Rogue Angel 53: Bathed in Blood by Alex Archer Read Free Book Online

Three.
    “Do you have any idea what time it is, Annja?” Doug asked.
    Annja couldn’t tell if he was irritated or just half-asleep. With Doug, they were often the same.
    “I know it’s early, Doug, sorry about...”
    Tamás stretched out his hand, waiting for her to give him the phone.
    “Annja? What’s going on? Why are you calling me at...”
    “Got someone who needs to speak with you,” she said, and then handed the phone to Tamás.
    “Mr. Morrell? My name is Detective Tamás, Slovak Police. I wondered if you would be willing to answer a few questions about Ms. Creed?”
    Annja sat there and fumed as Tamás asked Doug to confirm just about everything she’d told him, castigating herself the whole time for opening her mouth without thinking about the implications. She hadn’t told Doug about the episode she was shooting; she’d intended on surprising him with it when she got back. If he told Tamás he didn’t have any idea what she was doing in Hungary, that would set the detective’s alarm bells ringing and he might want to keep her here for a lot longer than she intended.
    Thankfully Doug had covered for her before. He must have answered the detective’s questions to the man’s satisfaction, because after several minutes Tamás handed the phone back to her.
    “All I can say is that you’d better have a good explanation for being wherever the hell you are when I thought you were in Budapest.”
    There was no mistaking his tone; this time he was ticked.
    “I do, Doug. And I guarantee you’re going to like it. Let me finish up here and I’ll call you later, okay?”
    “Harrumph.”
    That was it—a grunt and then a dial tone. Sometimes Doug could be the worst kind of prima donna. Then again, she tended to be less than pleasant when woken up at 3:00 a.m.
    She hung up the phone and slipped it back in her pocket, staring at Tamás the whole time, all but daring him to challenge her. She’d had enough of being treated like a criminal. Now she intended to get some answers.
    “Satisfied?” she asked.
    Tamás shrugged. “Just doing my job.”
    “I would think you’d be interviewing the victim, not harassing the Good Samaritan who saved her life.”
    The detective eyed her a moment and then sighed. “Trust me, if I could interview the injured woman, I would. Unfortunately, she passed away fifteen minutes ago, leaving you and Miss Polgár the last two people on earth to see her alive.”
    Annja didn’t know what to say. She’d thought the woman was out of the woods when they’d gotten her to the hospital and turned her over to the medical staff.
    Such a tragedy.
    She wondered how Tamás had gotten word of the woman’s death, as he’d been in here with her for the past half hour and hadn’t taken any calls, but then she remembered his conversation with the guard outside the door when he’d retrieved her cell phone.
    No wonder he’d wanted to verify her story. Annja and the woman who’d flagged her down were his only leads in what had suddenly become a murder investigation.
    Annja looked up to find Tamás watching her, though this time with less hostility. She decided to risk a question.
    “Have you been able to identify her?”
    Tamás shook his head. “No, not yet. No one here recognizes her and there are no missing-persons reports that match her description, which probably means she isn’t a local. We’re searching for more information and processing her fingerprints now, but our access to the larger police databases is somewhat limited, so it will take a few days.”
    Her curiosity getting the better of her, she risked another. “Do they have a cause of death?”
    The detective shrugged. “We won’t have an official cause of death until the autopsy this afternoon, but I don’t think we’ll find anything surprising. She was thrown down a cliff and left to die in the cold.”
    Annja frowned. “But what about the blood loss?” she asked, almost to herself.
    Tamás’s softer expression