by Rowe, Julie
Eventually, she quieted, wiped her face, and nodded to tell him she was ready to go back to work.
The second time Smoke had to make her take a break, she didn’t resist at all. She drank the water and ate another granola bar with robotic motions, then got back to work.
He watched her close. She was running out of energy and it showed.
About seven o’clock in the evening, her cell phone began to buzz.
“Hello.” She nodded. “Yes, ma’am. We’ll meet you at the main entrance.” She ended the call. “That was Dr. Rodrigues. They’re ten minutes away.”
“Good.” It was about time they got here. There wasn’t much between Small Blind and Las Vegas but flat highway and the odd tumbleweed.
Kini looked at herself and groaned. “She’s going to take one look at me and order me off this outbreak.”
“That’s bad?” Hell, he wanted her ordered off this outbreak.
“I’ve been chased by dogs, had my tires slashed, then someone blew up my car, leaving me looking like I’ve been attacked by a serial killer. I’m invested, Smoke. I want to know what the hell is going on.”
Chapter Nineteen
Kini had to pause and rein in her temper. If it turned out that this whole mess was caused by people in some way, as opposed to mice, she was going to hurt someone.
Smoke didn’t say anything, just paced along beside her as they walked to the main entrance of the hospital. There were lots of people around, many of them coughing, all of them going toward the emergency room.
Outside, the sun hadn’t set yet and beat down with an unrelenting heat, which could be its own kind of killer.
She wanted to do something, anything, so badly her hands shook. The problem wasn’t finding something to do, there was too much. A dozen different things crowded into the number one priority spot in her head, until she wasn’t sure which to do first.
It left her in a state of impotence she didn’t like at all.
Down the road, two vans approached, the sun reflecting off their windshields. Both vehicles came to a stop in two of the parking spaces allocated to the police next to the entrance and disgorged six people each.
Kini knew them all. River, Dr. Rodrigues, and four members of the doctor’s advance team members, whose job it was to create order out of chaos.
Rodrigues and River strode up the short set of stairs and came to an abrupt halt in front of Smoke and her.
“Good God,” Rodrigues said, staring at her face. She glanced at Smoke, and her lips tightened into a thin white line. “This is what you call minor injuries?”
“I know it looks bad, but—” Kini began.
“Looks bad?” Rodrigues shook her head. “You’re both off this case. Go back to Atlanta, get checked out by medical, and don’t return to work until I say so.”
“But—”
Rodrigues ignored her to train her focus on Smoke. “River tells me you’re very good at your job, Mr. Smoke.”
“Smoke,” he corrected. “No mister.”
Rodrigues flashed an irritated look at River. “What is it with you guys and your irrational attachment to one-word nomenclature?”
“Irrational?” River asked.
“Nomenclature?” Smoke asked.
Her stare turned razor sharp. “Your job is to make sure you and Kini follow my orders. Understand?”
He nodded, his face taking on all the flexibility of a block of granite. “Yes, ma’am.”
Rodrigues flashed her palm at them all and said to Kini and Smoke, “Go.” Then, she turned and strode through the front doors.
River shrugged and mouthed, “Sorry, man,” before following her inside with the other team members.
That was it? She was just supposed to forget about everything, toss it out of her head, and go home? Emmaline, baby Brittany, even that idiot Dr. Flett, she was just supposed to forget all of them? How was a person supposed to do that?
Smoke stood as still as a statue for about ten seconds then said in a flat tone, “Time to go.”
His words started a slow drip of anger deep inside her gut. “I don’t like leaving a job half done.”
“Same.”
“They need all the help they can get.”
“Help is here and more is coming.”
Kini glanced down, realized her fists were clenched into tight balls, and decided to show him a truth about herself. “I hate this.”
It wasn’t until he turned to look at her with a deep frown that she realized she might have given him more truth than she intended.
She sighed. In for a penny, in for a pound. “I care too much.”
He was silent, waiting for more, but there wasn’t much more.
“Too much?” he finally asked.
“It’s why I’m assigned to public health surveys and fact-finding work, and not outbreaks. I get attached to people and I prefer them to stay…alive and healthy.”
He stared at her, his gaze so intense she was sure he could see all the way to the bottom of her soul.
“When I first got out of nursing school, I wanted to work in an ER. Helping people in distress, victims of accidents, heart attacks, and strokes. What I got were small children with fevers, battered housewives, and drug overdoses.” She stopped to take a breath and found she didn’t have the energy to continue.
Smoke, silent as ever, seemed to watch her and the world at the same time. “Ugly,” he said.
She laughed, at first, but it morphed to tears which, when they dripped onto her hand, were pink with blood from the wounds on her face. “You know how first responders are supposed to be able to put all that ugly stuff into boxes in the back of our heads?” She could hear the hysteria in her voice but didn’t feel connected to it. It was as if she were two different people. One in pain, the other so far past pain she was numb. “Well, it turns out I don’t have any boxes.”
He gave her a narrow-eyed look of disbelief. “Or maybe,” he said. “Your boxes are all full.”
He couldn’t have hit her harder than if his fist had connected with her stomach. She struggled to breathe and found she couldn’t. The earth tilted oddly to one side and Smoke grabbed her by the shoulders, forced her to sit on the cement steps, and put her head between her knees.
The world narrowed into a thin line with high black walls and a ceiling that seemed to lower with every passing moment.
Now was not a good time for a new fucking box to show up.
A voice whispered in her ears, urging her to breathe.
What a fabulous idea. Her diaphragm seemed to work when she concentrated on it. In and out, in and out. The walls retreated, the ceiling rose, and a little more of the world became real.
Hard, warm hands rubbed her shoulders, while two massive knees hemmed hers in. A deep voice kept speaking to her, rumbling low with words she didn’t understand. No, that wasn’t right. Some of them were familiar.
Rest. She knew that word.
Heal. She knew that one, too.
Safe. That word was…dangerous. So attractive, so wonderful she wanted to believe in it, but the thought of knowing it, experiencing it, threatened to reopen wounds so deep and wide inside her they would kill her.
No, safe was not something she could ever believe in.
Still, that voice called to her, soothed her in a way that was unfamiliar. Soft, smooth, and with a strength that made her curious. What kind of creature could heal and entice with his voice alone?
“My people have been healing with song since the beginning of the world,” the beautiful voice said.
Had she asked her question out loud?
“It isn’t the same as the songs of my Scottish grandmother, whose people use it as a battle cry. Song is how we speak with spirit. Our medicine men can sometimes sing a person’s wounded spirit to a place where it can heal itself.”
“Are you a medicine man?” she heard a voice, hers, ask.
“No, I’m a warrior, but even warriors need to know when to rest. When to live in the
quiet so they can heal.”
Rest was something she didn’t understand. She kept busy in an effort to stop dwelling on things she dare not discuss, even with herself. How had he gotten so wise?
“You meant it, didn’t you?”
He tilted his head to one side.
“When you said you’d kill whoever hurt me.”
He nodded slowly.
“It’s too late.” She tried not to cry, she really did. “The pain lives inside me now.”
One of the hands on her shoulders cupped her face. “No,” Smoke disagreed. “If it did, you wouldn’t try so hard to fix everyone else.”
Was he right?
Hope, something she also tried to avoid, flirted with the edges of her understanding.
“Come, little bird. Let’s go to a place where we can rest, and where the shadows of the dead can’t hunt us.” His hands urged her to stand, but the dizziness came back in a rush.
“How about I sit here and wait until you get the jeep?”
When he didn’t answer immediately, she tilted her head up enough to make eye contact with him and tried to smile. “I’m just a little dizzy.”
He stared at her for a moment, searching, judging. “Don’t move.”
She snorted. “Not even if I wanted to.”
He cupped her face briefly then stood and jogged toward the car.
Kini rested her forehead on her knees wondering if she’d ever get a lid back on the crypt containing her emotions. Maybe he was right. Maybe that box, and every other one in the catacomb at the back of her head, was full.
A shadow fell on her, blocking out the eye-blinding sun.
She glanced up, expecting to see Smoke, but it wasn’t him. Two young-ish men stood over her. The kid she’d kicked in the nuts after discovering her flat tires, Freddy Alvarez, and someone she didn’t know. But the expression on their faces…she’d seen anger like that before.
She opened her mouth, but something flashed past her and a ball of cloth was shoved between her teeth. They grabbed her arms and restrained her before she could pull the gag out of her mouth and scream for help.
The men wrenched her to her feet and carried her into the hospital.
Smoke, where was Smoke?
She struggled, but someone growled in her ear, “Keep struggling and we’ll knock you out.”
In a crowded hospital? She struggled harder and managed to yank one arm free. She sent her fist toward the throat of the unknown man and was gratified when he made a pained noise and let go of her.
“Stupid bitch,” a male voice said then her neck was grabbed from behind and squeezed.
Pain overwhelmed her then dizziness sucked her into a black hole.
Chapter Twenty
Smoke got in the jeep and started the engine. He turned the vehicle around and drove toward the hospital. A crowd of people going up the steps to the main entrance blocked his view of Kini.
When they passed, no one was left sitting on the steps.
He’d told her to stay there, damn it. It was hot, so maybe she’d gone inside where the air conditioning could take the edge off.
The parking lot was even fuller than before, with a couple of trucks now parked on the groomed, gravel landscaped areas adjacent to the sidewalk on either side of the steps.
He parked next to one of the trucks, got out, and ran up the stairs.
The air was far cooler inside, but no Kini was in sight. Scanning the lobby and a couple of the hallways leading deeper into the building, he couldn’t see her.
Something caught his attention and he did a double take. One of Kini’s shoes lay on the floor of one of the hallways.
He strode toward it and picked it up.
The blood splatter across it was all too familiar. These were her shoes. Kini.
He looked around and saw a caretaker washing the floor farther down. “Excuse me,” Smoke said. “Did you see the lady who lost this shoe?”
“Yeah. Her friends didn’t bother to go back for it when it fell off. Not even when I yelled at them to stop and come back to get it.”
“Friends?”
“Two of them were carrying her.”
“Those weren’t friends,” Smoke growled.
“I thought she was having a seizure,” the caretaker said, horror turning his expression slack. “One of them shoved something into her mouth, I thought it was to keep her from biting her tongue, you know? She flailed around, hit one of them, then seemed to fall unconscious.”
“They took her.”
The hallway wasn’t a direct route to an exit, but it wouldn’t be hard to get to one.
Smoke turned and sprinted for the front door, dodging a line of people coming in. Seconds later, he was in the jeep, gunning the engine and peeling out of the parking lot.
The hospital had many doors, but only two ways a vehicle could get to it. He drifted the jeep as he forced it to speed into the staff parking area and commercial drop-off zone, hoping to confront whoever had taken Kini. He braked, angling the jeep so it blocked the exit.
No one was in sight, inside or outside a vehicle.
No one.
Smoke waited. He was supposed to be good at that, but the weird groan from the steering wheel told him he’d better stop taking his frustration out on his ride.
Why would anyone take her? She was a nurse, not someone with authority, privileged information, or launch codes.
Who benefited from her kidnapping? What could they hope to gain from Kini? Was it an angry local who’d lost a family member?
Smoke pulled into a parking spot and called River’s cell.
“Kini’s been kidnapped,” he said as soon as the other man answered the call. “Two men took her about five minutes ago, made it look like she was having a seizure or something.”
“You’re shitting me.”
“I shit you not.”
“What the fuck for?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out. She’s not in charge of anything.” They hadn’t really talked in depth about work, too distracted by all the crap going on around them. Had she kept the true scope of her job from him? “Is she?”
“No. She’s mostly independent. Travels a lot, does her job, goes on to the next one. Rodrigues likes her because she doesn’t need anyone to hand-hold her, but she doesn’t go off half-cocked either. This is the first time she’s ever been involved in an active outbreak.”
“Doesn’t make sense,” Smoke murmured, considering the entire situation. His heart rate had slowed, the adrenaline in his bloodstream reduced enough to let him think.
“It doesn’t track for me either. I mean, she was firebombed last night. What the fuck was that about?”
“We don’t know what the fuck, because the sheriff is listening to one of his deputies, who just happens to be Lacey’s brother. He’s looking for a way to bury me. Kini was attacked before the light show last night. Graffiti, getting T-boned, dogs, slashed tires, and a dumb fuck all tried to mess with her in the last two days.”
“Is there a pattern?”
That was the question he needed to ask.
“Yup,” Smoke said as his brain finally, finally, saw them. “After she’d been in town for a week, a rumor started going around about the CDC experimenting on people, making them sick on purpose. At about the same time, people started getting sick and dying from the hantavirus.”
“Either someone wants to make her the fall guy, or they’re using her as a distraction.”
“That’s how I’m reading it.”
“So they take her and the distraction continues.”
“Got any intel on this Free America From Oppression group?”
“Surprisingly little. The name has popped up in a few places on social media, but aside from the threat they sent to the news, nothing organized.”
“Nothing about this feels organized either,” Smoke said. “Whoever grabbed her, took a big risk in doing it in a public place.”
“Who started the rumors?”
“I don’t know, but I do know where to find out.”
“Where?”
“The post office.”
“Uh…”
Smoke started driving. “The women who work there are a bunch of gossips. Better than taking an ad out in the paper. I’ll call you as soon as I learn anything.” He ended the call and focused on driving.
The post office was in an adobe-style building that had been there for about one hundred years. It had operated as a jail at one time and still had bars on the windows.
He pounded on the door.
A middle-aged woman with her gray hair cut in some kind of bob came into view. “We’re closed,” she hollered.
Smoke ignored her large hint to leave and waved her over. “I need to know who you talked to about the CDC nurse.”
She looked at him like he’d asked for the moon to be delivered on a silver platter. She came over and opened the door. “Smoke? When did you get home?”
“Doesn’t matter,” he said with a shake of his head. “The CDC nurse?”
“There’s been talk all over town about that nurse and the disease she brought with her.”
Smoke leaned closer. “She didn’t bring anything other than a rental car with her, and she sure as shit didn’t get anyone sick.”
The woman reared back. “But—”
“No,” Smoke ordered. “Whatever you think happened, you’re wrong. Thanks to the gossip, she’s been attacked by dogs, idiots, and had her car firebombed.” He smiled his shark’s smile. “I would take it as a personal favor, Sylvia, if you’d put a stop to those rumors.”
She crossed her arms over her chest. “How do you know that nurse didn’t bring something with her? No one got sick until she showed up.”
“She doesn’t work in a lab or anything close,” Smoke told her. “She collects information and a small blood sample. That’s it.”
Her frown returned. “Oh.”
He widened his smile. “So, who’s unhappy?”
She shrugged. “Who’s not unhappy would be a shorter list.”
“Anyone stand out as particularly pissed off? Someone with a sick friend or relative?”