Light in Shadow by Unknown Read Free Book Online

blissful ignorance for a very long time.
    The Manor was a very private, very exclusive, very expensive psychiatric hospital situated on
    the shores of a remote lake in the mountains of Northern California. The sleepy little town of
    Candle Lake was nearby, but other than a scattering of summer boaters and campers, and
    some hunters in the fall, the place was all but forgotten on the maps.
    Leon knew that the hard-to-reach location was one of the things that made the Manor
    attractive to Harper's clients. The hospital raked in big bucks from folks who wanted their
    crazy family members warehoused out of sight and out of mind. Like so many other patients
    whose relatives had paid dearly to have a relative committed indefinitely, the two women had
    not had any visitors.
    But Harper could run his scam on the clients who were paying the fees for the two women
    only for a limited time, Leon thought. Sooner or later someone connected to one or both of
    the missing patients would have a reason to come to Candle Lake. When that day came,
    Harper would be in a bind because he would not be able to produce them.
    After learning that the two patients had apparently died in Mexico, Leon had begun to hope
    his problems might be over. Then, last week, he'd been contacted online by the creep who
    called himself, simply, GopherBoy.
    "… understand you are looking for a missing patient. I can help. My fees are as follows and
    are nonnegotiable …"
    That was when Leon's heartburn had kicked in again, big time. It was getting worse by the
    hour.
    Harper put down the phone, slowly removed his glasses, and looked at Leon.
    "I'm very busy today, Grady. I have two intakes to deal with this afternoon. I trust this is
    important?"
    Even Harper's voice affected his heartburn, Leon thought. It was classy sounding, a rich man's
    voice. It reminded him of all of the differences between them. Harper was a hustler, but unlike
    himself, the doc had gotten all the breaks.
    Harper was good-looking, with a lot of thick, silver-gray hair and a trim, tennis player's build.
    Somewhere along the line, he'd gotten a good education. He also had the kind of charm that
    he needed to snow his wealthy clients.
    "The hacker came through," Leon said. "It cost us, but it looks like we may have some hard
    information on the Cleland woman."
    "Not the other one?"
    "No."
    Harper frowned, but he did not look severely disappointed, just mildly regretful. It was as if
    Leon had told him that one of the stocks in his portfolio had tanked but that another had
    turned in a higher-than-expected earnings report.
    "Well, she wasn't nearly as lucrative as the Cleland woman," Harper said. "What have you
    got?"
    "According to GopherBoy, she's alive and well and living under another name. He says some
    online ID broker set up a program to feed false and misleading information about her to anyone
    who goes looking. That was why that investigator we hired back at the beginning didn't turn
    up any real leads."
    "Where is she?" Harper asked sharply. "I want her picked up immediately."
    The fire in Leon's chest flared higher. He needed some of the tablets he kept in his pocket,
    but he didn't think it would look good to chew them in front of his boss. He wanted to look like
    he was calm and in control here.
    "Not gonna be that easy, sir," he said. "She's being real careful. All GopherBoy could tell me is
    that she's somewhere in L.A. He did not have an exact location."
    "Somewhere in L.A.?" Harper's well-manicured hand clenched around a gold pen. "What good
    does that do us? L.A. covers a lot of territory."
    "Yeah, but now that I've got a name and some details about her new ID, it won't take me long
    to track her down. With your permission, sir, I'll leave this afternoon."
    "Don't try to bring her in on your own. When you've located her, stay out of sight and keep
    her under surveillance. Call me immediately. I'll send Ron and Ernie to assist you. They can
    handle the medications that will be