Identity Withheld. Sandra Orchard

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СКАЧАТЬ confusion. “Sorry, wrong bed.”

      Meanwhile the nurse hurried after the departing doctor. “Are you sure? Her BP is low. And look at her eyes. I’m concerned she’s still in shock.”

      Kara blinked. What was wrong with her eyes? Aside from her overreaction to Mr. Wrong Bed.

      The doctor stopped, and for the first time met her eyes, for all of a fleeting nanosecond. “She’s fine.”

      Kara swung her legs off the bed, not about to wait around long enough for the nurse to change his mind. Maybe it was her imagination, but the woman seemed a little too anxious to keep her here.

      As Kara pushed aside the curtain to leave, the nurse trotted up carrying a hypodermic. “Hold on a second.”

      “What—what’s that for? The doctor said I can go.”

      “Yes, but he just ordered this to help with the pain.”

      “I don’t need it.” Kara edged sideways, putting the bed between her and the needle-happy nurse. How had she not clued in to that maniacal glint in her eyes sooner? It was the exact same glint she’d seen in that goon’s eyes back in Boston when he’d spotted her snapping his picture and pulled his gun.

      An orderly popped a wheelie with a wheelchair at the end of her bed. “You the one who’s getting sprung?”

      “That’s me!” Kara jumped into the wheelchair.

      The orderly didn’t get three feet before the nurse rounded the bed with the needle. “She’s not going yet.”

      “Yes, actually, I am,” Kara insisted, reaching for the wheels herself. “The doctor released me.”

      The orderly hesitated.

      “Let’s go,” Kara prodded, cranking the chair out of the nurse’s reach.

      “Fine, take her,” the nurse relented, and the orderly snapped into action.

      “Your ride waiting outside the E.R.?” he asked, wheeling her past the long row of beds and into the hall.

      “Uh, no ride.”

      He pulled the chair into an abrupt U-turn.

      “What are you doing?”

      “Taking you to the front doors. There’s a cab company across the street.”

      As they passed the E.R.’s reception desk, she glimpsed the nurse talking on the phone and eyeballing her. What if she’d alerted a cohort to cut her off out front?

      Spotting an exit sign at the end of the next side hall, Kara said, “Stop, I’ll get out here.”

      “Oh, you drove yourself?” the orderly asked.

      She shot a glance over her shoulder to see if the nurse was looking. She wasn’t. “Is that the back parking lot?”

      “You got it.” The orderly accepted the detour easily.

      Maybe too easily, Kara thought as they approached the exit—the uncomfortably dark exit.

      “You want me to wheel you right to your car?” he asked.

      “No!” Kara hauled down her voice. “Here’s fine. Thank you.”

      Two seconds later, the orderly was already halfway back up the hall as she hovered inside the doorway scanning the poorly lit back lot. She dug into her pocket for her cell phone, except...did she really want to hang around here waiting for Ray if maniac nurse had called goons to nab her on sight?

      Two blocks. She could run that in under five minutes. Clutching her phone, she yanked up her hoodie and plunged into the misty darkness.

      The slap of footsteps on the wet pavement sounded behind her.

      Heart pounding, she quickened her pace.

      The sound got louder, closer.

      Breaking into a sprint, she glanced over her shoulder. The shadowy figure behind her abruptly stopped. “Whew,” Kara breathed, and then slammed into a solid wall of muscle.

      Powerful hands clamped around her upper arms. “I gotcha.”

       TWO

      “Kara?” Jake tightened his hold on the terrified woman and glanced at the man who’d been following her. Or had seemed to be. He’d since veered down a row of parked cars and appeared to be unlocking one.

      “Oh, Jake. It’s you.” Raindrops streaked Kara’s face, looking too much like tears, but the relief that oozed from her words gave him a kick of pleasure.

      He’d hoped to run into her here. Not this way. But he wasn’t complaining. “Who was that guy?” He hitched his chin in the direction of the man who’d since climbed into a nondescript sedan.

      “I—” Kara caught her breath. “I don’t know. I thought he was following me and I...I guess I got spooked.” She suddenly tensed, backed up a step. “What are you doing here?”

      The lights in the hospital’s back parking lot did little to push back the darkness, but this close, he could see wariness replace the relief that had been in her eyes moments ago. Still, he thought better of releasing his hold just yet. “One of my men was brought in for smoke inhalation. I came by to check on him.”

       And on you.

      But she didn’t need to know that. What were the doctors thinking releasing her so soon? She didn’t look ready to face the night with no home to return to. He was convinced that she knew more about the fire than she was saying. And one way or the other, he needed to coax her into telling him everything she knew.

      “Oh.” She shot a nervous glance over her shoulder but didn’t make another attempt to escape his hold. “I’m sorry. I hope your friend will be okay.”

      That much, at least, he believed. But this latest fire had all the earmarks of being another of their elusive firebug’s. That made five in the past nine weeks. Four of those had been on his watch, and this was the only one they’d come close to getting a lead on the culprit...in the person of Kara Grant.

      Jake gritted his teeth. His gut told him she wasn’t the firebug, as he’d initially suspected, but no way was her wild-eyed panic merely a post-traumatic reaction to a random attack. She thought she’d been deliberately targeted.

      If he hadn’t been sure of it before, he was now. As far as he was concerned, she was the key to nailing this guy. He steered her to an overhang, out of the rain. “I volunteered to help with the fire investigation.”

      “Wow, that’s really nice of you.”

      “So I’ll probably see you again.”

      Kara fussed with the zipper on her hoodie, clearly reluctant to meet his gaze.

      “This СКАЧАТЬ