Intensive Care

by Jessica Andersen

  “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

  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”!

  Books by Jessica Andersen

  HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE

  734—DR. BODYGUARD

  762—SECRET WITNESS

  793—INTENSIVE CARE

  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 ti
les, 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 sheet ing 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 doc tor. 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 c
alls 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.