Heartbeat

by Joan Johnston

  “Don’t bother,” she shouted back at him.

  Jack lurched off the bed, moving faster than his head would allow. “Maggie, I’m going to pass out and hit my head on the floor if you make me run after you.”

  She reappeared in his bedroom doorway, without his chambray shirt and wearing her shoes, bringing him up short. “If you’re well enough to start yelling at me, you’re well enough to take care of yourself. I promise to forget all this ever happened when I see you on Monday.”

  “How are you getting home?” he asked, figuring she’d forgotten she had no car of her own.

  “I called a cab,” she said. “I’ll wait for it outside.”

  That meant she didn’t have anyone—another man or a girlfriend or a relative—she felt comfortable rousing in the middle of the night, Jack thought as he followed her to the front door. She was alone. Like him.

  That didn’t necessarily make her vulnerable, Jack realized. In fact, so far she’d handled everything he’d thrown at her like a trooper. Which made sense, he supposed, if there wasn’t anyone around for her to lean on. Jack was ready and willing to offer a comforting shoulder, if only he could get her to use it. “I promise not to yell at you again,” he said. “Please stay.”

  She hesitated with her hand on the front doorknob, her back to him. “You’ll be fine,” she said. “It’s better if I go.”

  He padded on bare feet the short distance that separated them and put his hands on her hips from behind. He slid them up her body to her waist, then under her T-shirt. His thumbs caressed the center of her spine, while his fingertips eased up her bare midriff, settling along the elastic edge of her bra. If he moved his hands an inch or so higher, he would be cupping her breasts in his palms.

  Sexual tension arced between them. The intensity of the feeling surprised him, and he wondered if she felt it, too. “Maggie,” he whispered. He brushed his lips against her nape to one side of her ponytail. “Maggie.”

  It was a plea. And a promise.

  She made a keening sound in her throat, a yearning sound, a desolate sound, and manacled his wrists with her hands. “No, Jack. I can’t.”

  “Can’t?” He kissed his way across her shoulder, then up her throat to the shell of her ear. He caught the lobe in his teeth and nibbled gently. He could feel her trembling. He squeezed his eyes closed, fighting the headache that throbbed at the base of his skull. Not now. Not now, he pleaded.

  She let go of his wrists to cover his hands as they closed over her breasts. “Jack.”

  Jack heard longing. And regret. He understood one, but not the other. Maggie would have nothing to be sorry for. He would make sure of that. He turned her slowly in his arms and captured her body between his own and the door, settling himself in the cradle of her thighs, reaching behind her bare upper thighs and inching her legs apart. He was hard, and her soft flesh yielded to his.

  “You feel good, Maggie,” he murmured against her throat.

  She smelled of strawberries and woman, and he wanted to taste them both. He wanted to stake his claim, to put himself inside her hard and deep.

  And they hadn’t even kissed yet.

  Jack thought about what her lips would taste like, how soft and supple they would be, how wet and hot her mouth would be once he was inside it. He kissed the left side of her lips, then the right, to let her know what he intended, to let her know what was coming.

  “No.”

  It wasn’t a murmur or a sigh or a groan.

  Any of those Jack would have taken for reluctance, but they wouldn’t have slowed him down. Maggie had said no with serious conviction. Jack lifted his head and looked into her face.

  In the shadows created by the old-fashioned standing lamp beside the rocker, Jack saw panic in her eyes—-and the remnants of desire. Her jaw was rigid, as though her teeth were clenched, and the trembling he had thought was the result of sexual excitement, he now saw was something else entirely.

  “You’re not afraid of me, are you, Maggie?” “Of course not!”

  “What is it, then?” he asked, confused, wanting to understand.

  “This isn’t going to happen,” she gritted out. “I refuse to let it happen.”

  More evidence—verbal this time—that she wanted him, but had no intention of indulging herself.

  “No slumming, is that it, Maggie?”

  “Who you are has nothing to do with this!” she retorted. “I’m not like Victoria Wainwright. I don’t choose my friends for their blue blood or the size of their bank balances. No matter who you are, I have the right to say no, Jack.”

  “Your body isn’t saying no,” he accused, staring at her erect nipples beneath the thin cotton T-shirt.

  She closed her eyes, bit her lip, then opened her eyes again. The turmoil was gone, and with it, he suspected, a great deal of her susceptibility to his lovemaking. What he saw now was determination—a squared jaw and a militant stance and defiant eyes.

  “I didn’t say I didn’t want you,” she explained matter-of-factly. “I would be a fool to try and deny my physical response to you. What I said was that I don’t want this to happen. I don’t want to get involved with you or any other man.”

  “Why not?”

  “That’s none of your business.”

  Jack stared at her. Maybe he had rushed things a little. All right, maybe he had rushed things a lot. Maybe she needed a little time to get used to the idea of the two of them. He could wait. He knew where to find her. Now that he knew Maggie Wainwright’s wealth and social status weren’t an issue, he wasn’t going to let a little thing like her unwillingness to get involved stand in his way. Hell, he didn’t want to get involved, either.

  “All right, Maggie,” he said. “I can slow this down if you want.”

  “I don’t want it slowed down,” she said in a sharp voice. “I want it stopped.”

  “For now,” he said, reluctantly easing his hips away from hers.

  “For good!” Her fisted hands pressed against his chest.

  He backed up and let her go. “What’s got you so spooked?”

  “For one thing, I hardly know you,” she said. “That wasn’t a dream you were having, was it, Jack? It really happened, didn’t it?”

  Jack felt a stab of unease. “What is it you want to know, Maggie?”

  “Nothing. I just want to leave.”

  “Will you let me explain?”

  Her body rigid, her back to the door, she met his gaze. “Can you? I don’t know many hospital insurance investigators who carry guns and get shot at, Jack.”

  She had him there. Jack thought about making up a story but realized he didn’t want to. He planned to be spending a great deal of time with Ms. Wainwright, and he didn’t see how he could hide the truth from her for very long if she spent as much time as he hoped she would in his bed.

  The main object working undercover was to keep the bad guys from finding out who you were while you found out everything you could about them. As far as Jack could see, telling Maggie his secret wasn’t going to compromise his situation. The captain might have a fit, but what the hell.

  “I’m not an insurance investigator, Maggie. I’m a Texas Ranger.”

  Most people were impressed when they found out what Jack did for a living. A select few were chosen from the ranks of the Texas Department of Public Safety to become Texas Rangers, and the elite force was small—no more than 106 Rangers to cover the entire state. A certain mystique had grown around the Rangers over the century and more they had been catching outlaws, and Jack was proud to be a part of that history. So Maggie’s reaction to his revelation was a disappointment.

  Her eyes narrowed, her face got stony, and she asked, “What were you doing at the Wainwright & Cobb picnic, Jack? What is it you’re investigating that you have to work undercover?”

  She sounded like a lawyer. Which, of course, she was. “Look, Maggie, I don’t see why we have to get into that right now.”

  “Why not? You brought it up. I think I h
ave a right to know whether I’m the object of some sort of investigation. If that’s why you dragged me over here tonight—”

  “Whoa! Whoa!” he said. “Rein in those horses, counselor. If I’m not mistaken, you volunteered to see me home. Nobody held a gun to your head. And for the record, I don’t usually make a habit of inviting suspects home with me.” He paused. What had Maggie Wainwright done that she thought might be worth a Texas Ranger investigating?

  About the time Jack started searching Maggie’s gaze to see what she was hiding, she lowered her lids.

  “Secrets, Maggie?” he murmured.

  “None that would interest you,” she said, staring at her knotted hands.

  Jack felt queasy. What had he just done? It was a little late to close the barn doors now. He might as well finish what he’d started. “I’m posing as an insurance investigator so I can ask questions at the hospital about a suspected murderer.”

  “Who?”

  She still wasn’t looking at him, which worried Jack. “Roman Hollander,” he said.

  Her chin shot up, and her eyes opened wide. “Roman?” She gave a startled laugh. “A murderer? You must be joking! I’ve never known a more gentle, caring man. He’s a doctor, for heaven’s sake!”

  Jack was surprised at her strong reaction. “You’re well acquainted with Hollander, I presume.”

  “I know his wife, Lisa, very well. She works with me at Wainwright & Cobb. We met when she clerked for the law firm I worked for in Houston, and I put in a good word for her when she came looking for a job in San Antonio. I’m her mentor, if such things exist between women professionals. I’ve been to their house for dinner. I attended their daughter Amy’s third birthday party last week.”

  Maggie shook her head. “Roman, a murderer? I don’t believe it. Who is he supposed to have killed?”

  “Laurel Morgan, an eight-year-old accident victim with head trauma that he operated on a year ago,” Jack said. “Somebody injected an overdose of potassium chloride into the kid’s IV, causing her heart to stop. If her parents hadn’t made a stink, it would have gone on the books as a case of heart failure following surgery.”

  She frowned. “Why would Roman save the child on the operating table if he planned to kill her later?”

  “I give up. Why?”

  Maggie snorted and crossed her arms. “There is no why, because Roman didn’t kill that child.”

  “We think he did,” Jack said, leaning his palm on the wall beside her. It had the effect of hemming her in, but he did it because he was starting to get dizzy.

  “My turn to ask why,” Maggie said, edging past him and crossing to pick up a book from the floor and set it on the coffee table.

  Jack turned to face her, leaning back against the door to stay on his feet. “The way the Morgan child died last April—heart failure in the ICU after a serious accident and surgery—doesn’t look suspicious until you realize that an insurance investigator for MEDCO, the corporation that owns San Antonio General and a dozen other hospitals in Texas, discovered that at least five other children have died the same way over the past seven years in Houston and Dallas. We’re not sure yet how many other victims there might be in hospitals around the state.” Jack headed for the sofa as he said, “We’re still investigating.”

  Maggie put the rocker between them and asked, “Roman is a suspect in all those deaths?”

  “All of the children who died were his patients,” Jack said, easing down onto the sofa. “And we haven’t found any other common links.”

  “Lots of people have access to the ICU.”

  Jack laid his head carefully against the back of the couch and rubbed at his blurry eyes. “Maybe so. But I’m putting my money on Hollander.”

  “What’s his motive?” Maggie demanded. “Hollander’s written a bunch of journal articles suggesting he considers quality of life more important than mere survival.”

  Maggie snorted. “I feel the same way. Does that make me capable of murder?”

  “Under the right circumstances, anyone’s capable of murder.”

  Maggie stared at him, her eyes stark, her hands gripping the back of the rocker so hard her knuckles turned white.

  The lawman in Jack saw guilt, and he fleetingly wondered whether he was making a mistake telling her so much. The man who was attracted to Maggie saw distress and concern. That man kept right on talking.

  “All of the children who died would have faced some serious physical or mental handicap if they had survived,” he said. “We figure Hollander did his best to fix them up, but when he couldn’t, he killed them out of kindness.”

  “What evidence do you have that he did it?” Maggie demanded.

  “You sound like Hollander’s attorney!” Jack bolted upright, then froze, waiting for the dark to recede and things to come into focus again before he eased himself back down onto the arm of the couch. “Are you going to represent Hollander if I arrest him?”

  “I don’t do criminal work,” she said. “But I’m certain you have the wrong man, Jack.”

  “Maybe Hollander doesn’t want his failures hanging around to remind him he’s not God.”

  “That’s preposterous!” Maggie started pacing between Jack’s stone fireplace-useful in South Texas maybe two or three weeks a year—and the rocker. “Anybody, even someone off the street, could be giving those kids an overdose of potassium chloride, and you’d never know who it was unless you had a video camera in the ICU.”

  Jack tried to wrinkle his brow in a frown, realized that was a bad idea and, keeping his head as still as he could, said, “You seem to know a hell of a lot about it.”

  “I overheard the nurses talking about the perfect way to kill a patient without getting caught,” she said, her lips twisting wryly. “Murder 101. Insulin came up, but they all agreed potassium chloride was a better killing agent.”

  “Explain.”

  “Potassium chloride—the nurses called it KCI—is readily available around a hospital because every patient on an IV for more than twelve hours needs potassium to replace what they’ve lost. It’s not a controlled substance, so it isn’t locked up. A little too much potassium in an IV, and wham—” She slammed her hand on the coffee table. “You’re dead of an apparent heart attack, and no one’s the wiser.”

  Jack winced. “That’s for damn sure.” He rubbed his throbbing temples. “Unless you’re looking for an overdose, and sometimes even if you are, it doesn’t show up in an autopsy.”

  “It doesn’t?” Maggie asked, settling on the edge of the wooden coffee table far enough away that he couldn’t reach out and touch her. “The nurses didn’t mention that.”

  “The way it was explained to me, the heart stops beating so quickly the potassium chloride never reaches the ocular fluid, which is where a forensic pathologist checks for poison,” Jack said. “And because red blood cells create potassium when they break down after death, it’s hard not to find massive amounts of it in your system. When you’re embalmed, the evidence of the crime drains away with your blood.”

  “So how did you discover the Morgan child died of an overdose?” Maggie asked.

  Jack smiled ruefully. “MEDCO was looking for a way they could avoid malpractice liability, so the investigator asked the medical examiner to look for some cause of death other than negligence by the doctor, like foul play. The hospital sent Laurel Morgan’s body for an autopsy with all the IVs intact, and the medical examiner discovered enough excess potassium chloride in the tubing to verify an overdose.”

  “Couldn’t a nurse simply have made a mistake? Given an accidental second dose?”

  “Of course,” Jack said. “But that wouldn’t have gotten MEDCO off the malpractice hook. The investigator did a computer search for similar deaths and found five of them, all with the same primary care physician. Assuming Hollander was committing murder rather than malpractice, and assuming MEDCO had no reason to suspect him of such nefarious activities before they hired him, they were home free. Because it�
�s an interjurisdictional matter, MEDCO called on the Texas Rangers to investigate further.”

  Maggie knew most of MEDCO’ s business, but this had escaped her because it was a criminal matter, and the firm did no criminal work. She was appalled at what she’d just heard. “You mean Roman became a murder suspect because MEDCO didn’t want to pay a malpractice claim against him?”

  “That’s about the size of it.”

  She rose and paced away from him. “That’s absurd!”

  “Somebody’s killing kids, Maggie,” Jack said seriously. “All the victims were less than ten years old. A couple were only babies.”

  Maggie sank into Jack’s rocker. “Oh, God. It can’t be Roman. He has a little girl of his own. He could never—”

  “Hollander may turn out to be innocent,” Jack interrupted. “But right now he’s my number one suspect, and I need the complete cooperation of the nurses and the staff when I’m asking questions about him. That’s why I’m posing as an insurance investigator looking for evidence to defend Hollander against the Morgan malpractice suit. If everybody I interrogate thinks they’re helping the doctor by giving me information, I’ll get more of the truth out of them.”

  “Are you sure you’re looking for the truth?” Maggie said. “It sounds to me like you’ve already got Roman tried and convicted.”

  A horn blared in the quiet.

  “That’s my cab,” Maggie said, rising and heading for the door.

  Jack stepped in front of her before she could get there but was careful not to touch her.

  “Are you going to blow my cover?”

  “Roman is my friend. He has the right to know he’s a suspect.”

  “All I want to do is ask a few questions, Maggie. If the doctor’s innocent, no harm done. If he’s not . . .”

  “You don’t play fair, Jack.”

  “I’m not playing at all. Someone on staff may be a murderer, Maggie. I intend to find out who it is, so I can stop him. Are you going to help me?”

  “I’ll have to think about it,” Maggie said. She stared into his eyes, the message clear: Stand aside, Jack.