Do No Harm

by Christina McDonald

  I looked at Josh asleep on my lap. A rush of tenderness filled me as I watched his eyelids flutter in sleep. He was the biggest love of my life. Being his mother was what gave me meaning, what made everything in this whole crazy world make sense.

  I traced the shape of his face: his small, pert nose; his sharp chin, so much like mine. But the rounded hillocks of his cheekbones, his generous mouth and wide smile, the glint he got sometimes in his eyes, those were his father’s.

  I thought of the paternity test I had in a sealed envelope at the bottom of my jewelry box.

  I should throw it away. Gabe had become a liability, and it wasn’t like I needed him anymore. I’d been lucky so far; Gabe was sexy but not particularly bright. He’d never even asked where I’d gotten his DNA for a comparison match. I’d only offered to show him the paternity test because it didn’t show a name. It just said Probability of Paternity and Alleged Father. I’d only kept it at the time because I was worried Nate would ask for proof that Josh was his baby. He knew I’d dated someone before we got together.

  But he’d never asked.

  For a cop, Nate could be very blind. Sometimes he only saw what he wanted to see.

  I gathered Josh in my arms and stood, giving Nate a cool good-bye. “I’ll see you at home.”

  And I turned and walked away.

  CHAPTER 35

  NATE OPENED THE BOX that had arrived on his desk at the station this morning and looked at his Christmas present for Emma. Even though it had been tense between them lately, his wife was still the dream of his heart. Things would get better, he had to believe. As soon as Josh got this treatment and he cracked this case, they would go back to the way they had been.

  He smiled as he pulled a sheet of wrapping paper he’d bought out of his desk and wrapped the gift. She was going to love it.

  He signed the tag and tucked the present in a drawer, then hurried outside. There was one more thing he had to do today.

  Nate squinted against the early-morning sun as he parked at the Northwestern Nursing Home. With its gleaming red brick and fluted white pillars wrapped in twinkling lights, it looked more like his college fraternity house at Christmas than his dad’s nursing home.

  He signed in and followed the hallway to the back. He could hear carolers singing “Jingle Bells” in the common room. The smell of pumpkin pie and evergreen trees hung in the air, Christmas lights flashing cheerfully in the hallway. Nate caught sight of his own pale, drawn face as he passed the silver ornaments on the Christmas tree.

  Christmas was only three days away. He had just over a week until Lieutenant Dyson took the case from him.

  Matt was sitting in a wheelchair next to his bedroom window, staring glassy-eyed outside. The left side of his face drooped, a line of drool dripping down his chin. He looked tiny and frail, but at least he was up and out of bed. It was a damn sight better than what Nate had expected, seeing as he’d had pneumonia last week.

  “Hey, Dad.”

  Nate kissed the top of his head and used a tissue to wipe the drool away. Matt didn’t look at him. Sometimes Nate wondered if his dad even knew he was there. But his mom was right: it was time he stopped hiding from what his father had become and accepted him for who he was now.

  He tucked a faded blue blanket over Matt’s lap and wheeled him to a corner table in the nursing home’s indoor garden.

  He sat down, moving the old Nokia he’d found in the briefcase from his trouser pocket to his coat, a reminder to stop by Best Buy and grab a charger for it.

  After a minute he started talking. He told Matt how Josh was, how Moira was coping, and how proud he was of Emma’s work.

  “Mom told me about the dealers. The money,” he said. “I can’t figure out if I should be grateful to you or…” Hate you, he finished silently. He stared at his hands, not sure where to go from there.

  “Unhh.” The unexpected sound startled Nate. Matt was trying to move, trying to roll his neck.

  “Are you okay, Dad?” Nate knelt in front of his father, and for just a second, a fleeting, beautiful second, Matt met his gaze.

  “Unhh.” A solitary tear dripped from the corner of Matt’s eye. Nate watched it slide down the roughened, wrinkled skin and plop onto the blanket on his lap. “Unhh.”

  Nate grasped his father’s bony hand. “I know, Dad.” He pressed his forehead to his father’s, swallowing back tears. “I know. You did your best to take care of us. I get it.”

  Matt’s eyes fluttered shut, as if he didn’t have the strength to keep them open any longer. They’d lapsed into silence when a woman approached.

  “Nate? Remember me?”

  It was Robbie’s mom, Marsha Sadler.

  “Mrs. Sadler. Yes, of course I remember. Here, sit here.” Nate pulled over another chair.

  She sat next to him. “I wasn’t sure you did; you ran out of the grocery store so fast when I saw you the other day!”

  “Sorry, I had a call. Work.” He gestured to his suit and tie. “I’m a detective.”

  “Yes, I heard. Wade told me you’re a fine detective. You’re married to that doctor now.”

  “Wade?” Nate barely remembered Robbie’s dad.

  “My ex now. We divorced. After Robbie… there wasn’t much to save, you know? But we stayed friends. He had a stroke a few months back. That’s why I’m here.” She looked at her hands. “We’re both proud of you. All the good you’ve done.”

  Nate flushed. Good. A word he’d spent his life failing to live up to.

  He rolled a toothpick between his fingers. “Mrs. Sadler, I’ve wanted to tell you something for a long time.” Nate took a deep breath. “Robbie was being bullied at school. The day he… I was angry because he’d ratted me out about a test me and some of the other guys had cheated on. They beat him up, and I didn’t stop them. I’m so sorry.”

  “Oh, honey, Robbie told me what happened. But you didn’t do anything.”

  “That’s exactly it. I knew what they were going to do and I didn’t do anything.”

  Mrs. Sadler nodded slowly. “And now you regret that?”

  “I was a coward.” Shame burned in Nate’s stomach.

  “The way I figure it, being able to feel regret is the strongest sign of a good person. People who regret nothing are either saints or stupid. Those people do destructive things without insight. And they cause irreparable damage to their families and friends.”

  Mrs. Sadler reached for his free hand, cradled it in hers. Her fingers were bony and cold, the nails long, painted a garish pink. She stared at the dried crusts of blood and purple bruises on his fingernails. Nate pulled his hand away, suddenly embarrassed by the way he eased his pain.

  “Sometimes we make decisions that might not be the smartest ones, but they teach us who we are and who we want to be. But don’t use regret as a stick to beat yourself. Use it as a tool for doing better.” She met his gaze. “No one action defines us—it’s the journey that determines if we’re a good person or not.”

  Nate saw nothing but compassion in her eyes. Forgiveness. Something cracked inside him then. Maybe he’d just needed to hear it out loud, to feel Robbie’s mother’s grace, before he could forgive himself.

  “Thanks, Mrs. Sadler.”

  “Of course.” She clapped her hands on her knees and stood to go. “Hey, how’s your wife? I saw her last night near the old Skamania Mill.”

  “You saw Emma?” Nate tried to hide his surprise.

  “Yeah. I recognized her from a picture Wade showed me. She was helping a guy who looked a little worse for wear. Were they all right?”

  “Yes,” Nate said slowly.

  Emma must’ve found Ben at the old mill warehouse. So why had she told Nate she found him in the Target parking lot?

  He thought of the icy glare Emma had given him when he’d admitted he was probably going to arrest Ben. He knew his wife, and something was up.

  Something to do with Ben.

  He was terrified to find out what it was.

&nb
sp; * * *

  THE ELEVATOR doors dumped Nate into the hospital’s main entrance. He’d stopped by the clinic upstairs and spoken to Marjorie. Turned out the patient who’d filled the suspicious prescription for OxyContin signed by Dr. Wallington wasn’t registered there. And when Nate had done a quick online search with the state’s Department of Licensing, he’d learned that person had died in a car accident four years before.

  Somebody was signing prescriptions and using fake IDs to fill them for dead people.

  It had to be Julia. She had access and she’d been caught stealing oxy. Plus she was clearly using her own product.

  But Julia was in a coma. He couldn’t talk to her. Nate growled in frustration.

  What he really wanted to know was how many other doctors’ prescription pads she’d stolen.

  Nate suddenly had a horrible sinking feeling. What if Julia had stolen Emma’s pads too? Would the scandal, the investigation that would likely come, damage her career?

  Nate glanced at his watch. He needed to call Agent Hamilton and update her. She would probably have to kick this upstairs in the DEA, and if Emma became a focus of the investigation, there was no hope he’d be allowed to stay on the case. But first, Josh was getting his reprogrammed cells injected today, and Nate had to be there for his son.

  He rounded the corner and spotted Josh and Emma in front of the hospital café. Emma was talking to a tall, broad-chested man with streaky, beach-blond hair tied into a stubby ponytail. His jaw prickled with a few days’ stubble, and he had those deep dimples women always found so attractive.

  Emma caught sight of Nate. It was only brief, the widening of her eyes, but he saw it.

  Guilt.

  A rush of hot jealousy bloomed bitter and thick in his throat. Emma had been lying to him, Nate was sure of it. She was having an affair after all.

  “Nate, hi,” she said.

  Nate ignored her and picked Josh up, hoping to cover the storm of emotions filling him. “Hey, buddy! You ready for your infusion?”

  Josh nodded listlessly, his fingers in his mouth.

  “Nate, this is Gabe Wilson,” Emma said. “We went to high school together. He’s visiting family here.”

  Nate put on his most charming smile. “Nice to meet you, man.” He turned to Emma, already blocking Gabe out. “Ready to go?”

  He clasped Josh to him like a shield and turned and walked toward the elevators, giving her no choice but to jog after him.

  Moira was already waiting for them upstairs in Pediatric Oncology.

  “Thanks for coming, Ma.” Nate kissed her cheek.

  “You know I wouldn’t miss this!” She hugged Josh gently. He giggled and Emma watched him, smiling.

  At the sound of Josh’s giggle, the band that had been cinching tighter and tighter around Nate’s chest this last month eased just a little. As long as Josh was okay, that was all that mattered.

  They followed Katie to their private room. Dr. Palmer came in as she was giving Josh a dose of Tylenol and Benadryl. “It’ll reduce his chances of having an allergic reaction to the preservative the T-cells have been frozen in,” Katie explained.

  “You ready to go to battle, Captain Smiley?” Dr. Palmer fist-bumped Josh.

  “Let’s do this!” Josh made lightsaber noises, slashing his pretend weapon through the air.

  Katie fixed a line into the catheter connected to Josh’s port. It was attached to a huge machine, where the T-cells had been warmed and readied for injection.

  “Is that it?” Josh asked, eyes wide.

  Katie laughed. “That’s it.”

  “Now what do we do?”

  “This will only take about two minutes, but you’ll have to stay here for a few hours so we can make sure you’re all good, okay?”

  “I s’pose so.” Josh rested his head back in the chair, his eyes drooping.

  “You feeling a little sleepy?” Katie asked.

  Josh nodded.

  “That’s perfectly normal. It’s the Benadryl. Go ahead and get some rest.” She turned to Nate, Emma, and Moira. “I’ll check on him every half hour, but ring the bell if you need me. If everything goes well, we’ll let him go home in three hours. Hopefully the new T-cells will start killing the cancer cells within a week.”

  After she and the doctor had gone, Moira stood and announced she was going to grab a coffee from the family room, leaving Emma and Nate in a thick silence punctuated only by Josh’s gentle snores.

  Katie bustled back in with an envelope. “Jill up at the front desk asked me to give you your receipt.” She handed the envelope to Emma and left.

  Nate looked at Emma. “Receipt for what?”

  Emma’s face had drained of all color. She swallowed hard, her eyes darting around, like she was looking for somewhere to run. She was trying to come up with a lie.

  Before she could react, he swiped the envelope out of her hands.

  “Nate!” she protested, grabbing at it, but he’d already slit the envelope open and was holding the receipt in his hand.

  He couldn’t seem to make sense of it, though.

  Emma had paid Cascade Regional Hospital $98,004.

  Nate’s fingers went numb. The receipt fluttered to the floor as he tried to comprehend what he was seeing. Where the fuck had Emma gotten $98,004?

  “Emma,” he whispered. “What have you done?”

  Emma’s face had gone stony, her jaw set. “I think it’s best if you don’t know.”

  CHAPTER 36

  NATE STRODE QUICKLY ACROSS the hospital parking lot away from his wife. The sky was the color of a bruise, wet leaves slapping against his ankles. His pulse kicked hard in his veins. His stomach was tied in knots.

  Kia had called to say they’d gotten Violeta’s credit card statement, and he’d jumped at the chance to get away from Emma. She was still refusing to tell him where she’d gotten the $98,004 to pay the hospital.

  He couldn’t wrap his head around any of it. All Emma would say was that it had been required for Josh to get the infusion, although she’d promised to explain everything later, when they got home.

  “We have to focus on Josh right now,” she’d hissed. “We can’t jeopardize his recovery.”

  So while Kia headed to the hospital to interview Ben, Nate left and drove to the gas station where Violeta had made her last purchase.

  The gas station was about a half hour away, and Nate spent the entire time trying to work out where the money could have come from. His windshield wipers shoved desperately at the rain, his aching head pounding with every swipe. He knew that Emma had received some money from her parents’ life insurance. He thought it had all been used up on medical school, but maybe she’d had some left.

  Or maybe it had come from Ben.

  Which begged the question: Was it legal money?

  Had Ben stolen it? But from whom? There had been no reports of large sums of cash being stolen in the area.

  Nate’s head hurt. All the jigsaw pieces he’d been putting together in his mind were shifting and reassembling in a different order, but he still couldn’t see the whole picture.

  Nate parked outside a small redbrick gas station. Inside the old-fashioned building were rows of snacks and a wall of soft drinks. A very young woman with white-blond hair smiled at him from behind the cash register.

  “May I help, please?” She had a thick Scandinavian accent and eyes so blue it made Nate think of canoeing on Lake Chelan with his dad as a kid.

  “Hello, are you the owner?”

  “Oh no.” She giggled, a cute, childish sound. “That would be my boyfriend. He isn’t here right now.”

  “What’s his name?”

  “Gabe. Gabe Wilson. Shall I tell him you were asking for him?”

  Nate felt like the girl had punched him in the throat.

  Gabe Wilson.

  The same man who’d been with Emma this morning.

  Nate didn’t know what the connection was, but it felt important. His Spidey sense was buzzing, and he k
new never to ignore his Spidey sense. He put his elbows on the counter and leaned in closer, offering the girl his most charming smile.

  “Well”—he read the name tag pinned to her shirt—“Kari. I’m Detective Nate Sweeney. I have a murder victim who last used her credit card here.”

  The smile dropped off Kari’s face.

  He pointed to the video camera above the counter. “How long does that record for?”

  “Thirty days.”

  “I’m going to need to see it.”

  “I… don’t know if that’s allowed.”

  He thumped his badge on the counter. “I suppose I could always question you down at the station. You’d need to grab your ID and lock up the gas station, of course.”

  Kari’s eyes darted sideways. “Gabe, he should be here soon—”

  “This is time-sensitive, Kari. You understand.”

  Her shoulders dropped. “Okay, come with me.”

  He followed her to a back office with a desktop computer, floor-to-ceiling filing cabinets, and a printer. She clicked the mouse and pulled up the video surveillance footage. Nate gave her the date of Violeta’s purchase, and she opened the file, then got up so Nate could sit and watch it.

  The footage was grainy, opaque, but he could make out Violeta buying two packs of cigarettes, a pack of gum, and a handful of junk food from Gabe. There was no audio, but they spoke for a few minutes, Violeta saying something and Gabe laughing. After a moment, Gabe grabbed his coat and locked up the shop, and they left.

  Nate watched in fast-forward as the night passed and moved into the next day. Gabe came in and opened the shop, Kari entered, then exited. There was nothing that stuck out. So he clicked into the day before. People came in and out, paying for gas and buying food from the grocery section.

  And then he saw something that made his stomach drop. A woman putting a sheaf of small, square papers on the counter in front of Gabe.