by Rowe, Julie
God didn’t have that kind of money.
Dr. Flett looked at her then gave Smoke a quick once-over. “The CDC?” He didn’t sound impressed or happy to see them.
Kini walked toward him. “Kini Kerek, CDC Public Health department.” Smoke stood so close behind her she could feel the heat radiating off his body. “This is Lyle Smoke—”
“CDC Outbreak Task Force,” Smoke finished for her.
She had to work to keep her attention on Flett because she really wanted to gape at Smoke and ask, really?
He gave her a brief nod and said one word. “River.”
River had managed to recruit Smoke already? “That was fast,” she said under her breath.
“Who called you?” Dr. Flett demanded. He pointed an accusing gaze at the woman she’d just spoken to. “Did you call them, Janet?”
“No, sir. I thought you called them.”
Before he could accuse anyone else, Kini spoke up. “No one called us. We’re following up on a tip from a member of the public.”
Flett rolled his eyes. “You investigate every crackpot and conspiracy theorist in the state?”
She gave him a tight smile. “When they assault me and accuse me of killing people with an infection I know nothing about, yes.”
The doctor shook his head and went back to the chart he’d been looking at. “People are overreacting. It’s just the start of flu season.”
“So, you admit you have patients with flu-like symptoms? What about breathing difficulties? Pneumonia?”
He stared at her like she was asking for military launch codes.
Idiot.
Kini gathered all the patience she could muster and tried to project it into her voice. “Right now, it’s myself and Mr. Smoke investigating. If all you’ve got is a few people with the flu and nothing more serious, we’ll be in, out, and gone before you know it. If what you’ve got is more than that…” She paused to lean toward him and lowered her voice. “You want us on the ground here early.”
“This is my hospital,” he said, his tone sharp, contempt curling his lip.
Don’t go there. Do not go there.
“These are my people.” He continued looking down at her as if he were standing on a pulpit and she was a lowly petitioner. “I’m in charge.”
He went there.
Moron.
Kini managed to hang on to her temper well enough to say, “Not my call to make, but the CDC doesn’t take over if it doesn’t have to. We’d rather work with you behind the scenes. Things stay calmer that way.”
He stared at her for a couple of seconds then glanced at Smoke before, finally, saying, “We’ve had three deaths in the last couple of weeks, all from rapid onset pneumonia. Testing hasn’t come back yet on whether it’s bacterial or viral.”
Finally cooperation.
“Any current cases?”
“Four. I just admitted a new one about ten minutes ago.” He paused and cleared his throat. “There may be more in the waiting room.”
If he suspected more, what the hell were they doing in the waiting room? Gleefully infecting all those other people?
Saying that out loud would not lead to continued cooperation. She sucked in a breath and held it. No telling the idiotic man he was not only narcissistic, but stupid, too. He’d just get all arrogant and whiny.
By the time she was done talking to this jackass she was going to have a hernia.
Behind her, Smoke shifted his weight.
When had he gotten that close?
He tapped her on the shoulder. “A word?” He didn’t wait for her response, looking at Dr. Flett and giving the man a nod before guiding her away.
“What is it?” she asked him. “Did you get a text from River?”
“No.” He glanced at a couple of nurses who’d paused to read charts a couple of feet away.
They moved off.
“You looked like you were going to go boom.”
She winced. “That bad, huh?”
He nodded once and gave her a thorough visual examination that left her with a full-body blush. “Okay?” His gaze was…hot, possessive, and completely inappropriate.
She wanted more.
No. No. No. More was bad. More would lead to another morning of waking up naked on his chest. Her libido had barely survived the first time; it couldn’t take a second time without tying the man down and having its wicked, wicked way with him.
She cleared her throat instead of fanning herself. “I’ll try not to have a stroke.” She practically ran back to Dr. Flett. “My apologies. Would it be possible for me to obtain your patients’ recent histories and take blood samples?”
He looked at her like she’d just crawled out from under a rock. “Fine, but stay out of the way of my staff.”
“Of course.” She pinched her lips together to prevent the words, prick and dick, from coming out of her mouth. Her mother would rise from her grave to stick a bar of soap in it.
Flett called over a nurse and ordered her to assist Kini, then turned on his heel and disappeared into an exam room.
Kini gave the woman a commiserating smile. “Sorry to disrupt things, but all I need is the histories on the patients with pneumonia. I’ll also need to come back to take blood samples from them.”
“Okay.” She led them over to a stack of charts, grabbed four, and handed them to Kini. “Why do you need to come back for the samples?”
“I didn’t bring my collection kit with me,” Kini said. She would have, but Smoke’s monster machine would have needed a sidecar. “Will returning later for them be a problem?”
“We’ll mention it at shift change if you’re not done before then.”
“Thanks.” Kini looked at the charts then at her new colleague. How the hell had he gotten hired in just one day?
He met her gaze with a self-contained I’m innocent expression that was beginning to drive her crazy.
She took the charts, found an unoccupied bit of space on the counter, and began reading.
Three of the four patients all reported having flu-like symptoms for the last week. Fever, tiredness, achy muscles in the chest and back. What drove them to the ER was a worsening shortness of breath. One patient described it as feeling smothered by heavy blankets.
Blood had been drawn for chemistry and blood cell analysis, but the results weren’t in the chart yet.
An alarm went off in the one of the exam rooms. Two nurses and Dr. Flett rushed over and went inside. The alarm was shut off, but the nurse who came out of the room ran to a cart of medical supplies and pushed it at a run back to the room.
Kini glanced at Smoke then headed toward it.
She didn’t need to go inside to see Flett inserting a trach tube down the patient’s throat and into their lungs, then connect that to a ventilator. The patient had lost the battle to breathe on her own.
She looked at the room number then at the charts in her hands. It was one of the hantavirus possibilities.
Another nurse came over and poked her head into the room. “Lab results are back.”
Flett nodded at her but didn’t pause as he listened to the patient’s chest.
“Is the patient’s hematocrit elevated?” Kini asked. When the nurse hesitated, she added, “I’m with the CDC, evaluating this patient.”
“Um.” The nurse turned away and consulted some paperwork on the desk. “Yes, it’s slightly elevated. White cell count is up a little too.”
She winced. Well, that wasn’t good news. “Thanks.”
The nurse returned to her work.
Smoke stepped into her space. “What does an elevated hematocrit mean?”
“Hm, oh, often at this stage, the body overreacts to the presence of the virus by flooding the lungs with fluid. It shows up in the blood as a kind of dehydration, which raises the hematocrit. It’s one of the diagnostic criteria for Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome. That would be the official diagnosis if the patient has the hantavirus. Most non-health-care people would just call
it pneumonia.”
“So, it’s here.”
“Very possible.”
He looked at her. “Now what?”
She squared her shoulders. “Dr. Flett isn’t going to like the now what. So, I’ll have to be sure I follow procedures perfectly. I need to go over these charts and write an analysis/summary of them, take samples, and make my recommendations.”
“Doesn’t sound quick.”
“I can’t afford to make mistakes.” Mistakes could kill. “How long will it take before the tires are fixed on my rental?”
Smoke’s answer was to take out his cell phone and call his uncle.
“Twenty minutes,” he reported after a series of one- and two-word sentences.
She looked up at him. “How do you do that?”
“What?”
“Say in a couple of words what most people have to use entire sentences to communicate.”
He shrugged, his wide shoulders stretching the fabric of his T-shirt. “Talented?”
He was going to drive her crazy.
She pulled out her tablet from her purse and began making notes. It took her about fifteen minutes to finish, and Smoke stayed with her the entire time. He didn’t wander around, pace, or ask questions. He watched the entire room like he expected bad guys to stroll in looking for an argument.
“Stop it,” she hissed at him.
“Stop what?” He sounded confused.
She glanced at him. He looked it, too.
“You’re like a coiled cobra ready to strike, and it’s making me…edgy.”
“Coiled cobra?”
She sighed. “You know what I mean.” She waved her hand in front of him, indicating all of him. “You’re ready to go into battle, only there’s no one here for you to beat up.”
He grunted, seemed to consider her complaint, then spoke softly. “That’s who I am. My grandfather says I live up to my name. A silent watcher who knows to wait until the right moment to make my move.”
A shiver went down her back and she stared at him.
“I’m not a nice man.” It almost seemed like an afterthought. A confession he hadn’t thought to make until now.
“Are you trying to scare me?”
“You…you’re the last person I want to scare.” He smiled and it was so full of sexual promise it devastated her.
It took two deep breaths for her to recover and say, “You’re a menace.”
“Yep,” he said, drawing the word out.
Kini focused her gaze on her tablet. Work. She had work to do, and salivating all over her partner shouldn’t be on her list. As she made note of this last patient’s name and address, she realized she’d seen it before. Or something close.
She scrolled through her notes and wondered if she was seeing connections where there weren’t any.
“Smoke, would you look at these addresses? Are they close together?”
He went through them. “Yeah, they’re all within a five-mile radius.”
“Oh.” Damn, she’d thought she’d found something useful, but five miles was a lot of space.
“They’re all on the edge of the Zion National Park. There isn’t anyone else out there, just them.”
Understanding animated her voice. “Oh.”
Chapter Six
Kini had an expressive face. Smoke watched as surprise, understanding, then dismay rolled across it. She glanced at her tablet then stared at nothing, thinking. A little nod and a lift of her chin told him she’d made a decision.
He’d bet fifty bucks she was going to want to check in on the family members of each patient to see if they were showing any symptoms.
“I need my collection kit and my car.”
Yep, they were going for a drive. “Okay.” Smoke angled his head at Dr. Flett, who’d just come out of the exam room. “What about him?”
“He isn’t going to listen to anything I have to say.” Her tone was flat. “I’m just a nurse.”
“Dumb.”
“Yeah,” she said, her voice dry. “But no surprise there.” She moved off to talk to one of the nurses then returned. “We can go now.”
When she would have gone back out through the ER waiting room, he put a hand on her shoulder and nudged her in the opposite direction. “Back door.”
Surprise flitted over her, making her seem…brighter. “Excellent idea.”
“Do you compliment everyone?” he asked as they walked down the hall.
“Only when people deserve it.” She glanced at him. “Thanks.”
“For what?”
“Backing me up in there.”
He frowned at her. He hadn’t done much.
Though he hadn’t spoken out loud, she said, “You didn’t try to take over, and you didn’t say anything; you stood behind me and looked irritated. You were perfect.”
They reached the door and he opened it for her, raising one eyebrow as he looked at her. “Perfect, huh?”
“At looking threatening,” she qualified quickly, a blush spreading up her neck.
He leaned down to whisper in her ear as she went past him and through the doorway, “I aim to please.”
Her back went ramrod straight and she stomped ahead of him, muttering something under her breath that sounded suspiciously like, “Men.”
They rounded the building until they arrived at his bike. He got on, kicked the engine into life, and looked at her.
She’d crossed her arms over her chest and was scowling at him. “We need to talk.”
He lifted one shoulder to tell her to get to it.
She looked pointedly at the engine, so he killed it.
As soon as the rumble ended she said, “Stop with the innuendoes. It’s disrespectful to both of us.”
The blush on her face was red hot now. Did she think he was doing it to get a rise out of her? That he was just playing with her? If he told her what he wanted, to go back to the first time they met and do less talking and more kissing, she’d probably run like hell.
But she’d asked for honesty, so she’d get honesty.
“No disrespect intended,” he said. “I’ve been hard since I woke up with you draped over my chest.”
She rocked back on her heels like he’d hit her. “Is that a threat?”
See what honesty got him? Into shit, that’s where. “No.”
She narrowed her eyes. “A promise?”
Those eyes, along with pinched lips, told him she really meant threat again. “No.”
She stared at him, the frown on her face growing more and more pronounced. “Then what?”
Fuck it. “Yesterday morning, when I woke up with you half naked and plastered to me was the first time in two years I didn’t wake up with the urge to kill someone.” He watched her face as her blush dissipated.
“Oh.” A furrow etched its way between her eyebrows along with something suspiciously close to sympathy.
No thanks.
“I’m not looking for a pity fuck.”
That erased the awkwardness in about a second. “I wasn’t…” She groaned and rolled her eyes. “You’re such a guy.” She climbed onto the bike behind him. “Let’s go.”
He waited until she’d wrapped her arms around his waist before starting the engine and leaving the parking lot at a sedate, legal speed. He gave the gas a kick once they were on the street and she hung on to him harder, pressing her breasts into his back.
He knew she’d liked what he’d done and not done while she was negotiating with Flett. He’d let her do her thing while he did his, convincing the asshole he’d beat the crap out of him if he was disrespectful.
Then he’d become an asshole himself. Why? Because he wanted her attention, her mind picturing them on his bed completely naked? Why not just give her a stupid one liner? Hey baby, forget my bike, take me for a ride.
She’d knee him in the nuts, and he’d deserve it. He wasn’t that guy, so why was he acting like it? Was she right? Was he acting like an asshole because getting close to her meant fac
ing all the shit he’d dragged home with him and all the shit waiting for him here?
They arrived back at his uncle’s shop, her car with its new tires ready and waiting.
Kini hopped off the back of the bike and took a step toward her car. Smoke put a hand on her arm.
He made eye contact and said, “I was an asshole.”
Both her eyebrows rose.
“Can’t promise I won’t be again, but…” He shrugged. He wasn’t going to swear to something he couldn’t deliver, but he’d try.
“Okay,” she said after a couple of seconds. “I’ll try not to be so bitchy.” She let out a sigh. “It’s been a pretty weird day.”
He nodded and she gave him that brilliant smile again before she turned and walked toward her car.
They were okay. She’d understood him and that was it. They were okay.
He couldn’t keep his eyes off the little wiggle that was part of her stride.
Something in Smoke’s stomach tightened into a sizzling ball of heat. Shit, all she had to do was walk ten feet, and he was hard and ready to go.
But a pretty little gal like her wasn’t going to be interested in a beat-up soldier with eight years of death, destruction, and desolation in his head.
He should leave her alone. Do his job, keep her safe, then walk away with a nice working with you wave.
That possibility had ended the moment he woke up with her sleeping on him. Her scent and the softness of her skin was in his blood and in his head so deep he wasn’t sure it would ever leave.
He’d never wanted a woman like he wanted Kini.
He was absolutely bad for her.
She was too good for him.
It would never work.
He was so fucked.
Christ, when had he become a mopey Marty? His teammates would have razzed him to death if they saw him right now.
Smoke got off his bike and joined Kini and Terry.
“—brand new, all four tires,” Terry said to her. He gave a nod to Smoke and kept talking. “You’re good to go.”
“Thank you. How much do I owe you?”
“Nothing. Smoke picked up your tab.”
She turned, her mouth open, but he managed to speak before her. “The CDC is picking up the tab.”