Rutger looked down and nodded. “I understand you called 911.”
“Yes. How is he?”
Rutger’s lips pressed. “I’m sorry to say he didn’t make it.”
My eyes widened. “He’s . . . dead?”
The agent nodded.
The news hit me in the chest. I leaned back in the chair, gazing around the room. As bad as Morton had looked, it was still hard to believe he was dead. Poor man. And I’d had high hopes that he would make it. Could I have done something more? My thoughts turned to the words he’d spoken. Now he could never explain them to me. Did he have the chance to tell someone at the hospital?
I’d never be able to ask him about the flash drive.
“How did he die?”
“Why would you ask that? You saw he was in an accident.” Samuelson spoke in a light enough tone, but something lay beneath. I frowned at him.
“I knew Morton was in pain, and I think unconscious when they put him in the ambulance. But I just thought . . . When he said his chest hurt, I feared internal injuries. Is that what happened?”
“You could say that.”
Both men regarded me, unblinking. Why weren’t they answering directly? As if they toyed with me. Something in the air shifted. My muscles tightened, and for a split-second my breath held. These men no longer seemed harmless. They were too caught up in the power of their badges, the federal government behind them. What did they want?
My mind flitted to Mom, sleeping in her bedroom. So vulnerable. So needy.
I sat up straighter, allowing my expression to harden. I stared back at Samuelson. “Why are you here? What do you want from me?”
A beat passed. The three of us faced off.
“His name was Morton Leringer.” Rutger spoke up, his accent drawing out the name. “You know who that is?”
“No.”
“He’s a billionaire financier from this area.”
Driving such a nondescript car? “What was he doing on that little road?”
“He owns an estate—one of many across the country—up on Skyline. Overlooks the ocean.”
He’d been so close to home. The thought saddened me more.
“So what do you want from me?” The two men still stared, and I glared right back. They were leading up to something, I could feel it. And I didn’t care for their games.
Samuelson’s head moved, just the slightest. “Mrs. Shire, Morton Leringer did not die as a result of wounds sustained in an accident.”
“No?” I frowned at him.
“Not at all.” Samuelson laser-focused on my face. “The man was murdered.”
Chapter 5
Murdered? Air left my lungs. “What? How can that be?”
Samuelson’s stare was unyielding. “Leringer was stabbed in the back.”
“When? You mean at the hospital?”
“No.”
I waited for more, but they sat like stone. “What then?”
“He was stabbed before the ambulance arrived, Mrs. Shire.” Samuelson’s tone was flat.
I blinked. “You mean, when I was with him, he’d been stabbed?”
Samuelson nodded.
Coldness trickled through my veins. All that time I’d been with Morton, he had a knife wound in his back? “I . . . can’t believe it. Why didn’t he tell me?”
“We thought he may have.”
“No. He never said . . . I just can’t believe this. When was he stabbed? Who could have done it?”
“It was a single wound. It hit his pericardium—the sac around the heart.”
My head lowered. After all my years of working in a cardiologist’s office, I knew what that meant. Morton’s pericardium would have filled with blood while causing little external bleeding. No wonder he’d had such trouble breathing. He’d have gone into shock. Meanwhile the paramedics, fearing spinal injury, couldn’t move him enough to find the wound.
I focused on my lap, trying to choose between a dozen questions to ask next. “Did he make it to the hospital?”
“He died in the E.R.”
This was beyond sad. “The doctor must have discovered the stab wound.”
“Yes. But it was too late.”
“In Raleigh . . . Find.” Morton had known he was dying. Struggling to breathe, in terrible pain, he’d chosen those final words, rather than tell me he’d been stabbed. Or who had done it.
How could that message be more important than his own life?
I raised my head. “I didn’t know. He didn’t tell me or give any indication.”
“Did you see anyone in the area?”
My mind fled back to the scene. The car overturned, driver’s window open. I’d assumed Morton had crawled out of it. Had someone dragged him out, then killed him? “No. Just him. And his car on its side.”