“She’s so young,” Lauren exclaimed as she immediately went to work examining her. Though it was hard to be sure with all the damage, she didn’t think the girl was much older than fourteen or fifteen.
“Do you know her?” Daniel asked, leaning in and taking a closer look.
“I don’t think so. You?”
“She doesn’t look familiar. I don’t think she’s from around here.”
“Whoever she is, she’s going to need transport to the hospital. This is beyond what I can handle at the clinic.”
“How urgent?” Daniel asked from outside the pickup. “Ambulance or LifeFlight to the University of Utah?”
She considered the situation. “Her vitals are stable and nothing seems life-threatening at this point. Send for an ambulance,” she decided.
She lifted the girl’s thin T-shirt, trying to look for anything unusual in the dim light. She certainly found it.
“Sheriff, she’s pregnant,” she exclaimed.
He leaned inside, his expression clearly shocked. “Pregnant?”
“I’d guess about five or six months along.”
She moved her stethoscope and was relieved to hear a steady fetal heartbeat. She started to palpate the girl’s abdomen when suddenly her patient’s eyes flickered open. Even in the dim light inside the camper shell, Lauren could see panic chase across those battered features. The girl cried out and flailed at Lauren as she tried to scramble up and away from her.
“Easy, sweetheart. Easy,” Lauren murmured. Her skills at Spanish were limited but she tried her best. “I’m not going to hurt you. I’m here to help you and your baby.”
The girl’s breathing was harsh and labored, but her frantic efforts to fight Lauren off seemed to ease and she watched her warily.
“I’m Lauren. I’m a doctor,” she repeated in Spanish, holding up her stethoscope. “What’s your name?”
Through swollen, discolored eyes, the girl looked disoriented and suspicious, and didn’t answer for several seconds.
“Rosa,” she finally said, her voice raspy and strained. “Rosa Vallejo.”
Lauren smiled as calmly as if they were meeting for brunch. It was a skill she’d learned early in medical school—pretend you were calm and in control and your patients will assume you are. “Hello, Rosa Vallejo. I’m sorry you’re hurt but an ambulance is on the way for you, okay? We’re going to get you to the hospital.”
“No! No hospital. Please!”
The fear in the girl’s voice seemed to hitch up a notch and she tried to sit up again. Lauren touched her arm, for comfort and reassurance as much as to hold her in place. “You’ve been hurt. You need help. You need to make sure your baby is all right.”
“No. No. I’m fine. I must go.”
She lunged to climb out of the truck bed but Daniel stood blocking the way, looking huge and imposing, his badge glinting in the dim light. The girl froze, a whimper in her throat and a look of abject terror in her eyes. “No policía. No policía!”
She seemed incoherent with fear, struggling hysterically to break free of Lauren’s hold. Daniel finally reached in to help, which only seemed to upset the girl more.
“Hold her while I find something in my kit to calm her,” Lauren ordered. “She’s going to injure herself more if I don’t.”
A moment later, she found what she was looking for. Daniel held the girl while Lauren injected her with a sedative safe for pregnant women. A moment later, the medicine started to work its calming effect on her panicked patient and she sagged back against the horse blankets just as the wail of the ambulance sounded outside.
Lauren let out a sigh of relief and started to climb out of the truck bed. When Daniel reached to lift her out, she suddenly remembered his injury. She ignored his help and climbed out on her own.
“You’re going to break open all those lovely stitches if you don’t take it easy.”
“I’m fine,” he said firmly, just as the volunteer paramedics hurried over, medical bags slung over their shoulders.
“Hey, Mike, Pete,” Lauren greeted them with a smile.
“You trying to take over our business now, Doc?” Pete asked her with a wink.
“No way. You guys are the experts at triage here. I happened to be stitching up the sheriff at the clinic after the big brawl at Mickey’s bar. When he received this call, I rode along to see if I could help.”
“Busy night for all of us. What have we got?”
Daniel stepped closer to hear her report and Lauren tried not to react to his overwhelming physical presence.
She gave them Rosa’s vitals. “I have a young patient who appears to be approximately twenty weeks pregnant. It was tough to do a full assessment under these conditions, but she looks like she’s suffering multiple contusions and lacerations, probably the result of a beating. She appears to be suffering from exposure. I have no idea how long she’s been in the back of Dale’s pickup. Maybe an hour, maybe more. Whether that contributed to her hysteria, I can’t say, but I do know she’s not very crazy about authority figures right now. Seeing the sheriff set her off, so we may have to use restraints in the ambulance on our way to Salt Lake City.”
“You riding along?” Mike Halling asked.
“If I won’t be in the way.”
“You know we’ve always got room for you, Doc.”
She stood back while he and Pete Zabrisky quickly transferred the girl to the stretcher then lifted it into the ambulance.
“I’m guessing she must have climbed in the back of the truck in Park City, or wherever Dale might have stopped on the way. Though I’m pretty sure the attack didn’t happen here, I’m going to put one of my deputies to work processing the scene,” Daniel told her while they waited in the stinging sleet for the paramedics to finish loading Rosa into the bus.
“All right,” she answered.
“I won’t be far behind you. I’d like to question her once she’s been treated.” He paused. “I can give you a ride back to town when we’re done, if you need it.”
She nodded and climbed in after Mike and Pete. Maybe she had a problem with authority figures, too. That must be why her stomach fluttered and her heartbeat accelerated at the prospect of more time in the company of the unnerving Daniel Galvez.
Chapter 2
Watching Dr. Lauren Maxwell in action was more fascinating to him than the Final Four, the World Series and the Super Bowl combined. As long as she wasn’t working on him and he didn’t have to endure having her hands on him, Daniel wouldn’t mind watching her all day.
As he stepped back to let the ambulance pull past him, with its lights flashing through the drizzle of snow, he could see Lauren through the back windows as she talked to the paramedics in what he imagined was that brisk, efficient voice she used when directing patient care.
In trauma situations, Lauren always seemed completely in control. He never would have guessed back in the day that she would make such a wonderful physician.
He still found it amazing that the prim little girl on the school bus with her pink backpacks and her fake-fur-trimmed coats and her perfectly curled blond ringlets seemed to have no problem wading through blood and guts and could handle herself with such quiet but confident expertise, no matter the situation.
She loved her work. It was obvious every time Daniel had the chance to see her in action. Medicine wasn’t a job with Lauren Renee Maxwell, it was more like a sacred calling.
In the five years since she’d come back to Moose Springs and opened her clinic, he had watched her carefully. Like many others, at first he had expected her to fail. She was the spoiled, pampered daughter of the man who had been the town’s wealthiest citizen. How could she possibly have the stamina to cope with all the gritty realities of small-town doctoring?
Like almost everyone else, he had quickly figured out that there was more to Lauren than anybody might have guessed. Over the years, her clinic had become a strong, vital thread in the community fabric.
They were a
ll lucky to have her—and so was that young girl in the back of the ambulance.
“What am I supposed to do now?” Dale Richins asked, his wide, grizzled features concerned.
“We’re going to need a statement from you. The address of your sister’s house in Park City, any place you might have stopped between there and here. That kind of thing.”
“I can tell you where LouAnn lives. She’s on the edge of town, the only part the old-timers can afford anymore, with all the developers trying to buy everybody out. But I can tell you right now, I didn’t stop a single place after I left her house. Headed straight home. I don’t know if I even would have known that girl was back there if I hadn’t stopped to fix the flat. She would have likely froze to death.”
“You did the right thing, trying to help her.”
“What else was I supposed to do? Little thing like that.” He shook his head. “Just makes me sick, someone could hurt her and leave her to find her own way in the cold. Especially if she’s pregnant like the doc said. It’s got to be only eight or nine degrees out here. I can’t imagine how cold it was in the back of that drafty old camper shell while I was going sixty-five miles an hour on the interstate. It’s a wonder that little girl didn’t freeze solid before I found her.”
“Yeah, it was lucky you found her when you did.”
“Who do you figure might have done this to her?”
“I couldn’t guess right now until I have a chance to talk to her. I imagine she was probably looking for some way to escape when she stumbled onto your truck and camper shell. The lock’s broken, I see.”
“That old thing’s been busted since before you quit your fancy job in the city and came home. But yeah, that makes sense that she was looking for a way out.”
“So either she was injured somewhere near your sister’s house or she stumbled on your truck sometime after the beating. I’ll know better after I can interview her.”
Dale cleared his throat. “You let me know if she needs anything, won’t you? I can’t afford much, but I could help some with her doctor bills and whatnot.”
He couldn’t help being touched at the crusty old rancher’s obvious concern for his stowaway. Most of the time, Dale was hard-edged and irascible, cranky to everyone. Maybe Rosa reminded him of his three granddaughters or something.
“Thanks,” he answered. “That’s real decent of you.”
“Least I can do.”
“There’s Deputy Hendricks,” Daniel said as another department SUV approached. “She’ll take a statement from you with the particulars of your sister’s address and all, and then she can drive you home when you’re finished.”
“What the hell for? I can drive myself home.”
“I’m sorry, Dale, but we’re going to have to take your truck to the garage down at the station to see if we can find any evidence in the back. It’s standard procedure in cases like this.”
The rancher didn’t look too thrilled with that piece of information. “Don’t I have any kind of choice here?”
“You want us to do everything we can to find out who hurt that girl, don’t you?”
“I suppose…”
“You’ll have it back by morning, I promise.”
That didn’t seem to ease Dale’s sour look, but the rancher seemed to accept the inevitable.
“You heading to the hospital now?” he asked.
At Daniel’s nod, he pointed a gnarled finger at him. “You make sure R.J.’s daughter treats that girl right.”
Though he knew it was a foolish reflex, Daniel couldn’t help but stiffen at the renewed animosity in the rancher’s voice. How did Lauren deal with it, day after day? he wondered. Dale wasn’t the only old-timer around here who carried a grudge as wide and strong as the Weber River. She must face this kind of thing on a daily basis.
It pissed him off and made him want to shake the other man. Instead, he pasted on a calm smile. “Dale, if you weren’t so stubborn, you would admit Lauren is a fine doctor. She’ll take care of the girl. You can bet your ranch on it.”
The other man made a harrumphing kind of sound but didn’t comment as Teresa Hendricks approached. Daniel turned his attention from defending Lauren—something she would probably neither appreciate nor understand—and focused on the business at hand.
“Thanks for coming in on your first night off in a week,” he said to his deputy. “Sorry to do this to you.”
“Not a problem. Sounds like you had some excitement.”
He spent five minutes briefing her on the case, then suggested she drive the rancher home and take his statement there, where they both could be warm and dry.
“I’m going to follow the ambulance to the hospital and try to interview the vic,” he said. “If anything breaks here, you know how to reach me.”
The snow seemed to fall heavier and faster as he drove through Parley’s Canyon to the Salt Lake Valley. It was more crowded than he would have expected at eleven at night, until he remembered the film festival. This whole part of the state was insane when all the celebs were in town.
By the time he reached the University of Utah Medical Center, his shoulders ached with tension and he was definitely in need of a beer.
At the hospital, he went immediately to the emergency room and was directed down a hallway, where he quickly spotted Lauren talking to a man Daniel assumed was another doctor, at least judging by the stethoscope around his neck.
The guy was leaning down, and appeared to be hanging on every word Lauren said. He was blond and lean and as chiseled as those movie stars in their two-thousand-dollar ski jackets up the canyon, trying to see and be seen around town.
Daniel immediately hated him.
He took a step down the hallway and knew immediately when Lauren caught sight of him. She straightened abruptly and something flashed in her blue eyes, something murky and confusing. She quickly veiled her expression and it became a mask of stiff politeness.
Just once, he would love the chance to talk to her without the prickly shell she always seemed to whip out from somewhere and put on whenever he was near.
“Sheriff Galvez,” she greeted him, her delicate features solemn. “Have you met Kendall Fox? He’s the E.R. attending tonight. Kendall, this is Daniel Galvez.”
The doctor stuck out his hand and Daniel shook it, though he couldn’t escape the impression they were both circling around each other, sizing up the enemy like a couple of hound dogs sniffing after the same bone.
He didn’t miss the dismissal in the doctor’s eyes and for the second time that night, he had to fight the urge to kick somebody’s ass. He wouldn’t waste his energy, he thought. Lauren was too smart to go for the type of smooth player who couldn’t remember the name of the woman he was with unless she had it tattooed somewhere on a conveniently accessible portion of her anatomy.
“How’s our victim?” he asked.
“She’s gone to Radiology for some X-rays,” Lauren spoke up. “The tech should be bringing her back in a moment. Kendall…Dr. Fox…and I were just discussing the best course of action. We think—”
Dr. Jerk cut her off. “She has a little frostbite on a couple of her toes, an apparent broken wrist and some cracked ribs.”
“How’s the baby?” Daniel pointedly directed his question back to Lauren, ignoring the other man.
She frowned, looking worried. “She’s started having some mild contractions right now. We’ve given her medication to stop them, but she’s definitely going to need to be closely observed for the next few days.”
“She give any indication who put her here?”
Lauren shook her head. She had discarded her parka somewhere, he observed with his keen detective eye, and had put surgical scrubs on over the pale blue turtleneck she had worn when she treated his shoulder. Her hair was slipping from its braid and he had to fight a ridiculous urge to tuck it back.
“She clams up every time we ask.”
“I was afraid of that. She’s got to be frightened. It would
sure make my job easier if she could just give me the name, age and last-known address of the son of a bitch who put her here. Of course we have to do this the hard way. Can I talk to her?”
“You cops. Can’t you even wait until the girl gets out of X-ray?” Fox asked.
Daniel slid his fists into his pockets and pasted on that same damn calm smile that sometimes felt about as genuine as fool’s gold.
He really hated being made to feel like a big, dumb Mexican.
“I didn’t mean this instant,” he murmured. “But I would like to talk to her as soon as possible, while the details are still fresh in her mind.”
The doctor looked like he wanted to get in a pissing match right there in the hallway, but before he could unzip, a nurse in pink scrubs stuck her head out of one of the examination rooms.
She didn’t look pleased to find the E.R. doctor still standing close to Lauren, a sentiment with which Daniel heartily concurred. Her reaction made him wonder if the good doctor was the sort who left a swath of broken hearts through the staff.
“Dr. Fox, can you come in here for a minute?” the nurse asked. “I’ve got a question on your orders.”
The doctor’s handsome features twisted with annoyance but he hid it well. “Be right there.”
After he walked down the hall, a tight, awkward silence stretched between Daniel and Lauren. He found it both sad and frustrating, and wondered how he could ever bridge the chasm between them.
He wasn’t exactly sure how much Lauren knew about the events that led up to her father’s exposure and subsequent fall from grace. If she knew all of it, she must blame him for what happened next.
He sure as hell blamed himself.
“How’s your arm?” she asked.
The blasted thing throbbed like the devil, but he wasn’t about to admit that to her.
“Fine,” he assured her. “Sorry I wasted your time on that. If I’d known I would have to make a trip down here to the city, I could have just had them fix me up here while I was waiting to interview our beating victim. But then, I doubt anybody on staff here can claim such nice handiwork.”
Shelter from the Storm Page 2