“Special in what way?” he asked, continuing to answer most of her questions with questions of his own, a technique she suspected was designed to put her on the defensive.
It was working, too. She found herself growing more tense as she worked her way into the processing room, toward where the narrow space opened directly onto one of the fishing piers. Smith followed close behind her, making her feel as though she was being stalked.
Or herded.
She turned to him. “Can you get me twenty or so of those little bags you use for small shellfish orders? I need to keep each of the samples separate. A grease pencil would be good, too.”
He didn’t budge, instead moving closer. His voice dropped to a growl. “What, exactly, are you going to test for?”
“That’s up to the CDC team,” she said, playing dumb.
“Where else have you taken samples?”
She was almost positive he would call and check, so she didn’t lie. “You’re the first.”
Catching movement out of her peripheral vision, she turned her head and saw two men enter from the pier. One was moving strangely, shuffling his feet as though he was having neurological problems.
Panic knotted Rox’s gut and her heart hammered in her ears. “Maybe I should come back later.”
“I don’t think so.” Smith blocked her exit on one side, and raised his voice to call, “Hey, boys, the lady doctor here seems to think our fish is poisoning the town. What do you think about that?”
There was an ugly mutter from the men, and they moved to stand shoulder-to-shoulder, blocking her on that side as well.
She was trapped.
Chapter Four
Rox’s heart hammered as the two fishermen approached and Smith remained unmoving at her back, blocking her escape.
She held her hands away from her sides, palms up. No harm, no foul. “Come on, guys, I’m not looking to start any trouble here. I’m just trying to do my job.”
“By ruining ours,” the big guy on the left said. “It’s bad enough you’re telling people it’d be good for them to eat tinned foods and drink bottled water, and you’ve got the coast guard telling us we can’t put the boats into harbor anywhere but here. Now you’re trying to prove it’s the fish making people sick? What do you think’s going to happen to the town if the feds shut down the fishing grounds? We’ll starve!”
As he drew closer, she identified the dark-haired, dark-eyed man as Phil Jenks, a deckhand on one of the more prosperous fishing boats. He was big and brawny, shading toward overweight, and wore a plaid shirt beneath his waterproof coveralls. She’d seen him around town, didn’t know anything good or bad about him, but he gave her a seriously not-good vibe as he approached.
“I don’t want to ruin anything,” she said quickly. “Don’t you want to know if there’s something wrong with the fish you’ve been catching? Better yet, don’t you want me to prove that they’re fine?”
She didn’t mention that, based on her suspicions, there was a good chance they’d have to declare a moratorium on the fishing grounds until they had a chance to prove or disprove her theory.
Next to Jenks was Alex Gibson, a tall, sinewy guy with broad shoulders, brown hair and bright blue eyes. He was dating Lucy Tucker, the owner of the Tidal Treasures junk store located diagonally across from the clinic. Rox had chatted with Alex on occasion, and knew he was a fair-minded, mild-mannered guy who seemed to truly care about the town, and its inhabitants.
She leaned on that now, her voice rising a little with nerves. “Tell these guys, Alex. I’m only trying to help.”
“Roxanne is okay,” Alex said obligingly. “She’s not the sort to start trouble.”
“How can you be sure?” Smith muttered from behind her. “It’s not like she’s one of us. She’s only been here a year or so, and that father of hers was a real piece of work—here today, gone tomorrow, and took a few of us for more than we could afford, without much to show for it.”
It wasn’t the first time she’d heard something along those lines about her salesman father, who’d promised far more than he ever delivered—it was more like the thousandth time she’d heard it, and she knew for sure it wouldn’t be the last. Still, it stung. One of the main reasons she’d chosen to set up her clinic in Raven’s Cliff was that it’d been one of the few places she’d lived as a child where she’d felt like even a little part of the community. As the town’s only doctor, she wanted to become a larger part, the sort of person people turned to when they needed help.
She didn’t want to be the enemy.
“I’m only trying to help,” she said again. “Please. Let me test the fish. If I don’t, there’s a good chance the team from the CDC will want to, and that’ll make it a federal issue, maybe even involving the Fish and Game Department, and we wouldn’t want that, would we?”
Okay, that was bending the truth a little—the samples would be analyzed by the CDC team regardless of who actually took them, and once they had their answers, nothing she could do would stop Fish and Game from getting involved. But she didn’t think now was a good time to mention that, as the men got close enough that she could see the whites of their eyes.
Alex looked fine. Jenks, though…she wasn’t sure. His eyes might be a little bit reddish, and he definitely seemed to shuffle when he walked.
Her gut told her he was infected, and headed for a rage.
She backed away from Jenks, until she was almost touching Marvin Smith.
“Mr. Smith,” she said quietly, hoping Jenks wouldn’t hear, or if he did, that he wouldn’t compute. “Jenks is infected, and I think there’s a good chance he is, or soon will be, a Violent. I’m going to start backing up and I want you to do the same. I need you to pretend that we’re going to talk in your office.”
There was a moment of startled silence, as though he was trying to decide if she was lying. Then she felt a touch on her elbow, felt Smith move up close behind her. Loudly, he said, “Let’s take this into my office. We’ll have more privacy there.” He pushed her around in front of him. “Get moving, you.”
He practically shoved her ahead of him, blurting, “Run!” Then he turned and flung himself at Jenks, shouting, “Alex, get out of here!”
And all hell broke loose.
Rox pulled Luke’s .22, hit the safety and waited for her shot. Jenks was grappling with Smith, tearing at the older man’s clothing and howling with rage, his vocabulary and speech devolving as his eyes turned redder by the second. Definitely a Violent.
“Marvin, get out of the way!” Rox yelled. “I’ve got a gun.”
Alex took off running, headed out the back way, shouting over his shoulder, “I’ll get Captain Swanson. Keep him here until I get back!”
“Hurry!” she urged him, heart pounding in her chest, palms sweating like they always did when she picked up a weapon with the intention of using it.
Finally, Smith was able to tear away from Jenks. Thinking fast, the retired fisherman rolled beneath the bolted-down sorting trays in the middle of the narrow shed, out of Jenks’s reach.
Roaring, the sick, enraged fisherman turned on Rox. There was no mistaking the hatred in his red-tinged eyes, the urge to kill. “Got a gun, eh?” He sneered, grabbing a fisherman’s gaff off the wall and holding the sharply pointed, reverse-hooked spear like a weapon. “You’re a doctor. There’s no way you’ll shoot me.”
“Run, Doc!” Smith shouted.
I just have to hold him until the cops get here, Rox thought, stomach twisting with fear, with the effort it was taking to stay more or less calm. Just long enough to—
Jenks lunged toward her, swinging the gaff in a deadly arc.
Rox screamed and ducked under the attack. The gaff slammed into the side of the sorting shed and stuck, and Jenks roared and yanked at it.
Taking a deep breath, Rox said, “I’m sorry, Mr. Jenks.”
She shot him point-blank in the meaty part of his outer thigh.
Jenks bellowed and went down, clapping
his hands to his thigh, where blood quickly stained his heavy pants.
“Just stay still and keep the pressure on,” she said. “The police will be here in a moment. They’ll help us. You’ll be—” Fine, she was going to say, but didn’t get the chance, because Jenks, heedless of the pain, scrambled to his feet and came at her again.
He took her by surprise and got her before she knew what had hit her. His hard, hot body slammed into her, driving her back against a sorting tray. Pain flared in her lower back, and when she struggled upright, she was forced to hunch over.
She realized she’d lost the gun the same moment Jenks figured it out, and dismay slashed through her alongside fear.
“I’ve got it!” Smith yelled. “Get out of here!”
Rox didn’t stop to think or argue. She turned and ran, limping.
Three shots rang out behind her in quick succession, but a garbled curse and dragging footsteps warned that Jenks wasn’t down, wasn’t giving up on his pursuit. And he was moving faster than she was.
She put her head down and ran faster, adrenaline helping banish the sting in her lower back. Her breath whistled in her lungs as she skidded into the front room of the fish shop and through the passageway between the counter and wall, then across the store and onto the street, praying that the cops would be there, waiting to save her.
The avenue was deserted, even though it was the middle of the day. The terrified townspeople were hunkered down in their houses, waiting for Rox and the others to make it safe again.
Instead, she was running for her life.
Practically sobbing with fear, she bolted up the street toward the police station. Behind her, she heard Jenks’s dragging footsteps, and then a terribly familiar click.
The .22. He’d gotten it away from Smith.
“No!” Rox threw herself off to the side as Jenks fired. The sharp report echoed along the deserted street. Another. Another.
Screaming, Rox zigzagged, trying to get him to use up his ammunition. How many bullets had been in the gun when Luke gave it to her? She hadn’t checked, and damned herself for the oversight. She didn’t know if the Violent was out of ammo or just waiting, didn’t know where the cops were or why they hadn’t yet responded.
Thinking fast, legs rubbery with fear and exertion, she turned down the next side street, headed for the town common and the RCPD. If the cops weren’t coming to her in time, she’d get to them.
Hopefully.
Refusing to consider the alternative, Rox pushed herself, running as fast as she could. Her lungs hurt; her heart hurt. What if she didn’t make it? What if—
Motion blurred in her peripheral vision and a heavy body slammed into her. Strong arms grabbed her and dragged her to the side, into the narrow alley between the Cove Café and the library. Rox screamed and thrashed, but her attacker held on tight, keeping her in the alley and clapping a hand across her mouth.
“Roxie!” Her attacker shook her. “It’s me. Knock it off, it’s me.”
It took a second for Luke’s voice to penetrate, another for her to stop fighting and sag in his arms.
He wasn’t another attacker. He was a rescuer.
Beyond the mouth of the alley, she saw Swanson and his men close ranks on Jenks, wrestling him to the ground as he kicked and screamed imprecations.
Shaking, Rox turned away from the sight and pressed her face into the nearest available solid, immovable object. Which happened to be Luke’s chest.
“I thought I was going to die,” she said, not caring that her voice trembled. “I thought he was going to—”
“Don’t think about it,” he interrupted, wrapping his arms around her more securely, and holding on tight. “You’re safe. I’ve got you. Don’t think about the what-ifs.”
She wanted to lean into his embrace, wanted to inhale his musky, masculine scent, close her eyes and remember what it’d been like to be with him, to be his. But she knew she didn’t dare lean once because she’d be tempted to keep leaning, and that wouldn’t work.
This was what he was good at—the heroic rescue. It was the day-to-day stuff he couldn’t deal with.
Don’t think about it, he’d said, and the familiar phrase echoed back to too many arguments, too many disappointments.
Luke liked things simple and surface. He didn’t like to think about bad things—either the ones that had happened, or the ones that hadn’t. When things got too intense, he pulled up stakes and moved on to the next town, the next village, the next assignment. Just like her father had.
And that wasn’t what she wanted. Never had been.
As Rox’s adrenaline leveled off, she told herself she didn’t need to cling, not when there wasn’t a single good thing that could come of it.
She pushed away, levering her arms between them and backing up before she looked at him. “You’re right. I’m fine, so there’s no reason to think of what might’ve been. I’m grateful for the rescue. Grateful to all of you.” Deliberately turning away from Luke, she cast her eyes toward the cluster of cops at the mouth of the alley. She picked out the figure of an anxious-looking Alex Gibson.
When their eyes met, he raised a hand and called, “I’m sorry it took so long for me to get the police.”
“You did great,” she said, and meant it. “Thank you, Alex.”
Still deliberately ignoring Luke—more because she was mad at herself for wanting to fall back into old patterns than because she was mad at him for being himself—she marched back toward the group clustered around Jenks. When Captain Swanson looked up, she said, “Thanks for the rescue, Patrick. Once you’ve got him secure you can take him to the clinic and I’ll see to his leg.”
Coming up behind her, Luke insisted, “He goes straight to the monastery.”
“No offense, but I’ve got a better setup for minor surgery at the clinic,” she countered without looking at him. “Once I’ve dealt with the leg wound, he can go to the monastery.” Now she did turn and fix him with a look. “Unless you have objections?”
A muscle at his jaw knotted in a rhythmical tic, but he nodded once, sharply. “Fine. We’ll do it your way.” But his tone made it clear that it was only because he didn’t have a real reason to object.
Otherwise, it would’ve been his way, all the way. As usual.
“Fine,” she echoed, damning herself for responding to the tension in the air, for caring whether or not he approved of her decisions. And even worse, for caring that he hadn’t once said he’d been worried about her.
LUKE KNEW HE SHOULD head back to the monastery and ride herd on his team. Instead, he found himself in the waiting room of Rox’s clinic, kicking his heels while she patched up the Violent she’d winged with his .22.
The longer he waited, the worse his mood got.
He couldn’t fathom what she’d been thinking, going into the fish shop by herself. She should’ve known better, damn it. It was one thing to do a basic medical history on the victims. It was another to walk into a man’s space and imply that the product his livelihood—and that of much of the town—depended on might be contaminated.
She should’ve called in and waited for one of the CDC team members to make it into town to provide backup. Better yet, she should’ve finished her canvass and brought her suspicions to the team, so they could make some decisions, and a plan.
Instead, she’d gone completely Lone Ranger and nearly gotten herself killed during the investigation.
The more he thought about it, the angrier he got, which meant he’d built up a pretty serious temper by the time the cops escorted Jenks out of the exam room. The fisherman was shackled, stitched, limping and disoriented, looking pretty close to crashing into the catatonic state of the other patients. But that didn’t stop him from raging as the cops dragged him through the waiting room and out the busted clinic door.
“You’ll get yours, bitch!” he howled, his head thrown back and his eyes rolling wildly as he craned around, trying to see if Roxie had followed, if she was listening. “Th
is isn’t finished. You don’t come into my town and threaten our fishing. No freaking way. I’m going to get free, and I’ll be coming for you!” Head still tipped back, he let loose with a laugh that started down low in his chest and rose up, and up, and up, until it cracked on a near-shriek that riffled the hairs on the back of Luke’s neck.
“Let’s get him out of here!” one of the cops shouted, urging his buddies out the broken door.
Even once they were gone, though, Luke could hear Jenks outside, sometimes laughing, sometimes shrieking, gibbering meaningless strings of words that all ended in threats against Roxie and her clinic.
“Cripes.” Luke rolled his shoulders, trying to loosen the sudden tension. “Friendly town. Not exactly the sort of place I’d have rushed back to.”
“Then again,” Roxie said from behind him, “I bet you’ve never rushed back to anyplace. It’s always the next stop with you, isn’t it? The next village, the next outbreak, the next victim.”
Luke halfway expected her to say “the next woman,” but she didn’t. He’d bet a year’s pay she’d thought it, though, which brought his temper up another notch as he turned to face her, only to have it notch even higher when he saw the shadow of a bruise on her cheek, and the utter exhaustion in her eyes.
She looked defeated. Vulnerable. And very alone, standing in the hallway of her one-man clinic in the middle of nowhere.
Holding iron control over the anger, he said tightly, “We’ve had this fight before. Since we’re not together anymore, I can’t see that it’s relevant.”
It wasn’t what he wanted to say, but it was better this way. He had to keep it clean, keep it simple. They’d tried the other way before and it hadn’t worked for either of them.
“You’re right,” she said after a moment, shaking her head. “I guess I should apologize.”
“Don’t,” he said with a kink of dark humor. “You’ll just have to take it back when you’ve heard what I came here to say.”
“You want me to leave,” she said matter-of-factly. “You’re going to point out that I’ve been personally attacked twice in less than twenty-four hours, and that most of the townspeople frankly don’t like me. They consider me as much of an outsider as you, only worse, because I’m trying to pretend I’m a local. Then you’ll probably offer to call in more CDC manpower, but only if I agree to stay away for the duration of the outbreak, until the great Luke Freeman has worked his magic, solved the mystery and saved the day. Then you’ll leave and I can come home, and everything will go back to normal.” She lifted her chin, as though daring him to disagree. “How am I doing so far?”
With the M.D....at the Altar? Page 5
