She went through the first six in short order, finding two of the rooms occupied by patients who were less than pleased to be paying exorbitant fees just to have their privacy invaded. Nika left hasty apologies in her wake as she hurried to the next suite.
Disheartened, not to mention exceedingly worried, she started on the second six.
She found Gerald and Cole’s grandmother in the next to the last suite on the floor.
Her heart hammering, she entered the room quietly. Even so, the orderly sensed her presence. She saw his shoulders instantly tensing the moment she eased the door open.
Her first thought was to keep him calm—and to buy time until Cole showed up.
In a gentle, soft voice, she asked, “What are you doing, Gerald? You got off on the wrong floor.”
From what she could see, he was fussing with the IV drip, but it didn’t appear that he’d taken it off the rack yet. “I’m taking care of Mrs. Baker. Making her comfortable.”
“I’m her doctor, Gerald. I didn’t leave any instructions for you to follow.”
“Not your instructions I’m following,” he told her, his tone mild. Distant.
“Then whose are they?” she asked, inching her way toward the orderly. At this proximity, she could see that he had a syringe in his hand.
Her heart began hammering harder. She was right. Gerald was the one killing the patients. But why?
She needed to distract him, to keep him from using that syringe.
“God’s,” he answered simply.
“God told you to kill those people?” Nikka kept her tone even, as if she was just trying to understand what he was telling her. She knew she needed to keep his confidence, to make him feel as if he could trust her.
The orderly nodded. It was clear by his manner that he felt he was doing something noble. Something sanctified.
“God doesn’t like people to suffer.” He was smiling as he looked down at the sleeping face of the woman he was determined to help find peace. “I’m separating them from their suffering.”
Nikka took another small step forward. The orderly was taller and heavier than she was, but she was hoping that if she had to, she could literally throw him off balance. She’d have the element of surprise in her favor.
“Mrs. Baker isn’t suffering,” she pointed out softly.
“Oh, but she will be,” he told her, his voice sorrowful, as if he could already feel the old woman’s pain. “She’ll suffer horribly. Once the cancer advances.”
“We don’t know that she does have cancer,” Nika gently reminded him. “That’s why the tissue sample was sent to the lab. So they could analyze it.”
But Gerald shook his head. “It’s cancer. I know it’s cancer,” he insisted. “I can tell.”
She pretended to be impressed. “How can you tell, Gerald?”
His voice grew raspy as he recalled. “She looks just like my mother did when she came down with pancreatic cancer.” There were tears in his eyes as he looked at Nika. “At the end, she begged me to kill her. I don’t want Mrs. Baker to suffer like that.” He brushed his hand along the woman’s silver-gray hair. “I want her to go peacefully. She deserves that.”
“What about Mr. Peters? He didn’t have cancer. He wasn’t dying of anything. Why did you pick him?” Nika tactfully used the word “pick” rather than “kill” because it was far less confrontational that way. She didn’t want Gerald to become angry or defensive. She wanted him to think she was his friend.
The answer was the same. “To keep him from suffering,” Gerald said.
Nika looked at him. It wasn’t much of a stretch for her to pretend to be confused. “I don’t understand.”
Gerald sighed, as if he couldn’t fathom why she didn’t see what was so clear to him.
“Mr. Peters was being sent back to the nursing home. Do you know what those places are?” he demanded, a flash of anger in his eyes. “They’re holding zones for people just waiting to die. He was a hero, a policeman who saved lives. He didn’t deserve to be thrown aside like that. Like some rotten leftovers,” he concluded bitterly. And then, just as suddenly as he’d scowled, Gerald was smiling again. “Now he’s better off.”
Somehow, she needed to get through to him. To make Gerald stop before he killed Cole’s grandmother.
“You can’t make those decisions for people, Gerald. I was going to help Mr. Peters find a roommate so he could share the expense of having his own place again.”
“No, you weren’t,” the orderly accused petulantly. “You’re just saying that to make me feel guilty. Well, it won’t work! I saved Mr. Peters from suffering!” he insisted angrily.
Ignoring her now, Gerald began to uncouple the IV so that he could insert the syringe into it. The moment he took down the IV, Nika went to grab his wrist. Just then, she heard a noise behind her.
It all happened so fast that it was almost a blur. One moment, she was reaching for the orderly’s wrist, the next, he’d yanked her off balance, and had a choke hold on her. With his arm around her throat, Nika felt as if the orderly was crushing her larynx as he dragged her to him, his eyes riveted to Cole.
She felt the sharp tip of the syringe against her neck. Nika had no doubt that he would use it. And if he did, she estimated that she was less than a handful of heartbeats away from death.
Cole had his weapon out, holding it with both his hands to keep it steady. The muzzle was aimed directly at the orderly’s head.
“Let her go, Mayfield,” he ordered.
“And have you kill me? Sorry, not really one of the better offers I’ve gotten. What I’m doing is right,” he insisted, his voice sounding as if it was about to crack. “They don’t suffer. They die with dignity, not rot away, piece by piece. Can’t you understand that?” Gerald demanded angrily, then his eyes widened with determination, the hand with the syringe rising just a little, as if he was about to strike. “Come one step closer and I’ll kill her.”
It turned out to be the last thing he said.
Gerald died with a look of shock on his face, a single bullet hole right between his eyes.
“Don’t move another step closer,” Cole said at the same moment that he fired his gun. While he was in college, he’d never missed a Saturday at the firing range. Being a dead shot had been important to him. Now he realized why. It was as if fate had been preparing him for this one moment.
To save the woman who had, without his permission and almost without his knowledge, become so important to him.
Nika thought her legs had turned to liquid—until she used them to run from the crumpling body. Mercifully, they still worked.
“You got my message,” she cried, relieved.
Rather than say something to confirm that, or to give voice to the fact that, quite possibly for the rest of his life, he would be grateful beyond words that he’d managed to save her in time, Cole vented the incredible swirling turmoil within him.
He exploded at her.
“Who the hell do you think you are, some kind of superhero? You can’t just go running off to confront a guy who’s killed at least a dozen people—if not more.” Reports were coming into the precinct from more than a half dozen facilities, all of which had employed Mayfield at one time or other—and all which, coincidentally, had more than their share of patients dying at the time. “You wait for me,” he shouted.
Relieved or not, she wasn’t about to stand there and be yelled at. She wanted to be comforted, not upbraided, damn it. “If I’d waited, most likely your grandmother would have been dead by now,” she retorted.
“And if I hadn’t come in just when I did, you would have been dead by now!” he countered, not adding that he realized that he wouldn’t have been able to recover from that kind of a blow.
Her eyes narrowed, small slits firing laser beams. “Maybe you would have preferred that,” she snapped.
He stared at her incredulously. What the hell was she babbling about?
Tucking away his weapon, he threw up h
is hands. “All right, it’s official. You’re crazy.”
How dare he say that? Especially since, if she was crazy, he and his mercurial behavior had made her that way.
“Well, that’s not your problem, is it? Gerald’s your killer—he confessed to me—so the case is solved. And from all indications, your grandmother’s going to be just fine.” Nika had no idea how she knew, she just did. “That means that you don’t have to put up with me anymore.” She turned away from him, afraid that angry tears were about to come spilling out. She didn’t want him thinking that she was crying over him—even though she was.
He grabbed her arm, swinging her around to face him. “Stop making up my mind for me, Veronika. Maybe I want to.”
Maybe her anger was shutting down her mind. She had no idea what he was saying. “What? Want to what?”
She was going to make him spell it out, he thought, annoyed. Okay, then if that’s what she wanted, that’s what she was going to get.
“Maybe I want to put up with you,” he shouted back at her. When she widened her eyes like that, he found it hard to maintain his anger. “God damn it, woman, you are the most infuriating person I ever met—and I’ve never felt as alive as I have when I’m with you.”
She looked at him, stunned. “Then why are you shouting at me?”
That was easy to answer. “Because I don’t want to feel this way. I want to be numb again. Numb is safe. I do my job and go home. Simple, clean.”
She was beginning to understand. Nika’s mouth curved. “And I’m messy.”
He nodded, finally lowering his voice a little. “Oh so messy.”
She paused a second as she rolled the phrase over in her head. “Not exactly the kind of compliment a woman longs to hear.” The semi-smile turned into an amused grin. “But I’ll take it.”
The room began to fill up with people, doctors and nurses who had heard the single gunshot and wanted to know what was going on, as well as several security officers that one of the nurses had summoned.
Processing the scene, they fired questions at Cole and Nika. Cole took the lead and raised his hand, calling for a cessation of noise. It was a toss-up whether it was his commanding voice, or the badge and ID that he held in his hand that quieted the crowd.
Nodding toward the dead orderly, he said, “It looks like this was the last stop for the angel of death.”
For another moment, as the words sank in, there was silence. And then a torrent of questions began to engulf him. Cole looked over his shoulder at Nika. “Don’t go anywhere—we need to talk.”
Her eyes never left his. “About?”
Cole took a breath. Still ignoring the other questions that were being fired at him, he gave Nika an evasive answer. “We just need to talk.”
Nika mulled over Cole’s nonanswer while he dealt with the security guards and then called for backup. On Nika’s end, the wait seemed endless, but finally, the questions, at least for now, were all answered. The orderly’s body had been taken to the Medical Examiner to await an autopsy. And Cole’s grandmother, who’d slept through everything, was back in her room, still sleeping. After making a cursory report to his superior via his cell phone, Cole went down to his grandmother’s room.
Nika was already there.
“You said you wanted to talk,” Nika reminded him in response to his surprised look.
“Actually,” he admitted with feeling, “I don’t. What I really want to do is take you home and make love with you until I drop dead.”
“Drop dead,” she repeated. “Not exactly the most romantic scenario you could come up with, especially given what we just went through.”
“It would be, up until the last part,” he pointed out. And then the smile on his lips faded, pushed aside by the serious expression that had come over his features. He took her into his arms, thinking how special that felt—and how lucky he was. And how he’d almost lost it all. “I didn’t mean to yell at you before.”
An apology. She could forgive him for anything as long as he apologized, she realized. Though she tried to keep a straight face, she failed miserably. “Yes, you did.”
“Okay, I did,” he admitted, because lying would only serve him badly in this situation. “But that was only because you put yourself in danger and the consequences of that scared the hell out of me.
“As do the feelings that you’ve raised. I don’t want to feel like this,” he confessed, continuing to do what he’d never done before—bare his soul. “I don’t want to love you,” he insisted, knocking her for a loop when he used the one word she was certain she’d never hear from him. “But I can’t seem to block it or turn it off. Or even control it. It’s bigger than I am, and stronger.”
Her smile felt like it was growing deep roots—instantly. She threaded her arms around his neck. “Why don’t you just enjoy it?” she suggested.
“I suppose I could do that,” he allowed. “For a while, anyway.”
She started to feel her heart sink. “And then?” she pressed. If he intended to leave her someday soon, she needed him to put her on notice. So she’d stop harboring false hopes.
“And then we’ll up the ante.”
She cocked her head, her eyes on his. “What’s that supposed to mean?”
He smiled into her eyes, really smiled. She could feel it penetrating her soul.
“Anything we want it to,” he told her. Cole paused, waiting. “What do you think?”
She paused for a second as she selected her words. “I think, Detective Baker, that you and I are going to have a very interesting life.” She deliberately refrained from using the word “together.” That, she knew in her heart, would come in time. And she could wait.
He ran the back of his hand along her cheek, never taking his eyes off her. “I’m counting on it. You know, after everything that happened to me as a kid, I never thought I would ever feel close to anyone again besides G. And then you came along and somehow burrowed your way in when I wasn’t looking. And now, now I can’t imagine a day without you.”
Warmth spread all through her, right through her fingertips and toes. Her smile was soft, loving. “You know, for a guy who doesn’t talk much, that was very touching.”
He shrugged, a little self-conscious. “Yeah, well, don’t expect this all the time.”
Nika’s mouth curved as she tried to keep from laughing. You’re mine, Cole Baker, and I’m never letting you go. “I won’t. Oh, and just for the record, I love you, too,” she told him softly, lacing her arms around his neck. “Right down to my toes.”
“Well, it’s about time.”
The words, hardly more than a raspy whisper, came from his grandmother. She’d woken up for a span of perhaps thirty seconds.
But when they looked, she was asleep again.
It was just as well, Cole thought. The kiss that followed was far too torrid for a woman her age to witness.
Epilogue
“Mama, this is a happy time. You’re not supposed to be crying,” Nika chided gently.
She took out the brand-new lace handkerchief that Sasha had given her that morning just before they left for the church and wiped away the lone tear that had insisted on sliding down her mother’s cheek.
Paulina pushed aside her daughter’s hand. “I am your mother. Do not tell me what I can or cannot do.” She indicated the handkerchief still in Nika’s hand. “Be putting that away. You are not supposed to be using it. It will not be new if you do,” she said crisply in an attempt to maintain her abrupt facade. “And then we will he having to find something else for you to go with the borrowing and the old and blue,” she retorted, reciting the age-old articles that each bride was supposed to have in her possession as she walked down the aisle toward her future husband.
Paulina squared her shoulders as she reclaimed her composure. She and her daughter—her beautiful, beautiful daughter—were momentarily alone in the small room reserved for the bride within the church where, a few short minutes from now, her second-born was g
oing to become a married woman.
Her Nika was going to be the wife of a fine young man who had come to Paulina to ask for her daughter’s hand. She knew things like that were not done here in this day and age, so the fact that Cole Baker had done this specially pleased her. Her husband, she knew in her heart, would have approved of the match.
“Yes, Mama,” Nika said dutifully, then smiled warmly at her mother. “But this really is a happy time,” she repeated, her voice soft but firm nonetheless.
Paulina raised her chin and sniffed. “I know that,” she declared.
Josef heard the exchange between mother and daughter just as he was about to look in on them. He was to give the bride away, and even after having done so five previous times, the responsibility still filled him with pride.
He opened the door wider now. Somewhere in the background could be heard the beginning strains of the song that placed all brides center stage.
“She is your mother,” Nika’s uncle pointed out. “She is knowing everything.”
Nika slanted a quick glance toward her mother. There was a time that would have had her mother’s back up—she took offense at every word Nika’s uncle and aunt said—but this time Nika saw her mother nod her head, as if she had just been given her due.
“When it is coming to matters concerning my daughters,” Paulina said solemnly, “the answer is being yes.”
As if on cue, Nika’s three sisters came in, all but flooding the room. Alyx took Nika’s hands in hers and beamed even as she shook her head. “I can’t believe you’re getting married ahead of me.”
“Only by two weeks,” Nika pointed out. “And then we switch positions and I get to be your maid of honor.”
“Matron of honor,” Henryka, the youngest of the foursome, corrected. “You’ll be Alyx’s matron of honor,” she repeated, putting a great deal of stress on the word. And then she laughed, her eyes shining as she teased her older sister. “You’ll be an old married lady, Nika.”
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