by Unknown
Having backup also meant he’d have time to make a few phone calls. Two of those topped his list of priorities. Out of habit, Eli emptied out his uniform pockets onto his desk before he settled behind it and reached for the phone. After a check of the clock, the first call skipped over a time zone to a number on the outskirts of Denver.
“Boyle.”
“I thought it was ‘Colonel Dr. Stephen James Boyle, sir!’ these days,” Eli said with a grin.
“Only to little girly boys like you, son,” the voice on the other end of the line shot back. “How’s it hangin’, Pace? I haven’t heard from you in a while.”
“Hangin’ low and happy. How ’bout yourself?”
“You know I don’t like to brag. You still wearing a tin star in East Bumblefuck?”
“Northeast Bumblefuck, thanks. And it beats taking orders from a lowlife like you. I don’t know how those idiots stand it. But then, I guess that’s why they call them idiots.” With the customary exchange of insults covered, Eli moved on to the point of his call. “Listen, Steve, I was wondering if you might be able to help me out with a little problem.”
“You need me to write you a scrip for some penicillin?”
Eli rolled his eyes. “Wiseass. No, I need to know if you know anyone who could look at a couple of medical specimens for me.”
There was a brief silence, then Steve spoke again. “Animal, vegetable, or mineral?”
“Animal. Mostly. I have something a little weird going on around here.” Briefly, he outlined the story of Rosemary and Bill and their odd symptoms. “The vet is convinced it’s some kind of an infection, but she said none of the normal cultures have come up positive. She thought a microbiology lab might be able to look at a blood sample and find a germ, if there really is one hiding there. But she’s afraid that if she sends it to a commercial lab, the Lupines will be dead before she gets an answer.”
Another pause stretched out before Stephen replied. “I could probably do it myself. I do have a lab, and I am a microbiologist, after all.”
“Is that what you are?” Eli demanded. “Well, hell, I thought you were doing a study of the total force required to make a cadet airman shit his pants.”
“That’s just a hobby. Bugs are my job.” The scientist’s voice sobered. “Listen, though, Eli, if the vet is right and the second Lupine contracted whatever this thing is from the first one after spending just a few hours in close quarters, that would mean it’s a pretty volatile little microbe. You might want to suggest that both the patients be put into quarantine until you hear back from me. Better to be safe than sorry.”
Eli frowned. “I’m not sure I like the sound of that. Would the clinic staff be in danger, do you think?”
“From what you’ve told me, I doubt it. If it is a virus or a bacteria of some kind, I suspect it must be infectious only to Lupines. Otherwise, after all this time, they’d probably already be infected. And after you were bitten by one of them, you’d already be showing symptoms.” Stephen cleared his throat. “No, I’m probably being overly cautious, but it can’t hurt to take a few extra precautions until we figure out just what’s going on.”
“Right,” Eli agreed. “I want you to know that I really appreciate this, Steve. I’m gonna owe you one. Now, how am I supposed to get these blood samples to you? The faster the better.”
“Talk to your vet friend. He ought to have materials for shipping biological samples. Have him overnight them to me.”
“Her,” Eli corrected. “Dr. Barrett is a she. Josephine.”
Steve snorted. “Oh, so it’s like that, is it? Here I thought you were motivated by community service, and it turns out you’re just trying to get your dick wet.”
The surge of anger that spilled over Eli surprised him. “Be careful where you step here, Boyle.”
“Really?” The other man sounded incredulous. “Well, I’m impressed. I apologize, to you and the lady in question. But I’ll expect an invitation to the wedding.”
Eli forced himself to relax. He knew Steve hadn’t meant anything by his comment, just as he knew the other man didn’t mean anything now. But that didn’t mean he should feel so calm and even a little bit pleased at the idea of marrying Josie Barrett.
He fiddled with the keys and loose change he’d emptied onto the desk a few minutes ago. Oddly, the thinking about Josie always gave him the urge to do something with his hands.
“You’d come to my wedding?” he shot back, trying to sound casually amused and not convinced he had succeeded. “I didn’t know you owned any good dresses.”
“I’ve got a sassy little taffeta number that would be perfect. The blue really brings out my eyes.”
Eli snorted and shifted the keys to the side, exposing a small vial of clear glass. The one he’d found in the hunter’s blind. He’d forgotten all about it. He’d meant to tell Josie what he’d found as soon as he saw her yesterday, but he’d been a little distracted trying to save her from a crazed Lupine. Then there had been so many other things to deal with.
To make love to.
The vial had totally slipped his mind.
“Hey, one more thing,” he said, shifting the phone against his ear. “You don’t happen to have any chemists around there, do you?”
“Chemists?” Steve repeated. “You think you’ll need to drug her before you propose?”
“Funny. No, but there’s something else I’m going to slip into that package I send you. I found something near where the Lupine was shot. It looks to me like a medicine vial—you know, the kind of thing my flu shot comes out of—but it’s missing its label. It might be unrelated, but I’d still like to know if someone can tell me what was in it.”
“I’ll . . . see what I can do.” Pause. “Go ahead and send it over.”
“Thanks, buddy. Like I said, I’m going to owe you for this.”
“Just give me a chance to kiss the bride, and we’ll call it even.”
“Like hell. You’ll be lucky if I let you dance with her.”
Eli hung up with images of Josie in a long white dress whirling through his mind. They ought to inspire him to panic. Instead they just inspired him to imagine peeling her out of it and making love to her until she couldn’t remember her own name.
Shaking his head to clear it of the distracting image, Eli checked the clock again and placed his second call. When he disconnected a few minutes later, he’d been cursed out thoroughly for calling at what was termed “the ass-crack of dawn,” but he had the information he wanted. One final call and he had everything arranged. The Portland-based witch his friend from Seattle had recommended would drive out tomorrow morning. Luckily, her shop was closed on Wednesdays, so the trip would fit into her schedule. Plus, she’d sounded curious about their problem. She said she was looking forward to meeting them.
Thinking that he’d spoken on the phone more in the last hour than he had in the entire rest of his life, Eli punched in one more number, but this time he sat back in his chair and smiled as he listened to the rings.
“Stone Creek Animal Hospital. How can I help you?”
“You answer your own phone? Don’t you pay people to do things like that?”
He could practically hear her grimace. “Thank God it’s you. It was a reflex. I only realized what I was doing once it was too late to turn back. I was terrified that you were going to be Mrs. Patterson calling about her damn Siamese again.”
“What? You’re not a cat lover?” he teased.
Now he could hear her blush. “I like cats just fine. It’s Mrs. Patterson who makes me break out in hives. I swear, the American Psychiatric Association needs to back a study on her and her unique manifestation of Munchausen by proxy syndrome.”
He laughed. “Well, next time let your receptionist answer.”
“Deal. So what’s up? I have an appointment in three and a half minutes.”
“I just wanted to let you know that I called my scientist friend. He’s agreed to look at the samples for us. He said to
overnight them to him today and he’ll make it a priority to run them through the . . . whatever.”
“That’s fabulous!” Josie breathed, and he could hear the rustle of papers in the background. “Okay, I’ve got a pen. Just give me the address, and I’ll have Ben pack them up.”
“Actually, I was planning to come by in a bit, so I’ll give it to you then.”
“Eli, I told you I can’t take time in the middle of the day for lunches out. I’m sorry, but I’m just too busy.”
“Calm down. I wasn’t going to ask you for lunch.” He lowered his voice to a tone he hoped sounded calming, soothing, and matter-of-fact. “I’m coming to help you figure out where we might be able to quarantine Rosemary and Bill away from any other Lupines. I doubt many wander into your clinic, but Steve thought it would be a good idea to isolate them anyway.”
“Quarantine?” Josie sounded neither calmed nor soothed. “They need to be quarantined? Why? Did he tell you he thinks he knows what they have? Do I need to warn my staff? Eli, what the hell is going on?”
He grimaced. “Okay, now you really need to calm down.” He repeated Steve’s reasoning and his assurances that the illness was not transmissible to anyone other than Lupines. “It’s just a precaution, and probably an unnecessary one at that. But this thing makes me nervous, and I don’t see the harm in an excess of caution. I doubt that Rick would, either. Not when it comes to his pack. I’ll call him and clear it, but I’m pretty sure he’d agree with me. I don’t want to take any chances.”
“Me neither.” He heard her sigh. “Okay. For the moment, I’ll make sure everyone here understands that no one goes near the Lupines except for myself, Ben, Andrea, and Daisy. They’ve all already been in contact. I’m not really set up for quarantining anyone, but there’s a storage room that’s mostly empty because I’ve been wanting to turn it into a physical therapy space. I suppose we can put them in there. It’s only accessible through the back of the clinic, and no one needs to go in there for anything unless I tell them to. Will that work?”
“That sounds fine.”
“Well, I have a day full of appointments here. I’ll let you have Ben when I can, but he does have other things to do. Can you handle it yourself, or draft someone else to help you?”
“I’ll figure something out.”
“All right. I’ll talk to you later, then.”
“You’ll see me later,” he corrected, his mouth curving wickedly. “And then even later than that, you’ll taste me.”
When he hung up, he was laughing and marveling at the ability of his love to convey a beet-red blush over fiber-optic phone lines. Now, that was talent.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Josie loved her work. Really she did. And she told herself that many, many times on Tuesday, hoping that the reminder would prove useful. It did, she supposed, in the sense that she neither committed any felonies, nor told any of her patients that really, their pet would be fine if not for the owner’s stupidity. Even the reminder couldn’t stop her from wanting to say it, though. It just stopped the words from actually coming out.
When Eli stopped by at three o’clock, she barely had time to sneak a kiss in the back of the clinic before she had to race to her fifteenth appointment of the day. Thankfully, he took her brush-off with good grace, patting her on the bottom and telling her that he’d already spoken to Ben, the blood samples were already in the hands of the delivery company, and they had the quarantine setup under control. His calm demeanor help to settle her frazzled nerves, but the pat on her ass stayed with her through at least three appointments. She kept finding herself tingling and blushing at the least appropriate time. Brenda Nowicki even asked her if she was coming down with something, which had only made her blush harder.
Force of will got her through the remainder of her schedule, and even an emergency appointment with a congested guinea pig. Thankfully, she had no outcalls for large animals this week, so at least she hadn’t added travel to her list of duties. Still, by the time the clinic locked its door at seven fifteen, Josie felt like she’d been running a marathon for at least nine weeks. She rubbed a hand across the back of her neck as she trudged out of the last exam room to slap a chart down on the teetering pile she still needed to catch up on.
A metallic clang drew her attention to the hallway leading to the storage room she’d told Eli he could set up as a quarantine space. Curiosity drew her down the hall to see how far the Q-Team—as Ben had dubbed them—had gotten with their project. She reached for the knob, but the door swung open before she touched it.
“Brace yourself, Doc.” Ben grinned down at her, looking disheveled and disreputable and highly pleased with himself. She saw why when he stepped back and waved his hand at the newly rearranged and reequipped storage room. “The Q-Team is proud to present . . . Club Medicine!”
Josie laughed, her eyes widening as she took in the transformation. Gone were empty pallets that had once held dog food, the broken pieces of equipment, and the boxes of extra exam gloves and surgical drapes. In their place, she saw only gleaming tile floors and a floor-to-ceiling gated chain-link partition, securely bolted to opposite walls, that divided the space into an entry and work area in front and a large, enclosed kennel area on the other. Inside the kennel area, the linoleum floor had been padded with rubber mats on each end. Each mat was topped with an egg-crate dog bed.
She looked at Eli in wonder. “You guys managed all this in just a few hours?”
“It wasn’t really all that complicated. The partition was the biggest challenge, but once we found the wall studs, even that wasn’t so bad.” He grinned. “The guy at the fence company guaranteed it would take an entire pack of wolves to take it down.”
“I wasn’t worried about security. It looks solid to me. Besides, our two Lupines aren’t in any condition for a jailbreak at the moment.”
Josie turned around slowly, taking in the front of the room. A narrow hutch had been placed to the left of the door and stocked with everything needed for the care of the Lupines, including their charts, medications, and tape and bandages for their wound dressings.
She shook her head and laughed in amazement. “It’s perfect. I think putting them in the same kennel will make them both feel better once they start to become more alert. You’re both hired.”
“Thanks, but my contract with the town says I’m not allowed to moonlight,” Eli quipped, bending down to steal a brief kiss.
When he pulled away, Josie snuck a glance over at Ben, half expecting that he’d be staring at the ceiling and whistling with a look of perfect innocence on his face. Instead, she caught him watching shamelessly and grinning. When she scowled, he only grinned wider and winked at her. She muttered something under her breath about mutiny and disrespect. Ben appeared unfazed.
“But since I’m already here,” Eli continued, winking at her himself, “why don’t I help Ben move Rosemary and Bill into their new digs? They’re both damn heavy when they’re unconscious.”
Josie nodded and led the way back down the hall and across the triage area to the old kennel area, where she supervised first Rosemary’s and then Bill’s transfer to the quarantine space. When each of them had been settled on their own bed, she and Ben did a quick check of their injuries and made sure their IV drips remained connected and functional.
“Rosemary looks good,” Josie announced when she had assured herself that the short trip had caused the Lupine no harm. She pushed back to her feet and stepped across to her tech. “How’s Bill?”
Ben grumbled and fiddled with the plastic tubing of his IV. “He’s fine, but his line got caught on the door of his crate back there and came loose from the needle. I think I’ve got it fixed, though. He should be good.”
Satisfied, Josie turned and took two steps toward the front of the room. Her feet stuttered to a halt, though, when she heard an ominous rumble in the distance. She frowned at Eli through the chain-link.
“Do you know if it was supposed to rain today?”
“Because I could have sworn I just heard thunder.”
And that was when Ben screamed.
Josie spun around—whether of her own volition or from the knock she took when Eli leapt past her into the kennel, she couldn’t really tell. All she knew was that one minute everything had been fine, and the next minute Ben was screaming and Eli was running and Bill Evans had his teeth sunk deep into the flesh of the vet tech’s left leg.
“Out! Get out!” Eli shouted.
It took Josie a minute to realize he was talking to her. She made to step forward instead, intent on helping Ben, but the look Eli aimed at her had nearly enough force to knock her out of the room entirely. She stumbled backward and watched helplessly as the sheriff aimed a vicious kick at the Lupine’s head. The blow stunned the creature and he released his grip on Ben’s leg, shaking his head as if to stop it from ringing.
The moment Bill let go, Eli threw Ben over his shoulder and bolted for the gate, shoving Josie out in front of him. He slammed the chain-link panel closed behind him and leaned against it.
“Secure the lock!” he shouted, and Josie rushed to obey, flipping the pin into place and securing it with the padlock the fence company had so thoughtfully provided. As soon as the gate was secure, Eli stepped away, barely avoiding the vicious fangs of the enraged Lupine as it threw itself over and over against the fence, infuriated by its inability to reach its prey.
“That should not have happened,” Josie stuttered, following Eli out to the triage room, where he placed Ben on an exam table. “He was on enough sedative to knock out a rhino.”