The Unexpected Hero Read online

  So instead, he climbed into the shower, forcing himself to move forward. Just keep moving, just keep thinking about the next thing and the next, because any other option would leave you curled in a corner in a padded room.

  It had been a pretty good day, he reminded himself. They’d had fun, they’d thought about only good things, they’d both spent time making moves toward a more positive future.

  The hot water beat on him, and he stood under the stinging spray, head bowed, telling himself that he could always call Krissie later and apologize for sending her on her way so abruptly. Or maybe not. Maybe it would just be best to leave her thinking he was some kind of crazy bastard.

  Because, maybe, that’s what he was. He saw how people tried to avoid him at the hospital. He was aware that he often had a short fuse over stupid little things. He was working on it, but the fuse was still too short.

  Like the way he’d jumped all over Krissie the instant he first saw her, practically accusing her of malpractice in advance, for no better reason than that he’d made his own mistakes when he’d first returned to civilian practice. Projecting himself.

  Bright, Marcus, he told himself. Really bright.

  So, being a mensch, he’d apologized and tried to smooth it over, then—like an ass—he’d gone to her place, spent an evening with her and—stupidity of stupidities—he’d kissed her. Taking everything between them to a place he didn’t think he was ready for. A place he was sure she wasn’t ready for.

  Damn!

  The danger was that they might use each other as a crutch. Neither of them could afford that risk.

  But his stupidity hadn’t stopped with that kiss. No, genius Dr. Marcus had then invited Krissie into his life by discussing furniture with her, by showing her around his house, by asking her to help him paint the place and refinish a table.

  Was he insane?

  My God, whatever his own problems, he could clearly see that Krissie was fragile. There was something else there, something beyond the memories that haunted them both. Something he had seen a couple of times when she reacted to him, something that didn’t come from Iraq.

  He turned his face up to the spray, deciding that the best thing to do would be to return things between him and Krissie to a professional footing as fast as possible.

  He didn’t want to hurt her. And he didn’t trust himself not to.

  Chapter 7

  Krissie’s next two shifts were blessedly free of death and catastrophe. She began to relax into her new job and feel comfortable. She didn’t see a whole lot of David, but he seemed to be busy elsewhere in the hospital. And she’d had an LPN as a shadow every moment she’d spent with a patient.

  In a way it was a relief. So much had become so intense so fast, both at work and personally, and she was even having second thoughts about helping him paint his house. Not that she could justify backing out, not when she’d promised, but the idea of being in such close proximity to a man who attracted her while she was still scorched from her last relationship made her uneasy.

  So the break had proved welcome, giving her some time to remind herself of her priorities and the distance to shake free of her attraction to David. And what an attraction it was. Maybe memory was a liar, but the attraction she felt toward David seemed to her to be stronger than anything she had ever felt before.

  More than once, she had to batter down an urge to call him, to find out where he was, to get someone to talk about him. She was, she thought, in danger of acting as if she were having a high school crush. Time and again, she tried to remind herself that he had jumped all over her the instant they first met, with no better reason than that he thought he knew how she would act based on her previous jobs.

  Somehow, though, reminding herself of this didn’t seem to erase the more recent memories of a really nice guy.

  She came off duty, after her second shift in a row, with gritty eyes and an aching desire to get home to her air mattress, only to be caught as she walked to the door by Micah Parish. This morning, he wore his deputy’s uniform.

  “Morning, Krissie,” he said, his deep voice warm. For her, his dark eyes always seemed to smile. “Conference room.”

  At once, she tensed. “What’s wrong?”

  “Gage got some news he wants to share with you and David.”

  She tried to think positive thoughts, tried to believe that Gage was going to tell them to quit worrying, but she couldn’t believe that.

  Micah held the conference room door open for her and she entered, finding David and Gage already there.

  “Morning, Krissie,” Gage said. He didn’t bother to smile. David nodded at her, but he looked as tense as she felt.

  She took a seat across the table from David and nodded her thanks when Micah put a cup of coffee in front of her. Then Micah sat beside her, almost as if he wanted to be a bulwark.

  “Okay,” Gage said. He paused, sighed and shook his head. “I got the heads-up last night, but I waited until I received the faxed report from the forensic pathologist, because I figure you two know enough about medicine to understand what you’re seeing.” He shoved some papers toward David. “Basically, I gather that these two patients were murdered.”

  Krissie gasped. She looked at Gage, then Micah, as if hoping they were joking, but even as she did, she knew it was useless. These weren’t men to joke about such a thing.

  David hesitated, as if he didn’t want to see the truth in black and white, then began to leaf through the papers.

  “You understand right,” he said finally. “These potassium levels are impossible.”

  “Potassium?” Krissie repeated. “You mean someone injected them?”

  “With lethal levels,” David said. He pushed the lab report over to her.

  As she scanned the test results, a creeping sense of horror began to skitter faster and faster along her nerves. “Why?” she whispered, even though there was no answer. “Why?”

  “There’s another problem,” Gage said. “Mrs. Alexander may have lived in this county all her life, but the other victim was from Iowa. As far as we know at this point, he had no ties around here at all. None.”

  Krissie slowly lifted her head and looked at him. “It’s random? It’s random?” Somehow that made it even worse. “You mean this guy could pick just anyone and…and…” She couldn’t even make herself say it.

  “There’s one link,” Gage said. “The doll. We’re having it examined, but so far, there doesn’t seem to be anything about it that’s threatening.”

  “Just its existence,” Krissie muttered. Then she looked around at the three men, her face growing stiff and pinched. “And me,” she said finally. “I’m the other factor in the equation.”

  Gage shook his head immediately. “I’ve known you for years. You’re not the type.”

  “I wasn’t the type. You don’t know where I’ve been and how I might have changed.”

  “No,” David said immediately. “I’ve seen you with your other patients. You care too much about life.”

  “And Ted Bundy worked with rape victims and escorted his coworkers to their cars after dark while he worked at the crisis center.”

  “Oh, crap,” Micah said succinctly.

  Krissie blinked at him.

  “Crap,” he repeated.

  “I agree,” Gage said. “Wholeheartedly. If you’re linked to this in anyway, it’s to frame you, and I can’t figure out for the life of me why anyone would want to do that. You’ve been away for years.”

  Krissie didn’t know how to respond. Their trust touched her more deeply than words could express. She ached. “Guys…”

  Gage shook his head. “It’ll take a lot more than this to make me even think about pointing a finger in your direction. The main point is, we’ve got a killer on our hands.”

  “Someone,” David said, “who can apparently slip into hospital rooms with a syringe full of potassium solution.”

  “That could be a lot of people,” Krissie remarked, struggling to
maintain reason in the face of what felt like a one-two punch. God, two murders. Two real murders. Even though she had suspected it before, at some level she hadn’t really believed it. Hadn’t been able to believe it. Even with all she had seen of the world, she still couldn’t imagine this kind of thing being real. How crazy was that?

  “Exactly,” David agreed. “Everyone from visitors to staff.”

  Gage pulled the papers back toward him and began to straighten them. “Okay, so fill me on how this works and what our bad guy would need.”

  David answered. “Potassium replaces sodium in the nerves. The sodium is essential for electrical conductivity. If you replace it with potassium, the nerves can’t fire properly, hence the cardiac arrest. It’s commonly used for lethal injection.”

  “Lovely,” Gage said. “So anyone could find out about it?”

  “It’s not exactly a secret. It works fast and surely. When we get a normal potassium overdose, we can usually identify it quickly with symptoms and a BUN test, and treat it with sodium bicarb, which pushes the potassium into the cells and locks it up. But when you have a massive overdose, death is pretty quick.”

  “So, is it difficult to get?”

  “You can buy it at the grocery store,” Krissie said. “If you need to. It sells as a salt substitute. But there are lots of other places to get it. Dissolve it in water, put it into a syringe, inject it through the IV port so you don’t leave a needle mark—” She shuddered with horror that someone could walk into a hospital room and do such a cold, heartless thing to a helpless patient. “It’s too easy.”

  “I was afraid you’d say that.”

  David nodded. Krissie noted that his face had grown dark again, like the first time she had seen him. This had shaken him, too. “Syringes aren’t exactly out of place in a hospital, either. You could walk around with one in your hand, and nobody would say a word.”

  “If you’re on staff,” Krissie amended. “Granny might be questioned if she showed up to visit with one in hand.”

  “And then she could claim she’s diabetic.”

  Gage scratched his head impatiently. “Tell me something good. Something that will help.”

  “I’d suggest doing an inventory,” David said, “except that if you’re bent on murder, you can find syringes in bio-waste containers all over this hospital, and you’re hardly going to care if they’re contaminated. Then, potassium isn’t a controlled substance, and it’s one we have around for treating a number of things. We have potassium pills and IVs both. Not that it matters because, as Krissie said, there are a lot of places where you could get it.”

  “Are you telling me you think we have the perfect murder here?” Gage demanded.

  “No,” Krissie said. “We have the doll. It must mean something.”

  “One doll. I’m reliably informed that nothing the doll is made out of will hold a fingerprint. Okay, then, we need to be on our toes. Krissie, you need to have someone with you at all times.”

  “I already told her that,” David said. “I have no idea if she listened to me.”

  She glared at him, suddenly wondering why she’d found him so attractive. The way he’d ignored her the last couple of days should be warning enough. “I’ve made sure to have an LPN with me at all times, but there’s no reason to think anyone is after me.”

  “Maybe not. But if accusations come down the pike, I don’t want to be the one to tell your father why I didn’t make sure you were safe.”

  “Okay. Okay.”

  “We can pretty much assure she’s not alone here at the hospital,” David said. “Right now, that seems to be the important thing. I mean, if someone is trying to frame her by killing patients only when she’s on duty, then the thing is to make sure she’s with someone all the time. If it goes beyond that…” David shook his head. “I don’t know. We’re leaping at a conclusion here to begin with.”

  “Exactly,” Krissie said, hating to agree with him but needing to. “It’s a huge leap to think this maniac is trying to frame me.”

  “But it was the very first thought that crossed my mind,” David reminded her. “Simply because you were new and basically unknown to me, and the deaths occurred on your first two shifts.”

  Micah spoke. An ordinarily silent man, when he had something to say, everyone listened, usually to their benefit. “While we’re leaping to conclusions, there’s another one inherent here.”

  Gage arched a brow. “That is?”

  “That if someone has a grudge against Krissie, they may not stop at trying to frame her.”

  The conference room fell utterly silent as everyone tried to absorb that notion. Krissie stared blindly at the tabletop, her emotions so roiled now that she couldn’t even tell what she felt, other than renewed horror. Gage finally spoke.

  “Okay,” he said. “Let’s review. These patients have no relationship, except they were on the same ward on subsequent nights and that doll was found in both their rooms. The notion that Krissie might be the target of a frame, or worse, is based on the possibly irrelevant fact that the two murders occurred on her first two shifts. No murder occurred last night, right?”

  “Or the night before,” Krissie agreed. She tried to find hope in that, but somehow the darkness hovering around her didn’t back off.

  “Except,” David argued, “you weren’t alone at any time, were you?”

  She hesitated, hating to have to admit she’d followed his directions, then shook her head. “No, I did what you said.” But she immediately wanted him to know it wasn’t just because he had told her to. “Because if this is somehow directed at me, I don’t want to give the killer another opportunity.”

  “Now that,” Gage said, “just raised my suspicions another notch. If this isn’t related to Krissie in any way, why did nothing happen the last four nights? We need to check staffing schedules and find out if anyone who was working the nights of the murders was off the past four nights.”

  “I’ll get on it,” Micah said. “Might be good to check who else is a recent hire.”

  “Volunteers, too,” David suggested. Then he glanced at his watch. “I have to run. I have an eight o’clock patient at the office.” He hesitated, then asked, “Want to start stripping that table later this afternoon?”

  He’d been avoiding her like the plague for the last couple of days, now this? Part of her wanted to tell him where to stuff that table, but another part of her spoke first. “Sure, if I can get my sleep.”

  “I’ll call you around four. You’re off tonight, right?”

  She nodded, then watched him leave. Alone with Gage and Micah, she looked from one to the other. “I’m having trouble accepting that someone is out to get me. I’ve been away so long!”

  “Some problems,” Micah said, “follow us. You might want to think about whether someone from your past could have a grudge.”

  “Only my ex-boyfriend, and it’s not like he could slip by me unnoticed.”

  “If someone is after you,” Gage said, “it could be even more twisted than that. Your ex would probably come after you directly, not indirectly.”

  “I still think we’re hanging a lot of suspicion on what just might be coincidence, in terms of the murders happening on my first two shifts.”

  “Maybe so,” Gage said, rising. “But at the moment, it’s the only thing we have approaching a clue, and I’m sure as hell not going to ignore something that might be a threat to you.”

  “I get it,” she said, and rubbed her eyes. “An overabundance of caution.”

  “Exactly. I’ll follow you home to make sure you get into your apartment without any trouble. Micah, you dig around here.”

  “Consider it done.”

  Krissie gave Micah a hug, then allowed Gage to escort her to her car, much as it irritated her.

  But that was the thing about living somewhere like this. Like it or not, the protective arms of love were wrapping around her. And given the way news moved in Conard County, Krissie had no doubt her dad ha
d already told Gage and Micah to look after her.

  Krissie awoke a little after three, surprised that she hadn’t slept longer. As tired as she’d felt that morning, she’d been almost certain she would have slept more than seven hours.

  Sitting up, she turned off her alarm, which she’d set for four in case David did call, then shuffled into her little kitchen to make coffee.

  Laundry, she remembered as she rounded the corner. Her compact washer and dryer were in the closet at one end of her kitchen, and she’d dropped her knapsack there when she’d returned home this morning. Beside it lay the clothes she’d stripped off, too tired to even open the door and toss them on top of the machine.

  Yawning, she started the coffeemaker, then went to get the hamper from her bedroom. Piece by piece, she sorted, throwing lights into the washer, setting darks aside for the next load. Then she lifted her knapsack to empty it of the remains from her supper, a couple of water bottles and—

  The doll. That doll.

  She reached out to grip the doorframe and stared at the ugly thing as shock hit her like a punch to the gut.

  “Oh, my God!”

  Her voice sounded thin to her own ears, yet still loud in the hush of her apartment.

  The doll.

  She dropped it as if it were on fire, and nearly tripped on her clothes in her rush for the phone.

  Chapter 8

  “Isn’t this the point where you arrest me?” Krissie asked.

  She sat on her new couch, arms wrapped tightly around herself, as Gage, Micah and a couple of other deputies went over her apartment with a fine-tooth comb. It was all she could do not to shake.

  “Why would I do that?” Gage asked.

  “Because that doll was in my knapsack!”

  “Better yet, there was a loaded syringe stuffed inside it.” Gage settled beside her on the couch, looking at her with concern. “Krissie, for heaven’s sake, get a grip. I know finding it threw you for a loop. But just think. If you were responsible for that thing, would you have called me?”