Emergency Contact

by Susan Peterson

  He had healer’s hands. Long elegant fingers with the tips slightly calloused, as if he didn’t really spend all his time sitting behind a desk analyzing people. And when he slipped them over the curve of her ear, Tess shivered….

  He leaned closer, using a cotton swab to gently clean her cut. “What were you thinking out there in the pool—right before you started to go under?”

  His breath was warm against her cheek. Tess shook her head. Concentrating on his words, not on what he was doing to her body. “I don’t know. I can’t remember. It’s all a blur. Just a big blur.”

  As she spoke, Tess was conscious of how close he was. His mouth was only inches from hers. It would be so simple to lift her head and quickly brush her lips across his, to run her tongue along the swell of his bottom lip and then carefully, slowly suck it in.

  She tightened her fingers on the edge of the sheet. What was she thinking? Please don’t let me make a total fool out of myself, she thought. The stakes are much too high.

  “Do you trust me enough to let me help you, Tess?”

  Dear Harlequin Intrigue Reader,

  We have another month of spine-tingling romantic thrillers lined up for you—starting with the much anticipated second book in Joanna Wayne’s tantalizing miniseries duo, HIDDEN PASSIONS: FULL MOON MADNESS. In Just Before Dawn, a reclusive mountain man vows to get to the bottom of a single mother’s terrifying nightmares before darkness closes in.

  Award-winning author Leigh Riker makes an exciting debut in the Harlequin Intrigue line this May with Double Take. Next, pulses race out of control in Mask of a Hunter by Sylvie Kurtz—the second installment in THE SEEKERS—when a tough operative’s cover story as doting lover to a pretty librarian threatens to blow up.

  Be there from the beginning of our brand-new in-line continuity, SHOTGUN SALLYS! In this exciting trilogy, three young women friends uncover a scandal in the town of Mustang Valley, Texas, that puts their lives—and the lives of the men they love—on the line. Don’t miss Out for Justice by Susan Kearney.

  To wrap up a month of can’t-miss romantic suspense, Doreen Roberts debuts in the Harlequin Intrigue line with Official Duty, the next title in our COWBOY COPS thematic promotion. It’s a double-murder investigation that forces a woman out of hiding to face her perilous past…and her pent-up feelings for the sexy sheriff who still has her heart in custody. Last but certainly not least, Emergency Contact by Susan Peterson—part of our DEAD BOLT promotion—is an edgy psychological thriller about a traumatized amnesiac who may have been brainwashed to do the unthinkable….

  Enjoy all our selections this month!

  Sincerely,

  Denise O’Sullivan

  Senior Editor,

  Harlequin Intrigue

  EMERGENCY CONTACT

  SUSAN PETERSON

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  A devoted Star Trek fan, Susan Peterson wrote her first science-fiction novel at the age of thirteen. But unlike other Star Trek fan writers, in Susan’s novel she made sure that Mr. Spock fell in love. Unfortunately, what she didn’t take into consideration was the fact that falling in love and pursuing a life of total logic didn’t exactly go hand in hand. In any case, it was then that she realized that she was a hopeless romantic, a person who needed the happily-ever-after ending. But it wasn’t until later in life, after pursuing careers in intensive care nursing and school psychology, that Susan finally found the time to pursue a career in writing. An ardent fan of psychological thrillers and suspense, Susan combined her love of romance and suspense into several manuscripts targeted to the Harlequin Intrigue line. Getting the go-ahead to write for this line was a dream come true for her.

  Susan lives in a small town in northern New York with her son, Kevin, her nutball dog, Ozzie, Phoenix the cat and Lex the six-toed menace (a new kitten). Susan loves to hear from readers. E-mail her at SusanPetersonHI@aol.com or visit her Web site at susanpeterson.net.

  Books by Susan Peterson

  HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE

  751—CONCEALED WEAPON

  776—EMERGENCY CONTACT

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Tess Doe (Ross)—Although unaware of her own identity, Tess knows that she can trust no one, including gentle but probing psychiatrist Ryan Donovan, called in to treat her. Instinct tells her that her enemies are closing in and she must escape before time runs out.

  Ryan Donovan, M.D.—Disillusioned with clinical work, he returns to his hometown, determined to bury himself in research. But he quickly finds himself intriguingly involved with the beautiful but perplexing amnesiac who walked out of a local cornfield.

  Gen. Thomas Flynn—A member of the ultraconservative organization The Patriot’s Foundation of Family Values, Flynn is a decisive, arrogant man who decides to change the political course of a country by whatever means possible.

  Sidney Bloom, M.D.—A brilliant scientist who vehemently believes in the old adage The End Justifies the Means.

  Ian McCaffery—A human machine bent on making sure his superior’s plans for change come to fruition.

  For you, Dad.

  I know we haven’t always seen eye to eye, but your

  deep love, warm support and total belief in my talent

  have always made me feel appreciated. I love being

  one of your four daughters.

  Thanks to my critique partners Chris Wenger, Linda Bleser & Tracy Rysavy. You made this all possible.

  A special thanks to Patricia Otto, R.N. and Eric Lemza for their wonderful medical insights. Any medical errors are totally my fault and were done in order to make this work of fiction possible.

  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 Sixteen

  Chapter One

  The morning Tess Doe walked naked out of the Half Moon, Iowa, cornfield, psychiatrist Ryan Donovan was three miles away, wolfing down one of Sally Todd’s homemade sugar doughnuts and sipping some of her fresh-brewed coffee.

  “You want a dozen of them to go, Doc?” Sally asked, backing out of the kitchen and balancing a huge metal tray of iced apple turnovers in one hand. She set the tray onto the counter and wiped her flour-smudged hands on her apron.

  “Alice will kill me if I bring any of that stuff into the office,” Ryan said, using the corner of a paper napkin to swipe at his mouth.

  Shortly after meeting him, his new secretary had lamented to every other secretary on their floor that her new boss could eat like a horse and never gain an ounce. Ryan had taken it as fair warning not to bring in the usual office goodies.

  “Pish-posh, the girl just needs to accept the fact that she comes from good farm stock. She needs to celebrate her largeness.”

  Ryan didn’t have a response to that one. Sometimes Sally’s hometown philosophy wasn’t debatable. He had a feeling this was one of those times.

  Sally grabbed a white baker’s bag off the shelf and snapped it open. Before he could stop her, she’d shoved a dozen sugar and bavarian-cream doughnuts inside and set it on the counter in front of him.

  “Did you hear those helicopters overhead last night?” she asked.

  “Heard something hovering overhead, but I didn’t have time to go look.” Ryan took a sip of coffee. If there was anything Sally Todd liked better than baking, it was exchanging a bit of gossip.

  “When I stopped for gas this morning, Gar
y said he thought he saw an explosion over by the Carson farm,” Sally said. “But by the time he got there it was too dark to see anything.”

  “Wonderful,” Ryan said dryly. “Now we’ll have Gary telling everyone that aliens have landed in Half Moon.”

  “Don’t be making fun of poor Gary. People are a tad spooked with that research center being here.”

  Ryan laughed. “Talk about small town paranoia. All we’re doing is boring pharmaceutical research.”

  Before Sally could comment, her phone rang and she reached around to answer it. Ryan pulled a ten-dollar bill out of his wallet, set it on the counter, and picked up the bag of doughnuts. He nodded to Sally, prepared to head out to work. But she waved at him, signaling for him to wait.

  A few seconds later, she hung up the phone. “That was the police dispatcher. She said the Chief is looking for you. Wants you to meet him out at the Carson farm.”

  Ryan frowned. “Chief Cole wants to see me?”

  “Yep, right away.”

  Puzzled, Ryan shrugged. “Okay, I’ll head out there.”

  He waved and strolled out onto the main street of Half Moon. A few cars and pickup trucks were parked along Station Street, the main drag through town. Most belonged to the store owners that occupied the not-so-bustling shopping strip that made up downtown Half Moon. No large malls or superstores in this tiny town. But Ryan figured he’d adjust. He’d have to.

  Two months ago, weary from battling traffic and short-tempered city folks, he had quit his staff position at Boston’s Neuropsychiatric Hospital and returned home to Half Moon, a tiny, rural farming community. It was only luck that his old mentor, Dr. Sidney Bloom, had a position open for him at the Half Moon Research Center, a small, private facility dedicated to neuropsychiatric research.

  Ryan shook his head. Who was he kidding? Crowds, traffic and a busy schedule hadn’t prompted his decision to leave. Failure had forced him to leave. There wasn’t much room for a psychiatrist who didn’t know how to function better than a first-year medical student. A psychiatrist who failed his patients.

  He breathed deep, tasting the sweet warmth of summer, and raked a restless hand through his hair. Time to quit analyzing everything. Some things were better left alone. Research, not clinical work, was where he needed to concentrate his talents.

  He climbed into his dusty BMW and took off out of town. Fifteen minutes later, he pulled up the winding dirt driveway leading to the Carson farm.

  On the front lawn, next to one of Betty Carson’s carefully tended flower beds, stood Half Moon’s Chief of Police Ted Cole and Bud Carson. Bud’s expression was worried enough to send a jolt of concern through Ryan. Not much rattled Bud. Not even the night a private patient had left the research facility and climbed through the downstairs window of his house and started cooking scrambled eggs in the Carsons’ kitchen.

  Ryan pulled up behind Cole’s truck and jumped out. “Morning, gentlemen. What’s the big emergency?”

  Chief Cole scowled. “Another nutcase has escaped from the center and landed in Bud’s cornfield.”

  “Chief, people don’t escape from the Half Moon Research Center,” Ryan said patiently. “Sometimes people leave the center without signing out or letting anyone know where they’re going, but they’re at the center of their own free will.”

  Chief Cole snorted. “Still means they’re going over the wall, if you ask me.” He nodded his head in Bud Carson’s direction. “The nut job scared the stuffing out of poor Bud here.”

  Ryan smiled at the elderly farmer. “You do look a little rattled, Bud.”

  Bud ran a gnarled hand through his thinning gray hair. “I have good reason to, Doc. I was out back, taking a look at the corn when I heard something rustling. I looked up and out steps this woman. Damn near dropped my teeth.”

  Cole shot a sly sideways grin at his friend and then elbowed him in the side. “She got old Bud’s pulse aracing, too.”

  Ryan raised a questioning eyebrow in the farmer’s direction.

  “She was buck naked, Doc,” Bud explained. A twinge of red pinked the tip of the man’s ears. “Not a stitch on. Good thing Betty brought me some of that new denture adhesive. Otherwise I might ’ave lost ’em for sure.”

  Ryan glanced at the Chief. “I haven’t heard anything about anyone leaving the center without permission. Did you call Dr. Bloom?”

  The Chief nodded. “He was too busy to talk to me. I just got some flunky of his. I figured you’d be easier to deal with.”

  “I’ll help in any way I can,” Ryan said.

  After nodding to the two men, Ryan took the wooden porch steps two at a time. As he pulled open the screen door and stepped into the cheery farm kitchen, Betty Carson greeted him. “I’m glad they found you, Ryan. She’s in the living room. Go easy on her. Poor thing is as scared as a newborn baby rabbit.”

  Ryan gave Betty a reassuring smile. “I’ll be gentle.”

  He stepped around her and walked into the dimly lit living room. Like a lot of farm folks, Betty Carson kept the main part of the house cool by drawing heavy curtains to block the hot morning sun. The front room was dark, the furniture sitting amidst a heavy gloom.

  In spite of the poor light, Ryan spotted the woman immediately. She sat in the cushioned easy chair occupying the far corner of the room. She was covered from neck to feet with a hand-stitched quilt—one of Betty’s legendary homemade quilts, no doubt. Her legs were drawn up beneath the blanket, and her chin, small with a slight indentation in it, rested on her knees.

  She watched him from beneath a fringe of dark lashes. Lashes so dark they were startling when contrasted with the fall of white-blond hair spread out like a shawl across her slender shoulders.

  But it was the wide, iridescent green eyes beneath the straight line of bangs that caught and held his attention, sending a deep and intense awareness shooting through him. He couldn’t help but be struck by her stunning beauty.

  “Good morning,” he said softly. “My name is Donovan. Ryan Donovan. I’m a doctor.”

  At the word doctor, she stiffened a bit, her expression less friendly. “I didn’t ask for a doctor,” she said. “And I don’t need one.”

  He smiled. “Good, because I’m in the mood to just talk. Is that all right with you?”

  She stared at him in silence, her gaze penetrating, almost haunting in its directness. It seemed to sear him with a heat that was more piercing than twin lasers. But she didn’t lift her head off her knees or make any other move to indicate she was opposed to his suggestion.

  Ryan crossed the room, moving slowly, so as not to crowd or frighten her. She followed his progress with her eyes, their color radiating an unblinking brilliance in the dimness of the room. She didn’t seem tense or skittish, simply wary, as if prepared for anything.

  He pointed to the couch directly across from her. “Do you mind if I sit down?”

  She shrugged. “Do what you like. This isn’t my house.”

  Ryan leaned forward to catch her words, the sound so soft and light it was like a breeze brushing past his ear. The effect startled him and he struggled to regain his composure, feeling oddly off balance.

  What the hell was going on? He was never rattled when meeting a patient. He was the man always in control, always ready to handle the situation. The interns in the E.R. used to love it when he was the attending on-call and showed up to consult on a case. No matter how off-the-wall the E.R. walk-ins got, the interns knew that Ryan Donovan could handle them without breaking a sweat.

  He sat down and crossed one leg over the other, taking a moment to get a feel for the situation. As he slid an arm along the back of the couch, he tried to impart an air of calm he didn’t feel. But the last thing he wanted to do was spook her.

  “The Carsons asked me to come because they were concerned that you might be injured.” Ryan waited, but when she didn’t respond, he continued. “They thought you might have been in an accident.”

  She shook her head and the perfect cut
of bangs ruffled a bit with the movement of her head. They parted to reveal a small cut on her forehead, but it wasn’t bleeding and didn’t appear very deep.

  “I don’t think I was in an accident.”

  She spoke each word clearly, but there was a slight hesitation, as if she was struggling to form the words before saying them. Perhaps the pause indicated some kind of head trauma, he thought. She seemed oblivious to the cut on her head.

  “May I ask your name?”

  “Tess.” The small frown was back between her brows, and she looked as though she might have searched for the name, dug it up from somewhere deep inside. “My name is Tess,” she said slowly.

  Ryan waited a beat and then asked, “No last name?”

  Beneath the quilt, her hands moved, tightening around her knees. “Just Tess.” Her shoulders braced as if anticipating his next question.

  Ryan attempted to inject some lightness into the tenseness that hovered between them. “I don’t know too many people who go by only one name.”

  She lifted her eyes, her gaze slightly mocking. “Cher. Batman. Garfield.”

  He had to laugh. “Okay, you’ve got me there. A famous celebrity and two equally well-known cartoon characters. Are you telling me you’re someone famous?”

  She shook her head and the hair shimmered in the soft light. Her chin settled back on top of her knees. “No, I’m not famous.”

  “Can you tell me how you got into the Carsons’ cornfield?”

  “I walked.”

  “Yes, but where were you before you walked into the field?”

  “Somewhere else.”

  Ryan tried another tack. “I haven’t seen you around here before. Do you live close by?”

  For the first time, she smiled, a slight trembling stretch of her lips, as if she were afraid of him but wanted to come across as compliant. Cooperative. As if she hoped that if she kept things on an even keel, everything would be all right and he’d leave her alone.