“I’m sorry, Joann,” he said. “I can’t talk right now, text me the flyer.” He hung up, and a few seconds later, his phone pinged. He checked to make sure he’d received an attachment, but he couldn’t bring himself to open it. Not yet. Instead, he forwarded the text to Tony.
A moment later, his phone buzzed. He answered it.
“Bro, holy shit,” Tony said.
“I know, Tony, I know. I feel like an idiot not considering that she’d have friends or relatives looking for her. And now that the FBI is wanting to talk to her.”
“Say, what?”
“Yeah,” Merrick said. “Apparently, she’d been seen coming out of his house, and for some reason the FBI is investigating him. They showed me a surveillance photos of her, and asked me if I’d seen her. They didn’t know who she was. I told the agent that she was Mona Lisa Van Dyke and upstairs in a coma.
“You mean the FBI will find out we gave her fake ID? Way to go, slick,” Tony said, sarcastically. “What are we looking at, 10 to 20?”
“I’m sure it won’t come to that.” Merrick said. The two men were silent for a beat. “Listen, Tony, I’m calling the FBI agent back, we’re not going to get in trouble – because we’re cooperating. I’m going to tell her a
bout the flyer.”
They hung up and Merrick called the agent’s number.
“Is she out of the coma?”
“Yes, actually, she is.”
“I’d like to talk to her, but I’m headed out of town. But, I’ll be back tomorrow after noon. Where will she be around two?
“I’m not sure,” Merrick said.
“Well, keep me posted,” Agent Carson said.
“That’s why I called.”
“Is there something else?”
“Yes, I know her real name. Just got a missing person’s flyer – with her picture on it, can I text it to you?”
“Please do,” Agent Carson said. “And thanks for your cooperation.”
She hung up and Merrick wondered how Dr. Garcia would suggest they handle telling Bombshell the news that he’d been lying to her all along and that her name wasn’t Mona Lisa Van Dyke.
When he returned to the sixth floor, Doctor Garcia was waiting for him.
“They want to release her,” she said.
“Already?”
“Yes, and she’s very excited about going back to the hotel and spending more time with her fiancé.” Doctor Garcia’s lifted an eye brow, clearly curious about his reaction.
Merrick sighed and pulled out his phone. “I need to show you something,” he said and opened the image of the flyer and handed his phone to the doctor.
The doctor spent several minutes reading the flyer.
“Look, I’d like to go back to the hotel and get some sleep and then I’d like to gamble and have some R&R. Let’s stick to the current script for now and tomorrow, I’ll have a plan for how best to break it to her.”
“When, doctor – because, the FBI wants to question her sometime after two o’clock, tomorrow and they’ve seen that flyer – so they’re going to tell her, her real name.”
“Alright, then let’s have you bring her to my room, say ten o’clock tomorrow morning. I’ll have a strategy by then.”
Merrick thanked her, and called Linda to send a car for the doctor as he walked her to the elevator door. “Oh, can you text me that flyer?”