Fatal Hearts

by Norah Wilson

  As it happened, the second paramedic team arrived just as they were moving Boyd out.

  “Can I go now?” Hayden asked Detective Morgan. “They’re taking Boyd.”

  He grimaced. “I’m going to need you for a bit. Is there anything you can do for McBride if you go?”

  She took a deep breath. He was right. “No.”

  “Then I’ll ask you to hang in here to answer a few questions while we get this mess dealt with.” He gestured to Dr. Stratton, who was now receiving the full attention of the paramedics.

  She nodded.

  Within the next few minutes, Sylvia regained consciousness. Of course, she immediately tried to get up, and the paramedics had to restrain her. After they’d checked her out and determined she needed to be evaluated at the hospital and probably kept for observation, Ray Morgan stepped in to announce he was placing Dr. Stratton under arrest for attempted murder. Hayden watched with satisfaction as a uniformed cop, at the detective’s direction, quickly handcuffed her to the gurney.

  Sylvia glared at the constable, then turned her attention back to Ray Morgan. “Did you say attempted murder?” Sylvia craned her neck, clearly looking for Boyd’s dead body. “I was quite sure I’d actually succeeded.”

  “You did, ma’am,” Morgan said cheerfully. “But Dr. Walsh here resuscitated him.”

  Then he proceeded to read Sylvia her rights. In typical arrogant fashion, she declared the whole thing both unnecessary and tiresome. Understandably, the detective persisted.

  As they raised the gurney and prepared to wheel her out, Sylvia’s mask of composure finally slipped. “The Senator!” She looked around, locating the nurse. “Miss Shepherd, you’ll stay with my husband until you’re relieved?”

  “I will, ma’am.”

  Sylvia fixed her eyes on the detective. “You must call my son immediately. Nurse Shepherd has the number. He’ll come and take over his father’s care until other arrangements can be made.”

  “You can call him yourself, Dr. Stratton. I’m sure we can afford you that opportunity, perhaps at the hospital.”

  Her mask was back in place now. “I’d rather not speak with Jordan right now. He won’t be sympathetic. But he will step in to see to his father.”

  “So be it.” The detective tapped the gurney and addressed the paramedic. “This officer is going to accompany you and take custody of Dr. Stratton on arrival.”

  A moment later, the room was emptied enough for the CSIs to come in. Morgan paused to get the phone number for Sylvia’s son from the RN and called him. He wasn’t immediately available, so he left an urgent message. Then he took Hayden’s unresisting arm and drew her toward the kitchen.

  “Where’s Mrs. Garner?” she asked. At Ray’s lifted eyebrow, she clarified, “The housekeeper.”

  “She’s being questioned by one of my colleagues.” He gestured for Hayden to sit at the kitchen table. “I’ll make this as quick as possible. I know you want to join Boyd.”

  He was true to his word. It took perhaps half an hour for Hayden to relate the conversation she’d had with Boyd, his epiphany that it had to have been Sylvia. Then her headlong rush from the hospital when she realized what Boyd was likely too upset to think of—that Sylvia had poisoned him too.

  Morgan laughed when she recounted finding the service entrance door ajar, per tactical protocol, but they both sobered when she pointed out that fact probably made the difference between her getting there in time to help Boyd or not. No delay while she waited for Mrs. Garner to answer the door and while she tried to explain why she needed to be directed to wherever Sylvia was.

  And she related the tail end of the conversation between Boyd and Sylvia that she’d overheard. By the time she described the sound of Boyd’s last-ditch lunge at Sylvia even as he must have been losing consciousness, and his body hitting the floor, she was sobbing. Usually, it helped her keep emotion at bay to think about the physical processes that were going on. Not this time. She imagined Boyd’s heart going into v-fib, ventricles quivering uselessly, unable to pump blood to his brain. Then within seconds—unconsciousness. Within minutes, death. She couldn’t hold it together anymore.

  Detective Morgan let her cry a moment. Then he handed her a crisp, clean handkerchief, which she used to dry her tears. Also useful in helping her conquer the tears? She’d reached the part in her tale where she clubbed Sylvia over the head with the brass bookend.

  “You clocked her pretty good, huh?”

  She laughed, wiping away the last of her tears. “They teach you how hard to press a scalpel to get through various types of tissue, but they don’t tell you how hard to hit someone to knock them out. The way she went down, I thought I might have killed her, but I didn’t have room to think about anything but Boyd. So I kicked the handgun farther under the table, then started CPR. But then I realized they might have a defibrillator upstairs for the Senator. I think I about scared that nurse to death when I tore in there, demanding the defibrillator.”

  “She helped you with Boyd?”

  “Thank God, yes. She did CPR while I got the defibrillator ready. And she kept going with the compressions between shocks.”

  A uniformed cop approached to interrupt them. “Thought you might like to know that Detective McBride is conscious and very much himself.”

  “Oh, thank you! That’s such good—” Oh, shit.

  “What?” Morgan asked.

  “I need to call the ER. I kind of ran out on them after my conversation with Boyd. I tried to call him to alert him to what I figured Sylvia had done, but his line was tied up, so I left and raced down here.”

  “He was likely trying to reach me,” Detective Morgan said, “but I was on the line with the hospital establishing that Josh McBride’s blood work was definitely faked.”

  Hayden pulled out her phone. “I should call Marta and make sure they found someone to cover for me. As it was, I was covering for someone else.”

  “Go ahead,” he said. “In fact, you can take off now. I’ll need to sit down with you again, maybe a couple of times. I have a hunch this is very complicated and far-reaching. I just can’t figure out why people needed to die, just to cover up a shady adoption.”

  “About that. From what Sylvia said after Boyd arrested, I think the Senator is their father. That’s why she wanted to get rid of them. I think she’d have been satisfied if they had just dropped the investigation and gone home, but neither McBride was built that way, I guess.”

  Morgan let out a whistle. “Okay, that puts things in perspective. I’m guessing that’s what this whole thing with Dr. Gunn was about. Dr. Stratton was trying to deliver up a bad guy for Boyd so he could lay the blame somewhere and go home, mission accomplished.”

  Hayden groaned. “Yeah, I am going to be seeing a lot of you, aren’t I?”

  “Yep.” He laughed. “Now why don’t you go hang with the guy you really want to see. Officer Gordon will be happy to give you a lift.”

  CHAPTER 31

  Physically, Boyd felt fine. Well, a little banged up from hitting the floor, and his chest hurt like he’d been kicked by a mule, which they said was from the CPR. But all in all, he felt way better than a guy who’d been recently dead deserved to feel. And so far, everything was looking good. For a while, there’d been talk of shipping him to the Heart Center in Saint John for an ICD—an implantable cardioverter defibrillator—but they seemed more comfortable after they’d heard his history.

  He was grateful now that he’d had that exhaustive workup done in Toronto after Josh’s death. They’d relaxed a smidge when they confirmed that he’d had every possible test less than two weeks ago at the Toronto Heart Centre—he’d even worn a monitor for two solid days—and they’d found no identifiable electrocardiographic abnormalities. They unbent a little more when they learned he’d lived an active life and managed a demanding job without any symptoms until Dr. Stratto
n had started lacing his food with some kind of drug to make him vulnerable.

  The consensus now seemed to be that with the beta-blocker and the something-something blocker they were giving him, he should be fine.

  He could have told them that.

  All he really wanted right now was to see Hayden. Dying had a way of helping a guy sort out his priorities. Especially when it afforded you a chance to have an out-of-body chat with your dead twin.

  “Boyd!”

  He looked up to see Hayden framed in the doorway.

  “There you are.” He smiled. “I was beginning to think I’d lost you to that dandy, Ray Morgan.”

  She laughed, but as she moved to his bedside, he saw she was dashing away tears. “I think he’s taken.”

  So are you. Now I just have to figure out how to make you see it.

  He cleared his throat. “I hear Sylvia is just a few doors away, shackled to her bed.”

  “Yeah, she’s going to have to get used to being locked up.” She wiped away another tear. “All I can say is thank God it happened at Sylvia’s and that portable defibrillator unit was there. And the first time when it didn’t work—God, you scared me.” She sat on the edge of his bed.

  He pulled her down and kissed her forehead, then tipped her face up and kissed her mouth. “Hayden, darlin’, I had to come back. You said you’d never forgive me if I didn’t.”

  She pulled back. “You heard that?”

  “Heard it. Saw it. Until you hit me with the juice that second time. That must have jerked me back in. I don’t remember anything after that. I really was out of it once I came back.”

  “Boyd McBride, are you telling me you had an out-of-body experience while you were clinically dead?”

  He shrugged. “I know. I never gave much credence to that stuff. And there was no big beckoning light. Mostly, I just saw you working over me and that nurse who kept getting between us.”

  She laughed and swatted him. “That nurse was trying to keep some minimal circulation going so we didn’t resuscitate a profoundly brain-injured version of you.”

  “I know. I just like to hear you laugh.”

  She pushed her hair back from her face. “So you’re saying no to an ICD, I hear?”

  “For now,” he said. “But I’m happy to revisit the decision if I have any symptoms. And I’ll take all the drugs they tell me to take and avoid all the ones I have to avoid. I won’t take up training for an Ironman triathlon. I’ll go to all the doctor’s appointments I need to, do the stress tests, wear the monitor. In short, I’ll be the perfect patient. And if I do all that and have so much as a flutter, or if I find I have anxiety about it, I’ll be the first one at the doctor’s office saying I want the ICD.”

  “Sounds good.” She reached for his hand and linked it with hers. “Do you remember your confrontation with Sylvia?”

  “You think I could forget that?”

  “Well, you did lose consciousness. People often lose memory of whatever happened immediately before they black out.”

  “I remember everything.” His face took on a somber expression. “We did it, Hayden. We uncovered Josh’s murderer.”

  “And you found an aunt and two cousins. And, omigod, a father! The Senator is your father. I heard Sylvia gloating about not letting Arianna steal Lewis away from her with the old pregnancy trap.”

  Boyd felt a flare of rage at that, but he quickly dialed it back. He was under orders not to sweat that stuff anymore. From Josh.

  “Yeah, seems like a proper introduction will be in order. I just wish the guy could communicate. I’d ask him how a guy his age got involved with a girl our mother’s age, and then let her fend for herself when he got her pregnant.”

  “I expect you’ll find that Sylvia managed that too. She probably ran the poor girl off before she could . . .”

  “What?” Boyd asked. “Finish what you were saying.”

  “Sorry, I just thought of something else. Jordan Stratton is your half brother.”

  Boyd blinked. “You’re right. I hadn’t even thought of that yet.”

  “Yeah, lots to talk about. And this case is so convoluted. Ray Morgan is going to have you living at the police station while he debriefs you.”

  “Yup.” He ran his thumb over the back of her hand. “Lots for us to talk about too.”

  He saw the anxiety leap in her eyes, felt it weigh down the air between them.

  She dropped her gaze to their linked hands. “You must be anxious to get home.”

  “I will need to go back soon, to tell Mom and Dad about what happened to Josh, what I’ve really been doing in New Brunswick.”

  “And about this.” She gestured to the monitors.

  “I wish I didn’t have to, but yeah. I imagine it’ll be making national headlines, if not international ones. It’s just too juicy.”

  “When will you leave?”

  “As soon as the doc clears me to travel and the cops have had a chance to extract everything I know or think I know.”

  “A couple of days?”

  “Probably.”

  She drew a deep breath. “You can stay with me if you like. Dr. Stratton’s house will be a crime scene for the immediate future.”

  Boyd felt a pang at that. Here she was offering to do the thing she’d had enough sense—enough self-preservation—to avoid doing before. Letting him move in. He hoped that boded well for him.

  “I’d like that,” he said. “They’re going to keep me tonight, but as soon as they spring me, I’d love to go to your place.”

  “Good. I’ve already arranged to take a few days’ leave, so we can spend whatever time Ray Morgan can spare you together.”

  She ducked her head, and her glorious hair fell forward again. Where had the elastic gone that she usually used to pull her hair back? That’s when it struck him—she was trying to cover up her tear-ravaged face.

  She looked up at him and smiled brightly. Too brightly.

  “Hayden, do you think a man’s promise should survive death?”

  “What?”

  “Because I made a promise to you that I fully intended to keep at the time, but now I don’t know if I can do it.”

  Her eyes rounded. “What are you saying?”

  “I promised that I’d get out of your hair when this thing with Josh was done. But now that the time has come, I don’t want to.”

  She just looked at him blankly.

  “I want us to be together,” he added helpfully.

  “I told you, Boyd. I’m committed to my residency here. I can’t go traipsing off to Toronto.”

  “I’m not asking you to.”

  “So, what? We try to do the long-distance thing?”

  “Not that either.” He heard the pace of his own heartbeat picking up on the monitor and took a calming breath. It wouldn’t do to have a nurse barge in right now. “I was thinking I could relocate.”

  “Here?”

  He laughed at her tone. “Yeah, here. You’ve got over a year left on your residency, right?”

  “Fifteen months.”

  “So I’m thinking I could get a job. If the PD doesn’t want me for such an indefinite stint, I can—I don’t know—get a PI license or do security or, shit, hang out with the Senator.”

  “What about after, when I’ve finished my residency?”

  “I’ll go where you go.”

  “What if that’s Haiti?”

  “You mean the Doctors Without Borders thing?”

  She put her hands on her hips. “Yeah. That thing.”

  “So you’d be gone for a few weeks here and there. You really think I’d begrudge that?”

  “Boyd, the minimum commitment is nine months.”

  He felt his face go slack. “Nine months?”

  “Yes.” She looked so miserable.


  “Then I’ll go with you.”

  “To Haiti?”

  “To hell if I have to. But yeah, to Haiti. Actually, Canada has a commitment to the UN to help train local police in a number of countries, including Haiti. It’s called International Police Development, and is administered by the RCMP, but all kinds of forces take part in it. But even if that didn’t work out, I could go as a civilian volunteer.”

  “You would do that?”

  “In a heartbeat.” Then he hastened to add, “One of those effectual ones where everything is synced up and blood actually gets pumped, not one of those v-fib sons of bitches.”

  She grinned, and this time it looked real, not like that horrible bright smile earlier. He must be making headway. Then her smile faded.

  “What if you can’t go? What if there’s no program or no money or what if your parents are ill and need you?”

  Ah, here we are. This was the test. Much as he’d worry about her and fret for her safety and miss the hell out of her, he would never try to stop her. Yes, it could be dangerous. Kidnap of aid workers for ransom was pretty much business as usual in some of those countries. But his job was dangerous too, and he wouldn’t want her telling him he couldn’t do it.

  “Then I would learn to give good phone sex. And make Port-au-Prince my new vacation hotspot. And you would probably have to be really patient with me asking about the security detail.”

  She blinked rapidly, which he took as a good sign. “Why would you do all this? Why complicate your life like this?”

  “Josh was right. I have been an emotional coward. I still am. But not anymore. Starting right here, right now. I love you, Hayden Walsh. I want to spend my life with you, wherever that turns out to be.”

  “You love me?”

  “Of course I love you. And I’m not looking for someone to be at my side with those defibrillator paddles. I’d just get the ICD if I was worried about that. Which I am not.”

  “I love you too, Boyd, but—”

  He chuckled.

  She looked at him indignantly. “That’s funny?”

  “Josh said you wouldn’t make this easy for me.”