Read Bloodlines for Free Online

Corrigan's water-logged wallet. O'Connor had insisted Jack carry the card, thinking of the nights when Jack might spend his cab fare on booze. In case of emergency, please notify... he had written on the back of it and added his home number. He had been called more than once. Nothing else the hospital staff had found in the wallet had been readable, but because O'Connor had lived in three different apartments in the last five years, he had used pencil to write his phone number on the card. Pencil didn't run.
    Forty dollars had survived the soaking, so O'Connor was fairly sure the reason for the beating hadn't been robbery. God knew what had happened to Jack or why, but O'Connor figured that it was likely the answer would have something to do with a woman. That could wait.
    A uniformed officer had stopped by to take as much of a report as he could, which wasn't much of one. O'Connor had asked him to get in touch with Dan Norton, a friend of Jack's who worked as a homicide detective with the Las Piernas police. He hadn't had much hope that the officer would do that, so he was surprised when Norton had come by for a few minutes, at about ten that morning. He was one of half a dozen friends who had visited while Jack was still out cold. O'Connor knew Norton would make sure the case got whatever attention could be spared to it.
    O'Connor looked around the room. There was a second patient's bed, empty but neatly made, and after a brief study, he adjusted it almost to a sitting position. He pulled his tie free of his collar, tucked it into his pocket, took off his suit coat and draped it neatly over the back of a chair, removed his shoes and placed them beneath, then climbed onto the bed.
    He lay on his side, facing Corrigan, trying to mentally list his enemies. It was a long damned list.
    A young nurse came in and shook her head when she saw him, but said nothing.
    She took Corrigan's pulse, made a note on a chart, and said, "His color is better. That's a good sign."
    "He woke up," O'Connor said.
    "When?" she asked, surprised.
    "Just now. Talked to me a bit, then fell back to sleep."
    "You should have come to get me," she scolded.
    "It was me he wanted to talk to," he said.
    She rolled her eyes in exasperation, then caught the look of amusement on his face. "You're going to get us in trouble, Mr. O'Connor. Visiting hours were over long ago. If one of the nuns comes in here--"
    "One of them has come by already," he said, smiling.
    "Look, why don't you just go home and let us--"
    The smile disappeared. "Forget it. Until I know who did this to him, I'm not leaving."
    "I know, I know. You're going to defend him single-handedly if his attackers make another attempt on his life."
    "Do you think I'm not up to the job?" he asked, throwing his long legs over the edge of the bed, sitting up straight.
    "Apparently you don't think this hospital is."
    "Although the reputation of the Sisters of Mercy is undoubtedly a fierce one," he said, "and while I'm sure many a man has died of cruel injuries sustained from wimples and rosary beads, playing bodyguard is not really in their line of work, now is it?"
    "Is it in yours?"
    "If need be."
    They were reporters, the other nurses said, this man and the patient. She had not imagined that the work was so rough. This one had charmed his way past the end of visiting hours with his smile and that faint echo of Ireland in his speech.
    Corrigan moaned and O'Connor was up on his stocking feet and next to the bed in an instant. Together they watched and waited, but there was no other sound from him, save that of his steady breathing.
    The nurse studied O'Connor. His hair was dark and thick, a little ruffled. A thin scar cut one of his black brows in half, and his nose had been broken at least once. His blue-gray eyes were bloodshot; there were dark circles beneath them, circles that were not merely the result of this one night of vigilance.
    "You need to get some sleep, Mr. O'Connor."
    He shook his head, went