The Unexpected Hero Read online

“And?”

  “I’m thinking people outside the profession have no idea how hard it gets sometimes.”

  He nodded and turned to wash his hands. The two skinless breasts sat in an eight-inch glass baking dish, ready to go in as soon as the oven was hot. “Why would they, unless they’ve sat at a bedside with a loved one dying in agony?”

  “True.”

  He grabbed a towel and faced her again. “This is really working on you. Any idea why?”

  “I’m not sure. I mean, I was thinking about why someone would want to target me like this, maybe make me appear to be a murderer, and for some reason, that subject popped to mind.”

  “But you said you’ve never consciously done such a thing.”

  “Right.” She sighed heavily. “But what if someone thought I had?”

  That arrested him. He stood motionless, then dropped the towel and pulled his cell phone off his belt.

  “Who are you calling?” she asked.

  “Gage. This could be important.”

  “I don’t see how. Do you know how many people I’ve treated?”

  He shook his head. “That’s not the point. The point is how many people you’ve treated who have ties to this county.”

  That nearly froze her. She hadn’t thought of that, even as she’d been turning the idea around in her head. All of a sudden, this didn’t seem quite so Kafkaesque.

  Needing to sit, she pulled out a chair from her new table. It would be perfect, she thought, at least in the mind of someone who wanted revenge. If someone out there thought she had euthanized a patient, and wanted to get even for something that couldn’t be proved, what better way than to set her up as a murderer?

  It made sense then. Horrifying, ugly sense.

  “Gage? David Marcus. We might have an idea for you, but I don’t want to discuss it on the phone.” Pause. “Right, that’ll be fine. We should just be finishing dinner.”

  He snapped his phone closed and faced her, just as the oven beeped to say it had finished pre-heating. “He’ll be over around seven.”

  “I still don’t see how this can be much help.”

  “Hey, you’re the one who lived with a sheriff for most of your life. I’m just a doc.”

  “Well, it wasn’t like Dad talked about work at home. I didn’t exactly get a junior law enforcement course.”

  “So we’ll let Gage figure out what to do with it. He’s the investigator.”

  She helped David with the salad: washing, slicing and dicing beside him. It was a great time of year to make a salad, since most of the produce had been locally grown and thus perfectly ripened. One local rancher had invested in a hydroponic greenhouse to grow tomatoes most of the year, and the local supermarket gave them pride of place as soon as you stepped in the door.

  And, as Krissie had noticed almost as soon as she returned to town, the local farmer’s market had nearly trebled in size. With a troubled economy, folks with the land were making huge efforts to produce excess produce, and local folks were only too glad to snap it up at comparatively low prices.

  “I’d like to go back to the farmer’s market tomorrow,” she said. “It’s so different from when I left, and I’d like to explore it more.”

  “From what I hear, it’s becoming a staple for local shopping, so yeah, I’d love to go back with you. I get lazy cooking for one.”

  “Who doesn’t?”

  Dinner proved to be mouthwateringly delicious. The herb chicken melted in the mouth and exploded with flavor, and balsamic vinaigrette made the salad flavors pop.

  Krissie smiled at David. “You can cook for me any time.”

  “I may be doing a lot of that, depending on how long my house takes to clean up. And thanks again for offering to let me stay with you.”

  She waved a hand and smiled. “It’s what neighbors and friends do.”

  They had finished eating and were loading the dishwasher when Gage arrived. He wore a chambray shirt and jeans and his trademark black cowboy hat. Not even when in uniform did he exchange it for the sheriff’s tan Stetson.

  Krissie offered him coffee and a slice of cake. He accepted both with a smile and settled at the now-cleared table with them.

  “Okay, so what’s going on?”

  “Well, Krissie had a thought,” David said. He looked at her, waiting for her to speak.

  She had to admit that David never tried to control her, not even to the extent of speaking for her when he knew it was going to be difficult. It seemed as if her last resistance toward him was evaporating like smoke.

  “Krissie?” Gage prodded.

  She turned inward for a moment, seeking words. This had been difficult enough to discuss with another member of her profession, but now she had to discuss it with an outsider. But this was the man who had patiently played Monopoly with her when she was a young teen. The man who had joined her and her family for card games on Friday nights. The man her dad trusted completely.

  “What if someone thinks I euthanized a patient?”

  Gage grew very still. Then he drummed his fingers once, swiftly. “Did you?”

  “Not consciously, no.”

  “But you think there might be a link?”

  “I don’t know.” She shook her head. “I was sitting over at David’s place having coffee while he showered after we painted a bit, and I was trying to think why anyone would want to involve me in something like this. I mean, apart from the obvious possibility that we have some lunatic running around who just happened to start his killing spree the night I started work.”

  Gage nodded, his expression revealing absolutely nothing. This man must have been something else when he was undercover with the DEA, she thought. She caught herself, recognizing her mind’s attempt to deflect from the ugly business at hand.

  “Anyway,” she said, plunging into the icy water, “I was trying to think why anyone would have a grudge with me. And I started thinking of the patients I took care of while I was in the military. Horrendous cases, horrendous wounds. I can’t even begin to describe…”

  “You don’t have to.” Gage touched his scarred cheek, reminding her that he knew something of that by direct experience.

  “So, all of a sudden, I was thinking about this one case. The poor guy didn’t stand a chance. Severe burns over ninety-eight percent of his body. He was begging us to kill him all the while we were trying to find someplace to start an IV, so we could put him in a coma because he was suffering so much. And honestly, Gage, none of us thought he’d live long enough to transport. It was that bad.”

  “Go on.”

  “Anyway, I finally found a vein in his foot that had been protected enough by his boot…”

  “Armor? The armor didn’t protect him?”

  “He wasn’t wearing any. I don’t know why. I don’t know a damn thing about him except that he was the worst overall burn case I’d ever seen. Anyway, as soon as I got the line established, we pushed the meds to put him in a coma.”

  “Standard procedure with severe burns,” David interpolated. “Pain alone can kill a patient, plus there can be massive tissue swelling, including the brain. With all the physical trauma already present, and all the very painful treatments a burn victim needs as soon as possible, medicine has moved toward putting severe cases into comas.”

  Gage nodded.

  “He died soon after,” Krissie said heavily. “It could have been shock from the burns, loss of fluids and electrolytes, maybe too much morphine while they were bringing him in, maybe the meds to put him in the coma. We’ll never know for sure, and it really doesn’t matter because there was absolutely no chance he’d have survived further transport. It was that bad.”

  “And this links how?”

  “Well, it got me to thinking. Sometimes medical professionals…well, sometimes they speed a dying patient’s passing. When the suffering is too great, when there’s no possible hope.”

  “But you’re saying that you didn’t do that.”

  “Not consciously.
I’m not aware of doing anything I shouldn’t have, except that in those conditions, it’s possible to slip up and make mistakes.”

  “But those are mistakes,” Gage said. “We’re all human, we all make them.”

  She nodded. “But what if someone thought I euthanized that patient? What if someone who was there thinks I did something wrong? Or passed word to family back home that I did something wrong? And it didn’t have to be that patient in particular. There were so many.” She closed her eyes, fighting back an unwanted urge to weep. But maybe she should just let the tears come. Maybe there was no limit to the tears that needed to be shed.

  But instead, she blinked them back and looked at Gage. “So I just thought, well, if you wanted revenge for something that you thought was deliberate murder, whatever the circumstances, and you couldn’t prove there had been a murder at all…”

  Gage finished for her. “What better way than to set the perceived murderer up for some new murders?”

  Krissie nodded and looked down at her hands. She had been twisting them together without realizing it, and now her fingers hurt. She kept twisting them anyway. Sometimes she felt she deserved to hurt.

  Gage pondered for several minutes as he ate a few bites of cake and sipped coffee. “Thanks, Krissie.”

  “Thanks?”

  “Well, you’ve just given me a possible motive for this madness, and much as I hate to say it, it makes perverted sense.”

  “But how does it help?”

  “It helps me set the trap.”

  “In what way?”

  “Well, if this guy wants to set you up as a murderer, and not as a victim, then maybe we need to start a little gossip going.”

  “Gossip?” Having been raised in a small gossipy town, the very thought made Krissie’s heart sink. “My mother will kill you. I grew up hearing constantly that I mustn’t give anyone anything to gossip about.”

  Gage half smiled. “I love this county,” he said. “But look at it this way. With any luck, the gossip will only last a few days until we get the killer. Then I’ll paint you as a hero.”

  “I don’t need to be a hero. I just need my mom not to be on my case.”

  David chuckled at that. “I can sure understand that. Marge is a force to be reckoned with.”

  “Well, I’ll reckon with her and your dad. Once I explain what I’m doing, they’ll be okay.”

  “And just what are you doing?”

  “I’m going to make this killer think he’s just one step away from having you charged for murder.”

  Krissie didn’t ask for details, and Gage didn’t offer them. He was a tight-lipped man when it came to important things, and Krissie sometimes thought his wife, Miss Emma as she was known throughout the county, must have had her hands full getting him to open up.

  He left a short while later, and once again, David began to clear the table, this time of dessert plates and coffee cups. Krissie started to help, but then just turned and walked into her bedroom, closing the door quietly behind her.

  Once there, she made it as far as a folding chair before she collapsed and bent over. Every demon had its day, and today, more than one kept crashing through her gates.

  Hugging herself, she rocked gently and let the huge, silent tears fall. They fell for the victims, they fell for the memories, they fell for every sacrificed life, and they fell for innocence lost forever. They fell for nightmares that wouldn’t go away. They fell for wounds she could never heal, they fell from empathy, pain and even self-pity.

  God, she loathed self-pity. But the memories wouldn’t leave her alone, and the scars were still too fresh, and sometimes, just sometimes, she found it impossible to believe that her own mind could, or even should, mend.

  The horror, the guilt, the second-guessing, the self-doubt, the loathing, the fear…all of it wanted its say and she had to let it, because sometimes she just couldn’t stop it no matter how hard she tried.

  She didn’t hear David enter the room. The first knowledge of his presence came when he knelt before her and tried to wrap his arms around the tight ball of pain she had become. Somehow she unfolded enough to press her wet face into his shoulder, but she couldn’t stop hugging herself to hug him back, because at that moment it felt as if the grip of her own arms was all that kept her from flying apart into a thousand pieces.

  Her sobs gained voice, becoming noisy and ugly, wracking her. Dimly, she felt him twine his fingers in her short hair and gently caress her scalp while his other arm still held her tight.

  And then eons later, she realized the top of her head had grown damp. Startled, she hiccupped another sob and leaned back just enough that she could see his face.

  He was crying, too, she realized in wonder. Tears rolled down his cheeks, though he didn’t sob. It was as if stone wept, yielding nothing except a salty rain. But it was all there in his eyes, the same consuming pain that devoured her at times.

  Somehow that made it possible for her to let go of herself and wrap her arms around him, too. They clung, tiny passengers on a frail boat being battered by a storm-tossed ocean, pieces and chunks falling away forever to the deep, dark depths of places no human should go. Places no human should survive.

  Fatigue dried her tears and relaxed her body in the end. She sagged against him, and felt him steady her for a comforting few minutes. Then he eased away.

  “Stay here,” he said quietly.

  She didn’t even try to open her swollen eyes, just propped her elbows on her knees and wondered where that storm had surged from and whether those comforting arms of David’s would ever return. Most men, she thought, would have probably headed for the hills at the outset.

  Then she felt something cool and damp against her cheek. She pried open her eyes and realized he had a damp washcloth. He dabbed away her tears with amazing gentleness, then pressed the cool cloth to her eyes to ease their swelling.

  “Sorry,” she mumbled.

  “No, don’t say that. Sometimes it has to come out.”

  She didn’t even try to answer. She was so tired, more tired than she’d been since they’d received an influx of wounded. Tired to the point that remembering even that could no longer shake her.

  The dam had burst, and in its wake, her emotions felt like an arid, empty lake bed.

  David dabbed at her face a few more times, then rose and disappeared into the bathroom. When he returned without the washcloth, he held out a hand.

  “Come on, let’s take a walk. It’ll help.”

  The instant of resistance came from her past and she knew it. Pushing it aside, she took his hand and rose. Even in her emotionally exhausted state, she felt the spark when flesh met flesh. It might as well have happened to someone else, though, because she had no energy to savor it…or even to fear it.

  Dead inside. That’s how she felt.

  Twilight reigned and with it, cooler evening air, sapping the heat from the day. They strolled easily along tree-lined streets that played peekaboo with the view of the dark purple mountains in the west. Lights began to pop on in homes as they passed, suggesting cheerful warmth. She knew the physical reasons that walking was making her feel better, but she didn’t bother to think about it. Instead, she allowed the steadily rising endorphins to lift her out of the depths, and gradually replace the emotional desert with a deeper sense of well-being.

  Her step developed a spring and her pace quickened to something more normal for her. She began to notice the beauty of the old trees that arched over the streets and the way the leaves rustled in the quickening breeze.

  “It’s beautiful here,” she announced.

  He squeezed her hand. “It certainly is. Maybe one of these days we can hike up in the mountains.”

  “I used to do that all the time with a group of friends.”

  “I haven’t exactly reserved the time for it since I got here, but I think about it a lot.”

  “I know some good trails I can show you.” But she wasn’t thinking about hiking trails. Where their
hands met, an electricity seemed to be leaping into her, reminding her she was a woman with wants and needs. Steadily building an urgency she had not felt in a long time.

  Virtually the last wall had fallen, she realized. Her heart skipped some beats, maybe out of trepidation, although she wasn’t sure. It could just have been the rising sexual awareness that was steadily swamping her.

  She could feel a heaviness growing at her center, and steadily filling her, cell by cell. Her ability to think about anything else faded in the face of her rising awareness of the man beside her. The emptiness she had felt such a short time before, that arid lake bed within herself, was rapidly turning into a swamp of desire, and like quicksand, it was dragging her in only one direction.

  Her mind reminded her of how good she always felt when he touched her, reminded her of those light butterfly kisses, and made her want more, so much more.

  But even that frightened her, because lovemaking with Al had been all about Al. His way, his desires, and if she got little out of it, he had accused her of being frigid.

  She told herself she knew better than that, but the constant, repeated accusations had left her full of so many self-doubts.

  So what the heck was she thinking?

  But the heaviness persisted, and her entire universe kept narrowing to the man beside her. She was being driven by needs long unmet and maybe even by a need to prove Al wrong about her.

  It was all so confusing!

  Or at least she tried to tell herself so, because in point of fact, she wasn’t feeling confused at all. She wanted one thing and one thing only: to make love with the man beside her, to find out if the sparks she kept feeling from him could explode into the kind of conflagration she had always dreamed of but had never experienced.

  She realized suddenly that they had circled back to her apartment house. The urgency within her grew and almost without realizing it, she quickened her step. She sensed, rather than saw, David look at her in surprise, but he kept pace up the stairs, then stood patiently at her side while she fumbled with the lock.

  Once inside, she closed the door, flipped the lock and faced him.

  Then she did something she hadn’t done in years.