Wounds That Won’t Heal

by Calle J. Brookes

  Fin smiled, revealing her characteristic too-cute-for-words dimples. “I think it’s great. I really like him, Jilly. And I think he needs someone like you.” She turned serious. “I think he’s been hurting, too.”

  “I know. He thinks I don’t see it, but I do.” And he felt guilty. Guilty for her being hurt—and it still twinged, but Wanda had her on light duty—and guilty for involving her in the soap opera that was FCGH. The man took guilt to a whole new level at times. “He’s had a rough time, Fin. I guess it’s going to be my job to make him forget that when he can.”

  “I think you’ll be good at it. You two are lucky, you know that? To have found each other. To be able to trust each other that much.”

  Jillian impulsively hugged her friend. Fin had her own nightmares she dealt with. “I didn’t think I could trust someone like this so soon. But I know that even when we’re fighting, he will never physically hurt me. And with him I care enough to fight. I’m not afraid to fight. I trust him. It’s the emotional hurt that scares me the most.”

  “I can see that. But at least you are brave enough to try.”

  The two of them said very little as they walked back from the small break room next to the cafeteria. Jillian knew Fin’s story—one night in the early stages of developing W4HAV, she, Mel, Ari, Gabby, Margo, Lacy, Fin, Annie, and Izzie had had a big bawl session where they talked about everything bad that had happened to drive them to W4HAV. Margo and Fin shared the same story and would always mourn the friend they had lost when they’d been nineteen.

  She and Fin were quiet as they took the back way to Rafe’s office. Jillian didn’t have to go to see him, but he’d wanted her to. He worried.

  And he was keeping a close eye on her. She knew it.

  Hell, the entire hospital knew it.

  That thought made her smile. Had her resolve strengthening. Let them know. Let them speculate and gossip. It didn’t matter.

  He was what she needed right now. And she’d like to think she meant the same to him.

  “So, when are you going to make it official, like Lacy?” Fin grinned at Jillian as she asked. “I saw the rock she wears.”

  Jillian just shot her a look. They’d just come to the conclusion they didn’t hate each other less than a week ago. It was far too early to be thinking about rings. “Not moving that fast. Lacy’s crazy.”

  “Crazy in love.”

  “Yeah. But it’s working for them.” Jillian turned pensive. Insecure. Why were relationships so difficult to figure out sometimes? “I think Rafe and I are going to have to do some talk—Fin!”

  Jillian took off toward the pharmacy at a run. Fin was right behind her.

  120

  Jillian refused to let herself fall into a million pieces. This...this was something she couldn’t describe.

  Fin was next to her, looking absolutely sick.

  They saw dead bodies all the time. Jillian had thought she was even getting close to being conditioned to seeing dead bodies.

  But this?

  Jessica Ward had been left propped up against the pharmacy door like a piece of trash. Like she hadn’t mattered.

  She had mattered.

  Jillian might not have liked her, but the woman had mattered.

  Dear God, she’d mattered to Allen.

  Someone was going to have to tell him.

  Jillian’s hands had been trembling but she’d managed to hit the speed dial for Rafe. She’d had him put his phone number directly into her number one spot the day they’d compromised on her returning to work.

  Fin had called the TSP. It was more than obvious that Jessica Ward had been murdered.

  Women didn’t just strangle themselves.

  Jillian started shaking and if it wasn’t for Fin’s hand wrapped around hers, she would have slipped straight to the tiled floor.

  She looked at Fin and knew Fin’s horror had to be reflected in her own eyes.

  121

  Rafe went running. He came up on the scene just as security rushed down the hall connecting the offices to the pharmacy and the cafeteria.

  Jillian was there, her red hair a beacon in any crowd.

  She took one look at him and started shaking. Tears flooded her eyes.

  He didn’t think, or care, he just acted. Rafe put his arm around her and pulled her closer, careful to avoid her back. He cupped her head with one hand and just held her. “What’s going on?”

  Jillian pulled in a shuddering breath and nodded toward the pharmacy.

  That’s when Rafe saw the body. “What the hell happened?”

  “Fin and I found her on our way back from lunch.” Jillian pressed against him for one brief, brief moment then stepped back.

  Rafe didn’t like it, but they were on the clock. And he was the captain of this particular ship.

  Which meant Jessica Ward was his responsibility.

  “Someone needs to find Allen Jacobson.” Rafe winced as he thought about it. He fought the urge to pull Jillian closer.

  What Jacobson was about to learn was enough to destroy a man in every way that mattered.

  Rafe looked at Fin. “Can you get Allen down here? Have Dr. Campbell meet him at the surgical department.”

  Fin nodded. Dr. Campbell was a member of the psychiatric team assigned to the ER and the trauma department. She would be able to help break the news.

  Not that this was going to be easy, for any of them.

  122

  Allen knew the moment Dr. Campbell pulled him aside that whatever was about to happen wasn’t going to be good.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Allen...Dr. Holden-Deane needs you downstairs. In the pharmacy. There’s been...”

  “What?” His voice came out too harsh, but there was something in Dr. Campbell’s eyes that told him he wasn’t going to like the answer.

  “Allen, Jessica Ward is dead,” Dr. Campbell put her hand on his arm. “I’m not sure of the details. But you need to get down there. I’ll go with you.”

  Allen didn’t hear another word she said.

  123

  It took four hours for the TSP’s crime scene techs to get Jessica Ward’s crime scene processed. Rafe stayed next to Allen Jacobson for the entire four hours. The man was holding himself together by a thread.

  It brought back memories of Marcus losing Carissa in so many ways.

  Rafe wasn’t about to leave his colleague to face it alone.

  It had been in this very hospital. The Maternity Ward was two floors up from where they were now.

  Rafe had had his hand on the man’s shoulder when the detectives from the TSP approached. He shook the taller of the two’s hand. “Dr. Holden-Deane. I’m Chief of Medicine here. This is Dr. Allen Jacobson—”

  “We’re acquainted.” The shorter detective had said, cutting Rafe off. “What can either of you tell us about her?”

  They’d asked everyone else in the hall their questions before coming toward Rafe and the man most obviously upset by the woman’s death.

  They’d grilled Jillian and Fin for over an hour, until both women were raw and Rafe was beyond pissed. They’d just found her, after all. Nothing more.

  He didn’t quite understand that.

  “We were involved. For the last six months. What happened to her? Tell me who did this.” Allen’s words were broken. Rafe put a hand on the man’s shoulder.

  “Who do you think did this?” the detective asked.

  Rafe knew what the detective was trying to do. But Allen wasn’t the man responsible—Rafe would bet his own life on that.

  “I don’t have a damned clue. Jess...why would someone hurt her?” Allen wiped his hand over his eyes.

  The man had just lost his lover—not even a month after losing his best friend. Who the hell else did Allen have?

  Jillian was there, her small hand wrapped around Allen’s. Just there if her friend needed her.

  Rafe took a moment to study her, thankful she was safe in front of him.

  If he�
�d been the man in Allen’s shoes he didn’t know that he’d be holding himself together as well as Allen was.

  If Rafe lost Jillian, his entire world would be gone in an instant.

  Just exactly how deeply Marcus had been hurt sank in. How in the hell had Marcus pulled himself back together as well as he had?

  How could anyone?

  124

  Allen stared down at the body on the gurney. Jess had been dead less than seven hours. At least that’s what the speculation was. She’d gone outside on her final break and never made it back inside. At least, that’s what the security system had shown. No real details. Just date and time stamped. That was it.

  No one knew how the killer had gotten her back inside.

  No one knew how a woman could be murdered in a damned hospital and no one see anything, either.

  Grief threatened to knock him to his knees, but he would do what he had to do. He looked across her body at Rafael Holden-Deane and the two TSP detectives. Men he knew and respected, but who had been grilling him for the last hour. He just didn’t have the answers. "Someone will need to call her mother and sisters. She has two teenage sisters. One’s at FCU. That’s all I really know. She never let me meet her family."

  Holden-Deane looked at him. "Did you know her well?"

  Did he? Hell, Allen didn’t know. “We hadn’t been together too long, Rafe. And it was mostly casual at first. I don’t know… I...Who found her?”

  "Fin and Jillian. On their way back from the cafeteria. Did you know she used?"

  Allen looked at Rafe and shook his head. No. That just wasn’t possible. Not Jess. "She didn't use, I can swear to that. No signs whatsoever in the times that we were together. She kept herself healthy. Worked out, was actually on my case about my unhealthy diet. She wouldn’t even drink soda. Drugs were not her thing."

  No, money had been.

  She had wanted a doctor for a husband, someone to take care of her. Allen hadn’t been so foolish that he hadn’t realized that from the beginning.

  He just hadn’t cared at the time. He’d been after someone to just be with. Someone he could talk to. And someone he could sleep with to forget the pressure.

  Caring about her had come later. But he had never forgotten that the biggest draw he had offered her was his position as the Chief of Trauma Surgery.

  She’d liked his wallet and what it could mean for her.

  To give her a better life than the one that she had grown up with. Hell, Allen had understood that.

  Jessica had been ambitious, she would never ruin her plans with drugs. "I would've seen track marks if she was shooting up."

  "But that doesn't mean she wasn't abusing the drugs she had access to. I don't think I've said more than two words to her. I don't know her well at all."

  "I don’t really know. I thought we were getting there. It started off casually. I thought it was going somewhere.”

  “I’m sorry, Allen. Truly I am. I’m going to get with my cousin Elliot personally. We’ll find the person responsible for this.”

  125

  Rafe found his way back down to Vincent's office. It wasn't just the missing drugs this time. Someone had deliberately targeted Jessica Ward. The murder of the pharmacy tech plus the missing experimental drugs added up. Whatever was going on with Solpalmitraln, Jessica Ward had been involved in it.

  And the one tie between Jessica Ward and the surgical department that had access to the drug that stood out the most was Allen Jacobson.

  He didn't want to suspect the other man, but Jacobson's name was on the forms, he had been closely linked to Logan Lanning, and had been closely linked to Jessica Ward. He had access. And the security cameras had shown him entering the pharmacy often.

  More so than anyone else still alive, who didn’t work in the department.

  Elliot had called him an hour earlier and told him that Jessica Ward's finances did not reflect the average pay for a pharmacy technician at Finley Creek General—far from it.

  To the tune of $200,000 more than what she should've had.

  The TSP was on its way to ask Jacobson more questions; other detectives were on their way to speak with Jessica Ward's family.

  He appreciated Elliott keeping him in the loop, knowing that his cousin did not have to. But Elliot understood.

  He ran his own organization with probably the same dedication that Rafe felt for the hospital. There wasn't anything that Rafe wouldn't do to ensure that the hospital was a safe as it could possibly be.

  He'd spoken with the Board already. And finally got their agreement.

  All trials of Solpalmitraln were currently halted until the hospital and the TSP could get down to the bottom of what was going on with the drug.

  No one had forgotten that forty boxes of the highly volatile chemical were out there somewhere in the world.

  Elliott had also told him that Jessica Ward had had two boxes in the trunk of her car.

  During a Texas summer. Drugs that should have been refrigerated and kept at a constant forty degrees had been baking in her trunk for they didn't know how long.

  Allen Jacobson was about to get a shock. Provided he wasn't involved in the first place. Rafe didn't want to doubt him, he genuinely liked and respected Allen Jacobson, and he knew Jillian really liked him. Elliot and Chance respected him.

  If Jacobson was involved, it was going to be a betrayal. And he knew it.

  They'd all seen betrayal like that before, though.

  Rafe delivered the news to Vincent that they were going to upgrade the security system immediately, no more waiting around for the Board to catch up.

  Rafe was tired of everything being ex post facto at FCGH. It was time they were proactive rather than reactive. Whether that cost him his job or not, so be it. There were other hospitals out there.

  He could find a position anywhere. Even within Finley Creek County. Or he could open his own private practice again. Could even bring Jillian along as his nurse, if she wanted.

  As long as he was near his family and Jillian, Rafe honestly didn't give a damn what position he was in.

  He was for damned well going to make certain that FCGH was as safe as it could possibly be for Jillian and Lacy and Fin—and everyone else that he cared about at Finley Creek.

  "Dr. Holden-Deane, we went over the backups of the tapes. Do you want to take a look?" Vincent asked. Rafe respected the older man. Vincent was a former military police officer who had been medically discharged after taking a piece of shrapnel to his inner thigh. The damage was significant enough to leave him with a limp, but not to earn him a full disability discharge. Vincent was an asset to Finley Creek General Hospital, and Rafe knew it. Vincent was sharp, and if there was something on those tapes for him to see the older man would find it.

  Rafe looked at the cameras. He saw the blurry image of the man dragging Jessica Ward's body down the hall. He'd used the employee entrance. The killer had most likely known the code—or Jessica had told him.

  Or he was used to people seeing him there and someone had just casually let him in.

  "He's wearing a delivery uniform.”

  Rafe saw what the other man meant. Unfortunately, the quality of the cameras were so grainy that there was no way to identify what company the delivery man was from. But Rafe could extrapolate. And he could find the records of every delivery the hospital had ever received. It was just going to take time. He looked at Vincent. "Can we go back? To the night of the storm, when Jillian Beck fell in the stairwell?"

  She had seen a man, after hearing him argue with Jessica in the pharmacy that night. That was about the only detail she was clear on. Not unusual with a concussion, but damned unhelpful now.

  Fifteen minutes later, and Rafe had to push back the rage. The man who had killed Jessica Ward had come within eighteen inches of Jillian. Then Jillian had stopped to check her phone. The killer had exited the stairs one floor below the pharmacy a full minute before Jillian had even entered.

  Jessica Ward had
been the one to enter the stairwell just moments after Jillian. And it was Jessica who had exited the stairwell less than two minutes later, visibly laughing at something. Only eight minutes between Jessica leaving the stairwell at one end and Rafe entering on the other.

  No one else had entered the stairs on any floor in those eight minutes. Jillian had never exited the stairwell.

  Not until Rafe and Allen had carried her out.

  If someone had pushed Jillian—and they'd never know for certain—it would've been Jessica Ward.

  But why?

  He looked at the security guard next to him. "I want you to find someone to fill in for you, Vince. The only thing I want you to be working on until we have all the answers is tracking Jessica Ward's movements throughout the hospital on every tape for the last eight weeks. And that delivery man. I want to find what company he is from, where he went, and who he talked to."

  Because Jessica Ward was the one responsible, he just knew it.

  126

  Time. It was going to take him time to put all the pieces together and still be able to run his hospital to the best of his ability. So Rafe focused on the one extra resource he had.

  Lacy and the Becks. He took copies of everything he had found, including the files from the pharmacy, to Jillian's house that evening after his final meeting with Fin and Vincent.

  Chance was meeting him there. Lacy was already waiting.

  When he walked in, Jillian—who had clocked out an hour before he had and ridden home in the Barratt-Handley company car with Chance—was at the stove. She spent a lot of time there, he'd noticed before. She handled the kitchen tasks quickly and competently, and seemed to really enjoy it.