As soon as they closed the exam room door, Jericho called the DA on his cell phone, Matt would need to know what had happened tonight both with Ken Mitchell and the fire at the lab.
Kate had looked so pale, and Jericho wished he could get his hands around the neck of the person who had put her in danger.
Lana, dressed in a San Diego Fire Department T-shirt, came slamming through the ER doors. Running to the desk, she asked about Kate.
“Kate Quinn. Where is she? I was told she was brought to this hospital.”
“Excuse me,” he said. “Remember me? I’m Jericho St. James.”
Lana turned toward him and stared for a moment. Coming to some kind of conclusion, she reached out her hand. “Is Kate here?”
“They have her in an exam room,” he said, running his hands through his hair. “They won’t tell me anything.”
“Where?”
“Number Two.”
Lana brushed past him and headed toward the door. She grasped the knob and twisted it. Jericho followed her as Lana went into the room.
Kate was sitting up and a doctor was looking into her eyes.
“What are you people doing in here?”
* * *
“Since we can’t get any information from anyone else, we decided to find out for ourselves.” Lana came over and grasped Kate’s hand. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine. Just a slight concussion, a really bad headache, and a little smoke inhalation.”
“I…we were very worried about you,” Lana said, indicating Jericho standing close to the door, eyeing her with his heart in his eyes.
The doctor caught Kate’s attention and gave her instructions about what she had to do. Two days of bed rest, pain reliever for the headache, and an ointment for the contusion.
“Thank you.”
He left the examining room and Jericho came forward. Lana moved around the table to make room for him. “Are you sure you’re all right?”
“Yes,” she said, grabbing his hand and squeezing. “I’m fine, really.”
Kate turned to Lana. “It was arson, someone set the fire.”
“I know. I’ve already gathered evidence.”
“What’s destroyed?”
“The evidence locker with the LePlante stuff.”
“All of it?”
“Except for the glass shards. They melted.”
“What’s this about the LePlante evidence?” Matt Roth asked as he stepped into the room.
“It’s been destroyed,” Lana said.
Kate watched as the DA walked toward her. Her eyes went to his feet as he stumbled into a stool. Those shoes. They looked familiar… He reached her and grasped her hand. She looked down and that was when she saw them. The small wounds on either side of his hands. The shoes…the cuts on the hands. Oh, God, it was Roth who had started the fire. Roth who had killed Mrs. LePlante.
She closed her eyes. Jericho’s arms and hands reached out to comfort her. Her head was spinning, the terrible shock of realizing that the DA, the man she’d worked for since she started in forensic science, was a murderer.