by Rita Herron
“Who is he?” Derrick asked.
A smirk slid onto Ace’s face. “The big jock in school, the golden boy. The one no one would think to ask. He’s probably at practice now.”
Derrick’s cell phone buzzed, and he checked the caller ID. Sheriff Cramer.
“I have to answer this.” He thanked the young boy and walked away to connect the call. “McKinney speaking.”
“It’s Cramer. I just talked to the medical examiner.”
Derrick gripped the phone with sweaty fingers. “And?”
“It looks like you were right, McKinney. Natalie didn’t die of natural causes. She was murdered.”
Chapter Thirteen
Brianna’s chest clenched at the look of anger on Derrick’s face.
“We’ll meet you at the hospital in an hour.” Derrick disconnected and closed his phone.
“What’s wrong, Derrick? Was that about Ryan?”
“No,” he answered in a gruff voice. His eyes were tortured as he looked at her. “That was the sheriff. He talked to the medical examiner and we were right. Natalie was murdered.”
Brianna gasped. Even though they’d suspected it, hearing the reality hit her hard. “How?”
“Apparently she was injected with a drug that induced heart failure.”
“Who would do such a horrible thing?” Brianna whispered.
“Someone who wanted to keep her quiet,” Derrick said. “Do you remember seeing anyone suspicious that night?”
Brianna massaged her temple, struggling to think back. “It was so chaotic,” she recalled in a low voice. “Natalie was frightened, and I was trying to calm her and help her inside.”
A muscle jumped in Derrick’s jaw, and Brianna realized how difficult this must be for him.
“What else do you remember?”
“An orderly and nurse assisted Natalie inside. They whisked her to the E.R. I wanted to go with her, but they said they needed to check her over, then I could.”
“And did you?”
“No. I waited and waited.” She twisted her hands together. “Then I got nervous so I asked a nurse. She said there were complications, that they had to do an emergency C-section.”
“Did you see anyone in the waiting room who looked suspicious? Maybe someone who came into the E.R. after you?”
She closed her eyes, mentally reliving that night, but nothing came to mind. Nothing except the fear that had made her heart pound. “Not that I remember.” She glanced up at him. “God, Derrick. Why wasn’t I more observant? I should have insisted on going to the exam room with Natalie. Labor coaches and partners go into the E.R. for C-sections these days, but I trusted them.”
Tears filled her eyes. “If I had been with her, Natalie might still be alive.”
“DAMMIT, BRI. THIS IS NOT YOUR fault.” Hating the look of guilt haunting her eyes, Derrick reached out and pressed his hand over hers. “I’m Ryan’s father. I should have been there.” He hesitated and swallowed hard. “If Natalie had told me about Ryan I would have been. Then I could have protected her and the baby and none of this would have happened.”
“Derrick—”
“No, Bri. It’s true and you know it. If Natalie had trusted me, had thought I was father material, she would have told me. She might have even confided what had frightened her, and I could have stopped these maniacs from kidnapping my son.”
Guilt clawed at him, guilt mixed with anger over the fact that Natalie had kept his son from him.
That he might not be able to make it up to Ryan for Natalie being murdered and leaving him without a mother.
Except Brianna had filled that role. She obviously loved Ryan as if he was her son.
So why wasn’t Brianna blaming him?
Because she’d known the truth all along?
She’d denied it, but she could have lied just as that woman in his last case had.
Confusion muddled his brain, panic over where his son was making his throat tight.
“It’s not your fault, either,” Brianna said in a choked whisper.
Derrick used to shut down when he was a kid, when his father had drowned himself in booze and started the beatings. He’d refused to allow his father to see his fear.
Or his pain.
He wouldn’t now. He hadn’t found Ryan yet. And he owed it to Natalie to bring him home.
“I told Cramer we’d meet him at the hospital in an hour. Let’s go talk to Jeremy Dahl.” Clamping his jaw tight, he started the engine and headed to the high school.
“Did you believe Ace?” Brianna said as he drove through town.
“I’m on the fence.”
“He’s had a tough life,” Brianna noted, her tone defensive. “His father abused him for years and now he’s in the orphanage.”
Derrick cut his eyes toward her. “Your mother left you and you don’t have a chip on your shoulder.”
Pain flickered in Brianna’s eyes. He hated that he’d put it there.
“I did for a while,” she whispered so softly that he almost didn’t hear.
Her admission cost him, made him want to stop and pull her into his arms. Made him realize that she wore a strong face, but inside, she’d been hurting for years.
“What happened to change that?” he asked, needing to know for himself. Maybe he could take some lessons from her.
A faraway look settled in her eyes. “I realized that if I didn’t want to become like my mother, I had to let go of the anger. That I could help others and make my life what I wanted.”
“You would never have been like your mother,” he commented, then realized his slip when her face flamed with embarrassment.
“I always feared people knew she was a hooker,” Brianna conceded, then turned to look out the window.
He hated himself for making her more uncomfortable and pulled her hand in his. “Brianna, everyone may have known. But I admired you because you worked so hard to improve your life. I did the opposite. I did my best to prove my old man right.”
Brianna clenched his hand. “What do you mean? To prove him right?”
“When he beat me, he used to tell me that I wasn’t worth spit. After a while, I believed him.”
“He lied,” Brianna said, then squeezed his hand. “I always thought you were special.”
Derrick’s gaze caught hers, the tension rippling between them, his chest swelling with her words. Natalie had written that Bri had a crush on him.
Had that been true?
And why had she? He’d been a troubled kid with the law on his tail.
Disturbed by his reaction to her, Derrick jerked his attention back to the road and pulled into the high school parking lot. But the bitter memories taunted him, crowding his mind with regret and guilt. One memory in particular—the day he’d been arrested in front of the kids in the gym.
Had Brianna witnessed that? Had Natalie? Was that the reason Natalie had kept the truth about Ryan from him?
What would his son think about the man he’d been?
He’d tried to atone for his past by saving other kids but he’d failed the last one. And now his son…
No, he couldn’t fail him now.
BRIANNA BIT HER LIP to keep from saying more to Derrick as he parked. Fool that she was, she’d almost confessed that she’d always wanted him.
And that she wanted him now.
She admired the strong, serious, brooding, protective man he’d become. The man who cared about others, who worked to save children, who’d taken care of her when she’d first been hurt by the kidnapper and hadn’t left her side since.
The man who still turned her heart inside out, and made her body tingle with desire. Just the sound of his gruff voice sent an aching chill of need through her.
And when he’d admitted that this father had hurt him, she’d nearly broken down and cried.
And pulled him into her arms.
She tugged her coat closer as they wove their way up the sidewalk to the school. Derrick headed straight to the gy
m and she followed. They found Coach Rutherford there watching as his team ran laps. Derrick strode over to him, and Brianna joined them, watching Evan’s face contort with confusion, questions, then worry as he called a young man over to speak to them.
“Jeremy, this is Derrick McKinney and Brianna Honeycutt,” Evan said. “They need to ask you some questions about a meth lab in the area.”
Jeremy was a good-looking guy with linebacker shoulders. He wiped sweat from his brow with the back of his hand. “What are you talking about, Coach?”
Derrick told him about the lab and its possible correlation to Natalie’s death. “She was your teacher?” Derrick confirmed.
“Yeah, but I didn’t hurt her,” Jeremy answered. “I liked Ms. Cummings. I mean for a teacher she was okay.”
“Do you know any kids involved in drugs in the school?” Derrick asked.
Jeremy shrugged. “A few dopers, but they’re not athletes, so we don’t hang out.”
Evan shook his head. “If you do know something else, spill it now. If you don’t, you can be held accountable as an accessory.”
“Hey, no fair.” Jeremy crossed his arms. “I told you I’m not a doper, and I’m not.”
Derrick narrowed his eyes. “Then who is?”
“Talk to that cretin Ace.”
“Funny,” Derrick said sarcastically, “but he said to talk to you.”
Jeremy muttered an ugly word. “Well, he’s lying.”
“Then give us another name,” Derrick pressed.
Jeremy shrugged. “If you wanna find drugs, look at the science club. Talk is, they’d know how to cook up meth.”
Brianna’s mind raced. The science club—Charlie had mentioned something about some science geeks eight years ago. What if the science club was The Club Natalie had discovered, the ones who’d burned down the hospital?
DERRICK SPOTTED SHERIFF Cramer’s marked car when he parked at the hospital. Night was falling, daylight dwindling, the strain wearing on him.
The kidnapper could be anywhere by now. Or he could have done something horrible to Ryan and left him God knows where. The woods, a Dumpster…
No, he couldn’t think like that. He especially couldn’t let Brianna see his fears.
“Did you believe Jeremy Dahl?” Brianna asked as they walked up to the hospital entrance and hurried inside.
Derrick shrugged. “I don’t know. He could have been trying to divert suspicion from himself by sending us somewhere else.”
She nodded. “We still need to talk to Mark Larimer, too.”
“Yeah. We will after we talk to the doctor. And I want to look at a high school yearbook from eight years ago. See who belonged to that science club.”
“I have one at home,” Brianna offered.
He nodded, and they rode the elevator to the second floor, then walked down the hall to the hospital director’s office. Cramer was waiting in the receptionist’s office, so they joined him, and a minute later, Sheldon Lake, the director, a forty-something man with a bad toupee and square black-framed glasses, invited them inside.
Derrick let the sheriff explain the reason for their visit.
Lake’s reaction was just as Derrick expected. A professional mask, shock at the autopsy report and defensiveness. “I can assure you that none of the hospital staff was involved in Ms. Cummings’s death.”
Cramer crossed his arms. “Her death occurred in your facility after a procedure one of your doctors performed. And the drug she was given killed her.”
“That drug must have been administered by mistake,” Dr. Lake argued.
“We need to speak to Dr. Thorpe, the ob-gyn who delivered Ryan,” Derrick said. “And we’ll need to look at your security tapes from that night.”
Lake’s face turned pinched, but he pushed his intercom button and asked his receptionist to page Dr. Thorpe, then to contact the chief of security to come to his office.
“Why would you think someone would want to kill Ms. Cummings?” Dr. Lake asked.
Cramer and Derrick exchanged looks, then Cramer spoke up. “We have a possible motive, but the investigation is ongoing.”
“Were you working at the hospital when it burned down eight years ago?” Derrick continued.
Lake swiped a hand across his forehead where a bead of perspiration had formed. “Yes. I was in the E.R. back then. It was horrible.”
“We suspect that a meth lab might have been built below the facility,” Derrick said. “That it might have caused the explosion.”
Lake’s eyes widened. “Good God. Do you know who was responsible?”
“No, but we think Ms. Cummings might have stumbled on the truth.”
Shock strained Lake’s features. “And that person killed her?”
“It’s a theory,” Cramer said.
“Then I’ll do everything I can to help you. So many people in town lost loved ones that night. They deserve justice.”
A knock sounded, and Dr. Thorpe poked his head in. “You paged me, Dr. Lake?”
“Yes, come in.”
Thorpe stiffened as he spotted the sheriff, then his gaze rested on Brianna and his eyebrows rose. “What’s going on, Dr. Lake?”
“Sit down, Dr. Thorpe. I’ll explain when our security chief arrives.”
A tense silence fell between them, and Thorpe studied Brianna with narrowed eyes as if he already knew her suspicions.
Was he hiding something?
Chapter Fourteen
A chill slid up Brianna’s spine at the piercing look in Dr. Thorpe’s eyes. She jerked her gaze away, but still felt him watching her. They needed answers and she refused to let him intimidate her.
It seemed like hours, but the security chief finally appeared, a lanky young guy in his twenties named Butch Martin. Dr. Lake directed him to sit down, then steepled his hands on his desk.
“Dr. Thorpe, Butch, we seem to have a problem.” Lake gestured toward the sheriff. “Sheriff Cramer has brought something to my attention and we need to get to the bottom of it. Apparently he had Natalie Cummings’s body exhumed and the medical examiner performed an autopsy.”
Dr. Thorpe’s face paled slightly.
“Natalie Cummings didn’t die of natural causes as you said,” the sheriff countered. “She was given a lethal dose of cocaine. Couple that with her heart murmur, and it caused her to go into cardiac arrest.”
“Cocaine, my God.” Dr. Thorpe gripped the sides of his chair. “I would never administer that to a patient with a heart murmur.”
Dr. Lake cleared his throat. “Why didn’t you order an autopsy?”
Dr. Thorpe’s eyes shifted sideways. “I didn’t see the point. It presented itself as a heart attack and, with her predisposition and the stress and complications of labor, I thought it was one of those fluke cases.” Sweat beaded on his skin. “I still don’t see how it’s possible that she was murdered.”
“Tell us exactly what happened,” Dr. Lake prodded.
Dr. Thorpe tapped his fingers on the arm of the chair. “She had trouble delivering. The baby wouldn’t drop. He was breach, so we rushed her into surgery. She made it through the C-section, then we finished up and she was wheeled to recovery.”
“So she wasn’t in distress when she went to recovery?” Derrick summarized.
“No, she was fine.” Thorpe drummed his fingers again. “Then one of the nurses beeped me that she’d gone into heart failure. I performed CPR and used the crash cart, but I couldn’t save her.”
The rush of grief she’d felt when Dr. Thorpe had first told her about Natalie gnawed at her again. “Who was in the recovery room with her?” Brianna asked.
A vein throbbed in his neck. “A team of nurses monitor the recovery room. I don’t remember exactly who was on duty that night, but the hospital should have a record.”
“Which nurse discovered Natalie was in trouble?” Derrick asked.
“Janie Wilkins,” Thorpe said. “She’s one of our best.”
Sheriff Cramer hooked his thumbs i
n his belt loops. “We’ll need to speak with her.”
Dr. Lake buzzed his receptionist again, learned that Janie wouldn’t be in for another hour, then left a message for her to report to him when she arrived.
He turned to the security chief. “Let’s go to your office. I want you to pull up those tapes of that night so we can review them.”
Brianna stood and they followed the security chief to his office. The Christmas garland draped around the doorway mocked her. This Christmas season would haunt her forever.
She braced herself as they entered, anxiety and hope warring within her. She wanted to know who had killed her best friend and left Ryan motherless.
But how could she stand to actually watch her friend being murdered?
DERRICK SAW THE TENSION ON Brianna’s face and realized how personal this was for her. Natalie had been her best friend, the one person she’d loved since she was a child.
Not that seeing Natalie murdered wouldn’t bother him, but he had seen death before. Cruel, brutal death that had robbed young children of their lives. Deaths that had hardened him. Or so he’d thought.
But Brianna’s anguish and the idea of his own son being hurt clawed at his self-control.
Dammit, he had to care about his own son. He’d be a monster like some of the people he’d chased and arrested if he didn’t.
But he didn’t want to care about Brianna.
Still, he touched her arm and spoke softly. “Bri, why don’t you wait outside? If we find this person on tape, it’s not going to be easy to watch.”
Her gaze locked with his for a moment, and gratitude flashed in her eyes. But she surprised him by shaking her head. “No, I have to follow this through.”
The security chief gestured for them to sit down and they gathered in hardback chairs around the array of screens connected to cameras scattered throughout the hospital. He shuffled through the stored tapes and located the one stamped with the date of Natalie’s delivery, then fed it into the system. They spent the next few minutes scrolling through the tape, studying the scene where Brianna had driven up with Natalie, the nurses helping her inside and wheeling her to the E.R.