Kansas City Countdown

by Julie Miller

  “I had my brains bashed in, Hellie. The doctor said half an inch in either of two directions and I’d be dead.” More eager than ever to get rid of him, Kenna nudged him into the hallway. “I’ll see how I feel Monday morning and call the office if I need to postpone or have someone else cover my appointments.”

  “But—”

  “But nothing. I can’t even think of who Judge Livingston is right now, much less what motions you’re talking about. I don’t remember Andrew Colbern or his wife or my assistant. And if you need me to manage your cases for you, you’ll just have to wait.”

  His expression hardened and Kenna realized they had more of an audience than the detective watching them from inside the exam room. Did she always sound like such a harpy when she got upset? Was her impatience with Hellie a by-product of injury and fatigue? Whatever filter she’d had on her emotional impulses must have bled out with the gash behind her ear. Her nostrils flared with a deep breath and she lowered her tone to a more civil pitch and nodded to the nurse who’d helped her earlier.

  Once the other woman’s concerned expression eased, and she moved on down the hallway, Kenna looked to Hellie. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to snap at you. I’m not feeling like myself right now. The doctor said I’d need a few days for the swelling and headache to recede. I need to evaluate my recovery before I return to work.”

  Appeased by her apology, Hellie smiled. “Of course. Take whatever time you need. I just wanted you to know how valuable you are to the firm, and not worry for one moment that we don’t need a woman like you at Kleinschmidt, Drexler.” A woman like her? Was that a compliment or some kind of sexist remark? “My teasing about work is just the kind of tough love pep talk I’d expect from you if our situations were reversed.”

  She’d trade tough love for losing this headache and a little bit of TLC right about now. “Thank you for coming. Now if you don’t mind, I’d like a little privacy so I can change out of this lovely hospital gown.”

  Kenna turned her head aside when he leaned in to give her a kiss. Was this uncomfortable feeling Hellie gave her the subconscious part of her brain trying to give her some kind of warning? Or was it simply having something come at her face, the same way she’d reacted to the syringe, that made her flinch? After a momentary hesitation, he pulled away. “I’ll be in touch.”

  He was heading toward the lobby when Kenna reentered the examination room. She closed the door behind her and leaned against it with a weary sigh before crossing to the exam table to gather her things. “Thanks for rescuing me again. I thought he’d never leave.”

  “Told you I’m keeping tabs, Counselor.” Keir turned to face the table with her while she packed up the papers Hellie had brought. “Although it sounded as though you could handle him yourself if you needed to.”

  The burst of indignant energy she’d shown Hellie seemed to ebb with every inhale of Keir’s warm, musky scent. If calming reassurance was a commodity, this man could make a fortune selling it. Feeling herself relax a little, Kenna picked up the folded letter she’d wadded in her fist and opened it to make sure she hadn’t damaged an important document. Several flattened, desiccated rose petals fell out and fluttered to her feet. She looked at the parchment-colored paper, flipped it over and a vague sense of unease quickened her pulse. She had no idea why, other than this was a really weird thing to receive in the mail. There was only one symbol typed on the entire page—a capital O in the top left-hand corner of the paper. The rest of it was just as blank as the important parts of her memory were. “What do you suppose that means?”

  “Someone’s printer ran out of ink?”

  “The sender wouldn’t notice the page was blank before stuffing it into the envelope?”

  Keir knelt at her bare toes and gathered up the petals to drop them into her hand. “Secret admirer? Maybe that’s just a piece of scrap paper to contain these, and the roses are the message.”

  “Why would I be sentimental about dead things?” There was certainly nothing about the once red petals that had shriveled and faded with age that sparked any kind of warm feeling inside her. “I suppose these meant something to me before the attack.”

  Keir picked up the envelope so they both could look at it. It had been addressed to her at work and stamped with a Kansas City postmark, although there was no return address.

  “The sender definitely wants to remain anonymous.” Keir opened the flap for her to drop the scentless petals inside. “Did Bond bring this to you?”

  Kenna nodded, stuffing the wrinkled paper inside, as well. “Everything was in the bag he brought. It all came from my office.”

  “Do you mind if I catch up to him and ask him about it? Maybe find out where he was tonight?”

  She tilted her gaze to meet his, hearing the suspicion behind his question. “Hellie’s a friend—maybe a little pompous and annoying—but he didn’t do this to me.”

  “How do you know he’s a friend? You’re just going to take his word for it? The guy took his own sweet time in getting here. Made a couple of tacky comments that weren’t as funny as he thought. Asked a lot of questions, too—like he might be checking to see how much you remember.”

  Keir’s fingers closed around her arm, and she wondered at the urge to turn into the warmth seeping through the thin cotton of her gown.

  “How do you know he didn’t hurt you? Do you remember the face of your attacker? Was he wearing a mask? Anything about his build? His ethnicity? Whether it was even a man?”

  The sensation of warmth quickly dissipated as she shrugged away from his touch. As much as she appreciated his honesty, the reminder that she hadn’t been able to give him any of those details rattled her. Maybe this blind faith in Keir Watson, this feeling that she knew him better than anyone else now, was a false comfort. “How do I know you didn’t do this to me, Detective? You said we were enemies. Maybe sending me what’s left of a dead rose after cutting me up is your idea of a joke.”

  Instead of taking offense at standing her ground, the way Helmut Bond had, Keir grinned. “Now you’re being smart. Stay that way.” He lightly pinched her chin between his thumb and forefinger before heading out the door. “And I really am driving you home, so don’t get any ideas about calling a cab and sneaking out of here. I’ll be outside in the hallway chatting up Hellie for a few minutes. Then I’ll bring the car around and meet you at the lobby exit when you’re ready.”

  Nodding, Kenna closed the door behind him and crossed to her bag to pull out her clothes. It took her only a few minutes to put on the workout pants, tank top and jacket, and slip into her running shoes. It took a bit longer to carefully pull a comb through her hair without aggravating her injuries and dab on some copper gloss over her tingling lips.

  With her papers and toiletries packed in the bag, she looked around the ER room one last time to make sure she had everything. Ready to leave this nightmare behind her, she hurried out into the hallway, only slowing her steps once she reached the lobby. She didn’t have to worry much about curious stares because most of the people sitting or pacing among the pods of furniture had their own illnesses and loved ones to worry about. When she didn’t see Keir anywhere, conversing with Helmut Bond or waiting out front in his black muscle car, Kenna perched on the edge of an empty chair near the front doors to wait.

  Since she had no idea where he’d parked after dropping her off at the ER doors, she didn’t know how long it would take him to walk to his car and come back for her. But the clock over the reception desk had already ticked away five minutes. Maybe Keir had gotten into another argument with Hellie. Maybe he wasn’t coming back for her. Maybe putting her trust in the younger detective was the stupidest thing she’d ever done.

  A nervous sense of abandonment tried to take hold, filling her shattered brain with fear and doubt. Determined not to give in to the debilitating feeling, Kenna squirmed in her chair, slowly
turning her head to study the other patients and family members waiting in the lobby area. For the sun to not even be up yet, there were a surprising number of people waiting to be seen or to hear news of a loved one. Fortunately, no one seemed to notice her growing agitation—not the children putting together a puzzle with their grandmother and chatting about baby names, not the elderly couple holding hands while they both tried to read magazines, not the teenager dozing in a chair beside his texting buddy or the man on his cell phone pacing in front of the windows.

  All of these people had connections to someone. All of them were absorbed in their own private worlds, oblivious of everyone else in the hospital. Kenna was the only one spying on anyone else’s troubles, the only one curious enough to...

  A chill rippled down her spine as if someone had blown a soft breath against the back of her neck.

  She wasn’t the only one watching.

  Kenna spun around, immediately squeezing her eyes shut against the vertigo slamming through her skull. Several seconds passed before she dared to open her eyes. Had Keir pulled up out front? She didn’t see any black cars beneath the canopy outside the hospital doors. Holding her palm against her throbbing temple, she stood and slowly surveyed the lobby. Was that...?

  An afterimage of a man standing at the edge of the hallway to the ER treatment rooms imprinted itself on her brain. A faceless man in jeans and a black hoodie. Standing there. Watching her.

  She blinked her eyes to focus them again, only there was no hoodie. No man, period. She glanced around the lobby again. The teenagers were both wearing hooded sweatshirts, one blue, one black. But they couldn’t be in two places at once. Was she confusing them with the man she’d seen? Or imagining the picture from Keir’s phone? Was her vision as addled as the rest of her brain?

  Not willing to add hallucinations to the rest of the symptoms she had to deal with, Kenna hugged her bag beneath her arm and crossed the lobby to the hallway. She saw no one like the man she’d imagined here, only nurses hurrying about their business and an orderly pushing a patient in a wheelchair off the elevator. Needing confirmation one way or the other as to what she’d seen or hadn’t seen, she walked down the hallway, glancing inside open doors, catching a glimpse of the empty elevator closing, wondering if the man she’d seen had stepped into a room or stairwell and shut the door behind him.

  Kenna paused at the room where she’d been treated. The door stood ajar. Surely not... It would be too much...

  Taking a deep breath and steeling herself for the unexpected, she pushed open the door.

  Empty. Thank God. Her lungs deflated on an exhale of relief.

  Until she saw Dr. McBride’s work cart. The stainless steel tray had been moved across the room. And though the trash from bandage kits, hair bonnet and the saline bottle remained, someone had knocked the bloody gauze that had been there only minutes earlier onto the floor. No. There was only one lonely strip of soiled gauze lying there. The rest was missing. She checked the trash. She checked beneath the examination table.

  Kenna’s breathing grew shallow. Her pulse pounded against every wound on her head. This wasn’t right. Something wasn’t right. She doubted that any orderly had been in to clean—he would still be in here working if he hadn’t cleared away everything.

  Who would steal a souvenir of her blood and pain?

  Who wanted that piece of her?

  Who was the hooded man? “What do you want from me?”

  Kenna turned and smacked into a solid chest. Hands clamped around her shoulders and a gasp of fear stuck in her throat. She twisted.

  “Kenna?”

  She shoved against the trap. “Let go of me!”

  “Kenna.” Strong arms tightened around her. “You’re shaking. What’s wrong?”

  She couldn’t catch her breath. She couldn’t think. But she could feel. Strength and warmth. She could smell. Musky and familiar. Keir. Instinct guided her arms beneath his jacket and around his waist. She pressed her face against the warm column of his neck.

  Keir shifted his hold on her, sliding one hand up beneath her hair to palm the nape of her neck, and whispered against her ear, “You need to talk to me. Right now.”

  “I saw him. The man in the hood. The man in your picture. He was here.”

  Chapter Four

  Keir was in trouble. He hadn’t been to bed in twenty-four hours, and had endured one hell of a day at work and an emotional roller coaster of a night at the hospital. He needed a shave, some food and a serious attitude adjustment—but he didn’t care. As he pulled his car into an empty lane of the highway to skirt the beginnings of morning rush-hour traffic, he tried to figure out when and how his well-ordered world had subtly shifted into this dangerous, uncharted territory. He had the why nailed down already. Scrubbing at the weary muscles at the back of his neck, he glanced over to the woman dozing in the seat across from him.

  Kenna Parker was the reason why.

  She was the reason he’d given up a good night’s sleep, the reason he was calling in favors to get intel on an investigation that wasn’t officially his, the reason he was speeding across town to take her home when he could just as easily have called a cab or even a squad car for her.

  She’d torn apart the murder-for-hire case he’d put together that should have been a slam dunk, guaranteeing that he’d be having a conversation with the major case squad’s lead detective Monday morning to find out how she’d bested him in a courtroom. Nobody bested him. He’d turned success into an art form. He always had a plan B or a plan C if something went south on him. He won bets and had his pick of women and solved cases with a cool blend of resourcefulness, wits and determination that had rarely failed him.

  Playing savior to Kenna Parker just didn’t make sense.

  He wasn’t supposed to like the woman who defended some of the worst criminals he and the rest of KCPD tried to put away. And yeah, it still grated on his ego that he hadn’t been able to get a conviction on Andrew Colbern. Yet there was something fascinating about Kenna outside the courtroom. She was confident and self-sufficient in many ways, yet surprisingly vulnerable in others. Maybe it was just the blow to the head and slice-and-dice some pervert had done to her face that had revealed that vulnerability to him. But she seemed at such a disadvantage to egomaniacs like Hellie Bond who wanted to dictate her choices, to the perp who’d attacked her so viciously and who could, quite possibly, come back to finish the job and to that creeper who’d shown up twice now and vanished without a trace, despite a sweep of the neighborhood and hospital.

  He wanted to believe that the photo he’d shown Kenna had created the power of suggestion in her scrambled brain to misidentify one of the two teenagers in the lobby who matched Hoodie Guy’s description. But she was certain the boys had been on the sofa the entire time she glimpsed the man watching her and had tried to track him on her own. She was adamant not only that the man had been spying on her, but that he’d stolen a gross souvenir from her time in the ER. What kind of sicko wanted to keep the blood of his victim? This was looking more and more like some kind of obsession, because Keir imagined her attacker had kept her shoe and purse and whatever personal belongings she’d had on her at the time of the attack, too.

  She couldn’t be imagining the threat lurking in the shadows around her. He’d seen Hoodie Guy, too. And he wasn’t about to accept it as coincidence that a man matching that description had now shown up at two locations where Kenna was. And until she regained her memory or they could find some other way to identify her attacker, every person she met was a potential enemy.

  Keir didn’t like those kinds of odds in a fight. Nor could he deny her sense of humor and keen intelligence that had helped her cope with it all.

  Kenna was as clever and complex as Tammy had been vacuous and transparent. He’d gotten a little rush from their verbal sparring matches. And what was with his
straying gaze when it should be firmly fixed on the road? Kenna Parker had legs that went on for miles, with long, lean curves emphasized by the clingy yoga pants and zippered workout jacket she wore. At the hospital, she’d held on to him as if her life depended on it, and his body had waked at the contact. His fingers craved the smooth silk of her skin. His nose sought out the cool, citrusy scent of her hair. Their bodies fit together like two pieces of a puzzle. He’d held on as long as she’d needed him to, and then for a few seconds longer because he needed to hold her. Even now his heart hammered a little harder in his chest as he remembered the imprint of her in his arms.

  “You’re tired, Watson,” he warned himself, inhaling a deep breath and dragging his focus back to the highway. Keir glanced at the GPS on the dashboard, and busied his mind with estimating how much longer it would be until they reached the Parker Estate off State Line Drive.

  He wasn’t supposed to feel compassion for Kenna Parker. He wasn’t supposed to have his hormones buzzing with awareness about the color of her eyes or the clinging grip of her hand or those sexy, muscular legs stretched out beneath the dashboard of his Dodge Charger.

  Yep. He was so in trouble.

  “You’re not falling asleep on me, are you, Detective?” a softly articulate voice asked.

  Kenna’s eyes lit like silver with the glow from the dashboard lights. Somehow he’d missed her studying him between those long blond lashes. Right. He’d been enjoying the view farther down and fooling himself into thinking that there was something real happening between them. Conceding how distracted he was, Keir flexed his fingers around the steering wheel. “It’s been a long night.”

  She pushed herself up straighter in her seat and adjusted her seat belt. “I’d offer to drive, but—”