The Dying Room by Debra Webb Page A

circumstances. I didn’t charge you for taking those extra kinky pics out of the mix.”
    “She still sued me for divorce,” Rob argued. “What’s your point?”
    “My point is, I know a city councilman who could make your life hell if he found out you’d screwed around with his wife. Especially in some of those positions.” Buddy grinned. “I didn’t charge you a dime for keeping your fat out of the fire.”
    Rob waved him off. “Man, that was two years ago. What’re you doing bringing up the past?”
    “Sometimes we need to remember the past so we know the right way to go in the future.” Buddy was a fine one to be spouting advice. As true as that was, he wasn’t about to be taken to the cleaners by this guy. It wasn’t as much about the money as it was about making sure he didn’t get any ideas about the future potential of the info he now possessed. Protecting Sylvia was too important to let this guy get a whiff of fear.
    Rob grinned. “I guess you got a point. Let’s enjoy our lunch while I fill you in and we’ll settle up afterwards.”
    “Works for me.”
    On cue the bartender dropped two plates loaded with cheeseburgers and fries on the counter in front of them.
    After downing a few bites, Rob started talking. “Finding the people who adopted her was easy. I tracked down the private service your client used first, and then I located a retired file clerk. It cost me five G’s to get her to give me the name.”
    “Reasonable under the circumstances,” Buddy allowed.
    Rob tore off another bite of his burger. Buddy did the same, his patience thinning a little. He’d never known the guy to beat around the bush, but he was damned sure doing exactly that today.
    “The young lady graduated from UCLA. She’s a nurse. Graduated at the very top of her class. Some of the Facebook posts from her friends suggested she could have done anything she chose. Her friends were all complaining that she didn’t continue on to med school with them. Evidently, she dropped pre-med and switched to nursing at the end of her second year in college.”
    “I guess she just decided she didn’t want to be a doctor. So what about the couple who adopted her?” Buddy hoped the kid had lived a happy life so far and had been treated well. Sylvia already punished herself enough for giving the kid up. He could imagine how she would suffer if her daughter had been treated badly.
    “Rich folks. In their early fifties when they adopted her. The father was a heart surgeon. The mother was a pediatric surgeon.”
    “Was?” Buddy frowned. “Both parents are deceased?”
    Rob nodded. “The father had a heart attack. The wife had a heart attack trying to save him. They both died right there in their living room and the daughter found them.”
    “Damn.” He shook his head.
    “Hell of a thing,” Rob agreed. “Bad for the kid. That was a couple years ago, around the same time she changed her career path. I looked back a few years on her Facebook. It seemed like her parents were not only in a stressful field but they were involved in all kinds of humanitarian work. They went to foreign countries and helped the needy rather than take vacations. The kid worked right alongside them until she went off to college. The parents retired five years ago and had been spending a lot more time overseas.”
    “Sounds like a hardworking family.”
    “Maybe too hard,” Rob said. “Sounds like a lot of stress to me. Maybe the kid decided she didn’t want that much stress in her life.”
    “Maybe so.” Buddy knew how it felt to hold another person’s life in his hands. Though he’d never had to take anyone’s life when he was a cop, he’d come close. Those few seconds had felt like an eternity. Trying to save someone’s life would be a similar desperation. Doctors, especially surgeons, he supposed, faced intense situations every day. In recent years going overseas, even to serve the communities there, could be a dangerous business.