Identity Withheld. Sandra Orchard

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      A knock sounded on the door. “You okay?” Sherri called.

      “Yes. Almost done.” Kara lifted her voice over the noise of the fan, and then cupped her hand around her mouth at the receiver. “Ray, it’s Kara. They made me come to the hospital and the sheriff wants to question me and... Please come get me if you can. Or I’ll meet you as soon as I’m released.”

      Sherri knocked again. “They have a bed for you. You ready?”

      Kara stuffed the phone back into her pocket, snapped off the faucet and fan, and jerked open the door. “Ready.”

      Rather than return her to the gurney, Sherri led her to a curtained-off bed at the end of a long room lined with beds. “Here you go. Lie down here and the doctor will be in to see you soon.” Sherri nodded at the sheriff waiting by the bed, then left. Facing the sheriff alone, Kara suddenly felt a whole lot worse than she had a minute ago.

      A very efficient nurse wasted no time checking her vitals as the sheriff pulled up a chair and flipped open his notebook. Between his crisply ironed shirt, unflattering crew cut and the hard lines creasing his face, he reminded her of a drill-sergeant principal she’d once worked under—the kind of guy who didn’t let anything slip by him.

      “Your pulse is very rapid,” the nurse scolded.

      Yours would be, too, if someone was trying to kill you! Kara took a deep breath and willed it to slow.

      “Tell me what happened,” the sheriff said.

      “I was upstairs watching a movie in my room when my landlady’s cat started scratching my door and mewing frantically.” Kara dug her fingers into the sheets. Had she cost Mrs. Harboyle her dear companion, too? “Did the firefighters save the cat? It ran when I tried to pick it up.”

      With a suppressed huff, the sheriff stopped writing. “A large, long-haired white cat?”

      “Yes!”

      “Yes, he was rescued. Please continue.”

      “I turned off the TV and—” She squeezed her eyes shut as the panic crashed over her all over again. “That’s when—” Her breath came in short gasps. “I heard the crackling, smelled the smoke.”

      The nurse touched Kara’s shoulder. “You’re okay now. Take deep breaths.”

      Inhaling, Kara pressed her lips together.

      “Did you hear anything downstairs before that?” the sheriff asked.

      “It’s an old house. It creaks and groans a lot. I try not to pay too much attention.” She bit her lip. It wasn’t a lie, exactly. She did try not to pay attention, but with a death threat hanging over her head, every creak and groan made her jump. That was why she’d turned on the movie, extraloud, to drown out the noises of the storm outside, and the one inside her head and heart. She was spending Thanksgiving alone, and couldn’t help wondering if she’d ever be able to spend another holiday with her family, as paltry as their celebrations had always been.

      “How about outside? A bark? A car engine? Any kind of movement?”

      She twisted her hands in the sheets and buried them in her lap. “No, nothing.”

      “Were you home alone all day?”

      “No, I work for a janitorial service.” The furthest thing from a kindergarten teacher the marshal’s office could find. And she missed being with kids so much. “I got home just after five.”

      “Was the door locked?”

      “Yes.”

      “And you didn’t smell any smoke at that time?”

      “No, I reheated leftovers and went to my room.”

      “You didn’t check the other doors?”

      “I did.” She gulped. She was always checking and double-checking the locks, because Mrs. Harboyle had a bad habit of letting out the cat and not relocking the door.

      “And you didn’t hear anyone break in? See any evidence of a break-in?”

      “No.” Kara’s throat constricted at the possibility that Mrs. Harboyle had left the back door unlocked before her daughter picked her up. That the arsonist might’ve still been in the house when she got home.

      The sheriff flipped over a page in his notebook. “How did you get out?”

      She fixed her gaze on the sheriff’s badge. “I covered myself with a wet towel and tried to get downstairs, but—” The words clogged in her throat. The flames had moved so fast.

      “That’s how you burned your arm?”

      She hugged it to her belly and nodded. “I ran back to my room and jumped out the window onto the roof of the woodshed and from there to the ground.”

      “Did you see anyone then?”

      “A car stopped on the street and I hid in the bushes.” Her heart ratcheted in her chest at the memory—the fear that she’d escaped the fire only to face the man who’d set it.

      “Our 9-1-1 caller. Yes, I talked to him. He said he pounded on the door. Why didn’t you show yourself? Tell him no one else was inside?”

      “I—” She gulped. “I guess I was in shock.”

      The sheriff drilled her with the same questions, phrased a dozen different ways, for what seemed like forever. Finally the nurse shooed him out to make way for the doctor. To Kara’s relief, he said he had all the information he needed for the moment.

      By tomorrow, she’d be out of town and it would be the marshal’s problem to explain her disappearance.

      The nurse returned with a tall, dark-haired doctor who immediately started into his own litany of questions as the nurse removed the arm dressing so he could examine the burn.

      The more questions he asked, the edgier Kara grew, but she couldn’t figure out why. There was nothing weird about his questions. Except...

      He never actually looked her in the eye. Not once. Was he afraid she’d be able to read something there?

      She muffled a gasp. What if the adoption ring was connected to organized crime and they had a hold over him, like that doctor on the TV show, and they’d ordered him to kill her?

      She swallowed. Okay, get a grip. He could just be preoccupied. He wore a wedding band. Maybe he’d just got off the phone with his wife about a problem at home. He had to at least be a doctor, right? Otherwise the nurse wouldn’t have brought him in.

      The doctor glanced at her now-bare wound. “That doesn’t look too bad.”

      And it didn’t. Aside from a few blistery spots, she’d had sunburns that were worse.

      “You can go,” the doctor said, turning to leave.

      “I can?”

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