Intensive Care
Intensive Care
Jessica Andersen
HOT BODIESAfter another patient mysteriously turned up dead, Dr. Ripley Davis began desperately seeking answers. Until radiation safety officer Zachary Cage stormed into her office with an array of accusations and brimming with male sex appeal. Ripley didn't have time to convince the brooding man she was innocent. She was trying to save her next patient and stay alive.Cage had once sworn to protect innocent patients from their doctors' mistakes, but Ripley's fiery resolve to seek the truth–and her soft curves–soon melted his doubts and touched his heart. She was enticing–and in danger. And only Cage could save her from the deadly killer who had made the beautiful doctor his prime target.
“Look, Cage. I know you’re just trying to do your job. But those are my patients dying.”
“And it’s your reputation on the line,” he said without thinking, and saw Ripley’s eyes darken further, this time with anger.
“No, Cage—my patients. I don’t care about anything else right now.”
He wished he could explain what he was feeling, but the barriers were still too thick, the walls too high. “I know you’re a good doctor, Ripley.”
She cocked her head. “Does this mean you want a truce?”
Yes, he wanted a truce with her. He wanted a lifetime. But he’d been a terrible husband once before. He knew better than to try again. So he nodded. “Sure, a truce. Can we start with you giving me a lift home?”
She turned to leave, and he followed her out to the street, gazing at her legs and feeling the hairs on the back of his neck prickle to attention, like there was someone watching.
Someone waiting.
Dear Harlequin Intrigue Reader,
August marks a special month at Harlequin Intrigue as we commemorate our twentieth anniversary! Over the past two decades we’ve satisfied our devoted readers’ diverse appetites with a vast smorgasbord of romantic suspense page-turners. Now, as we look forward to the future, we continue to stand by our promise to deliver thrilling mysteries penned by stellar authors.
As part of our celebration, our much-anticipated new promotion, ECLIPSE, takes flight. With one book planned per month, these stirring Gothic-inspired stories will sweep you into an entrancing landscape of danger, deceit…and desire. Leona Karr sets the stage for mind-bending mystery with debut title, A Dangerous Inheritance.
A high-risk undercover assignment turns treacherous when smoldering seduction turns to forbidden love, in Bulletproof Billionaire by Mallory Kane, the second installment of NEW ORLEANS CONFIDENTIAL. Then, peril closes in on two torn-apart lovers, in Midnight Disclosures— Rita Herron’s latest book in her spine-tingling medical research series, NIGHTHAWK ISLAND.
Patricia Rosemoor proves that the fear of the unknown can be a real aphrodisiac in On the List—the fourth installment of CLUB UNDERCOVER. Code blue! Patients are mysteriously dropping like flies in Boston General Hospital, and it’s a race against time to prevent the killer from striking again, in Intensive Care by Jessica Andersen.
To round off an unforgettable month, Jackie Manning returns to the lineup with Sudden Alliance—a woman-in-jeopardy tale fraught with nonstop action…and a lethal attraction!
Join in on the festivities by checking out all our selections this month!
Sincerely,
Denise O’Sullivan
Harlequin Intrigue Senior Editor
Intensive Care
Jessica Andersen
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Though she’s tried out professions ranging from cleaning sea lion cages to cloning glaucoma genes, from patent law to training horses, Jessica is happiest when she’s combining all these interests with her first love—writing romances. These days she’s delighted to be writing full-time on a farm in rural Connecticut that she shares with a small menagerie of animals and a hero named Brian. She hopes you’ll visit her at www.JessicaAndersen.com for info on upcoming books, contests and to say “Hi”!
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Ripley Davis—She will do anything to keep her patients safe and her department open, even if it means teaming up with just the sort of man she’s vowed to avoid.
Zachary Cage—His mission is protecting patients from unscrupulous doctors like the ones that killed his wife. Will he learn to trust Ripley in time to save her from the serial killer at work in Boston General?
Leo Gabney—The head administrator will do anything to win the Hospital of the Year Award and its ten-million-dollar prize. Anything.
Howard Davis—Ripley’s father once ran the hospital. Whose side is he on?
Belle—The hospital volunteer loves her patients, but is there a dark side to her angelic behavior?
Whistler—Cage’s assistant has the training and the knowledge to murder the patients with injected radioactivity and adrenaline.
Tansy Whitmore—There’s something bothering Riley’s friend and co-worker, but she’d rather not talk about it.
George Dixon—Cage has replaced him as head of Radiation Safety at the hospital, but Dixon may still be playing a role at the hospital. A sinister one.
To Melissa Jeglinski, for believing in my stories and helping me grow as a writer.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter One
Ripley Davis stiff-armed the swinging doors that separated Radiation Oncology from Boston General’s central atrium and frowned at the unexpected death report in her hand. She’d gone over the case ten times since the day before and it still didn’t make any sense.
Ida Mae Harris shouldn’t have died.
The failure weighed heavily as she jogged down the spiraling stairs to the lobby, but her schedule left little room for a quiet moment. She had barely enough time to grab a coffee before she was due at another “emergency” Radiation Safety meeting—the second one this month. She’d heard that the head Radiation Safety Nazi had been replaced, but she held little hope for improvement. Rumor had it that the new guy, Zachary Cage, hated doctors.
Great, that was just what Ripley needed.
She didn’t have time for a meeting and she didn’t have time for a Radiation Safety Officer with an attitude shutting her down for a snap inspection. She was struggling to keep the Radiation Oncology department open as it was, following the last round of budget cuts. But R-ONC—pronounced Ronk—was her life. The patients were her family. The administration couldn’t shut her down. They just couldn’t.
The paperwork in her hand crinkled and Ripley knew they could shut her down unless she could defend Ida Mae’s death at the inquiry. The sixty-something grandmother had been scheduled for release. She’d been happy and fit following her treatment. She shouldn’t have died.
What had gone wrong?
Ripley shook her head as she turned the corner and strode across the hospital’s tiled atrium toward the café. The waterfall fountain burbled to itself, but she wasn’t soothed by the sound. Even shorthanded, her department’s survival rate was one of the best in the country. She was up to date with all the new methods and ran a ruthlessly tight ship. The trite explanation she’d been forced to give Ida Mae’s husband—sometimes these things just happen—was baloney.
She didn’t allow these things to happen to the patients she cared for, agonized over. She was determined to figure out why Ida Mae had died.
Ripley was halfway across the atrium when she heard running footsteps and her brain fired emergency! But before she could spin around to see what was wrong, a hot, sweaty body hit her from behind, and a man bellowed, “You killed my wife!”
She staggered forward with a shriek as the focused response of a doctor fragmented to sheer feminine terror. She fell to her knees beneath her attacker’s weight and smelled old, sour whiskey and unwashed man. Her shock was instant and complete. Paralyzing.
“You killed her!”
Half sitting on the cold tiles, Ripley struggled to face him. “Wait! Wait, I didn’t kill anyone, I didn’t—” She broke off when she recognized the rumpled, teary man towering above her.
It was Ida Mae Harris’s husband. He’d brought flowers every day during visiting hours.
His mouth worked. Grief etched the deep grooves of his face. “She was fine, you said. She was coming home today.” He held out a glass rose, one of the many trinkets sold in the hospital gift store. “Our fiftieth anniversary was next week. I bought her a flower.”
A tear tracked across one wrinkled cheek as he snapped the glass rose in two with a vicious, violent motion. He pointed the stem toward Ripley. Light glinted off the wickedly pointed end and a manic rage sparked in his eyes. Alcohol fueled the flames to a blast that burned through her chest. “Now Ida Mae is dead. You killed her!”
Ripley struggled to her knees and held out both hands, barely aware of the gaping onlookers and the sound of the fountain behind her. Fear coiled hard and hot in her stomach. She saw the hands shake and was only dimly aware they belonged to her. No! she wanted to shout. I didn’t kill her! My patients are my life. They’re my family, don’t you understand?
But he was beyond understanding. So she tried to soothe. Tried to defuse, saying, “Mr. Harris. Losing your wife is a terrible, terrible thing, but this won’t make it any better.”
He’d seemed calm when she had called to break the news of Ida Mae’s death. But Ripley knew shock—and anger—could be delayed. And intense.
When another tear creased his cheek to join the first, Ripley thought she might be getting through. She rose to her feet and held out a trembling hand, palm up, and tried to steady the quiver in her voice. Tried to hold back her own scared tears when she said, “Give me the piece of glass, Mr. Harris. Ida Mae wouldn’t have wanted you to do this.”
It was the wrong thing to say.
“Ida Mae didn’t want to die!” the big man roared. He brought the makeshift knife up and leapt on Ripley with a snarl on his lips and fierce grief in his eyes.
The glass stem swept down in a glittering arc and chaos erupted.
A woman screamed. A nearby display of children’s watercolors crashed to the floor, overturned by the stranger who’d hidden behind it. Ripley lurched away from Mr. Harris, twisted and fell to the ground as the stranger charged across the tiles, grabbed Harris, and hurled him into the fountain.
Water smacked onto the tile floor and the onlookers shrieked.
There was another enormous splash as Ripley’s dark savior followed his combatant into the fountain. She struggled to her feet in time to see the man haul Harris up by his collar, punch him hard and drop the suddenly limp figure back into the water.
And the world stilled. Silenced. Even the fountain seemed muted. And Ripley stared as two pieces of information battled for control of her conscious mind.
She was safe. And the stranger was magnificent.
Breathing hard, six-foot-two inches of rugged male glared down into the roiling fountain with water sheeting down behind him. His long nose and heavy brow made his profile more fierce than handsome, and across the distance that separated them, she couldn’t tell what color his eyes were. They just looked…black.
The wet material of his cotton shirt and dress pants clung like a lover to the tight bulges of his biceps and the long muscles of his thighs and calves. Ripley’s mouth dried to sand when he leaned down and hauled Harris out of the water with a filthy curse and those muscles bunched and strained.
Paying no attention to the gathering crowd, the stranger stepped out of the fountain and dumped the now-weeping man on the tiles, leaving him for the uniformed police officers who poured into the atrium with guns drawn, only to find the situation under control.
Then the stranger turned toward Ripley and their eyes locked. A click of connection arced between them like a live wire. She felt a tremble in her thighs and an ache in the empty place between them. It didn’t feel like fear. Far from it. How could fear exist side by side with this sensation?
He walked toward her and Ripley was barely aware of the growing hum as the onlookers started talking in loud, excited tones about their own imagined bravery during the dangerous moments.
She saw only him. Dark, wet hair clung to his wide brow and the damp shirt hung from his chest like chain mail. He held out his hand. Glass sparkled on his palm.
“I’ll take that.” The nasal Boston twang jolted Ripley out of her trance, and she looked blankly at the officer who had materialized beside her. When he pointed at the glass rose stem, she shook her head and slid it into the breast pocket of her lab coat, though she couldn’t have said why.
The slight bump of a glass thorn pressed through the fabric to touch her skin, and she had to suppress a shiver. The imprint of Harris’s hands stung her side and shoulder. She could feel him against her, hot and sweaty and mad with grief. The fine trembles that began in her stomach threatened to work their way out, but Ripley knew she couldn’t let them take control.
She had to be a doctor now. She was Ripley Davis, MD. She couldn’t be soft. Davises don’t make public scenes, growled her father’s voice in the back of her mind, and the familiar anger helped her push the shakes aside.
She could be a frightened woman later. In private.
Gesturing toward the officers herding witnesses into the coffee shop, she said, “That’s not necessary. I won’t be pressing charges.” She focused on hospital policy. Head Administrator Leo Gabney’s policy. It was easier to think of policy than what might have happened if Harris had been a little quicker with the makeshift knife, the other man a little slower with his rescue.
The trembles in her stomach threatened to take over.
“Why the hell not?” The stranger’s voice was as dark and fierce as his face. It was steel and smoke and anger, with a hint of softness at the edges. In an insane flash, Ripley wondered what it sounded like first thing in the morning.
How it would sound calling her name.
And why in God’s name was she thinking about that? She didn’t need a man. Didn’t need sex. She was a doctor. She saved lives. She didn’t need a man to make her feel whole. That was a weakness, just like love. Like the need for rescue.
It was adrenaline, Ripley decided when the stranger’s brows drew together in a scowl that she felt all the way to her core. That’s all it was. Adrenaline and the shaky knowledge that he’d saved her life.
She couldn’t remember the last time a man had thought to rescue her from anything.
Fighting to keep her voice steady, she said, “Mr. Harris needs compassion more than he needs jail time.” She nodded toward the new widower, who was sobbing brokenly into his hands as a white-coated ER attending crouched down beside him and officers hovered above.
She could barely make out Harris’s words over the growing din. “Ida Mae. The phone call. Dr. Davis killed Ida Mae.”
Ripley closed her eyes. These things happen, she’d said over the phone when she told him his wife’s heart had stopped without warning. Cheap words. The disbelief in his voice had wounded her, because she had barely believed it herself. His sobs tore at her now.
She had failed her patient. Her department.
Herself.
The stranger spat a curse. “He could have killed you! What kind of hospital policy is that? What kind of safety do you people have here? The guy’s a nut. He should be punished!”
“He’s already been punished,” Ripley snapped over Harris’s rising howls. “He’s lost his wife.” Though she didn’t believe in happily ever after for herself, it worked for some. It had worked for the Harrises. She thought of the rose stem in her pocket. He’d bought Ida Mae a glass flower to celebrate their fiftieth anniversary. Now he’d spend it alone.
The sting of guilt pierced like a thorn.
The stranger snarled, “That’s bull and you know it. Grief doesn’t give a man the right to hurt other people.”
“Give it up, pal,” the officer suggested. “We get these calls every few months. Boston General won’t press charges and we’ve never had anyone seriously hurt. For better or worse, their system seems to work. Now, if I could have your names for my report, I’ll get out of your hair.”
Ripley gave her name and department. The stranger clenched his jaw when she mentioned Radiation Oncology, but he merely glared at the officer. “My name is Zachary Cage. I think this is bull, I’m soaking wet and I’m late for a meeting.” With a final glance at Ripley, he stalked away, dripping.
That was the new Radiation Safety Officer? Ripley stared at him in disbelief. The rumors had been right on about his attitude, but they hadn’t said he was gorgeous.
“Hell,” she muttered, and lifted a hand to brush the hair away from her face. That was when she noticed the hand was still shaking. Her whole body was shaking. And she was going to throw up.
If you must fall apart, do it someplace private, Howard Davis’s stern voice said in her mind. Davises must never be weak in public. Never.
She was halfway across the atrium on her way to the ladies’ room when she saw the ER attending give Harris a sedative jab in the upper arm. The weeping man’s voice abruptly rose above the atrium din. “The voice on the phone said Dr. Davis killed my wife!” Then he slumped to the floor, unconscious.
Ripley made it to the bathroom, barely. But it was a long time before she stopped shaking.
“JUST WHAT I NEED. Another damn doctor trying to save her own hide. Typical. Well, we’ll see about that, won’t we?” Cage yanked the warm-up pants out of his gym bag and dragged them over his clammy legs. He cursed when his bad shoulder protested. The surgeons had repaired the joint as well as they could, but the ligaments just weren’t strong enough for underwater wrestling matches.
“What’s that, boss?” Whistler stuck his head around the corner but kept his butt firmly planted in the computer chair lest he lose the rhythm of his solitaire game.
“Nothing. Come on, we’re late for the meeting.”
“You wearing that?”
Cage scowled down at the faded baseball jersey, warm-up pants and scuffed sneakers. “Not much choice, is there? My work clothes are soaked. Come on.”
His nominal assistant obediently tagged along to the meeting Head Administrator Leo Gabney had set up.
“Why the hell won’t the hospital prosecute that guy?” Cage snarled. “He attacked one of your doctors with broken glass, for God’s sake.” He had told Whistler the bare bones of the story. The radiation tech, twentyish and faintly geeky, had barely batted an eyelash. Then again, Whistler hadn’t reacted to much yet, except to offer a small grin when Leo Gabney had announced that Cage was replacing George Dixon as Radiation Safety Officer.
The other five members of the team hadn’t been as kind. Two had rolled their eyes, one had made a pointed reference to the failed Albany Memorial lawsuit, and the others hadn’t bothered to look up from their card game. Cage had considered firing all of them on the spot.
The day had gone downhill from there, culminating in him stumbling upon a woman being held at knifepoint in the hospital lobby. He could still feel the echo of rage. Though Cage knew exactly how the widower felt, there was no excuse for physically harming a woman.
Even if she was a doctor.
“If the guy freaked out because his wife died unexpectedly, they’ll hush it up,” Whistler said with a sidelong glance.
“Why is that?”
“The administration doesn’t want a malpractice suit. They’re bad for business and for BoGen’s chances at Hospital of the Year.”
Cage stiffened, and when the memory tried to come, he stuffed it deep down, hidden where it belonged. He growled, “Malpractice my ass. Doctors shouldn’t ‘practice’ on anyone. They should know what the hell they’re doing before they start mucking around.”
Whistler shrugged. “Don’t see much of it here. Boston General has an excellent record. The administration has seen to it, one way or another.” He pushed open the door to the Radiation Oncology conference room and gestured Cage through.
“You’re late.” Head Administrator Leo Gabney pounced just inside the conference room. His scowl lacked some of its intended punch because he barely topped five-foot-six. “And what the hell are you wearing?”
Cage brushed past him. “Long story. But for the record, your security sucks.”
“Lucky for you, our security isn’t your problem. You’ll adjust to the way we do things here soon enough.” Gabney shooed Cage up to the front of the room. “Let’s get on with it, the natives are restless.”
That was an understatement, Cage decided as he took the podium. Fifty or so faces stared at him with varying degrees of annoyance, anger and downright hostility. Nothing unexpected. A few coffee-shop conversations and a scan of the files had shown him that his predecessor had been neither well liked nor particularly effective. It seemed that George Dixon had been more interested in women than radiation safety—whether or not the women returned his affections.
Well, Cage thought, the female population at Boston General was in no danger from him. His priority was the job. Period.
But as he adjusted the microphone to chin height and scanned the room, an unfamiliar tingling skittered through Cage’s chest, and he couldn’t help glancing at the only face that reflected something other than hostility.
She was here.
The woman hadn’t been far from his mind, he realized, since the incident in the atrium. She’d brushed it off and hidden behind hospital policy, but he had saved her life and they both knew it. The adrenaline still thrummed through his veins as he peered past the podium and focused on her face.
Dr. Ripley Davis. The statistics in her personnel file hadn’t prepared him for that first meeting. Hadn’t prepared him to see her as a woman instead of a doctor. A suspect.
In those first few seconds, he’d seen only a beautiful woman with dark, springy curls fastened behind her head, a few left free to brush her jaw and long, elegant neck. The moment their eyes had met, the water he’d been standing in hadn’t felt cold anymore. Neither had his body.
It had been a long time since sex had been a part of his vocabulary; even the need for it had been burned out of him. But desire had flowed through him then, as it flowed through him now when their eyes locked in the auditorium and the electricity surged again.
Dr. Ripley Davis. Radiation Oncology. He didn’t trust R-ONCs as far as he could pitch them, and he’d already heard rumors of suspicious doings in her department. His investigation was already underway. The fact that she was a beautiful woman shouldn’t matter one bit.
It wouldn’t matter, he told himself firmly. If she was responsible for the hidden radioactive material Dixon had supposedly found in the R-ONC broom closet, Cage would bring Dr. Davis down and be glad of it. He had no patience for sloppy doctors. Especially R-ONCs. And it was beyond unacceptable for unlogged radioactive materials to be scattered throughout the hospital.
Cursing the rev of his body when she smiled tentatively and mouthed, “Thank you,” Cage gritted his teeth and glared out at the rest of the assembly. He could deal with their animosity more easily than he could deal with Ripley Davis’s smile.
“Attention. Everyone, please!” The Head Administrator waved the crowd to silence. “As you know,” Gabney began, “the final ballots for Hospital of the Year will be cast at the end of the week, and Boston General is up for the title and the ten-million-dollar grant. This money would not only go far in easing our recent budget concerns, it would also fund the new Gabney Children’s Wing.” There was little reaction from the room, but the administrator beamed and nodded as though there had been a standing ovation. “Now, as part of my continued commitment to improving Boston General, I’d like to introduce Zachary Cage, who is replacing George Dixon as Radiation Safety Officer.”
There was a quick, speculative buzz, but it died when Cage cleared his throat and leaned toward the microphone. “I know there have been complaints about fines levied by the previous RSO, and I promise to look into those incidents.”
There were a few nods and a faint smile or two. These were wiped clean as Cage continued, “But…the radiation safety here is a joke. You know it, and I know it. I intend to bring each and every doctor in this hospital back into strict accordance with federal radiation safety guidelines. There will be no exceptions, no allowances. You will comply or you will be shut down until the guidelines are met.” An angry hum skittered through the crowd and Cage saw Leo frown. Undaunted, he barked, “Radioactivity is not a toy, ladies and gentlemen. It is a weapon.”
A quick memory of angry red burns on soft skin had his stomach clenching. He glanced down at the notes he didn’t need and ignored the hands that shot up around the room. He ignored the chocolate-brown eyes he could feel on his face like a touch and tried to imagine wounded blue ones in their place.
Heather. He was doing this for Heather. He hadn’t been able to save her. Hadn’t been able to punish her killers. But he could make the hospitals safer for other women. For other men’s wives. The widower’s cry echoed in his head. Dr. Davis killed my wife!
Cage leaned forward into the microphone and made the final pronouncement, the one that was likely to be the most unpopular. “I will be performing a full audit of your radiation use for the last two years, starting in the labs with the most recent fines and infractions.” He glanced up and was caught in her eyes. The sudden angry babble faded into the background when he saw the surprise on her face.
And the sudden flash of…worry?
He glanced down at the unnecessary notes again, needing to sever the contact. “My team and I will start our audit tomorrow.” He paused and his eyes found Ripley Davis again. It was as though he was speaking only to her. “We’ll begin with Radiation Oncology.”
This time, the fear was unmistakable and Cage felt an unaccountable thread of disappointment knife through him. Ripley Davis had something to hide.
She was just like all the others.
The meeting wound down quickly after that. Cage saw Dr. Davis slide from her seat as he opened the floor to questions, but she didn’t meet his eyes. She hurried from the room while he answered a query about waste containment systems and Cage had a sudden, mad impulse to follow her.
As quickly as he could, he turned the microphone over to the Head Administrator and walked to the door. There was no sign of her in the hallway. Gabney droned in the background, “I will be personally overseeing the public affairs events scheduled over the next two weeks as the Hospital of the Year voting draws near…”
Cage slipped out of the conference room and headed for the Radiation Safety office, intent on rereading her personnel file. Ripley Davis had piqued his interest. Not because of the way she looked, or because of how she’d handled the situation in the atrium, he assured himself, but because she was a doctor. A R-ONC. And because George Dixon had told several people about finding a jar of radioactive material in the R-ONC broom closet. Unlabeled. Unshielded. Unauthorized.
Unacceptable.
Now it was Cage’s job to figure out where the jar had come from. Where it had gone. And why.
He found the Rad Safety office deserted and he grimaced. Dixon had run a sloppy office in more ways than one. “Those technicians had better step up to the plate, or they’ll find themselves looking for new jobs,” he muttered into the echoing emptiness.
He crossed to the cardboard box that held his paperwork, pulled out the stack of files he’d requested from personnel, and thumbed through until he reached Davis, Ripley. He froze.
That morning, the folder had been thick with commendations and biographical material. But not anymore.
He pulled the now-thin folder from the box and opened it.
The file was empty.
Chapter Two
Ripley spent that night going over Ida Mae Harris’s lab workups backward and forward until the notations blurred together. Then she staggered to bed and slept a few hours, plagued by a tangle of waterfalls, hot black eyes and unfamiliar aches. The shrill ring of the alarm was almost a relief, but when she reached her office at Boston General, the tension she’d felt after Harris’s attack returned in force.
A book she remembered leaving open to a page on cardiac complications was closed. Her chair, which she usually pushed all the way under the desk, was askew.
Had someone been in her office? She glanced at the door. It had been locked as usual. She shook her head.
She was still rattled from the day before, that was all. She was shaky from being assaulted, and worried by Mr. Harris’s strange choice of words. The voice on the phone said Dr. Davis killed my wife. Had he meant her phone call when Ida Mae died? It seemed the likeliest answer, but the phrasing bothered Ripley. What if someone else had called Mr. Harris and told him R-ONC was responsible for his wife’s death?
She’d be looking at a malpractice suit, and even worse, it meant that someone in her dwindling department couldn’t be trusted.
“He’s late.”
Ripley jumped, cracked her elbow on the corner of her desk, and swore. It wasn’t often that her best friend, Tansy, snuck up on her. Usually, the pretty blonde entered the room with a flourish and an invisible fanfare. Men lit up. Women smiled. Her energy was infectious.
Not today. Ripley grimaced. “You look about how I feel. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing important.” Tansy’s smile barely flattened the frown. A sleepless night was etched in the slump of her shoulders and the dark circles under her eyes. “How are you feeling after yesterday?”
“Jumpy and sore,” Ripley replied. “And I know Cage is late.”
The new RSO’s threatened audit was another reason for her nerves. Though Ripley and her technicians were scrupulous about their radiation practices, Zachary Cage was reputed to be on a mission. And Leo Gabney was looking for an excuse to close the R-ONC department and shuffle their expensive patients elsewhere across the city, where Ripley knew they’d get adequate care.
Adequate, but not exceptional. And though she’d originally taken the R-ONC position to prove to her father that she wasn’t going to join him in his cushy private practice, over the years the department had become her baby. Her family.
It was the only family she was likely to have, Ripley knew, and she wasn’t about to let the administration, or the new RSO, take it away from her.
“Ida Mae Harris’s autopsy is today, you know,” Tansy broke the silence, shooting her a sidelong glance.
And there was her biggest worry in a nutshell. She touched the manila folder on her desk. It was all that was left of a sixty-eight-year-old woman who’d been looking forward to a milestone anniversary she would never reach. “Yes, I know.”
“They won’t find anything that Gabney will be able to use against us.” Tansy gave her a one-armed hug. Though she spent much of her time on loan to Hospitals for Humanity—HFH—an international group of doctors who took assignments under the worst of conditions, Tansy worked in R-ONC when she was at home. She understood.
“I almost hope they do find something, you know? At least then we’d have an answer.” Ripley shrugged. “It’s always better to know than to wonder.”
“Well, whatever they find, it wasn’t anything R-ONC did wrong. It wasn’t anything you did wrong.” Of anyone in the hospital, only Tansy knew how much Ripley needed to hear the words. Only Tansy knew how insecure the seemingly invincible Dr. Davis was about her work, how much it frightened her to play God.
How much it hurt when she lost a patient. A friend.
Ripley squeezed her eyes shut. “I hope you’re right. And I hope the new RSO doesn’t cause problems.” Her temperature spiked as her mind flashed back to black eyes and the hot whispered promises of her dreams.
Or had that been a nightmare?
“What sort of problems would those be?” The rough rumble came from close behind her, too close, and the sizzle that lanced through her midsection was unmistakable.
Ripley spun and faced the door. Cage. She stifled a curse that he’d walked through the outer office and into the inner sanctum without her realizing it, before she’d been able to prepare herself to see him again.
She didn’t want him to know about the autopsy. Didn’t want him to know that she couldn’t explain Ida Mae’s death. Her past experience with Radiation Safety had taught her it was best to tell them as little as possible.
And her own reactions told her it was safest to keep her distance from this RSO in particular. With R-ONC’s future uncertain, she couldn’t afford the weakness that came with an emotional entanglement.
Her father had taught her that, as well.
Cage’s face gave away nothing as they squared off in her doorway, and once again Ripley felt that click of connection. Something primitive flared deep in his black eyes and he held out his hand like a challenge. “We weren’t properly introduced yesterday. I’m Cage, the new RSO.”
She took the hand and felt her heart kick when his fingers closed over hers. “Dr. Davis.” He held on a moment longer than necessary before allowing her to pull away.
“A pleasure,” he replied, but a lift of his heavy brow told her it was anything but.
“Though I’m grateful for your help in the atrium yesterday, I’m not thrilled about a full audit. I have patients to treat, and the violations you mentioned were Dixon’s way of getting back at me for refusing to date him.” A hint of temper seeped into Ripley’s voice and she gestured toward the outer office, feeling tired and cranky. Twitchy. Tense. “Never mind. Come on, I’ll show you where we keep the radiation logs.”
She tried to brush past him, but the RSO didn’t budge and she ended up too close, staring up into his dark, dark eyes. A tremble began in her stomach and worked its way out from there. Irritation, she told herself. Nerves.
Lust, whispered her subconscious. Sexual awareness.
It took her a long moment to realize that he wasn’t gazing into her eyes with mirrored desire. He was focused over her shoulder, staring at Ida Mae’s paperwork piled on the corner of her desk. “What is that, your personnel file?”
Ripley spun away and slapped a hand on the pile. “This is confidential patient information, Mr. Cage. Off-limits unless you’re a doctor.”
Something dangerous flashed in his eyes, but he stepped back and inclined his head. “My apologies. After you, Dr. Davis.”
Why had he thought it was her personnel file? Ripley had no idea, just as she had no idea why the outer office suddenly seemed crowded and hot.
Hyperaware of him following close behind, she walked to a padlocked refrigerator, pulled out a green binder and handed it to him. “Here’s the main radiation log. It’s up to date as of this morning.”
Their fingers brushed when he took the rad log. “Of course it is.” His voice gave away nothing, but Ripley felt as though he was mocking her. Or perhaps himself. “I would expect nothing less.”
With that, he spun on his heel and headed for the treatment rooms that branched off the outer office. In his wake, Ripley stared.
“Wow,” said Tansy’s voice from the inner office. The blonde crossed the room to stand at Ripley’s shoulder and watch Cage walk away.
“Yeah,” Ripley agreed. “Wow, what a jerk.”
Tansy’s lips curved slightly and she glanced at Ripley. “That’s not quite what I meant. That’s who rescued you from Ida Mae’s husband?” They watched as Cage crouched down and began copying serial numbers off the linear accelerator in Treatment Room One.
A foul, whiskey-laden breath on the side of her neck. Hard, grabbing fingers. A sweep of glittering glass. Panic. Warm black eyes and cool waterfalls. Ripley shivered and rubbed her arms where goose bumps came to life at the thought. “Yes, but that doesn’t make him any less dangerous to R-ONC. You heard him at the meeting. He’s on a witch hunt.”
They watched him bend over to peer at the electrical hookups. With a fleeting spark of her usual manner, Tansy murmured, “I wouldn’t mind being the witch he’s hunting for, if you know what I mean.” She leveled a telling glance at her friend. “But I get the feeling he’s already picked her out.”
“Did you just call me a witch?” Ripley deflected the quick jolt with sarcasm, but Tansy’s knowing look told her the sparks flying in the little office hadn’t been her imagination.
What a time for her libido to wake up. What a poor choice for it to make.
“Just calling it how I see it, Dr. Davis.” Then Tansy sobered. “I’m just glad he was there for you yesterday. When I imagine what might have happened…”
“Let’s not think about it right now, okay?” Ripley patted her friend’s arm and tried to summon a reassuring smile. “It’s over.”
Then she remembered Harris’s words in the atrium, and thought of her desk chair that morning. The closed files. The subtle disarray. And she wondered.
Was it really over? Or was it just beginning?
FINGERS POUNDING on the keyboard of the linear accelerator, Cage congratulated himself on learning three things in the first two minutes he’d been in the Radiation Oncology department. One, Ripley Davis didn’t want him auditing R-ONC. Two, she didn’t want him to know about the papers on her desk. And three, she was so goddamn beautiful she made his chest ache.
The first two were no surprise. The third was shocking. Cage had thought all the softer emotions had been burned out of him long ago with a single pencil-thin beam of radiation and a tidal wave of guilt.
“I keep the programs updated.” Her voice at his shoulder was a jolt he refused to show, but the buzz of her nearness sliced through him and set up a greedy alarm in his brain.
“So I see.” And it was true. She’d upgraded the software every time another glitch in the treatment equipment had come to light. “Too bad it takes people dying for Radcorp to debug these death traps.” He slapped the shielding of the linear accelerator with a scowl.
She sucked in a breath on what he thought might have been a growl. “I think those stories are exaggerated, don’t you, Mr. Cage? And let’s not forget the hundreds of thousands of patients who are helped each year by radiation treatment.”
“But it’s okay to forget about the people who died because Radcorp and a group of R-ONCs at Albany Memorial ignored the reports and kept treating patients with a broken accelerator?” Cage’s fingers were beginning to hurt from punching the keys so hard. He paused, clenched his fists and blew out a breath. “Never mind. The programs look fine and your fixes are up to date. Where are your disposal logs?”
“I get it.” Ripley’s voice sharpened and the air between them snapped. “You dislike R-ONCs in general. And here I thought it was me you didn’t like. Because let me tell you, Cage, I’m grateful for your help yesterday, but—”
Whatever she’d planned to tell him was lost in a flurry of noise and color from the outer office.
“Dr. Rip, Dr. Rip!” With lots of “vroom-vroom” noises and imaginary squealing tires, a purple-haired girl flew toward the treatment room, pushing a small boy in a hospital-issue wheelchair. They skidded to a halt and the girl’s hair slid off her head and landed on the floor.
Ripley and the kids took one look at the purple road-kill and started laughing.
Cage took one look at the girl’s naked pink scalp and the fine blue veins beneath, and shuddered.
“Livvy, what are you doing here? I thought you were between treatments. Is everything okay?” Ripley hugged the girl and bent to pick up the purple wig. “Hey, Milo. What’s up?” She didn’t touch the boy, who sagged back as though exhausted by the shared laughter. A Boston baseball cap looked ridiculously large on his bald head.
Cage’s stomach clenched on the three cups of coffee he’d poured into it that morning. One of the reasons he’d chosen Rad Safety was its distance from the actual patients. He could help them without ever seeing them. Without remembering.
“Belle called my mom and said Milo wasn’t feeling so hot.” The girl was older than she looked at first, Cage realized as she adjusted the purple wig on her slippery scalp. She was probably in her early teens, though her painful thinness and large eyes made her seem younger. “So a few of us came in for a visit. We were just talking about the game next week, weren’t we, Milo?”
The boy in the chair nodded limply. “Yep.” The word was no more than a breath, but Ripley didn’t seem to notice. Her callousness made Cage think of other doctors. Other times.
She glanced at him and explained, though he hadn’t asked. “The Tammy Fund has a box at the ballpark and they give it to a different R-ONC department after each game. The kids love it. We’ve got tickets for next week.”
Cage shrugged. “Baseball’s okay.”
He felt the damaged ligaments in his pitching arm ache. The pain was duller than the throb in his soul, but both reminded him of a man who’d cared more for his career than his family.
“Do I know you?” The soft question pulled Cage from the memory of broken promises and busted dreams, but he had no answer for the girl. Nor did he take the hand she offered when she said, “I’m Olivia Minton.”
“Cage. And no, we haven’t met.” He backed away on the pretext of flipping the green binder open and studying an unseen column of numbers.
“Don’t worry, kids. He’s rude to everyone.” Ripley glared at him and herded the children away. “Did you just stop by to say hi, or did you want something?”
“We wanted to say hi,” Livvy said staunchly at the same time Milo breathed, “We wanted some markers.”
Ripley laughed and the sound zinged through Cage. “Going to tattoo yourselves again?” She crossed to a desk drawer and pulled out a handful of pens. “Just remember, these are the permanent ones we use to mark you for radiation treatment. The ink takes weeks to fade.”
Milo cheered softly and clutched the pens in his lap like a prize. Livvy thanked Ripley and cast one long look back at Cage before she pushed Milo out the door, but Cage didn’t tell the girl where she’d seen him before.
He was five years, one court battle and a master’s degree in Health Physics away from being that man. His love of the game had faltered, leaving behind a need for revenge.
“They’re not contagious,” Ripley said without preamble as she stalked back over to him, holding a thick binder as if she wanted to smack him with it. “You won’t catch cancer from shaking hands.” She didn’t say you jerk, but it was implied.
“Those your wipe logs? Thanks.” Ignoring the dig, Cage grabbed the ledger and opened it on the nearest table, though he knew what he’d see. Nothing. He’d already figured he wasn’t going to find a single digit out of place in the R-ONC department. He’d bet that every sheet was filled in to the last MilliCurie of radioactive material and the last tenth of a rad of waste. He’d find every bottle of neutralizer filled to the brim and every employee’s training up to date.
And he’d bet his job she was hiding something.
He hefted the logbooks and ignored the twinge of protest from his shoulder. “I’ll get these back to you when I’ve gone over everything.”
“Fine. Just don’t shut me down, okay? I have patients that depend on me.” She glanced over and tucked a strand of curly dark hair behind her ear. The gesture was strangely vulnerable. “We do good things here, Cage. We save lives.”
Cage didn’t say anything, because his answer would have been you don’t save all of them, and that would never do. Instead, he repeated, “I’ll get these back to you when I’m done with them,” and escaped out into the hall beyond the R-ONC doors.
Once he was outside her offices, he leaned against a decorative column and concentrated on breathing air that didn’t carry a faint hint of her scent. He had to clear his head. He didn’t have time to get tied up over a woman. Any woman. Especially a R-ONC.
“You okay, boss?” As seemed to be his habit, Whistler appeared out of nowhere.
“Fine.” Cage didn’t want to talk about R-ONC, or about the way Ripley Davis made him feel mad and guilty and horny all at once. Nor did he want to talk about the rumors of radioactivity gone astray. He wasn’t sure who he could trust in the Rad Safety department yet. If anyone. “Any calls this morning?”
“Nothing exciting or I would’ve paged you.” The young man shrugged. “A few gray egg deliveries.” The radioactive material arrived in lead-lined capsules. It was delivered to Rad Safety, checked in and dispersed to the labs.
Everything was checked and double-checked. There was no radioactivity in the hospital that couldn’t be accounted for each and every moment of the day. So where the hell had the nukes supposedly found in the broom closet come from? Cage had no idea, but the concept was unnerving. Since he was working on coffee-shop rumor and speculation, he had no evidence, either.
When he’d brought it up with the Head Administrator, Gabney had stared at him, hard, and prattled on about the Hospital of the Year award. Cage had gotten the message.
Don’t rock the boat.
Too bad for Gabney it was Cage’s mission in life to do exactly that. Heather had died because a group of doctors hadn’t wanted to make waves. Cage had vowed it wouldn’t happen again.
The doors to the R-ONC department swung open and there was Ripley Davis, marching across the foyer to the stairs. Cage’s head came up. “Here. Take these.” He shoved the R-ONC radiation logs at Whistler. “Check them against our databases, but don’t worry if you don’t find anything. I bet they’re up to date.”
Whistler’s eyes cut from Ripley to Cage and back. “What’re you going to do?”
“I’m going to have a little chat with Dr. Davis,” Cage said, feeling an unfamiliar tingle of anticipation. “I think she and I have gotten off on the wrong foot.”
Whistler snorted. “Good luck. She can be a real hard case with people who’re trying to interfere with R-ONC. Her head tech used to say Dr. Davis treats that department like it’s her husband, and the patients like her children.”
Cage’s eyes followed her figure down the stairs, admiring the long, no-nonsense stride and the gentle sway of hip and hair. He grimaced. Husband. Children.
In his experience, doctors gave little value to family.
TANSY WAS LATE for their midmorning coffee break, so Ripley sat alone at the rear of the hospital café with her back to the room and hoped everyone got the hint. She was in no mood for company.
She scowled at her muffin and wished the new Radiation Safety Officer to the devil. It was his fault she felt out of synch today. She was tired because she’d dreamed about him and she was behind schedule because he’d insisted on testing each of the treatment machines separately, though there hadn’t been an accelerator-related death in four or five years.
And she was worried because she couldn’t help feeling Zachary Cage had seen more than she wanted him to, both in the lab and in her. If he and the Head Administrator ganged up against R-ONC, she’d be out in a minute. Her patients would be farmed out and forgotten, and she’d wind up doing a hundred Pap smears a day in her father’s practice.
Ripley bowed her head as tears threatened and the bruises left by Ida Mae’s husband throbbed.
“There you are!” The dark, rough voice spoke close at her shoulder for the second time that day, but she didn’t give Cage the satisfaction of seeing her flinch. Somehow, she’d known he was there. A hint of electricity in the air, a shadow of heat had warned her of his presence.
“Go away,” she muttered as he slid onto the wall bench opposite her, “I’m waiting for someone.”
She could meet rude with rude any day.
“I saw Dr. Whitmore in the hall. She asked me to tell you she was on the way to an autopsy and she’d see you at lunch.” He grinned, but the motion of his face didn’t lighten the darkness of his eyes one bit. He knew very well she didn’t want him there. “So I’ll keep you company instead.”
His legs were so long his knees bumped hers beneath the tiny table, sending a buzz of warmth through her thighs. Her chair was bolted to the floor. She couldn’t slide away, and Cage didn’t seem in any hurry to move.
“Why should I want your company?” She remembered the look in his eyes when Livvy’s favorite wig fell off. Scowling, she tried to scoot away from the warm pressure of the knees bracketing hers.
Cage took a hit of his coffee and grimaced as though it didn’t go down quite right. “We both know I won’t find anything when I look over those logs.”
She slanted him a look as wariness sizzled through her. He was fishing. “Meaning?”
“Meaning that your records are clean and your protocols are up to snuff, yet I think you’re hiding something. Care to let me in on it? You can start by telling me about those papers on your desk.”
Ripley wrapped her hands around her coffee cup and wished it were his neck. She decided to meet rude with angry. Anger was better than the guilt of knowing she couldn’t explain Ida Mae’s death. She snapped, “I don’t like your tone, Mr. Cage, and I don’t like your implication. I—” Her cell phone rang. “Excuse me.” She flipped open the slim phone. “Dr. Davis.”
“Ripley! You’ve got to get down to autopsy right now.” Tansy’s voice was tight with tension and Ripley fought the quick panic as she remembered where her friend had gone.
To oversee Ida Mae’s autopsy.
Ripley kept her voice steady, professional, all too aware of the RSO sitting across from her. Aware of the pressure of his knees against hers, the accusation that hung in the air as she said, “I’ll be right there. Can you tell me what’s wrong?”
“It’s Ida Mae.” Tansy paused and in the live silence Ripley heard Cage’s beeper sound. He looked at the display, cursed and stood just as Tansy said, “The body’s radioactive, Rip. She’s so hot she’s practically glowing.”
Chapter Three
“I hope this is Whistler’s idea of a joke,” Cage muttered as the elevator descended. His beeper read 911C-B110, which translated to “emergency—contamination in room B110.” Nukes in the basement? That didn’t make any sense.
Aware of two nurses and a civilian sharing the car, he didn’t ask about Ripley’s phone call, but she was headed down to the basement on the double. The thought that they were bound for the same place bothered him, though he couldn’t have said why.
“Coming?” Ripley held the door with obvious impatience. He stepped out into the long, damp hallway, aware of the faint hum beneath his skin, a tingle left over from the intimate press of her knees beneath the café table. He frowned.
This was neither the time nor the place for desire. And it certainly wasn’t the right woman.
Still, he moved closer to her side as they strode down the hall. Harris had said something about a phone call, and her file was missing from his desk. His instincts, which he’d learned to heed, gave him a sharp poke, a hint of suspicion. What if Ripley Davis wasn’t a sloppy doctor after all?
What if she was in trouble?
His mind rejected the idea, but his heart wasn’t so sure. And he’d be damned if he let another woman be hurt while he concentrated on other things.
“Rip!” Tansy Whitmore was waiting in the hall, and Cage thought she looked even worse than she had that morning, when he’d noticed the dark shadows beneath her eyes and the deep grooves beside her mouth. Pretty and blond was one thing. Pretty, blond and haunted was another. It made him wonder just what Dr. Whitmore might be hiding. What she knew. “Ida Mae’s body is—”
“Tansy!” Ripley interrupted with a quick look back at Cage. A line had just been drawn with him on one side, the women on the other. Inclining his head in acknowledgement, he opened the door to B110 and gestured them into the autopsy room. He grimaced when the smell hit.
Death, with a pathetic overtone of air freshener.
“Hey, boss.” Whistler leaned over a body bag with no apparent regard for the funk in the room or the smear of…something on his shirt. Cage had thought before that his nominal second-in-command was a tad strange. Now he was sure of it.
“What’ve we got?” He hadn’t meant to bark the question, but it echoed in the fetid room and battled with the cheerful hip-hop blatting from a radio sitting high above the metal slabs.
Whistler straightened unhurriedly. “We started the radiation sweeps you ordered down here in the basement. You know, work the hospital from bottom to top?”
Cage noticed that the pathologist and the women were huddled at the end of the room. “You paged me for contamination. Where is it?”
And why the hell was there radiation in the morgue?
Whistler jerked his chin at the body, which had been only partially unzipped from its bag. “Right here. Ida Mae Harris is hotter than a Las Vegas showgirl.”
What the—? “Then stand back,” Cage snapped. “You’re not wearing a protective suit, you idiot.” No wonder the others were plastered against the far wall. When Whistler obligingly ambled out of range, Cage said, “Where’s she contaminated?”
“Not ‘where,’ boss.” The tech shook his head and shrugged to indicate that he didn’t understand it. “She’s hot everywhere, and I don’t think it’s surface contamination.” He picked up a portable Geiger counter, cranked it on and waved the wand toward the body bag.
The machine’s howl drowned out both the music and Ripley’s gasp. Cage looked over at her and their eyes met and held. He saw surprised horror. Confusion. And…guilt? Then she glanced over at her friend, and Cage saw the curtain drop over her emotions.
He’d get no more from Ripley Davis. Her priorities were clear. Herself first, the members of her department second and the hospital third. Then maybe the patients fourth or fifth.
Just like every other R-ONC he’d ever dealt with.
With unaccountable disappointment sliding through him, Cage glanced down at the pathologist’s notes. The woman’s name jumped out at him. Ida Mae Harris.
This was the wife of the man who had attacked Ripley the day before. Coincidence? He thought not. Suddenly, the distraught husband’s words in the atrium took on a far more sinister meaning.
Dr. Davis killed my wife.
Cage glanced over at her. It was difficult to see the slender brunette as a killer, but he’d learned the hard way that death in a hospital was not always a simple thing. There were often many players. Many mistakes. In his mind, she slid back from “victim” to “suspect” as he reached for his phone and called the Rad Safety Office. “We need all of you down here, pronto,” he barked when one of the techs answered, grouchy at having his card game interrupted. “We need to isolate the morgue, decontaminate everything in it, and dispose of this body.”
“You can’t do that!”
He glanced over at Ripley. She’d advanced to the center of the room with her hands fisted as though she’d fight him for the body. Her breasts lifted with the force of her agitated breathing, and he fought the elemental sexual awareness that clawed at him when she took a step closer.
He leaned down and had the satisfaction of seeing her eyes widen a fraction, though the surge of heat between them was less satisfying. “Yes, I can and I just did. Dixon may have used the RSO job to harass the female doctors who turned him down for dates, but I’m here to keep this hospital safe. That includes isolating radioactively contaminated items.”
Ripley snapped, “That’s not an ‘item.’ It’s a woman’s body. Her name was Ida Mae Harris, and her husband wants to know why she died. Remember him, Cage? Are you going to tell Harris that he can’t bury his wife because she’s going to spend the next thirty half-lives in a fifty-five-gallon drum in the subbasement? Are you going to tell him we won’t autopsy her because we’re afraid of contamination? He doesn’t care about any of that. Frankly, I don’t care about it, either. I want the autopsy done as quickly as possible.”
Why was she arguing for the autopsy? He’d have thought she would want the whole incident buried. Or cremated. It was the surest way to cover a mistake.
What was her angle, then? There had to be one. Doctors didn’t do anything without an agenda, but what was hers? Because she was absolutely right. For the good of the patient and the hospital, they’d have to find a way to examine the body without nuking anyone. He frowned, confused.
Whose side was Ripley Davis on?
“What was wrong with Mrs. Harris?” Whistler interrupted, “Besides the obvious.”
“Breast cancer,” Ripley answered. “She had a small lump removed.”
Thinking fast, Cage asked, “What radiation treatment?” Some of the newer methods involved implanting a radioactive seed in place of the tumor. If the seed hadn’t been properly removed, it could account for the woman’s contamination.
“She’d had two treatments under the A55,” Ripley replied, and Cage’s heart iced at the reminder of another linear accelerator. Another patient. Heather. His wife had gone in for a simple radiation treatment and died mere days later. He barely heard Ripley say, “But that couldn’t account for the contamination. The accelerator beams radiation into the body. There’s no residual source.”
Whistler chimed in from across the room, “And that’s not all, boss. There are hot spots all over the room with varying count levels.” He grinned at the pathologist, who looked as though she might faint. There was a strange, unsettling fascination in Whistler’s expression. “I’ll bet they’ve autopsied radioactive bodies here before and never even knew it.”
“OH, GOD. THAT WAS AWFUL.” Once she and Tansy were back in the R-ONC inner office, Ripley sank to the sofa and covered her face with her hands. She couldn’t believe Ida Mae’s body was radioactive. What the hell had gone wrong?
She’d sat and talked with Ida Mae, just as she visited with each of her patients. She waited with them. Agonized with them. Loved them. And now this? It was unthinkable.
“Nothing was…odd about her treatment, right, Ripley?” Reluctant doubt edged Tansy’s tone. Just back from an overseas assignment with her partner, she hadn’t been in town when Ida Mae had started her treatment.
“It was textbook, Tans. I swear. I have no idea how this could have happened.” Ripley dropped her hands and leaned back, staring at the ceiling. “No idea at all. Damn it.”
“What about the other spots Whistler found in the morgue?”
That discovery had chilled Ripley to the bone. She shook her head. “I hope he was wrong. If not, then…” She faltered. If not, it meant radioactive bodies had been processed in the morgue before.
She took a deep breath. R-ONC was her department. Everything that went on inside its walls was her responsibility. Ergo, it was up to her to figure out what had happened to Ida Mae Harris. With a little help from Tansy.
But when she lifted her head to make the suggestion, Ripley saw that her best friend was practically dozing on her feet. She looked terrible. Quick concern rose. “Tansy, you look like you’re ready to drop. Why don’t you head on home? Better yet, page Dale and let him take you home and put you to bed.” Dr. Dale Metcalf, infectious disease specialist, was Tansy’s partner on overseas assignments. And her lover. Though Ripley didn’t believe in happily ever after for herself, it looked as if Tansy and Dale had a pretty good shot at it.
“We broke up.”
“You what!?” Ripley stared at her best friend, finally realizing that the red tint to Tansy’s eyes and the hollows in her cheeks weren’t all due to her friend’s habitual insomnia. There had been a good dose of tears as well. “When? Why?”
“It doesn’t matter.” When Ripley would’ve argued, Tansy held up a hand. “Not now, okay? I think you’re right about taking the rest of the day off, though. I’ll be back on Sunday for rounds.”
Ripley nodded, knowing that for all her outward cheerfulness, Tansy had a private streak that ran deep. She’d talk about her problems when she was ready to and not before. “See you Sunday, then.” Ripley would simply have to work on Ida Mae’s case herself. There had to be a clue in the clinical notes.
“Dr. Rip?” The breathy voice from the doorway had both women turning.
Milo sagged in his wheelchair with a jumble of pens in his lap. At Ripley’s wave, the volunteer, Belle, pushed him in and took the markers from the sleepy boy’s hands.
“Livvy’s gone home, but Milo wanted to return these to you personally. Shall I put them in your office?” Belle was a tiny woman of indeterminate age who had been volunteering at Boston General for many years. When her father had died the year before, leaving her comfortably well-off but alone, she had begun spending more and more time at the hospital. Now, she divided her time amongst her favorite patients and the hospital chapel.
“Thanks, Belle. You can just leave them on my desk. I’ll sort them and put them away later.”
By the time the volunteer had completed her errand and wheeled Milo back out into the hall, the little boy was fast asleep.
“He worries me,” Ripley said to Tansy, thinking that the chemotherapy and radiation treatments were hurting Milo more than they were hurting the cancer. The boy was simply tired, and his family’s continued absence wasn’t helping Ripley keep his spirits up. If she had a precious child like that…
“You should be more worried about your A55 right now, Dr. Davis.” The dark voice was a shock, but it was the touch of his hand on her shoulder that had Ripley jolting and spinning around.
“Cage!” She’d been so caught up in watching Milo slump toward sick, exhausted sleep that she’d missed both Tansy’s escape and the RSO’s entrance. That was why her heart was racing, she told herself, not because the imprint of his hand burned her shoulder like fire. Then she processed his words and the heat of surprise shifted quickly to anger, both at his disregard for the child and for his implication. “And why should I worry about the accelerator? You checked it yourself this morning. It’s fine.”
“A patient that you irradiated is dead, Dr. Davis, and her corpse is contaminated. I think you should worry a great deal.”
He shouldn’t be so appealing, Ripley thought as her eyes glanced over his stubble-shadowed jaw, when he was threatening her. But for some reason, his antagonism was compelling. Perhaps it was the taint of grief at the back of his eyes. She wondered, not for the first time, what had happened to him. Why did he work in a hospital and hate doctors? Who had he lost, and how had it scarred him so?
Why, thought Ripley to herself with a mental shake, are you trying to romanticize him when he’s being a jerk?
Aloud, she replied, “Of course I’m worried about Ida Mae’s contamination.” He had no idea how worried she was, just as he had no idea that Ida Mae shouldn’t have died. “But I can’t see how the linear accelerator could be involved.”
“It’s killed before.”
The flat pronouncement startled her, as did the menace behind the words. The glimmer of an idea formed in the back of her mind, prompted by the tendril of grief she sensed within him. “True,” she said cautiously, “but the last of those lawsuits was settled years ago. The technology’s improved and the linear accelerator doesn’t leave a source behind. Can you honestly think of a way this machine could cause the sort of Geiger counter reading Whistler was getting off Ida Mae today?”
She had to give him credit. He actually thought about it for a minute before his shoulders relaxed a fraction. “No. I can’t.”
Ripley blew out a breath. “Which means she wasn’t contaminated by her treatment.” It was only a minor relief, because that still left two questions. What had killed her, and what had contaminated her?
“Well, in that case,” Cage began, “if we agree for the moment that the A55 isn’t capable of leaving a radioactive source behind, we have to assume that Mrs. Harris was either fed, injected or washed with something contaminated.”
The list was chilling. Ripley suppressed a shiver. “I guess we’ll know more tomorrow, once your lab has done some preliminary tests.” She switched gears. “You are going to allow us to autopsy, right? I mean, the radioactivity didn’t kill her, so we need to find out what did.”
Cage looked at her sideways. “Worried now? Starting to hear the M-word in the back of your mind?”
It took her a moment before she realized what he was talking about. Malpractice. She bristled. “Contrary to what you think, Cage, not every doctor focuses on covering his or her ass. Some of us are focused on doing the best we can for our patients.” She fisted her hands at her hips. “Yes, I’m worried. Damn worried. But radiation poisoning is a slow process, and Ida Mae didn’t show any symptoms. The radiation didn’t kill her.”
Cage made a sound that could have been a growl, could have been a curse, and he spun to pace across the outer office. “So it’s no big deal that she was contaminated? Since she didn’t die from it, we don’t need to be upset?”
“That’s not what I’m saying at all. Don’t put words in my mouth!” Now Ripley was angry, pure and simple. “Do you see me trying to sweep this under the rug? Am I pretending nothing is wrong? No. I care what happened to Ida Mae, and I’m going to figure it out if it kills me.”
“Forgive me if I find that hard to believe,” he growled, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was glaring toward the outer office doors, where the R-ONC label could be read backward through the glass. “You’re all the same. Money first, acclaim second, righteousness third and patients somewhere down around tenth or so.”
Ripley drew breath to blast him into next week, but something about his profile stopped her. His throat worked once, twice, and his hands balled into fists as though he wanted to lash out, yet the grief etched on his face was that of someone who’s been lost for a long, long time.
All of a sudden, he reminded her of Milo.
She crossed the room and touched his shoulder. “Whatever happened to you, Cage, I’m sorry. Maybe you have good reason for thinking this way, but it’s not fair. I’m a good doctor. I’m not in it for the money or the fame. I’m here to help people. You shouldn’t try to blame me for that or twist my motives. You don’t have the right.”
He lifted his hand and it hovered for a moment above hers, until she thought he might return her touch. But then he let his hand fall and stepped away from her.
“I apologize, Dr. Davis.” He was talking to the glass door, and she saw the muscles in his jaw bunch and flex as he swallowed hard and straightened to his full height. “That was unprofessional of me, and you’re right. We need to work together to figure out what happened with Ida Mae Harris.”
“That wasn’t quite what I had—”
He interrupted, “If you’ll get me a copy of her workup for the radiation treatment, I’ll study it tonight.”
Ripley wasn’t sure what to say. For a moment, she’d thought she’d seen something sad and lonely beneath the fierce brows and black eyes. But it could have been her imagination. The man standing before her looked as though he’d never had a weak moment in his life.
In fact, at that moment Cage reminded Ripley quite strongly of her father—the most angry, domineering, perpetually correct individual on the planet. The comparison quickly killed her moment of pity.
She ground her teeth. “I’ll get the paperwork.” And then you can get out of here.
When he was gone, she sat at her desk for a good five minutes, waiting for her system to level. She imagined steam coming out of her ears, and the mental picture was satisfying. But as anger slowly drained, she was left feeling empty and alone.
The sore spots from Harris’s fingers ached down to the bone, and the outer office echoed strangely when footsteps walked past in the hallway. Ripley shivered and heard a muted tinkle from the pocket of her lab coat when the broken glass stem chimed against a pair of pens.
The sound seemed unnaturally loud. Even the vents were shut down.
“I shouldn’t have sent Cage away,” she said into the quiet. “Being aggravated is better than this.” Her words didn’t even echo. They seemed to fall dead the moment they left her lips, but there was a slide of answering motion out in the hallway.
“Hello?” Suddenly desperate for the sight of another human being, Ripley stood and walked across the outer office to poke her head into the hallway. “Hello, is there someone out there?”
The corridor was deserted, but the door to the broom closet was ajar.
“Hello?” she called, walking to the closet. “Mr. Frank, are you in there?” The maintenance crew generally worked the late evening shift, but perhaps the janitor was starting early today. Ripley was so thoroughly freaked out by the bad vibes in her office that even the dour old man’s company would be a relief.
She peeked inside the storage room, where a small army of cleaning supplies was shelved beside a collection of mops and a hulking floor waxer. The overhead light was on. She stepped inside and said, “Mr. Frank?” though it was obvious that the tiny space was empty. She was turning to leave when a faint hiss and a whiff of something nasty drew her to the far corner. She crouched down and sniffed. Her heart picked up a notch.
“Mr. Frank,” she called, readily identifying the odor and its cause. “One of your bottles is leaking!”
The only response was a soft clicking sound and a sudden deadening of the air. Ripley froze. She turned and stared at the door.
It was shut.
The hissing grew louder, and in the light of the single bulb above her head, she saw a cloud of vapor rising from the corner. The smell grew worse. Her eyes watered and the back of her throat started to burn. She grabbed the doorknob and twisted.
It didn’t move.
Ripley stared at the knob in disbelief. She rattled it. Numb shock poured through her and she coughed. The bitter air scorched her throat. The pain spurred hot, hard panic.
“Help!” she yelled, “The door shut behind me and there’s gas. Let me out.” She rattled the knob harder, barely able to see it through a river of tears. She thought she heard a footstep in the hall and yelled louder, “Mr. Frank? Anyone? Open the door!”
She pressed her ear to the wood and heard nothing over the hiss of bubbling chemicals.
Chemicals. She wrapped the lab coat over her face and slitted her eyes against the sting as she crouched down and peered behind the waxing machine. A pair of bottles leaned drunkenly against each other. Drain cleaner spread from one in a garish blue pool. Bleach leaked from the other, and where the two puddles merged, vapor bubbled and hissed.
Chlorine! She had to get out of there. Fast.
Galvanized, yet already weakened by the foul air, Ripley grabbed a broom from the corner and beat the handle against the door. “Help! Help, there’s gas in here. Let me out!” She inhaled to yell again and choked.
It hurt to breathe. It hurt to keep her eyes open. It even hurt to beat on the door. Oxygen. She needed oxygen. Ripley crouched down and sucked at the narrow crack beneath the door, but the seal was tight.
Holding the lab coat over her face, she battled back through the thickening fog and tried to nudge the bleach bottle away from the drain cleaner. But the gas had fuddled her coordination. She pushed too hard, and the bottles tipped over. Bleach splashed into the blue puddle and the reaction was instantaneous.
A gout of vapor erupted. Ripley reeled back and fell against the door, sinking to her knees as her strength failed. Blackness crowded her vision as she gave a few feeble whacks at the door and called, “Help me. Somebody, please help me!”
She thought she heard another footstep in the hall.
Then she thought nothing.
Chapter Four
The anger swirled deep inside Cage as he stalked the halls of Boston General. He didn’t like the effect Ripley Davis had on him. He didn’t like the things she made him remember. Made him want. She wasn’t anything like Heather had been, yet he was drawn to her. It didn’t seem to matter that she was everything he despised.
He valued honesty. She wasn’t telling him the whole truth.
He hated doctors, especially R-ONCs. She was head of the department.
His priority was protecting the patients from doctors. One of her patients was dead. Radioactive. And her biggest priority was saving her own hide.
Just like all the others.
He halted in the middle of the wide elevator lobby. So why was he walking back to Radiation Safety? He should be in R-ONC, questioning her until she broke down and admitted to taking the personnel file off his desk, until she told him everything she knew about Ida Mae Harris and the radioactivity Dixon supposedly found in the broom closet.
He had an ugly suspicion the two were related.
“Damn it.” He spun on his heel and marched back the way he’d come. “This time, I’m not leaving until I have some answers.”
But when he reached the outer office, Cage found R-ONC deserted. “It’s almost five on a Friday.” He cursed. “What did I expect? Dedication?”
Noticing that the door to the inner office stood ajar, he crossed the carpeted floor and peered inside. It was empty. Casually glancing back toward the corridor, he eased across the room to her desk, feeling awkward even as he assured himself it was the right thing to do.
He needed to know what she’d been hiding that morning. He needed to see those papers. They weren’t on her desk, so he was reaching for the top drawer when he heard a thump out in the hallway. It didn’t sound like Ripley Davis’s purposeful stride, but he didn’t want to be caught rifling through her stuff. Feeling ashamed by his actions, though he couldn’t have said why, he walked across the outer office and peered into the hall.
It was deserted. A faint whiff of cleaning solution suggested that the janitor had begun his work for the evening. Satisfied, Cage turned back to the inner office. Another thump brought him up short. This time he thought he heard a voice.
“Help me.”
“What the hell?” Adrenaline kicked him into the hall, which was still empty. The corridor was lined with closed doors. Heart pounding, he yelled, “Hello? Does somebody need help?”
There was no response, but the smell of cleaning solvent grew stronger. He wrinkled his nose and glanced over at the R-ONC broom closet, where Dixon had found the jar of radioactive material.
There was a key in the lock.
“Hello? Is someone in there?” The smell was stronger near the door, but there was no answer. Maybe he’d imagined the voice. His heart pounded as he twisted the key and pulled open the door.
Ripley Davis tumbled out at his feet, followed by a cloud of thick, choking air.
Shock poured through him, followed by panic. She wasn’t moving. He wasn’t even sure she was breathing.
She looked dead.
“Christ!” When he inhaled, the reflexive cough practically tore his throat apart. Choking, he lifted her in his arms and cradled her limp body against his chest. He staggered away from the closet. Away from the poisoned air. “Dr. Davis! Ripley! Can you hear me?” The words were trapped in his burning lungs, but the pressure eased once they were in the fresher air of the outer office.
She felt light in his arms. Too light, as though the life had already drained from her.
He slammed the door shut and lowered her to the floor. He knelt beside her, as close to praying as he’d been for half a decade. Trying not to remember that his prayers had been ignored before.
“Come on, Ripley. Come on, baby, breathe!” His hands shook as he fumbled for his phone. “Come on, damn it. Breathe!”
And she did.
She took a gasping breath. Then another. Then she started to cough and struggle weakly against him. A spurt of pure relief sizzled through Cage. She was alive.
Barely.
He couldn’t even name all the emotions that flooded through him. Wasn’t even sure he wanted to. He sagged down beside her and pulled her onto his lap. “You’re okay. Just breathe. Take it nice and easy.” He soothed her with mindless words as she curled into him. “Easy now. You’re okay. I’ve got you.”
He felt an impotent rage build. He’d been tossing her office while she was in dire danger.
With every deadly incident, it became clearer that she needed his protection, not his suspicion.
Too soon, she tried to talk. She gasped, “Call…HazMat,” between breaths in a voice as scratchy as raw wool. “Chlorine.”
He placed the call, directing the Hazardous Materials crew to the closet and deflecting their questions with a curt, “No, I don’t know what the hell happened. Just get down here.” He glanced down at Ripley, who was curled against his chest, shaking. His heart constricted. He’d almost been too late. Again. What the hell was going on here? “Hang on. I’ll call the ER and get a gurney sent up.
Her sudden grip on his wrist was firm, though she was still shivering with reaction. “No…ER. I’ll be…fine.” She pushed off his lap and shook her head. “Not…weak in public.”
He missed the feel of her against him even as his mind registered the danger in the emotion. He faced her down, saying, “Bull. You were gassed unconscious. You’re going to the ER and no arguments.” He glared to let her know he was serious.
Finally, she nodded. “Okay.” She wiped her cheeks with the back of one hand in a vulnerable, almost childlike sweep, and said, “Thank you. I didn’t think anyone was…” She took a breath. “Thank you.” When he reached for her, she shifted away. “No. I’m fine. I can hold myself up.”
Cage dropped his hand, realizing he’d wanted the contact for himself, and knowing his brain was right in thinking she spelled danger. She was in danger, and she was dangerous. Of all the women he’d met since Heather’s death, she was the first one he was attracted to. The first one who might make him lose sight of his purpose. His vow.
His penance.
There was a commotion out in the hall as the gurney arrived on the heels of the HazMat team. Ripley was loaded onto the bed over her protests that she could walk just fine. As they wheeled her away, Cage could hear her say over the rising din in the hallway, “Nobody calls my father, understand? I don’t want anyone to know about this.”
He hesitated, knowing that meant she’d be alone. Vulnerable. Then he shook his head. She’d be surrounded by people. Nothing could hurt her in the ER.
He hoped.
“Mr. Cage, over here!” One of the HazMat guys waved.
Seeing that the big inspirators were sucking the last of the fumes out of the closet, Cage glanced in. “What have you got?”
“I’ve got a gassy closet, that’s what I’ve got.” The protective-suited figure pointed to the far corner of the little room. “A couple of bottles fell off the shelves and leaked into each other. Add drain cleaner to bleach and poof!” He spread his hands wide. “Instant chlorine gas. Luckily it was contained in this space.”
“Dr. Davis was locked in the closet at the time,” Cage said, watching the other man’s eyes widen.
“No kidding! What was she doing in here? Is she okay?”
“She’ll make it,” he replied, thinking that he had no idea what she’d been doing in the closet. Now that she was gone, and her presence wasn’t distracting him, his thoughts turned in a new direction. A less welcome, more familiar direction. Deception. What if she’d been in the closet hiding more nukes? Or removing them? He hated himself for it, but couldn’t set the suspicion aside. “Do you have a Geiger counter with you?”
“Sure.” Another suited man handed it over. “But why bother? Chlorine gas isn’t radioactive.”
No kidding. Cage didn’t bother to answer, he simply cranked on the Geiger counter and swept the room.
Nothing. Relief skittered through him, followed by a sense of shame. He’d been searching her desk while she was locked in the closet with poisonous gas. Now he was scanning the closet that had almost been her death, while she was down in the ER. Alone.
If he didn’t get his head screwed on straight and figure out whether to protect Ripley or build a case against her, he’d end up doing neither. He didn’t think he could bear another death on his conscience.
“How’d she lock herself in?” the first guy asked. “These doors unlock from the inside.”
“Not if you leave the key on the other side.” Cage fingered the metal object in his pocket. “I’m sure it was an accident.”
Three masked faces peered at him in astonishment. “What else would it be?” one asked.
Cage touched the key again, considering. Worrying. He couldn’t believe that she’d accidentally locked herself in the closet and knocked over the bottles of cleaner. But what was the alternative? A conspiracy gone awry? A plot against her? None of it made sense. He shook his head. “Never mind. I’ll talk to you later. I’m going down to the ER to make sure she’s okay.”
He had a few questions for Ripley Davis. Then he was going to wait with her in the ER, whether she liked it or not.
Nobody, not even a R-ONC, deserved to stay in the hospital alone.
TWO HOURS LATER, Ripley and Cage were buzzed into Leo Gabney’s office. Her throat still stung and her eyes were an odd shade of red, but she knew Cage’s arrival had been her salvation. A few minutes more and she’d have been facing serious lung damage. Or worse.
She suppressed a shiver and took a step nearer Cage. She frowned and moved away again, knowing she couldn’t afford the weakness. He’d saved her twice in two days, and she was physically drawn to him. But that didn’t mean she could count on him. Didn’t mean she liked him.
Didn’t mean she wanted him.
He was rude. He was afraid of cancer patients. He was the RSO and she was a heartbeat away from losing her department.
And he reminded her of her father.
Besides, Cage had been sending conflicting signals ever since he’d shown up in the ER. Sometimes she had felt protected by his fierce bulk. Other times it seemed as though he thought she’d locked herself in the closet to throw off suspicion. That he thought she’d killed Ida Mae and was trying to cover it up.
He might not be able to make up his mind, Ripley thought, but she had. She didn’t need Zachary Cage to protect her. She was just fine on her own.
Except that he’s saved you twice in two days. And you liked it when he held you. Unable to deny the truth of it, Ripley ground her teeth as the Head Administrator waved them to chairs facing his ocean-sized desk.
“Dr. Davis. Mr. Cage.” Gabney sat down and grew six inches. Rumor had it his desk chair was so tall his feet didn’t hit the floor. “What’s this I hear about problems in Radiation Oncology?”
“Big problems.” Cage rose to his feet and prowled the spacious room like a jungle cat, pausing for a moment in front of the scale model of the Gabney Wing that would be built if, no, when Boston General won the ten-million-dollar grant. “Dr. Davis was attacked yesterday by a patient’s husband.”
Ripley couldn’t guess the mood behind Gabney’s pudgy face and cool gray eyes. She’d never been able to read the Head Administrator, even the day he’d called her in to tell her R-ONC was next on the downsizing list. The little man had savored the news, knowing it was an underhanded blow at her father, Howard Davis, who had been Gabney’s predecessor as Head Administrator. Now he shrugged. “The Harris case is old news, and it’s been dealt with.”
Startled, she asked, “What do you mean, ‘dealt with’?” How could Ida Mae’s death have been settled when they still didn’t know why she died?
A small smile tugged at the administrator’s lips. “We can’t have rumors that our head R-ONC killed a patient, now, can we? At least not until the award has been given out.” He sniffed and flicked his fingers to indicate that the attack had been a nuisance rather than a real threat to Ripley’s life. “The witnesses have been spoken to, and I smoothed things over with Mr. Harris personally, though we may revisit the topic in a few weeks.”
The subtext was clear. Gabney needed R-ONC intact for the vote. After that, she was expendable, and so was her department. Damn it! With no local R-ONC openings, she would either have to give in to her father’s demands or start over in a new city. A new hospital.
And what of her patients here? She feared some of them, like little Milo, would fall through the cracks and disappear. She couldn’t let that happen.
But at the same time, she couldn’t ignore Ida Mae’s death or the radioactivity in her body. Nor could she ignore Cage, who asked, “What did Mr. Harris say when you spoke to him? Yesterday, he said the voice—”
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Jessica Andersen
HOT BODIESAfter another patient mysteriously turned up dead, Dr. Ripley Davis began desperately seeking answers. Until radiation safety officer Zachary Cage stormed into her office with an array of accusations and brimming with male sex appeal. Ripley didn't have time to convince the brooding man she was innocent. She was trying to save her next patient and stay alive.Cage had once sworn to protect innocent patients from their doctors' mistakes, but Ripley's fiery resolve to seek the truth–and her soft curves–soon melted his doubts and touched his heart. She was enticing–and in danger. And only Cage could save her from the deadly killer who had made the beautiful doctor his prime target.
“Look, Cage. I know you’re just trying to do your job. But those are my patients dying.”
“And it’s your reputation on the line,” he said without thinking, and saw Ripley’s eyes darken further, this time with anger.
“No, Cage—my patients. I don’t care about anything else right now.”
He wished he could explain what he was feeling, but the barriers were still too thick, the walls too high. “I know you’re a good doctor, Ripley.”
She cocked her head. “Does this mean you want a truce?”
Yes, he wanted a truce with her. He wanted a lifetime. But he’d been a terrible husband once before. He knew better than to try again. So he nodded. “Sure, a truce. Can we start with you giving me a lift home?”
She turned to leave, and he followed her out to the street, gazing at her legs and feeling the hairs on the back of his neck prickle to attention, like there was someone watching.
Someone waiting.
Dear Harlequin Intrigue Reader,
August marks a special month at Harlequin Intrigue as we commemorate our twentieth anniversary! Over the past two decades we’ve satisfied our devoted readers’ diverse appetites with a vast smorgasbord of romantic suspense page-turners. Now, as we look forward to the future, we continue to stand by our promise to deliver thrilling mysteries penned by stellar authors.
As part of our celebration, our much-anticipated new promotion, ECLIPSE, takes flight. With one book planned per month, these stirring Gothic-inspired stories will sweep you into an entrancing landscape of danger, deceit…and desire. Leona Karr sets the stage for mind-bending mystery with debut title, A Dangerous Inheritance.
A high-risk undercover assignment turns treacherous when smoldering seduction turns to forbidden love, in Bulletproof Billionaire by Mallory Kane, the second installment of NEW ORLEANS CONFIDENTIAL. Then, peril closes in on two torn-apart lovers, in Midnight Disclosures— Rita Herron’s latest book in her spine-tingling medical research series, NIGHTHAWK ISLAND.
Patricia Rosemoor proves that the fear of the unknown can be a real aphrodisiac in On the List—the fourth installment of CLUB UNDERCOVER. Code blue! Patients are mysteriously dropping like flies in Boston General Hospital, and it’s a race against time to prevent the killer from striking again, in Intensive Care by Jessica Andersen.
To round off an unforgettable month, Jackie Manning returns to the lineup with Sudden Alliance—a woman-in-jeopardy tale fraught with nonstop action…and a lethal attraction!
Join in on the festivities by checking out all our selections this month!
Sincerely,
Denise O’Sullivan
Harlequin Intrigue Senior Editor
Intensive Care
Jessica Andersen
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Though she’s tried out professions ranging from cleaning sea lion cages to cloning glaucoma genes, from patent law to training horses, Jessica is happiest when she’s combining all these interests with her first love—writing romances. These days she’s delighted to be writing full-time on a farm in rural Connecticut that she shares with a small menagerie of animals and a hero named Brian. She hopes you’ll visit her at www.JessicaAndersen.com for info on upcoming books, contests and to say “Hi”!
CAST OF CHARACTERS
Ripley Davis—She will do anything to keep her patients safe and her department open, even if it means teaming up with just the sort of man she’s vowed to avoid.
Zachary Cage—His mission is protecting patients from unscrupulous doctors like the ones that killed his wife. Will he learn to trust Ripley in time to save her from the serial killer at work in Boston General?
Leo Gabney—The head administrator will do anything to win the Hospital of the Year Award and its ten-million-dollar prize. Anything.
Howard Davis—Ripley’s father once ran the hospital. Whose side is he on?
Belle—The hospital volunteer loves her patients, but is there a dark side to her angelic behavior?
Whistler—Cage’s assistant has the training and the knowledge to murder the patients with injected radioactivity and adrenaline.
Tansy Whitmore—There’s something bothering Riley’s friend and co-worker, but she’d rather not talk about it.
George Dixon—Cage has replaced him as head of Radiation Safety at the hospital, but Dixon may still be playing a role at the hospital. A sinister one.
To Melissa Jeglinski, for believing in my stories and helping me grow as a writer.
Contents
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter One
Ripley Davis stiff-armed the swinging doors that separated Radiation Oncology from Boston General’s central atrium and frowned at the unexpected death report in her hand. She’d gone over the case ten times since the day before and it still didn’t make any sense.
Ida Mae Harris shouldn’t have died.
The failure weighed heavily as she jogged down the spiraling stairs to the lobby, but her schedule left little room for a quiet moment. She had barely enough time to grab a coffee before she was due at another “emergency” Radiation Safety meeting—the second one this month. She’d heard that the head Radiation Safety Nazi had been replaced, but she held little hope for improvement. Rumor had it that the new guy, Zachary Cage, hated doctors.
Great, that was just what Ripley needed.
She didn’t have time for a meeting and she didn’t have time for a Radiation Safety Officer with an attitude shutting her down for a snap inspection. She was struggling to keep the Radiation Oncology department open as it was, following the last round of budget cuts. But R-ONC—pronounced Ronk—was her life. The patients were her family. The administration couldn’t shut her down. They just couldn’t.
The paperwork in her hand crinkled and Ripley knew they could shut her down unless she could defend Ida Mae’s death at the inquiry. The sixty-something grandmother had been scheduled for release. She’d been happy and fit following her treatment. She shouldn’t have died.
What had gone wrong?
Ripley shook her head as she turned the corner and strode across the hospital’s tiled atrium toward the café. The waterfall fountain burbled to itself, but she wasn’t soothed by the sound. Even shorthanded, her department’s survival rate was one of the best in the country. She was up to date with all the new methods and ran a ruthlessly tight ship. The trite explanation she’d been forced to give Ida Mae’s husband—sometimes these things just happen—was baloney.
She didn’t allow these things to happen to the patients she cared for, agonized over. She was determined to figure out why Ida Mae had died.
Ripley was halfway across the atrium when she heard running footsteps and her brain fired emergency! But before she could spin around to see what was wrong, a hot, sweaty body hit her from behind, and a man bellowed, “You killed my wife!”
She staggered forward with a shriek as the focused response of a doctor fragmented to sheer feminine terror. She fell to her knees beneath her attacker’s weight and smelled old, sour whiskey and unwashed man. Her shock was instant and complete. Paralyzing.
“You killed her!”
Half sitting on the cold tiles, Ripley struggled to face him. “Wait! Wait, I didn’t kill anyone, I didn’t—” She broke off when she recognized the rumpled, teary man towering above her.
It was Ida Mae Harris’s husband. He’d brought flowers every day during visiting hours.
His mouth worked. Grief etched the deep grooves of his face. “She was fine, you said. She was coming home today.” He held out a glass rose, one of the many trinkets sold in the hospital gift store. “Our fiftieth anniversary was next week. I bought her a flower.”
A tear tracked across one wrinkled cheek as he snapped the glass rose in two with a vicious, violent motion. He pointed the stem toward Ripley. Light glinted off the wickedly pointed end and a manic rage sparked in his eyes. Alcohol fueled the flames to a blast that burned through her chest. “Now Ida Mae is dead. You killed her!”
Ripley struggled to her knees and held out both hands, barely aware of the gaping onlookers and the sound of the fountain behind her. Fear coiled hard and hot in her stomach. She saw the hands shake and was only dimly aware they belonged to her. No! she wanted to shout. I didn’t kill her! My patients are my life. They’re my family, don’t you understand?
But he was beyond understanding. So she tried to soothe. Tried to defuse, saying, “Mr. Harris. Losing your wife is a terrible, terrible thing, but this won’t make it any better.”
He’d seemed calm when she had called to break the news of Ida Mae’s death. But Ripley knew shock—and anger—could be delayed. And intense.
When another tear creased his cheek to join the first, Ripley thought she might be getting through. She rose to her feet and held out a trembling hand, palm up, and tried to steady the quiver in her voice. Tried to hold back her own scared tears when she said, “Give me the piece of glass, Mr. Harris. Ida Mae wouldn’t have wanted you to do this.”
It was the wrong thing to say.
“Ida Mae didn’t want to die!” the big man roared. He brought the makeshift knife up and leapt on Ripley with a snarl on his lips and fierce grief in his eyes.
The glass stem swept down in a glittering arc and chaos erupted.
A woman screamed. A nearby display of children’s watercolors crashed to the floor, overturned by the stranger who’d hidden behind it. Ripley lurched away from Mr. Harris, twisted and fell to the ground as the stranger charged across the tiles, grabbed Harris, and hurled him into the fountain.
Water smacked onto the tile floor and the onlookers shrieked.
There was another enormous splash as Ripley’s dark savior followed his combatant into the fountain. She struggled to her feet in time to see the man haul Harris up by his collar, punch him hard and drop the suddenly limp figure back into the water.
And the world stilled. Silenced. Even the fountain seemed muted. And Ripley stared as two pieces of information battled for control of her conscious mind.
She was safe. And the stranger was magnificent.
Breathing hard, six-foot-two inches of rugged male glared down into the roiling fountain with water sheeting down behind him. His long nose and heavy brow made his profile more fierce than handsome, and across the distance that separated them, she couldn’t tell what color his eyes were. They just looked…black.
The wet material of his cotton shirt and dress pants clung like a lover to the tight bulges of his biceps and the long muscles of his thighs and calves. Ripley’s mouth dried to sand when he leaned down and hauled Harris out of the water with a filthy curse and those muscles bunched and strained.
Paying no attention to the gathering crowd, the stranger stepped out of the fountain and dumped the now-weeping man on the tiles, leaving him for the uniformed police officers who poured into the atrium with guns drawn, only to find the situation under control.
Then the stranger turned toward Ripley and their eyes locked. A click of connection arced between them like a live wire. She felt a tremble in her thighs and an ache in the empty place between them. It didn’t feel like fear. Far from it. How could fear exist side by side with this sensation?
He walked toward her and Ripley was barely aware of the growing hum as the onlookers started talking in loud, excited tones about their own imagined bravery during the dangerous moments.
She saw only him. Dark, wet hair clung to his wide brow and the damp shirt hung from his chest like chain mail. He held out his hand. Glass sparkled on his palm.
“I’ll take that.” The nasal Boston twang jolted Ripley out of her trance, and she looked blankly at the officer who had materialized beside her. When he pointed at the glass rose stem, she shook her head and slid it into the breast pocket of her lab coat, though she couldn’t have said why.
The slight bump of a glass thorn pressed through the fabric to touch her skin, and she had to suppress a shiver. The imprint of Harris’s hands stung her side and shoulder. She could feel him against her, hot and sweaty and mad with grief. The fine trembles that began in her stomach threatened to work their way out, but Ripley knew she couldn’t let them take control.
She had to be a doctor now. She was Ripley Davis, MD. She couldn’t be soft. Davises don’t make public scenes, growled her father’s voice in the back of her mind, and the familiar anger helped her push the shakes aside.
She could be a frightened woman later. In private.
Gesturing toward the officers herding witnesses into the coffee shop, she said, “That’s not necessary. I won’t be pressing charges.” She focused on hospital policy. Head Administrator Leo Gabney’s policy. It was easier to think of policy than what might have happened if Harris had been a little quicker with the makeshift knife, the other man a little slower with his rescue.
The trembles in her stomach threatened to take over.
“Why the hell not?” The stranger’s voice was as dark and fierce as his face. It was steel and smoke and anger, with a hint of softness at the edges. In an insane flash, Ripley wondered what it sounded like first thing in the morning.
How it would sound calling her name.
And why in God’s name was she thinking about that? She didn’t need a man. Didn’t need sex. She was a doctor. She saved lives. She didn’t need a man to make her feel whole. That was a weakness, just like love. Like the need for rescue.
It was adrenaline, Ripley decided when the stranger’s brows drew together in a scowl that she felt all the way to her core. That’s all it was. Adrenaline and the shaky knowledge that he’d saved her life.
She couldn’t remember the last time a man had thought to rescue her from anything.
Fighting to keep her voice steady, she said, “Mr. Harris needs compassion more than he needs jail time.” She nodded toward the new widower, who was sobbing brokenly into his hands as a white-coated ER attending crouched down beside him and officers hovered above.
She could barely make out Harris’s words over the growing din. “Ida Mae. The phone call. Dr. Davis killed Ida Mae.”
Ripley closed her eyes. These things happen, she’d said over the phone when she told him his wife’s heart had stopped without warning. Cheap words. The disbelief in his voice had wounded her, because she had barely believed it herself. His sobs tore at her now.
She had failed her patient. Her department.
Herself.
The stranger spat a curse. “He could have killed you! What kind of hospital policy is that? What kind of safety do you people have here? The guy’s a nut. He should be punished!”
“He’s already been punished,” Ripley snapped over Harris’s rising howls. “He’s lost his wife.” Though she didn’t believe in happily ever after for herself, it worked for some. It had worked for the Harrises. She thought of the rose stem in her pocket. He’d bought Ida Mae a glass flower to celebrate their fiftieth anniversary. Now he’d spend it alone.
The sting of guilt pierced like a thorn.
The stranger snarled, “That’s bull and you know it. Grief doesn’t give a man the right to hurt other people.”
“Give it up, pal,” the officer suggested. “We get these calls every few months. Boston General won’t press charges and we’ve never had anyone seriously hurt. For better or worse, their system seems to work. Now, if I could have your names for my report, I’ll get out of your hair.”
Ripley gave her name and department. The stranger clenched his jaw when she mentioned Radiation Oncology, but he merely glared at the officer. “My name is Zachary Cage. I think this is bull, I’m soaking wet and I’m late for a meeting.” With a final glance at Ripley, he stalked away, dripping.
That was the new Radiation Safety Officer? Ripley stared at him in disbelief. The rumors had been right on about his attitude, but they hadn’t said he was gorgeous.
“Hell,” she muttered, and lifted a hand to brush the hair away from her face. That was when she noticed the hand was still shaking. Her whole body was shaking. And she was going to throw up.
If you must fall apart, do it someplace private, Howard Davis’s stern voice said in her mind. Davises must never be weak in public. Never.
She was halfway across the atrium on her way to the ladies’ room when she saw the ER attending give Harris a sedative jab in the upper arm. The weeping man’s voice abruptly rose above the atrium din. “The voice on the phone said Dr. Davis killed my wife!” Then he slumped to the floor, unconscious.
Ripley made it to the bathroom, barely. But it was a long time before she stopped shaking.
“JUST WHAT I NEED. Another damn doctor trying to save her own hide. Typical. Well, we’ll see about that, won’t we?” Cage yanked the warm-up pants out of his gym bag and dragged them over his clammy legs. He cursed when his bad shoulder protested. The surgeons had repaired the joint as well as they could, but the ligaments just weren’t strong enough for underwater wrestling matches.
“What’s that, boss?” Whistler stuck his head around the corner but kept his butt firmly planted in the computer chair lest he lose the rhythm of his solitaire game.
“Nothing. Come on, we’re late for the meeting.”
“You wearing that?”
Cage scowled down at the faded baseball jersey, warm-up pants and scuffed sneakers. “Not much choice, is there? My work clothes are soaked. Come on.”
His nominal assistant obediently tagged along to the meeting Head Administrator Leo Gabney had set up.
“Why the hell won’t the hospital prosecute that guy?” Cage snarled. “He attacked one of your doctors with broken glass, for God’s sake.” He had told Whistler the bare bones of the story. The radiation tech, twentyish and faintly geeky, had barely batted an eyelash. Then again, Whistler hadn’t reacted to much yet, except to offer a small grin when Leo Gabney had announced that Cage was replacing George Dixon as Radiation Safety Officer.
The other five members of the team hadn’t been as kind. Two had rolled their eyes, one had made a pointed reference to the failed Albany Memorial lawsuit, and the others hadn’t bothered to look up from their card game. Cage had considered firing all of them on the spot.
The day had gone downhill from there, culminating in him stumbling upon a woman being held at knifepoint in the hospital lobby. He could still feel the echo of rage. Though Cage knew exactly how the widower felt, there was no excuse for physically harming a woman.
Even if she was a doctor.
“If the guy freaked out because his wife died unexpectedly, they’ll hush it up,” Whistler said with a sidelong glance.
“Why is that?”
“The administration doesn’t want a malpractice suit. They’re bad for business and for BoGen’s chances at Hospital of the Year.”
Cage stiffened, and when the memory tried to come, he stuffed it deep down, hidden where it belonged. He growled, “Malpractice my ass. Doctors shouldn’t ‘practice’ on anyone. They should know what the hell they’re doing before they start mucking around.”
Whistler shrugged. “Don’t see much of it here. Boston General has an excellent record. The administration has seen to it, one way or another.” He pushed open the door to the Radiation Oncology conference room and gestured Cage through.
“You’re late.” Head Administrator Leo Gabney pounced just inside the conference room. His scowl lacked some of its intended punch because he barely topped five-foot-six. “And what the hell are you wearing?”
Cage brushed past him. “Long story. But for the record, your security sucks.”
“Lucky for you, our security isn’t your problem. You’ll adjust to the way we do things here soon enough.” Gabney shooed Cage up to the front of the room. “Let’s get on with it, the natives are restless.”
That was an understatement, Cage decided as he took the podium. Fifty or so faces stared at him with varying degrees of annoyance, anger and downright hostility. Nothing unexpected. A few coffee-shop conversations and a scan of the files had shown him that his predecessor had been neither well liked nor particularly effective. It seemed that George Dixon had been more interested in women than radiation safety—whether or not the women returned his affections.
Well, Cage thought, the female population at Boston General was in no danger from him. His priority was the job. Period.
But as he adjusted the microphone to chin height and scanned the room, an unfamiliar tingling skittered through Cage’s chest, and he couldn’t help glancing at the only face that reflected something other than hostility.
She was here.
The woman hadn’t been far from his mind, he realized, since the incident in the atrium. She’d brushed it off and hidden behind hospital policy, but he had saved her life and they both knew it. The adrenaline still thrummed through his veins as he peered past the podium and focused on her face.
Dr. Ripley Davis. The statistics in her personnel file hadn’t prepared him for that first meeting. Hadn’t prepared him to see her as a woman instead of a doctor. A suspect.
In those first few seconds, he’d seen only a beautiful woman with dark, springy curls fastened behind her head, a few left free to brush her jaw and long, elegant neck. The moment their eyes had met, the water he’d been standing in hadn’t felt cold anymore. Neither had his body.
It had been a long time since sex had been a part of his vocabulary; even the need for it had been burned out of him. But desire had flowed through him then, as it flowed through him now when their eyes locked in the auditorium and the electricity surged again.
Dr. Ripley Davis. Radiation Oncology. He didn’t trust R-ONCs as far as he could pitch them, and he’d already heard rumors of suspicious doings in her department. His investigation was already underway. The fact that she was a beautiful woman shouldn’t matter one bit.
It wouldn’t matter, he told himself firmly. If she was responsible for the hidden radioactive material Dixon had supposedly found in the R-ONC broom closet, Cage would bring Dr. Davis down and be glad of it. He had no patience for sloppy doctors. Especially R-ONCs. And it was beyond unacceptable for unlogged radioactive materials to be scattered throughout the hospital.
Cursing the rev of his body when she smiled tentatively and mouthed, “Thank you,” Cage gritted his teeth and glared out at the rest of the assembly. He could deal with their animosity more easily than he could deal with Ripley Davis’s smile.
“Attention. Everyone, please!” The Head Administrator waved the crowd to silence. “As you know,” Gabney began, “the final ballots for Hospital of the Year will be cast at the end of the week, and Boston General is up for the title and the ten-million-dollar grant. This money would not only go far in easing our recent budget concerns, it would also fund the new Gabney Children’s Wing.” There was little reaction from the room, but the administrator beamed and nodded as though there had been a standing ovation. “Now, as part of my continued commitment to improving Boston General, I’d like to introduce Zachary Cage, who is replacing George Dixon as Radiation Safety Officer.”
There was a quick, speculative buzz, but it died when Cage cleared his throat and leaned toward the microphone. “I know there have been complaints about fines levied by the previous RSO, and I promise to look into those incidents.”
There were a few nods and a faint smile or two. These were wiped clean as Cage continued, “But…the radiation safety here is a joke. You know it, and I know it. I intend to bring each and every doctor in this hospital back into strict accordance with federal radiation safety guidelines. There will be no exceptions, no allowances. You will comply or you will be shut down until the guidelines are met.” An angry hum skittered through the crowd and Cage saw Leo frown. Undaunted, he barked, “Radioactivity is not a toy, ladies and gentlemen. It is a weapon.”
A quick memory of angry red burns on soft skin had his stomach clenching. He glanced down at the notes he didn’t need and ignored the hands that shot up around the room. He ignored the chocolate-brown eyes he could feel on his face like a touch and tried to imagine wounded blue ones in their place.
Heather. He was doing this for Heather. He hadn’t been able to save her. Hadn’t been able to punish her killers. But he could make the hospitals safer for other women. For other men’s wives. The widower’s cry echoed in his head. Dr. Davis killed my wife!
Cage leaned forward into the microphone and made the final pronouncement, the one that was likely to be the most unpopular. “I will be performing a full audit of your radiation use for the last two years, starting in the labs with the most recent fines and infractions.” He glanced up and was caught in her eyes. The sudden angry babble faded into the background when he saw the surprise on her face.
And the sudden flash of…worry?
He glanced down at the unnecessary notes again, needing to sever the contact. “My team and I will start our audit tomorrow.” He paused and his eyes found Ripley Davis again. It was as though he was speaking only to her. “We’ll begin with Radiation Oncology.”
This time, the fear was unmistakable and Cage felt an unaccountable thread of disappointment knife through him. Ripley Davis had something to hide.
She was just like all the others.
The meeting wound down quickly after that. Cage saw Dr. Davis slide from her seat as he opened the floor to questions, but she didn’t meet his eyes. She hurried from the room while he answered a query about waste containment systems and Cage had a sudden, mad impulse to follow her.
As quickly as he could, he turned the microphone over to the Head Administrator and walked to the door. There was no sign of her in the hallway. Gabney droned in the background, “I will be personally overseeing the public affairs events scheduled over the next two weeks as the Hospital of the Year voting draws near…”
Cage slipped out of the conference room and headed for the Radiation Safety office, intent on rereading her personnel file. Ripley Davis had piqued his interest. Not because of the way she looked, or because of how she’d handled the situation in the atrium, he assured himself, but because she was a doctor. A R-ONC. And because George Dixon had told several people about finding a jar of radioactive material in the R-ONC broom closet. Unlabeled. Unshielded. Unauthorized.
Unacceptable.
Now it was Cage’s job to figure out where the jar had come from. Where it had gone. And why.
He found the Rad Safety office deserted and he grimaced. Dixon had run a sloppy office in more ways than one. “Those technicians had better step up to the plate, or they’ll find themselves looking for new jobs,” he muttered into the echoing emptiness.
He crossed to the cardboard box that held his paperwork, pulled out the stack of files he’d requested from personnel, and thumbed through until he reached Davis, Ripley. He froze.
That morning, the folder had been thick with commendations and biographical material. But not anymore.
He pulled the now-thin folder from the box and opened it.
The file was empty.
Chapter Two
Ripley spent that night going over Ida Mae Harris’s lab workups backward and forward until the notations blurred together. Then she staggered to bed and slept a few hours, plagued by a tangle of waterfalls, hot black eyes and unfamiliar aches. The shrill ring of the alarm was almost a relief, but when she reached her office at Boston General, the tension she’d felt after Harris’s attack returned in force.
A book she remembered leaving open to a page on cardiac complications was closed. Her chair, which she usually pushed all the way under the desk, was askew.
Had someone been in her office? She glanced at the door. It had been locked as usual. She shook her head.
She was still rattled from the day before, that was all. She was shaky from being assaulted, and worried by Mr. Harris’s strange choice of words. The voice on the phone said Dr. Davis killed my wife. Had he meant her phone call when Ida Mae died? It seemed the likeliest answer, but the phrasing bothered Ripley. What if someone else had called Mr. Harris and told him R-ONC was responsible for his wife’s death?
She’d be looking at a malpractice suit, and even worse, it meant that someone in her dwindling department couldn’t be trusted.
“He’s late.”
Ripley jumped, cracked her elbow on the corner of her desk, and swore. It wasn’t often that her best friend, Tansy, snuck up on her. Usually, the pretty blonde entered the room with a flourish and an invisible fanfare. Men lit up. Women smiled. Her energy was infectious.
Not today. Ripley grimaced. “You look about how I feel. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing important.” Tansy’s smile barely flattened the frown. A sleepless night was etched in the slump of her shoulders and the dark circles under her eyes. “How are you feeling after yesterday?”
“Jumpy and sore,” Ripley replied. “And I know Cage is late.”
The new RSO’s threatened audit was another reason for her nerves. Though Ripley and her technicians were scrupulous about their radiation practices, Zachary Cage was reputed to be on a mission. And Leo Gabney was looking for an excuse to close the R-ONC department and shuffle their expensive patients elsewhere across the city, where Ripley knew they’d get adequate care.
Adequate, but not exceptional. And though she’d originally taken the R-ONC position to prove to her father that she wasn’t going to join him in his cushy private practice, over the years the department had become her baby. Her family.
It was the only family she was likely to have, Ripley knew, and she wasn’t about to let the administration, or the new RSO, take it away from her.
“Ida Mae Harris’s autopsy is today, you know,” Tansy broke the silence, shooting her a sidelong glance.
And there was her biggest worry in a nutshell. She touched the manila folder on her desk. It was all that was left of a sixty-eight-year-old woman who’d been looking forward to a milestone anniversary she would never reach. “Yes, I know.”
“They won’t find anything that Gabney will be able to use against us.” Tansy gave her a one-armed hug. Though she spent much of her time on loan to Hospitals for Humanity—HFH—an international group of doctors who took assignments under the worst of conditions, Tansy worked in R-ONC when she was at home. She understood.
“I almost hope they do find something, you know? At least then we’d have an answer.” Ripley shrugged. “It’s always better to know than to wonder.”
“Well, whatever they find, it wasn’t anything R-ONC did wrong. It wasn’t anything you did wrong.” Of anyone in the hospital, only Tansy knew how much Ripley needed to hear the words. Only Tansy knew how insecure the seemingly invincible Dr. Davis was about her work, how much it frightened her to play God.
How much it hurt when she lost a patient. A friend.
Ripley squeezed her eyes shut. “I hope you’re right. And I hope the new RSO doesn’t cause problems.” Her temperature spiked as her mind flashed back to black eyes and the hot whispered promises of her dreams.
Or had that been a nightmare?
“What sort of problems would those be?” The rough rumble came from close behind her, too close, and the sizzle that lanced through her midsection was unmistakable.
Ripley spun and faced the door. Cage. She stifled a curse that he’d walked through the outer office and into the inner sanctum without her realizing it, before she’d been able to prepare herself to see him again.
She didn’t want him to know about the autopsy. Didn’t want him to know that she couldn’t explain Ida Mae’s death. Her past experience with Radiation Safety had taught her it was best to tell them as little as possible.
And her own reactions told her it was safest to keep her distance from this RSO in particular. With R-ONC’s future uncertain, she couldn’t afford the weakness that came with an emotional entanglement.
Her father had taught her that, as well.
Cage’s face gave away nothing as they squared off in her doorway, and once again Ripley felt that click of connection. Something primitive flared deep in his black eyes and he held out his hand like a challenge. “We weren’t properly introduced yesterday. I’m Cage, the new RSO.”
She took the hand and felt her heart kick when his fingers closed over hers. “Dr. Davis.” He held on a moment longer than necessary before allowing her to pull away.
“A pleasure,” he replied, but a lift of his heavy brow told her it was anything but.
“Though I’m grateful for your help in the atrium yesterday, I’m not thrilled about a full audit. I have patients to treat, and the violations you mentioned were Dixon’s way of getting back at me for refusing to date him.” A hint of temper seeped into Ripley’s voice and she gestured toward the outer office, feeling tired and cranky. Twitchy. Tense. “Never mind. Come on, I’ll show you where we keep the radiation logs.”
She tried to brush past him, but the RSO didn’t budge and she ended up too close, staring up into his dark, dark eyes. A tremble began in her stomach and worked its way out from there. Irritation, she told herself. Nerves.
Lust, whispered her subconscious. Sexual awareness.
It took her a long moment to realize that he wasn’t gazing into her eyes with mirrored desire. He was focused over her shoulder, staring at Ida Mae’s paperwork piled on the corner of her desk. “What is that, your personnel file?”
Ripley spun away and slapped a hand on the pile. “This is confidential patient information, Mr. Cage. Off-limits unless you’re a doctor.”
Something dangerous flashed in his eyes, but he stepped back and inclined his head. “My apologies. After you, Dr. Davis.”
Why had he thought it was her personnel file? Ripley had no idea, just as she had no idea why the outer office suddenly seemed crowded and hot.
Hyperaware of him following close behind, she walked to a padlocked refrigerator, pulled out a green binder and handed it to him. “Here’s the main radiation log. It’s up to date as of this morning.”
Their fingers brushed when he took the rad log. “Of course it is.” His voice gave away nothing, but Ripley felt as though he was mocking her. Or perhaps himself. “I would expect nothing less.”
With that, he spun on his heel and headed for the treatment rooms that branched off the outer office. In his wake, Ripley stared.
“Wow,” said Tansy’s voice from the inner office. The blonde crossed the room to stand at Ripley’s shoulder and watch Cage walk away.
“Yeah,” Ripley agreed. “Wow, what a jerk.”
Tansy’s lips curved slightly and she glanced at Ripley. “That’s not quite what I meant. That’s who rescued you from Ida Mae’s husband?” They watched as Cage crouched down and began copying serial numbers off the linear accelerator in Treatment Room One.
A foul, whiskey-laden breath on the side of her neck. Hard, grabbing fingers. A sweep of glittering glass. Panic. Warm black eyes and cool waterfalls. Ripley shivered and rubbed her arms where goose bumps came to life at the thought. “Yes, but that doesn’t make him any less dangerous to R-ONC. You heard him at the meeting. He’s on a witch hunt.”
They watched him bend over to peer at the electrical hookups. With a fleeting spark of her usual manner, Tansy murmured, “I wouldn’t mind being the witch he’s hunting for, if you know what I mean.” She leveled a telling glance at her friend. “But I get the feeling he’s already picked her out.”
“Did you just call me a witch?” Ripley deflected the quick jolt with sarcasm, but Tansy’s knowing look told her the sparks flying in the little office hadn’t been her imagination.
What a time for her libido to wake up. What a poor choice for it to make.
“Just calling it how I see it, Dr. Davis.” Then Tansy sobered. “I’m just glad he was there for you yesterday. When I imagine what might have happened…”
“Let’s not think about it right now, okay?” Ripley patted her friend’s arm and tried to summon a reassuring smile. “It’s over.”
Then she remembered Harris’s words in the atrium, and thought of her desk chair that morning. The closed files. The subtle disarray. And she wondered.
Was it really over? Or was it just beginning?
FINGERS POUNDING on the keyboard of the linear accelerator, Cage congratulated himself on learning three things in the first two minutes he’d been in the Radiation Oncology department. One, Ripley Davis didn’t want him auditing R-ONC. Two, she didn’t want him to know about the papers on her desk. And three, she was so goddamn beautiful she made his chest ache.
The first two were no surprise. The third was shocking. Cage had thought all the softer emotions had been burned out of him long ago with a single pencil-thin beam of radiation and a tidal wave of guilt.
“I keep the programs updated.” Her voice at his shoulder was a jolt he refused to show, but the buzz of her nearness sliced through him and set up a greedy alarm in his brain.
“So I see.” And it was true. She’d upgraded the software every time another glitch in the treatment equipment had come to light. “Too bad it takes people dying for Radcorp to debug these death traps.” He slapped the shielding of the linear accelerator with a scowl.
She sucked in a breath on what he thought might have been a growl. “I think those stories are exaggerated, don’t you, Mr. Cage? And let’s not forget the hundreds of thousands of patients who are helped each year by radiation treatment.”
“But it’s okay to forget about the people who died because Radcorp and a group of R-ONCs at Albany Memorial ignored the reports and kept treating patients with a broken accelerator?” Cage’s fingers were beginning to hurt from punching the keys so hard. He paused, clenched his fists and blew out a breath. “Never mind. The programs look fine and your fixes are up to date. Where are your disposal logs?”
“I get it.” Ripley’s voice sharpened and the air between them snapped. “You dislike R-ONCs in general. And here I thought it was me you didn’t like. Because let me tell you, Cage, I’m grateful for your help yesterday, but—”
Whatever she’d planned to tell him was lost in a flurry of noise and color from the outer office.
“Dr. Rip, Dr. Rip!” With lots of “vroom-vroom” noises and imaginary squealing tires, a purple-haired girl flew toward the treatment room, pushing a small boy in a hospital-issue wheelchair. They skidded to a halt and the girl’s hair slid off her head and landed on the floor.
Ripley and the kids took one look at the purple road-kill and started laughing.
Cage took one look at the girl’s naked pink scalp and the fine blue veins beneath, and shuddered.
“Livvy, what are you doing here? I thought you were between treatments. Is everything okay?” Ripley hugged the girl and bent to pick up the purple wig. “Hey, Milo. What’s up?” She didn’t touch the boy, who sagged back as though exhausted by the shared laughter. A Boston baseball cap looked ridiculously large on his bald head.
Cage’s stomach clenched on the three cups of coffee he’d poured into it that morning. One of the reasons he’d chosen Rad Safety was its distance from the actual patients. He could help them without ever seeing them. Without remembering.
“Belle called my mom and said Milo wasn’t feeling so hot.” The girl was older than she looked at first, Cage realized as she adjusted the purple wig on her slippery scalp. She was probably in her early teens, though her painful thinness and large eyes made her seem younger. “So a few of us came in for a visit. We were just talking about the game next week, weren’t we, Milo?”
The boy in the chair nodded limply. “Yep.” The word was no more than a breath, but Ripley didn’t seem to notice. Her callousness made Cage think of other doctors. Other times.
She glanced at him and explained, though he hadn’t asked. “The Tammy Fund has a box at the ballpark and they give it to a different R-ONC department after each game. The kids love it. We’ve got tickets for next week.”
Cage shrugged. “Baseball’s okay.”
He felt the damaged ligaments in his pitching arm ache. The pain was duller than the throb in his soul, but both reminded him of a man who’d cared more for his career than his family.
“Do I know you?” The soft question pulled Cage from the memory of broken promises and busted dreams, but he had no answer for the girl. Nor did he take the hand she offered when she said, “I’m Olivia Minton.”
“Cage. And no, we haven’t met.” He backed away on the pretext of flipping the green binder open and studying an unseen column of numbers.
“Don’t worry, kids. He’s rude to everyone.” Ripley glared at him and herded the children away. “Did you just stop by to say hi, or did you want something?”
“We wanted to say hi,” Livvy said staunchly at the same time Milo breathed, “We wanted some markers.”
Ripley laughed and the sound zinged through Cage. “Going to tattoo yourselves again?” She crossed to a desk drawer and pulled out a handful of pens. “Just remember, these are the permanent ones we use to mark you for radiation treatment. The ink takes weeks to fade.”
Milo cheered softly and clutched the pens in his lap like a prize. Livvy thanked Ripley and cast one long look back at Cage before she pushed Milo out the door, but Cage didn’t tell the girl where she’d seen him before.
He was five years, one court battle and a master’s degree in Health Physics away from being that man. His love of the game had faltered, leaving behind a need for revenge.
“They’re not contagious,” Ripley said without preamble as she stalked back over to him, holding a thick binder as if she wanted to smack him with it. “You won’t catch cancer from shaking hands.” She didn’t say you jerk, but it was implied.
“Those your wipe logs? Thanks.” Ignoring the dig, Cage grabbed the ledger and opened it on the nearest table, though he knew what he’d see. Nothing. He’d already figured he wasn’t going to find a single digit out of place in the R-ONC department. He’d bet that every sheet was filled in to the last MilliCurie of radioactive material and the last tenth of a rad of waste. He’d find every bottle of neutralizer filled to the brim and every employee’s training up to date.
And he’d bet his job she was hiding something.
He hefted the logbooks and ignored the twinge of protest from his shoulder. “I’ll get these back to you when I’ve gone over everything.”
“Fine. Just don’t shut me down, okay? I have patients that depend on me.” She glanced over and tucked a strand of curly dark hair behind her ear. The gesture was strangely vulnerable. “We do good things here, Cage. We save lives.”
Cage didn’t say anything, because his answer would have been you don’t save all of them, and that would never do. Instead, he repeated, “I’ll get these back to you when I’m done with them,” and escaped out into the hall beyond the R-ONC doors.
Once he was outside her offices, he leaned against a decorative column and concentrated on breathing air that didn’t carry a faint hint of her scent. He had to clear his head. He didn’t have time to get tied up over a woman. Any woman. Especially a R-ONC.
“You okay, boss?” As seemed to be his habit, Whistler appeared out of nowhere.
“Fine.” Cage didn’t want to talk about R-ONC, or about the way Ripley Davis made him feel mad and guilty and horny all at once. Nor did he want to talk about the rumors of radioactivity gone astray. He wasn’t sure who he could trust in the Rad Safety department yet. If anyone. “Any calls this morning?”
“Nothing exciting or I would’ve paged you.” The young man shrugged. “A few gray egg deliveries.” The radioactive material arrived in lead-lined capsules. It was delivered to Rad Safety, checked in and dispersed to the labs.
Everything was checked and double-checked. There was no radioactivity in the hospital that couldn’t be accounted for each and every moment of the day. So where the hell had the nukes supposedly found in the broom closet come from? Cage had no idea, but the concept was unnerving. Since he was working on coffee-shop rumor and speculation, he had no evidence, either.
When he’d brought it up with the Head Administrator, Gabney had stared at him, hard, and prattled on about the Hospital of the Year award. Cage had gotten the message.
Don’t rock the boat.
Too bad for Gabney it was Cage’s mission in life to do exactly that. Heather had died because a group of doctors hadn’t wanted to make waves. Cage had vowed it wouldn’t happen again.
The doors to the R-ONC department swung open and there was Ripley Davis, marching across the foyer to the stairs. Cage’s head came up. “Here. Take these.” He shoved the R-ONC radiation logs at Whistler. “Check them against our databases, but don’t worry if you don’t find anything. I bet they’re up to date.”
Whistler’s eyes cut from Ripley to Cage and back. “What’re you going to do?”
“I’m going to have a little chat with Dr. Davis,” Cage said, feeling an unfamiliar tingle of anticipation. “I think she and I have gotten off on the wrong foot.”
Whistler snorted. “Good luck. She can be a real hard case with people who’re trying to interfere with R-ONC. Her head tech used to say Dr. Davis treats that department like it’s her husband, and the patients like her children.”
Cage’s eyes followed her figure down the stairs, admiring the long, no-nonsense stride and the gentle sway of hip and hair. He grimaced. Husband. Children.
In his experience, doctors gave little value to family.
TANSY WAS LATE for their midmorning coffee break, so Ripley sat alone at the rear of the hospital café with her back to the room and hoped everyone got the hint. She was in no mood for company.
She scowled at her muffin and wished the new Radiation Safety Officer to the devil. It was his fault she felt out of synch today. She was tired because she’d dreamed about him and she was behind schedule because he’d insisted on testing each of the treatment machines separately, though there hadn’t been an accelerator-related death in four or five years.
And she was worried because she couldn’t help feeling Zachary Cage had seen more than she wanted him to, both in the lab and in her. If he and the Head Administrator ganged up against R-ONC, she’d be out in a minute. Her patients would be farmed out and forgotten, and she’d wind up doing a hundred Pap smears a day in her father’s practice.
Ripley bowed her head as tears threatened and the bruises left by Ida Mae’s husband throbbed.
“There you are!” The dark, rough voice spoke close at her shoulder for the second time that day, but she didn’t give Cage the satisfaction of seeing her flinch. Somehow, she’d known he was there. A hint of electricity in the air, a shadow of heat had warned her of his presence.
“Go away,” she muttered as he slid onto the wall bench opposite her, “I’m waiting for someone.”
She could meet rude with rude any day.
“I saw Dr. Whitmore in the hall. She asked me to tell you she was on the way to an autopsy and she’d see you at lunch.” He grinned, but the motion of his face didn’t lighten the darkness of his eyes one bit. He knew very well she didn’t want him there. “So I’ll keep you company instead.”
His legs were so long his knees bumped hers beneath the tiny table, sending a buzz of warmth through her thighs. Her chair was bolted to the floor. She couldn’t slide away, and Cage didn’t seem in any hurry to move.
“Why should I want your company?” She remembered the look in his eyes when Livvy’s favorite wig fell off. Scowling, she tried to scoot away from the warm pressure of the knees bracketing hers.
Cage took a hit of his coffee and grimaced as though it didn’t go down quite right. “We both know I won’t find anything when I look over those logs.”
She slanted him a look as wariness sizzled through her. He was fishing. “Meaning?”
“Meaning that your records are clean and your protocols are up to snuff, yet I think you’re hiding something. Care to let me in on it? You can start by telling me about those papers on your desk.”
Ripley wrapped her hands around her coffee cup and wished it were his neck. She decided to meet rude with angry. Anger was better than the guilt of knowing she couldn’t explain Ida Mae’s death. She snapped, “I don’t like your tone, Mr. Cage, and I don’t like your implication. I—” Her cell phone rang. “Excuse me.” She flipped open the slim phone. “Dr. Davis.”
“Ripley! You’ve got to get down to autopsy right now.” Tansy’s voice was tight with tension and Ripley fought the quick panic as she remembered where her friend had gone.
To oversee Ida Mae’s autopsy.
Ripley kept her voice steady, professional, all too aware of the RSO sitting across from her. Aware of the pressure of his knees against hers, the accusation that hung in the air as she said, “I’ll be right there. Can you tell me what’s wrong?”
“It’s Ida Mae.” Tansy paused and in the live silence Ripley heard Cage’s beeper sound. He looked at the display, cursed and stood just as Tansy said, “The body’s radioactive, Rip. She’s so hot she’s practically glowing.”
Chapter Three
“I hope this is Whistler’s idea of a joke,” Cage muttered as the elevator descended. His beeper read 911C-B110, which translated to “emergency—contamination in room B110.” Nukes in the basement? That didn’t make any sense.
Aware of two nurses and a civilian sharing the car, he didn’t ask about Ripley’s phone call, but she was headed down to the basement on the double. The thought that they were bound for the same place bothered him, though he couldn’t have said why.
“Coming?” Ripley held the door with obvious impatience. He stepped out into the long, damp hallway, aware of the faint hum beneath his skin, a tingle left over from the intimate press of her knees beneath the café table. He frowned.
This was neither the time nor the place for desire. And it certainly wasn’t the right woman.
Still, he moved closer to her side as they strode down the hall. Harris had said something about a phone call, and her file was missing from his desk. His instincts, which he’d learned to heed, gave him a sharp poke, a hint of suspicion. What if Ripley Davis wasn’t a sloppy doctor after all?
What if she was in trouble?
His mind rejected the idea, but his heart wasn’t so sure. And he’d be damned if he let another woman be hurt while he concentrated on other things.
“Rip!” Tansy Whitmore was waiting in the hall, and Cage thought she looked even worse than she had that morning, when he’d noticed the dark shadows beneath her eyes and the deep grooves beside her mouth. Pretty and blond was one thing. Pretty, blond and haunted was another. It made him wonder just what Dr. Whitmore might be hiding. What she knew. “Ida Mae’s body is—”
“Tansy!” Ripley interrupted with a quick look back at Cage. A line had just been drawn with him on one side, the women on the other. Inclining his head in acknowledgement, he opened the door to B110 and gestured them into the autopsy room. He grimaced when the smell hit.
Death, with a pathetic overtone of air freshener.
“Hey, boss.” Whistler leaned over a body bag with no apparent regard for the funk in the room or the smear of…something on his shirt. Cage had thought before that his nominal second-in-command was a tad strange. Now he was sure of it.
“What’ve we got?” He hadn’t meant to bark the question, but it echoed in the fetid room and battled with the cheerful hip-hop blatting from a radio sitting high above the metal slabs.
Whistler straightened unhurriedly. “We started the radiation sweeps you ordered down here in the basement. You know, work the hospital from bottom to top?”
Cage noticed that the pathologist and the women were huddled at the end of the room. “You paged me for contamination. Where is it?”
And why the hell was there radiation in the morgue?
Whistler jerked his chin at the body, which had been only partially unzipped from its bag. “Right here. Ida Mae Harris is hotter than a Las Vegas showgirl.”
What the—? “Then stand back,” Cage snapped. “You’re not wearing a protective suit, you idiot.” No wonder the others were plastered against the far wall. When Whistler obligingly ambled out of range, Cage said, “Where’s she contaminated?”
“Not ‘where,’ boss.” The tech shook his head and shrugged to indicate that he didn’t understand it. “She’s hot everywhere, and I don’t think it’s surface contamination.” He picked up a portable Geiger counter, cranked it on and waved the wand toward the body bag.
The machine’s howl drowned out both the music and Ripley’s gasp. Cage looked over at her and their eyes met and held. He saw surprised horror. Confusion. And…guilt? Then she glanced over at her friend, and Cage saw the curtain drop over her emotions.
He’d get no more from Ripley Davis. Her priorities were clear. Herself first, the members of her department second and the hospital third. Then maybe the patients fourth or fifth.
Just like every other R-ONC he’d ever dealt with.
With unaccountable disappointment sliding through him, Cage glanced down at the pathologist’s notes. The woman’s name jumped out at him. Ida Mae Harris.
This was the wife of the man who had attacked Ripley the day before. Coincidence? He thought not. Suddenly, the distraught husband’s words in the atrium took on a far more sinister meaning.
Dr. Davis killed my wife.
Cage glanced over at her. It was difficult to see the slender brunette as a killer, but he’d learned the hard way that death in a hospital was not always a simple thing. There were often many players. Many mistakes. In his mind, she slid back from “victim” to “suspect” as he reached for his phone and called the Rad Safety Office. “We need all of you down here, pronto,” he barked when one of the techs answered, grouchy at having his card game interrupted. “We need to isolate the morgue, decontaminate everything in it, and dispose of this body.”
“You can’t do that!”
He glanced over at Ripley. She’d advanced to the center of the room with her hands fisted as though she’d fight him for the body. Her breasts lifted with the force of her agitated breathing, and he fought the elemental sexual awareness that clawed at him when she took a step closer.
He leaned down and had the satisfaction of seeing her eyes widen a fraction, though the surge of heat between them was less satisfying. “Yes, I can and I just did. Dixon may have used the RSO job to harass the female doctors who turned him down for dates, but I’m here to keep this hospital safe. That includes isolating radioactively contaminated items.”
Ripley snapped, “That’s not an ‘item.’ It’s a woman’s body. Her name was Ida Mae Harris, and her husband wants to know why she died. Remember him, Cage? Are you going to tell Harris that he can’t bury his wife because she’s going to spend the next thirty half-lives in a fifty-five-gallon drum in the subbasement? Are you going to tell him we won’t autopsy her because we’re afraid of contamination? He doesn’t care about any of that. Frankly, I don’t care about it, either. I want the autopsy done as quickly as possible.”
Why was she arguing for the autopsy? He’d have thought she would want the whole incident buried. Or cremated. It was the surest way to cover a mistake.
What was her angle, then? There had to be one. Doctors didn’t do anything without an agenda, but what was hers? Because she was absolutely right. For the good of the patient and the hospital, they’d have to find a way to examine the body without nuking anyone. He frowned, confused.
Whose side was Ripley Davis on?
“What was wrong with Mrs. Harris?” Whistler interrupted, “Besides the obvious.”
“Breast cancer,” Ripley answered. “She had a small lump removed.”
Thinking fast, Cage asked, “What radiation treatment?” Some of the newer methods involved implanting a radioactive seed in place of the tumor. If the seed hadn’t been properly removed, it could account for the woman’s contamination.
“She’d had two treatments under the A55,” Ripley replied, and Cage’s heart iced at the reminder of another linear accelerator. Another patient. Heather. His wife had gone in for a simple radiation treatment and died mere days later. He barely heard Ripley say, “But that couldn’t account for the contamination. The accelerator beams radiation into the body. There’s no residual source.”
Whistler chimed in from across the room, “And that’s not all, boss. There are hot spots all over the room with varying count levels.” He grinned at the pathologist, who looked as though she might faint. There was a strange, unsettling fascination in Whistler’s expression. “I’ll bet they’ve autopsied radioactive bodies here before and never even knew it.”
“OH, GOD. THAT WAS AWFUL.” Once she and Tansy were back in the R-ONC inner office, Ripley sank to the sofa and covered her face with her hands. She couldn’t believe Ida Mae’s body was radioactive. What the hell had gone wrong?
She’d sat and talked with Ida Mae, just as she visited with each of her patients. She waited with them. Agonized with them. Loved them. And now this? It was unthinkable.
“Nothing was…odd about her treatment, right, Ripley?” Reluctant doubt edged Tansy’s tone. Just back from an overseas assignment with her partner, she hadn’t been in town when Ida Mae had started her treatment.
“It was textbook, Tans. I swear. I have no idea how this could have happened.” Ripley dropped her hands and leaned back, staring at the ceiling. “No idea at all. Damn it.”
“What about the other spots Whistler found in the morgue?”
That discovery had chilled Ripley to the bone. She shook her head. “I hope he was wrong. If not, then…” She faltered. If not, it meant radioactive bodies had been processed in the morgue before.
She took a deep breath. R-ONC was her department. Everything that went on inside its walls was her responsibility. Ergo, it was up to her to figure out what had happened to Ida Mae Harris. With a little help from Tansy.
But when she lifted her head to make the suggestion, Ripley saw that her best friend was practically dozing on her feet. She looked terrible. Quick concern rose. “Tansy, you look like you’re ready to drop. Why don’t you head on home? Better yet, page Dale and let him take you home and put you to bed.” Dr. Dale Metcalf, infectious disease specialist, was Tansy’s partner on overseas assignments. And her lover. Though Ripley didn’t believe in happily ever after for herself, it looked as if Tansy and Dale had a pretty good shot at it.
“We broke up.”
“You what!?” Ripley stared at her best friend, finally realizing that the red tint to Tansy’s eyes and the hollows in her cheeks weren’t all due to her friend’s habitual insomnia. There had been a good dose of tears as well. “When? Why?”
“It doesn’t matter.” When Ripley would’ve argued, Tansy held up a hand. “Not now, okay? I think you’re right about taking the rest of the day off, though. I’ll be back on Sunday for rounds.”
Ripley nodded, knowing that for all her outward cheerfulness, Tansy had a private streak that ran deep. She’d talk about her problems when she was ready to and not before. “See you Sunday, then.” Ripley would simply have to work on Ida Mae’s case herself. There had to be a clue in the clinical notes.
“Dr. Rip?” The breathy voice from the doorway had both women turning.
Milo sagged in his wheelchair with a jumble of pens in his lap. At Ripley’s wave, the volunteer, Belle, pushed him in and took the markers from the sleepy boy’s hands.
“Livvy’s gone home, but Milo wanted to return these to you personally. Shall I put them in your office?” Belle was a tiny woman of indeterminate age who had been volunteering at Boston General for many years. When her father had died the year before, leaving her comfortably well-off but alone, she had begun spending more and more time at the hospital. Now, she divided her time amongst her favorite patients and the hospital chapel.
“Thanks, Belle. You can just leave them on my desk. I’ll sort them and put them away later.”
By the time the volunteer had completed her errand and wheeled Milo back out into the hall, the little boy was fast asleep.
“He worries me,” Ripley said to Tansy, thinking that the chemotherapy and radiation treatments were hurting Milo more than they were hurting the cancer. The boy was simply tired, and his family’s continued absence wasn’t helping Ripley keep his spirits up. If she had a precious child like that…
“You should be more worried about your A55 right now, Dr. Davis.” The dark voice was a shock, but it was the touch of his hand on her shoulder that had Ripley jolting and spinning around.
“Cage!” She’d been so caught up in watching Milo slump toward sick, exhausted sleep that she’d missed both Tansy’s escape and the RSO’s entrance. That was why her heart was racing, she told herself, not because the imprint of his hand burned her shoulder like fire. Then she processed his words and the heat of surprise shifted quickly to anger, both at his disregard for the child and for his implication. “And why should I worry about the accelerator? You checked it yourself this morning. It’s fine.”
“A patient that you irradiated is dead, Dr. Davis, and her corpse is contaminated. I think you should worry a great deal.”
He shouldn’t be so appealing, Ripley thought as her eyes glanced over his stubble-shadowed jaw, when he was threatening her. But for some reason, his antagonism was compelling. Perhaps it was the taint of grief at the back of his eyes. She wondered, not for the first time, what had happened to him. Why did he work in a hospital and hate doctors? Who had he lost, and how had it scarred him so?
Why, thought Ripley to herself with a mental shake, are you trying to romanticize him when he’s being a jerk?
Aloud, she replied, “Of course I’m worried about Ida Mae’s contamination.” He had no idea how worried she was, just as he had no idea that Ida Mae shouldn’t have died. “But I can’t see how the linear accelerator could be involved.”
“It’s killed before.”
The flat pronouncement startled her, as did the menace behind the words. The glimmer of an idea formed in the back of her mind, prompted by the tendril of grief she sensed within him. “True,” she said cautiously, “but the last of those lawsuits was settled years ago. The technology’s improved and the linear accelerator doesn’t leave a source behind. Can you honestly think of a way this machine could cause the sort of Geiger counter reading Whistler was getting off Ida Mae today?”
She had to give him credit. He actually thought about it for a minute before his shoulders relaxed a fraction. “No. I can’t.”
Ripley blew out a breath. “Which means she wasn’t contaminated by her treatment.” It was only a minor relief, because that still left two questions. What had killed her, and what had contaminated her?
“Well, in that case,” Cage began, “if we agree for the moment that the A55 isn’t capable of leaving a radioactive source behind, we have to assume that Mrs. Harris was either fed, injected or washed with something contaminated.”
The list was chilling. Ripley suppressed a shiver. “I guess we’ll know more tomorrow, once your lab has done some preliminary tests.” She switched gears. “You are going to allow us to autopsy, right? I mean, the radioactivity didn’t kill her, so we need to find out what did.”
Cage looked at her sideways. “Worried now? Starting to hear the M-word in the back of your mind?”
It took her a moment before she realized what he was talking about. Malpractice. She bristled. “Contrary to what you think, Cage, not every doctor focuses on covering his or her ass. Some of us are focused on doing the best we can for our patients.” She fisted her hands at her hips. “Yes, I’m worried. Damn worried. But radiation poisoning is a slow process, and Ida Mae didn’t show any symptoms. The radiation didn’t kill her.”
Cage made a sound that could have been a growl, could have been a curse, and he spun to pace across the outer office. “So it’s no big deal that she was contaminated? Since she didn’t die from it, we don’t need to be upset?”
“That’s not what I’m saying at all. Don’t put words in my mouth!” Now Ripley was angry, pure and simple. “Do you see me trying to sweep this under the rug? Am I pretending nothing is wrong? No. I care what happened to Ida Mae, and I’m going to figure it out if it kills me.”
“Forgive me if I find that hard to believe,” he growled, but he wasn’t looking at her. He was glaring toward the outer office doors, where the R-ONC label could be read backward through the glass. “You’re all the same. Money first, acclaim second, righteousness third and patients somewhere down around tenth or so.”
Ripley drew breath to blast him into next week, but something about his profile stopped her. His throat worked once, twice, and his hands balled into fists as though he wanted to lash out, yet the grief etched on his face was that of someone who’s been lost for a long, long time.
All of a sudden, he reminded her of Milo.
She crossed the room and touched his shoulder. “Whatever happened to you, Cage, I’m sorry. Maybe you have good reason for thinking this way, but it’s not fair. I’m a good doctor. I’m not in it for the money or the fame. I’m here to help people. You shouldn’t try to blame me for that or twist my motives. You don’t have the right.”
He lifted his hand and it hovered for a moment above hers, until she thought he might return her touch. But then he let his hand fall and stepped away from her.
“I apologize, Dr. Davis.” He was talking to the glass door, and she saw the muscles in his jaw bunch and flex as he swallowed hard and straightened to his full height. “That was unprofessional of me, and you’re right. We need to work together to figure out what happened with Ida Mae Harris.”
“That wasn’t quite what I had—”
He interrupted, “If you’ll get me a copy of her workup for the radiation treatment, I’ll study it tonight.”
Ripley wasn’t sure what to say. For a moment, she’d thought she’d seen something sad and lonely beneath the fierce brows and black eyes. But it could have been her imagination. The man standing before her looked as though he’d never had a weak moment in his life.
In fact, at that moment Cage reminded Ripley quite strongly of her father—the most angry, domineering, perpetually correct individual on the planet. The comparison quickly killed her moment of pity.
She ground her teeth. “I’ll get the paperwork.” And then you can get out of here.
When he was gone, she sat at her desk for a good five minutes, waiting for her system to level. She imagined steam coming out of her ears, and the mental picture was satisfying. But as anger slowly drained, she was left feeling empty and alone.
The sore spots from Harris’s fingers ached down to the bone, and the outer office echoed strangely when footsteps walked past in the hallway. Ripley shivered and heard a muted tinkle from the pocket of her lab coat when the broken glass stem chimed against a pair of pens.
The sound seemed unnaturally loud. Even the vents were shut down.
“I shouldn’t have sent Cage away,” she said into the quiet. “Being aggravated is better than this.” Her words didn’t even echo. They seemed to fall dead the moment they left her lips, but there was a slide of answering motion out in the hallway.
“Hello?” Suddenly desperate for the sight of another human being, Ripley stood and walked across the outer office to poke her head into the hallway. “Hello, is there someone out there?”
The corridor was deserted, but the door to the broom closet was ajar.
“Hello?” she called, walking to the closet. “Mr. Frank, are you in there?” The maintenance crew generally worked the late evening shift, but perhaps the janitor was starting early today. Ripley was so thoroughly freaked out by the bad vibes in her office that even the dour old man’s company would be a relief.
She peeked inside the storage room, where a small army of cleaning supplies was shelved beside a collection of mops and a hulking floor waxer. The overhead light was on. She stepped inside and said, “Mr. Frank?” though it was obvious that the tiny space was empty. She was turning to leave when a faint hiss and a whiff of something nasty drew her to the far corner. She crouched down and sniffed. Her heart picked up a notch.
“Mr. Frank,” she called, readily identifying the odor and its cause. “One of your bottles is leaking!”
The only response was a soft clicking sound and a sudden deadening of the air. Ripley froze. She turned and stared at the door.
It was shut.
The hissing grew louder, and in the light of the single bulb above her head, she saw a cloud of vapor rising from the corner. The smell grew worse. Her eyes watered and the back of her throat started to burn. She grabbed the doorknob and twisted.
It didn’t move.
Ripley stared at the knob in disbelief. She rattled it. Numb shock poured through her and she coughed. The bitter air scorched her throat. The pain spurred hot, hard panic.
“Help!” she yelled, “The door shut behind me and there’s gas. Let me out.” She rattled the knob harder, barely able to see it through a river of tears. She thought she heard a footstep in the hall and yelled louder, “Mr. Frank? Anyone? Open the door!”
She pressed her ear to the wood and heard nothing over the hiss of bubbling chemicals.
Chemicals. She wrapped the lab coat over her face and slitted her eyes against the sting as she crouched down and peered behind the waxing machine. A pair of bottles leaned drunkenly against each other. Drain cleaner spread from one in a garish blue pool. Bleach leaked from the other, and where the two puddles merged, vapor bubbled and hissed.
Chlorine! She had to get out of there. Fast.
Galvanized, yet already weakened by the foul air, Ripley grabbed a broom from the corner and beat the handle against the door. “Help! Help, there’s gas in here. Let me out!” She inhaled to yell again and choked.
It hurt to breathe. It hurt to keep her eyes open. It even hurt to beat on the door. Oxygen. She needed oxygen. Ripley crouched down and sucked at the narrow crack beneath the door, but the seal was tight.
Holding the lab coat over her face, she battled back through the thickening fog and tried to nudge the bleach bottle away from the drain cleaner. But the gas had fuddled her coordination. She pushed too hard, and the bottles tipped over. Bleach splashed into the blue puddle and the reaction was instantaneous.
A gout of vapor erupted. Ripley reeled back and fell against the door, sinking to her knees as her strength failed. Blackness crowded her vision as she gave a few feeble whacks at the door and called, “Help me. Somebody, please help me!”
She thought she heard another footstep in the hall.
Then she thought nothing.
Chapter Four
The anger swirled deep inside Cage as he stalked the halls of Boston General. He didn’t like the effect Ripley Davis had on him. He didn’t like the things she made him remember. Made him want. She wasn’t anything like Heather had been, yet he was drawn to her. It didn’t seem to matter that she was everything he despised.
He valued honesty. She wasn’t telling him the whole truth.
He hated doctors, especially R-ONCs. She was head of the department.
His priority was protecting the patients from doctors. One of her patients was dead. Radioactive. And her biggest priority was saving her own hide.
Just like all the others.
He halted in the middle of the wide elevator lobby. So why was he walking back to Radiation Safety? He should be in R-ONC, questioning her until she broke down and admitted to taking the personnel file off his desk, until she told him everything she knew about Ida Mae Harris and the radioactivity Dixon supposedly found in the broom closet.
He had an ugly suspicion the two were related.
“Damn it.” He spun on his heel and marched back the way he’d come. “This time, I’m not leaving until I have some answers.”
But when he reached the outer office, Cage found R-ONC deserted. “It’s almost five on a Friday.” He cursed. “What did I expect? Dedication?”
Noticing that the door to the inner office stood ajar, he crossed the carpeted floor and peered inside. It was empty. Casually glancing back toward the corridor, he eased across the room to her desk, feeling awkward even as he assured himself it was the right thing to do.
He needed to know what she’d been hiding that morning. He needed to see those papers. They weren’t on her desk, so he was reaching for the top drawer when he heard a thump out in the hallway. It didn’t sound like Ripley Davis’s purposeful stride, but he didn’t want to be caught rifling through her stuff. Feeling ashamed by his actions, though he couldn’t have said why, he walked across the outer office and peered into the hall.
It was deserted. A faint whiff of cleaning solution suggested that the janitor had begun his work for the evening. Satisfied, Cage turned back to the inner office. Another thump brought him up short. This time he thought he heard a voice.
“Help me.”
“What the hell?” Adrenaline kicked him into the hall, which was still empty. The corridor was lined with closed doors. Heart pounding, he yelled, “Hello? Does somebody need help?”
There was no response, but the smell of cleaning solvent grew stronger. He wrinkled his nose and glanced over at the R-ONC broom closet, where Dixon had found the jar of radioactive material.
There was a key in the lock.
“Hello? Is someone in there?” The smell was stronger near the door, but there was no answer. Maybe he’d imagined the voice. His heart pounded as he twisted the key and pulled open the door.
Ripley Davis tumbled out at his feet, followed by a cloud of thick, choking air.
Shock poured through him, followed by panic. She wasn’t moving. He wasn’t even sure she was breathing.
She looked dead.
“Christ!” When he inhaled, the reflexive cough practically tore his throat apart. Choking, he lifted her in his arms and cradled her limp body against his chest. He staggered away from the closet. Away from the poisoned air. “Dr. Davis! Ripley! Can you hear me?” The words were trapped in his burning lungs, but the pressure eased once they were in the fresher air of the outer office.
She felt light in his arms. Too light, as though the life had already drained from her.
He slammed the door shut and lowered her to the floor. He knelt beside her, as close to praying as he’d been for half a decade. Trying not to remember that his prayers had been ignored before.
“Come on, Ripley. Come on, baby, breathe!” His hands shook as he fumbled for his phone. “Come on, damn it. Breathe!”
And she did.
She took a gasping breath. Then another. Then she started to cough and struggle weakly against him. A spurt of pure relief sizzled through Cage. She was alive.
Barely.
He couldn’t even name all the emotions that flooded through him. Wasn’t even sure he wanted to. He sagged down beside her and pulled her onto his lap. “You’re okay. Just breathe. Take it nice and easy.” He soothed her with mindless words as she curled into him. “Easy now. You’re okay. I’ve got you.”
He felt an impotent rage build. He’d been tossing her office while she was in dire danger.
With every deadly incident, it became clearer that she needed his protection, not his suspicion.
Too soon, she tried to talk. She gasped, “Call…HazMat,” between breaths in a voice as scratchy as raw wool. “Chlorine.”
He placed the call, directing the Hazardous Materials crew to the closet and deflecting their questions with a curt, “No, I don’t know what the hell happened. Just get down here.” He glanced down at Ripley, who was curled against his chest, shaking. His heart constricted. He’d almost been too late. Again. What the hell was going on here? “Hang on. I’ll call the ER and get a gurney sent up.
Her sudden grip on his wrist was firm, though she was still shivering with reaction. “No…ER. I’ll be…fine.” She pushed off his lap and shook her head. “Not…weak in public.”
He missed the feel of her against him even as his mind registered the danger in the emotion. He faced her down, saying, “Bull. You were gassed unconscious. You’re going to the ER and no arguments.” He glared to let her know he was serious.
Finally, she nodded. “Okay.” She wiped her cheeks with the back of one hand in a vulnerable, almost childlike sweep, and said, “Thank you. I didn’t think anyone was…” She took a breath. “Thank you.” When he reached for her, she shifted away. “No. I’m fine. I can hold myself up.”
Cage dropped his hand, realizing he’d wanted the contact for himself, and knowing his brain was right in thinking she spelled danger. She was in danger, and she was dangerous. Of all the women he’d met since Heather’s death, she was the first one he was attracted to. The first one who might make him lose sight of his purpose. His vow.
His penance.
There was a commotion out in the hall as the gurney arrived on the heels of the HazMat team. Ripley was loaded onto the bed over her protests that she could walk just fine. As they wheeled her away, Cage could hear her say over the rising din in the hallway, “Nobody calls my father, understand? I don’t want anyone to know about this.”
He hesitated, knowing that meant she’d be alone. Vulnerable. Then he shook his head. She’d be surrounded by people. Nothing could hurt her in the ER.
He hoped.
“Mr. Cage, over here!” One of the HazMat guys waved.
Seeing that the big inspirators were sucking the last of the fumes out of the closet, Cage glanced in. “What have you got?”
“I’ve got a gassy closet, that’s what I’ve got.” The protective-suited figure pointed to the far corner of the little room. “A couple of bottles fell off the shelves and leaked into each other. Add drain cleaner to bleach and poof!” He spread his hands wide. “Instant chlorine gas. Luckily it was contained in this space.”
“Dr. Davis was locked in the closet at the time,” Cage said, watching the other man’s eyes widen.
“No kidding! What was she doing in here? Is she okay?”
“She’ll make it,” he replied, thinking that he had no idea what she’d been doing in the closet. Now that she was gone, and her presence wasn’t distracting him, his thoughts turned in a new direction. A less welcome, more familiar direction. Deception. What if she’d been in the closet hiding more nukes? Or removing them? He hated himself for it, but couldn’t set the suspicion aside. “Do you have a Geiger counter with you?”
“Sure.” Another suited man handed it over. “But why bother? Chlorine gas isn’t radioactive.”
No kidding. Cage didn’t bother to answer, he simply cranked on the Geiger counter and swept the room.
Nothing. Relief skittered through him, followed by a sense of shame. He’d been searching her desk while she was locked in the closet with poisonous gas. Now he was scanning the closet that had almost been her death, while she was down in the ER. Alone.
If he didn’t get his head screwed on straight and figure out whether to protect Ripley or build a case against her, he’d end up doing neither. He didn’t think he could bear another death on his conscience.
“How’d she lock herself in?” the first guy asked. “These doors unlock from the inside.”
“Not if you leave the key on the other side.” Cage fingered the metal object in his pocket. “I’m sure it was an accident.”
Three masked faces peered at him in astonishment. “What else would it be?” one asked.
Cage touched the key again, considering. Worrying. He couldn’t believe that she’d accidentally locked herself in the closet and knocked over the bottles of cleaner. But what was the alternative? A conspiracy gone awry? A plot against her? None of it made sense. He shook his head. “Never mind. I’ll talk to you later. I’m going down to the ER to make sure she’s okay.”
He had a few questions for Ripley Davis. Then he was going to wait with her in the ER, whether she liked it or not.
Nobody, not even a R-ONC, deserved to stay in the hospital alone.
TWO HOURS LATER, Ripley and Cage were buzzed into Leo Gabney’s office. Her throat still stung and her eyes were an odd shade of red, but she knew Cage’s arrival had been her salvation. A few minutes more and she’d have been facing serious lung damage. Or worse.
She suppressed a shiver and took a step nearer Cage. She frowned and moved away again, knowing she couldn’t afford the weakness. He’d saved her twice in two days, and she was physically drawn to him. But that didn’t mean she could count on him. Didn’t mean she liked him.
Didn’t mean she wanted him.
He was rude. He was afraid of cancer patients. He was the RSO and she was a heartbeat away from losing her department.
And he reminded her of her father.
Besides, Cage had been sending conflicting signals ever since he’d shown up in the ER. Sometimes she had felt protected by his fierce bulk. Other times it seemed as though he thought she’d locked herself in the closet to throw off suspicion. That he thought she’d killed Ida Mae and was trying to cover it up.
He might not be able to make up his mind, Ripley thought, but she had. She didn’t need Zachary Cage to protect her. She was just fine on her own.
Except that he’s saved you twice in two days. And you liked it when he held you. Unable to deny the truth of it, Ripley ground her teeth as the Head Administrator waved them to chairs facing his ocean-sized desk.
“Dr. Davis. Mr. Cage.” Gabney sat down and grew six inches. Rumor had it his desk chair was so tall his feet didn’t hit the floor. “What’s this I hear about problems in Radiation Oncology?”
“Big problems.” Cage rose to his feet and prowled the spacious room like a jungle cat, pausing for a moment in front of the scale model of the Gabney Wing that would be built if, no, when Boston General won the ten-million-dollar grant. “Dr. Davis was attacked yesterday by a patient’s husband.”
Ripley couldn’t guess the mood behind Gabney’s pudgy face and cool gray eyes. She’d never been able to read the Head Administrator, even the day he’d called her in to tell her R-ONC was next on the downsizing list. The little man had savored the news, knowing it was an underhanded blow at her father, Howard Davis, who had been Gabney’s predecessor as Head Administrator. Now he shrugged. “The Harris case is old news, and it’s been dealt with.”
Startled, she asked, “What do you mean, ‘dealt with’?” How could Ida Mae’s death have been settled when they still didn’t know why she died?
A small smile tugged at the administrator’s lips. “We can’t have rumors that our head R-ONC killed a patient, now, can we? At least not until the award has been given out.” He sniffed and flicked his fingers to indicate that the attack had been a nuisance rather than a real threat to Ripley’s life. “The witnesses have been spoken to, and I smoothed things over with Mr. Harris personally, though we may revisit the topic in a few weeks.”
The subtext was clear. Gabney needed R-ONC intact for the vote. After that, she was expendable, and so was her department. Damn it! With no local R-ONC openings, she would either have to give in to her father’s demands or start over in a new city. A new hospital.
And what of her patients here? She feared some of them, like little Milo, would fall through the cracks and disappear. She couldn’t let that happen.
But at the same time, she couldn’t ignore Ida Mae’s death or the radioactivity in her body. Nor could she ignore Cage, who asked, “What did Mr. Harris say when you spoke to him? Yesterday, he said the voice—”
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Jessica Andersen
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современная зарубежная литература
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: HOT BODIESAfter another patient mysteriously turned up dead, Dr. Ripley Davis began desperately seeking answers. Until radiation safety officer Zachary Cage stormed into her office with an array of accusations and brimming with male sex appeal. Ripley didn′t have time to convince the brooding man she was innocent. She was trying to save her next patient and stay alive.Cage had once sworn to protect innocent patients from their doctors′ mistakes, but Ripley′s fiery resolve to seek the truth–and her soft curves–soon melted his doubts and touched his heart. She was enticing–and in danger. And only Cage could save her from the deadly killer who had made the beautiful doctor his prime target.