hat pulled so low
over his forehead that he could barely see out.  His eyes were open, but they
were red and glassy, and he was staring vacantly at nothing.  It was positively
creepy.  At first I thought the guy was dead, and my inclination was to run.  
But then I realized that he wasn’t dead; he’d been drugged to the gills. 
    “Look what they’ve done to him,” Maddie repeated, this time on
the verge of tears.  “Bless his heart.”  She reached over and stroked the guy’s
arm.  In the movies, this would be the part where the patient reaches out and
grabs Maddie’s arm and the audience shrieks in fright, but in this scene, the
poor guy didn’t even acknowledge my wife’s touch. 
    “Come on,” I said, taking each of them in an arm and guiding
them out of the room and back into the hall. 
    “You want to write his name down?” I suggested to Felicia, and
she nodded and went fishing into her handbag.  I decided that this was above my
level of investigative skills and that I’d call Niki with what we had and let
him take over.  
    We wheeled Mrs. Silva to the living room and made our way back
to the stairwell.  The door we’d come in through was closed and the janitor was
nowhere in sight.  I wasn’t feeling great about the situation, but at least
we’d been able to give a name to the Faker.  There was still a chance that we
could get something out of him.  I opened the door and was about to look around
before I stepped outside, when an alarm sounded so loud that I had to cover my
ears.  A strobe light above the door was flashing in protest to its having been
opened.
    It took me a couple of seconds to get my shit together before I
yelled, “Run!” and the three of us took off full speed toward the Suburban. 
People were looking around trying to figure out why the alarm had sounded.  I
unlocked the doors with the remote and opened the door to a blast of heat and jumped
into the driver’s seat, bumping my knee hard on the steering wheel.  I cursed
silently, then out loud when I saw a guard standing at the door we’d just come
out of.  He was looking around and when his eyes found us, Maddie waved to him
nonchalantly and smiled. The guard didn’t smile back.  He started in our
direction and I could see him going for his sidearm. 
    As I put the key in the ignition, I flashed to the most
overused scene in the movies where the engine cranks and cranks