by Dawn Eastman
Katie nodded.
“Okay, I’ll let Caleb take you home. I’ve got a long night ahead of me.”
They walked out to the reception area again. Matt and Caleb stood as they came through the door.
Matt took a step toward Katie. “I was so worried when I heard that an ambulance was coming to the ER with a shooting victim.”
Katie smiled and walked toward him. He put his arms around her, and they stood like that for a long moment.
Caleb sat back down and pulled out his phone. He feigned absorption in the small screen.
Matt pulled away to look at her. “I thought it was you who had been shot. Once I found out from the EMTs that you were fine, I came straight here to try to get some information.”
“As you can see, I’m fine.” Katie’s voice shook, betraying the lie.
“I’d like to keep it that way,” Matt said. And then he kissed her. It wasn’t a gentle, tentative first kiss. It was an I’ve-wanted-to-do-this-forever-and-I’m-glad-you’re-not-dead kiss. Katie felt warm and jittery and bubbly all at the same time.
Chief Carlson cleared his throat in an embarrassed but pointed way.
Katie and Matt broke apart and smiled at each other.
Matt nodded at the chief. “We’ll take her home.”
36
A month later, Katie and Matt bumped over a rutted pumpkin patch in a wooden wagon. Matt had claimed it was a necessary part of living in Michigan. Everyone went to the apple orchard and the pumpkin patch in the fall.
The grapevine had been overloaded when Baxter heard about what’d happened out at Marilyn’s cabin.
There had been one final twist in the whole saga of Noah Swanson’s death. They’d unearthed a skeleton with injuries on the back of the head and the front. Christopher had admitted that he had seen Noah move before he buried him and had hit him with the shovel “to be sure he wouldn’t hurt Marilyn again.”
Marilyn had admitted to killing Ellen Riley. She thought Ellen was threatening to reveal that Todd had killed his father. She’d filled the diazepam prescription with a stolen prescription pad and had taken the Demerol and syringe from the clinic. She’d hoped to make it look enough like suicide to fool the police.
The chief had his hands full figuring out whom to charge with what. Marilyn was charged with the murder of Ellen Riley and the hit-and-run of Christopher. Eric was charged for shooting his mother and assaulting Katie. And Christopher was likely to be charged with murder in Noah Swanson’s death. The chief said he had a really good lawyer.
Matt put his arm around Katie, and she snuggled closer in the crisp air.
“You said you had some news for me,” Matt said.
Katie turned to look him in the eye.
“We might be looking for a locums doc for the next six months or so,” she said.
Matt’s eyebrows rose. “Is Emmett finally retiring?”
“No, Nick needs to take some time off,” Katie said. “The night Ellen died, he was at a Narcotics Anonymous meeting. Emmett found him a very exclusive rehab center. He’ll have to go through a board review after he gets out, and we’ll see what his situation is then.”
“That’s very interesting,” Matt said. He pulled her closer. “What’s the policy on interoffice dating over there?”
Acknowledgments
First, thanks go to you, Reader, for ignoring your phone, computer, tablet, TV, and other distractions to spend a few hours with these characters.
Thank you to the incredible crew at Crooked Lane Books: Matt Martz for believing in this book. Anne Brewer for making it so much better than it was. Jenny Chen for shepherding it through the publication process. And Melanie Sun for the beautiful cover design.
Thank you to my agent, Sharon Bowers, for helping me to continue doing what I love.
As always, a huge debt of gratitude goes out to the amazing writer friends who encourage, support, and inspire this literary journey: Wendy Delsol, Kimberly Stuart, Kali VanBaale, and Carol Spaulding-Kruse.
And thanks to Steve, Jake, and Ellie for everything else.