With the M.D....at the Altar?

by Jessica Andersen

  “You’re right about everything except the townspeople. I hadn’t realized you were that unpopular. I just figured it was the disease making the victims mean.” And how revealing that her lack of popularity was the thing that seemed to gall her the most, he thought.

  Then again, she’d always cared too much about other people’s opinions, had always spent far too much of her valuable time befriending the locals, time he’d thought would be better spent working on science and medicine.

  She shrugged and looked past him, to where the cops had stuffed Jenks into a patrol car and were doing a U-turn, headed for the monastery. “You’re not a local until you’ve been here a dozen or so generations. And my father wasn’t exactly—” She broke off. “Never mind. Not important.”

  “Your father what?” he asked, unable to help himself even though he knew they should keep it to business.

  For all that she’d talked about wanting a home and family, she’d almost never spoken of her own, except to say that her parents were divorced, and her mother had remarried and moved to the Dakotas.

  “Like I said, it’s not important. What is important is that—as you’ve probably guessed—I have no intention of leaving Raven’s Cliff. Not now, and not in the future. I’m staying in this town, and I’m staying on this case—period, end of sentence. So rather than waste time arguing about it, why don’t you bring me up to speed on where your team is with the outbreak?”

  He damn well did want to argue. He also wanted to grab her and shake some sense into her, or maybe grab her, stick her in the SUV and drive her right out of town, so he could lock her somewhere safe.

  She narrowed her eyes. “Don’t even think about it.”

  “I hate it when you do that,” he muttered, piling annoyance atop the anger.

  “I can read you like you’re closed-captioned. Deal with it.”

  Except she hadn’t always read him right, he remembered. She’d missed a few things along the way, and he hadn’t bothered to correct her misapprehensions.

  But that was then, not now, and now was what mattered. The outbreak was what mattered.

  “Treat me like I’m the local medicine man,” she said softly. “Give me that much respect, at least.”

  He snorted. “Please. My respect for your skills as a doctor have never been a question and you damn well know it.”

  “So stop treating me like an outsider!”

  It was the second time she’d used the word, which made it telling. He didn’t remember that being an issue before. Then again, those had been different times, different circumstances.

  And they had, perhaps, been slightly different people.

  He nodded. “Okay, medicine man. You’re on.” He gave her a quick summary of the tests they’d run so far, and the results, most of which had been negative except for the abnormal levels of steroid hormones.

  “They’re ’roid raging?” she said, her voice cracking with incredulity. “From a disease? That doesn’t make any sense. I’ve never heard of anything like that before.”

  “Me, either, but that doesn’t mean it’s not happening now. God knows we’ve seen some pretty strange stuff before. Why not this?”

  “You’re right.” She scrubbed both hands across her face, wincing when she hit the bruise. “I know you’re right. And I know it’s stupid to say ‘but we’re in Maine.’ But we are, and that’s the way I feel. This sort of thing shouldn’t happen stateside, in my town.”

  He didn’t point out that by her own admission most of the townspeople didn’t consider it “her” town, nor did he remind her that bad stuff happened in the affluent U.S.A., not just the third-world countries they used to frequent. She knew both those things, she just didn’t want to face them.

  Denial was part of the grief process. He’d seen it before in hundreds of village doctors, priests and medicine men—healers all, who took it upon themselves to care for the people nearest them. Unlike Luke himself, who wasn’t looking to care about anybody, and made no secret of the fact, to himself or anyone else. He was just looking to check off another outbreak and move on, because that was what he did. He moved on, and didn’t get involved. It was better that way.

  Reminding himself of that hard-learned lesson, he forced the anger—and the worry—aside. Roxie was a grown-up and a hell of a doctor. If she said she was staying, then she was staying. And that was a good thing, too, he told himself, because he could use the extra set of capable hands if he was going to solve the case.

  That was the most important thing. Not the people, but the case. And he’d do well to remember it.

  “We’re wasting time standing here talking,” he said curtly, crouching down to grab the field kit he’d snagged from the SUV. “Come on.”

  She looked surprised, though he wasn’t sure if that was because of the abrupt subject change, or the fact that he was including her in the investigation. “Where are we going?”

  “Coastal Fish. We have some samples to take.”

  THE WELL-DRESSED MAN cursed when a rock shifted beneath him, making him teeter on the narrow trail. With a sheer rock wall on one side and a deadly drop to the ocean on the other, he didn’t have much room for maneuvering, and the full knapsack he had slung over one shoulder was messing with his balance.

  Swearing bitterly, he scrabbled for a handhold and lunged a couple of steps farther forward, until he reached the place where the path widened to a small ledge.

  From all other directions—at the top of the cliff, where Beacon Manor and its burned-out lighthouse looked out over the sea, or from the water looking up—the ledge looked like nothing special. But that was a natural optical illusion created by a fallen rock slab. In reality, the faint path and narrow rocky shelf led to a series of interconnected caves that delved into the cliffside below the lighthouse, above the waterline.

  He entered the first cave, which was a wide, welcoming space with a scorched black spot near the entrance providing mute evidence of long-ago campfires. Moving quickly through this antechamber, he ducked a little to keep from banging his head and strode deeper into the cave system, lighting the way with a small flashlight that he retrieved from the heavy knapsack.

  In times past, the caves had no doubt served as bolt-holes for smugglers and bootleggers, as suggested by the tool marks in some of the rock walls, and the smears of vintage graffiti in tar paint and scratched symbols.

  Farther back, in the last chamber that was easily accessible by a full-grown man, a set of four iron eyebolts sunk into the living rock indicated that something—or someone—had been locked there for a time.

  Now, it served a similar purpose.

  Before entering the chamber, he pulled a stocking cap over his face. It was a cliché, perhaps, and probably unnecessary since his captive spent most of her time unconscious, and was completely out of it when he did manage to rouse her. But he figured the precaution was a sensible one given that his plans involved returning his captive to her home.

  Assuming, of course, that her father played his part correctly.

  The young woman was in her late twenties, and wrapped in a pale blue blanket that he’d tucked around the chains. Her tawny hair was a tangled mess of corkscrew curls plastered around her face, and her arms, legs and face were bruised and scraped, and streaked with dirt.

  She didn’t move when he entered, but the regular rise and fall of her chest assured him that she was still alive, still as out of it as she’d been ever since he’d handed over the fake documents to the distant hospital’s staff, claiming their Jane Doe as his own.

  He did his business with brisk efficiency, rousing her enough to force her to drink two cans of a liquid diet for senior citizens, followed by a bottle of water. Then he cleaned her up, wrinkling his nose at the smell and the mess, wishing there were another way to handle the necessary business.

  But, he reminded himself as he packed the trash away in his knapsack and headed out of the cave system, the reward is going to be well worth the effort.

&nb
sp; Either her father cooperated…or she died.

  Chapter Five

  Five hours and a number of lab tests later, Rox and the other doctors had an important new piece of data: yes, the outbreak was coming from the fish.

  Specifically, they’d linked the symptoms to a group of abnormally large fish marked with a dark stripe along either side of their bodies. Mostly haddock and cod seemed to have been affected, though Rox suspected someone—probably Marvin Smith—had either hidden or dumped other examples of the abnormally large fish, because when she and Luke had returned to Coastal Fish to collect their samples, the bins had seemed much emptier than they’d been earlier in the day.

  Regardless, their exhaustive analyses revealed that the blood and muscle of the dark-lined fish contained a substance very similar to an enzyme normally produced by the human body in order to increase steroid hormone production. There seemed to be two forms of enzyme contamination, with some fish producing a great deal of it while others produced more moderate levels.

  “That explains the two types of the disease,” Luke said later that evening. “The nonviolent patients must’ve ingested the lower-producing fish, while the Violents ate the turbocharged version, et voilà!” He gestured with his fork. “The enzyme moves from the digestive tract to the circulation, triggers overproduction of steroid hormones and probably some secondary metabolites and products we haven’t caught yet, and you’ve got yourself a ’roid rage.”

  Except, as far as Rox was concerned, there was no et voilà about it. There were still too many facets of the disease going unexplained. “That would be a neat little explanation,” she said tartly, “except for one thing.”

  He simply raised an eyebrow.

  “The Violents aren’t randomly raging. What we’re seeing is an amplification of their natural tendencies. Aztec’s little crush on me turned into an obsession. Jenks’s normal loyalty toward the fishing fleet became homicidal protectiveness. That’s not random. It seems to me like it’s more of a…” She thought for a second. “Like a loss of inhibitions.”

  The five doctors sat around the long table in the kitchen, discussing their findings over dinner. Bug had whipped up an army’s worth of burgers and fried veggies, and Rox was enjoying the solid meal. She was having trouble remembering the last time she’d actually sat down and eaten.

  Probably just before the first cases came in, she admitted to herself. She’d been on the go ever since. She should be grateful to Luke and the others that the patients were mostly stable and receiving supportive treatment in a safe environment, and she had time to sit down for dinner. But she wasn’t grateful. She was feeling snappish and combative. It irked her that Luke had been the one to identify the enzyme, that Bug had actually been the first to notice that the larger fish all had the dark lines while their smaller counterparts didn’t.

  She’d wanted to be the one to discover the source and identity of the disease, wanted to be the hero who saved the town.

  And she needed to get over herself, she acknowledged inwardly, knowing that her mood stemmed from the fact that while they might’ve identified the fish as the common denominator among the patients, they didn’t know why the fish were growing so quickly and whether the problem was going to spread…and they didn’t know how to treat the catatonic patients, some of whom were starting to deteriorate.

  “Roxie,” Luke snapped, his tone suggesting he’d said her name several times already.

  “What? Oh, sorry.” She blinked, realizing that she’d tuned out midconversation with her burger halfway to her mouth.

  May, who was sitting next to her at the long, picnic-style table, touched her arm. “When was the last time you slept?”

  “Last night,” Rox answered around a jaw-cracking yawn that suggested her body had been waiting for her to notice how tired she’d gotten.

  “We got here last night, remember?” Luke said. “First we took care of your buddy, Aztec, and then we went to work getting the monastery ready for business. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you were right there with us, all night.”

  “Which means you’ve all been up for going on two days, too,” she countered, not wanting him to single her out for coddling. Anything his team could handle, she could handle, too.

  “True enough.” Luke nodded. “But how many days were you doing three-hour night checks on your patients before that?”

  She hated that he was being reasonable, hated that he was in her space, hated that he didn’t seem to be experiencing any of the same flashes she was, when she’d see him tilt his head and grin a certain way and remember that same look from before, remember the situation and the people they’d been with, and how it had felt to be by his side. It hurt her that he seemed to be able to work beside her without thinking about the past, when she couldn’t do anything but.

  And, she admitted with brutal honesty, he was right, damn it. She was overtired, and getting bitchy. She sighed and scrubbed both hands across her face. “You’re right. I’m cranky and exhausted and I’m no good to anyone.”

  May squeezed her arm. “You’re not alone anymore, Doc. Turn it off for a few hours while someone else does night shift.”

  Remembering their earlier conversation, Rox glanced at Luke. “Weren’t we supposed to be on night shift?”

  “That was assuming you caught some downtime this afternoon. You didn’t, so you’re off the hook. Go on.” He waved her toward the west wing. “Let someone else take care of you for a change.”

  She shot him a sharp look at that statement, thinking it was an odd thing for him to think, and an even odder thing to say in front of his teammates. But she didn’t call him on it, and nodded instead. “Thanks. Wake me if you need me.”

  He nodded. “Of course.” But they both knew he wouldn’t. As far as he was concerned, the great Luke Freeman didn’t need anyone—at least not for long.

  Yawning, she rose and headed for the room she’d staked out as her own—which had consisted of dumping a suitcase full of toiletries, a few changes of clothes and other odds and ends she’d collected from her apartment over the clinic.

  Her room was much like every other residential room in the monastery: a long, narrow stone rectangle with a door at one end and a single barred window at the other, with a cold stone floor and high ceiling. This particular room had a strangely carved pillar set in one corner. Only a handful of the rooms she’d been in had the pillars, which were no doubt some sort of structural element put in to support the huge weight of the monastery itself.

  The volunteers had schlepped in borrowed cots for the doctors, along with bedclothes and the like, creating a bare but functional space. And at the moment, functional was all she was asking for.

  Too tired to unpack and organize, she scrabbled through the contents of her suitcase until she found her toothbrush and toothpaste, and swept the rest onto the stone floor beside the bed. The shared bathroom was down the hall, which meant she had to pass several of the nonviolent patients’ rooms. She looked in on Jeff and Wendy as she passed, hoping against hope that the married couple, both registered nurses who worked for and with her at the clinic, would start to show improvement soon.

  There didn’t seem to be any change in their conditions, which was both good and bad news—good because at least they weren’t back-sliding like some of the others, but bad because the longer the human body stayed in a catatonic state, the less likely it was to recover.

  They needed to find a cure soon, or a treatment at the very least. Granted, Luke and his team had made enormous progress in only a day, but it was hard not to feel as if they were playing catch-up to the disease, always one step behind.

  Telling herself the dragging depression was as much fatigue as hopelessness, Rox used the bathroom and headed back to her room, locking the door from the inside. She knew the gesture was totally unnecessary, given that the Violents were catatonic, restrained and locked in their rooms, and Luke’s teammates were on night duty, but it made her feel safer knowing she could sleep wi
thout thinking of Aztec and Jenks only a few doors down.

  After taking a last look around her sleeping area—a habit from the old days when there had been snakes and various vermin to worry about—she flipped the light switch, killing the single bulb that illuminated the chamber.

  She felt her way to the cot, tripping over her suitcase in the process, but she was too tired to care that she’d made an even bigger mess with her packed clothes. She got her shoes off and set them beside the flashlight she was keeping close by, in case the power went. Then the old familiar field training kicked in and she dropped onto the cot fully clothed, so she could respond quickly to a medical emergency or other sort of threat.

  She thought it was a sad state of affairs that although she was in Raven’s Cliff, less than five miles from her clinic, a threat or emergency wasn’t out of the question. But she didn’t think that for long, because she was asleep almost immediately.

  She didn’t know how long she slept, or what she dreamed of, but when she awoke, her breath was locked in her throat and her heart was hammering as though she’d sprinted all the way to Beacon Lighthouse and back. At first she thought she’d been dreaming.

  Then she heard a shifting, sliding noise and she knew it was no dream.

  Someone was in her room.

  For a half second she thought maybe it was Luke, but that part of their relationship was long over. And she’d locked the door.