by Jenna Ryan
Unable to focus her eyes on the frosty circle of the pond, Nikita nevertheless forced herself to her knees. The moment she moved, she heard a rumbling crack, a sound so ominous that every muscle in her body froze.
“Oh, God, please, not that.” She moved an experimental knee. The cracks emerged as a string of nerve-racking splinters and pops.
Beneath her a webwork of lines, some fine, some alarmingly large, took shape.
“Muddy paws!” she exclaimed softly as the full horror of her predicament sank in. “It’s thawing!”
Fearful that any movement would send her through the ice, she endeavored to locate the edge of the pond. The closest point was a good fifteen yards away. She stared in disbelief. “How did I get out this far?”
A welter of sounds assailed her. More cracks first, then the stealthier sound of footsteps on the snow.
She probed the darkness. Her heart thundered in her chest, and her gloved palms, still planted on the ice surface, went clammy. The bushes rustled. A figure formed in the shadows of the oak trees.
Nikita forgot to breathe. No one in his or her right mind would step onto the thin ice now. For what it was worth, she should be safe from attack. Unless the person had a gun.
“Nikita?”
Her heart gave a stuttering lurch. “Vachon!”
Relief brought a rush of light-headedness. Then an unmistakable crack sounded to her right. Even when she remained motionless, the ice was refusing to support her weight.
When Nikita dared to open her eyes again, she saw Vachon crouched by the pond’s edge, surveying the surface. It didn’t help her nerves to see concentration lines furrowing his brow.
Standing, he circled the pond until he’d reached the closest point to her. “The ice is thinnest where you’re kneeling,” he said calmly. “Try and ease yourself to the left.”
She concentrated and began to sidle sideways. Her knee went through before she could stop it.
“Don’t move,” Vachon ordered after she’d hastily extracted herself. “I’m coming out.”
Her muscles tightened. “We’ll both go through.”
“I’m not leaving you here, Nikita.”
Her hand went through to her elbow. With a small yelp, she jerked free.
“Stop moving,” Vachon shouted.
“No, don’t, Vachon!” she protested when, wool scarf in hand, he started crawling toward her. “It’s not much thicker where you are.”
The words were scarcely out of her mouth when the ice surface gave a loud yaw of protest and dipped under the weight of Vachon’s knees. Ice splinters flew up; Vachon disappeared, and Nikita felt herself plunging forward.
Even as her body hit the frigid water, she knew it would have happened with or without Vachon’s intervention. Except that now there were two of them being sucked under the water by the weight of their clothing. And who on earth remained out there to rescue them?
It was a moot question, since anyone out there was undoubtedly relishing their plight.
Her coat felt as if it had lead in the pockets. Between gulps of frosty air, she fought her way out of the cumbersome wool. Her strength was depleted, and try as she might she couldn’t locate Vachon. Had he gone under?
A hand grabbed her wrist as she endeavored to grope for the outer lip of the broken ice. “This way,” Vachon shouted, and tugged.
Nikita kicked to keep herself afloat, but otherwise let herself be guided by him. She watched through stinging eyes as he reached up to test the strength of the rough edge. It snapped off in his hand.
Panting, she followed his example and pulled on the ice. Over and over again they tried, but each time the edges broke.
The water was deep and icy cold, numbing Nikita down to her bones. Her skin hurt as if it had been fast frozen. How far, she wondered dazedly, could it possibly be to shore?
“Here’s a solid piece.” With his knee, Vachon worked her toward a patch of ice that had several inches of thickness to it. “See if you can hoist yourself out.”
Nikita didn’t know if she responded or not. It took every scrap of her energy to plant her hands on the hard surface and haul herself upward.
She paused halfway, dizzy and breathing hard. Keep going, her brain ordered. Get out, then help Vachon.
The dreaded word hovered in the back of her mind. Hypothermia. She had no idea how long they’d been submerged. It felt like hours but was probably only minutes. Still, that would be sufficient if they had to walk all the way to the hospital in sopping clothes.
Hands on her waist pushed her out of the watery grave. Careful to put no undue pressure on the ice, she rolled over then immediately scrambled to the side.
“It’s solid,” she called to Vachon.
“How far to shore?” he panted, pulling himself up.
Nikita rubbed her stinging palms on the legs of her jeans. “About twenty feet. It’s a full m-mile to the hospital.”
His grim nod and equally unpromising expression did little to dispel her unease. She didn’t need him to tell her the temperature was dropping. The stiffness of her wet hair and the frost burn on her cheeks did that quite effectively.
They crawled cautiously to the far side of the pond. Nikita eyed the cottage, checked her jeans’ pocket for the keys and tugged on Vachon’s black rugby shirt. “We can go there,” she said, using her head as an indicator. “There’s a f-fireplace.”
He nodded and gave her a little push.
If he had been the one to push her—and Nikita’s instincts told her resoundingly that he had not—she no longer cared. Above all else, they needed to get dry. Warm, dry and out of the wind that blew in a steady stream from the north.
With fumbling fingers, she stuck her key in the padlock. She knew it was the right key because it had a green cap, and green signified the cottage.
“What are you doing?” Vachon demanded thirty frigid seconds later.
“It won’t work,” she said, kicking the door with her wet boot. “Either the thing’s rusted or—” she glanced soberly at his shadowed face “—somebody’s changed the padlock.”
THE MURDERER couldn’t stay to watch. Wanted to stay, to be sure, but didn’t dare. More people prowled the woods at night than Dr. Nikita Sorensen. Obviously they did, otherwise Vachon would not have been there to fall through the ice with her.
That had not been an expected occurrence. What was Vachon doing following Nikita into the woods?
Clinging to leafless shadows, the murderer retraced the path to the hospital. A steady temper was essential here. Give nothing away. Nikita did not need to die yet. She’d been a spur-of-the-moment idea. She posed no serious threat. She was simply an annoyance with her snooty attitude and fistful of high-blown recommendations. What did she know about anything? What did any of the buffoons at Beldon-Drake know? A murderer walked in their midst, and the fools simply went on about their business.
The lower halls were lit at a subdued level. The murderer slipped into the building undetected and headed for Admissions, a brazen move, but who would think twice of it? Who would even take note if asked?
The elevator clanked to a halt before the killer reached the lobby. The cage door opened, and out stepped two people. One of them didn’t matter right now. The other had a secretive little smile playing on her lips. A smile that told a story the murderer did not care to hear.
A red haze formed, blood boiling, seething, surging. Now here was a situation that must be dealt with. Immediately.
The murderer checked the desk. Good, the nurse was absent from her post. The second person in the elevator had already walked to the front door, stuck in a security card and left. The guards sat in the outer lobby. There was no one to see, no one to know.
Drawing a deep breath, the murderer stepped into the light and smiled, a cheerful, amiable sort of smile. The woman’s eyes lit up. “Hi,” she said.
The murderer replied. “Hi, yourself. I haven’t seen you for a while, Patti.” The false smile turned up a notch. “Why d
on’t you and I go someplace quiet and have a chat?”
Chapter Eight
“I might have known you’d be good at breaking and entering.” Gratefully, Nikita held her hands, palms out, to the heat of the blazing fire. “When did picking rusty locks become part of cop training?”
“Same time as shrinks started torching their couches.”
She rubbed the ends of her wet hair and regarded him, narrow-eyed. “I still have my couch, Vachon.”
He arched a skeptical brow. “And do your patients lie on it?”
“Frequently.” Her eyes shimmered with malicious humor. “In both senses of the word.”
He’d set himself up for that one. Crouched before the stone hearth, he added another log to the already crackling fire. They’d been lucky. The crates inside the cottage had broken apart easily into kindling, and though exposed to the elements since summer, the stack of logs lining the outer wall hadn’t been wet, merely covered with a thick layer of snow.
With her hair almost dry, Nikita sat on her heels and blew out a deep breath. “We were lucky, you and I, Vachon. We could have been killed tonight”
“Could have been.” He poked idly at the fire with a green branch, “but weren’t” Keeping his eyes on the coals, he asked, “Are you warm enough like that?”
He heard the guilelessness in her voice when she replied. “Perfectly. Why? Am I distracting you?”
“A little.” He slid his gaze to her. “You’re a beautiful woman, Nikita. I’m sure you’ve been told that many times before. You’d distract any man with half his senses intact who got within fifty yards of you.”
The compliment seemed to surprise her but she covered it by murmuring, “Thanks. My ego needs a boost every now and then. You, uh, can take your shirt off to dry it, you know.”
No, he couldn’t do that. That smacked of an intimacy he didn’t trust himself to withstand—because at some point they’d be forced to exit this cluttered little cottage with its stacks of medical barrels and crates.
Returning his troubled gaze to the flames, he said, “I’m fine the way I am.”
“So am L” She sounded faintly regretful. “But here we are, inches apart, with a fire in the grate and all the privacy in the world surrounding us.”
“You’d call that a textbook dilemma, I suppose.” His tone and a single elevated brow challenged her. Then, shifting his eyes from her lovely face, he added irritably, “You head doctors are all the same. A glib answer for everything, except that you never really answer questions at all, only ask more, until your patients are so screwed up they have trouble remembering their own names.”
She was staring at him, on the verge of glowering at him. The weight of her gaze scorched more effectively than the heat from the fire.
“Do you want to tell me where that came from, Vachon?” she retorted levelly. “Or would you rather I took a guess? Someone you loved needed psychiatric help, right? And you don’t think he or she got it.”
“I know she didn’t.”
“How do you know? Did she tell you?”
“No.”
“Then what?”
The dangerous light in his eyes stopped her. “She died, Nikita. She wasted away to nothing from a healthy, vibrant woman. Her doctor was useless. He waltzed in and out at will, filled her head with a lot of mumbo jumbo about empty nests and low self-esteem, stuck her on some experimental program he’d developed, got her to fill out checks in advance, pumped a truckload of drugs into her seventy-five-year-old body and told her to search her subconscious for answers to all the asinine questions he’d put there in the first place.”
“That doesn’t mean—”
“And then,” Vachon growled, on a roll he was loath to halt, “he topped it off by demanding money from the family after she died. Latent program fees, he called them.”
“Did the family pay?” Nikita asked.
“They didn’t have to. Three other patients took him to court on charges of misrepresentation. They won their suits.”
“You don’t sound very happy about it. Is this doctor still practicing?”
“He was fined, but his license wasn’t revoked. He moved to Texas after the trial, sweet-talked a couple of politicians and a man named Jackson McCallum.” He took a deep breath. “McCallum helped him patent his so-called program. Result? As we speak, Dr. Marcel Fontaine is sitting in a Dallas penthouse, growing fat on the profits of a con.”
Nikita sighed. “I’ve never heard of the man or his program, Vachon. He can’t be that big in psychiatric circles. It happens to a lot of people in a lot of different occupations. Not every cop I’ve known was squeaky clean, either. Your friend hooked a grubby little barnacle, that’s all.”
He watched the flame flicker. “She was my grandmother, Nikita.”
“Oh.” A pause. “I’m sorry, I really am. I know how angry I’d be if anyone messed with Gran’s head.”
He couldn’t prevent the faint smile that grazed his lips. “I can’t picture anybody doing that, somehow. Still…”
“Understanding is all well and good,” she finished for him, “but you still don’t trust shrinks.”
No, and he didn’t trust himself at that particular moment. He stole a glance at her dark, silky hair, her luminous features that glowed pale gold in the firelight and her mouth that made him think of rich cherry wine—honeyed and sweet and wickedly intoxicating. On instinct, he shot a quick, desperate look at the bolted door. He needed to get out of here. Now.
“Someone pushed me down the hill, Vachon.”
Her voice and subdued tone staunched his rising need to be away from her. “Are you sure?”
“I saw the person, not clearly, but there was someone dressed in black. He or she came out of the trees, knocked me off balance, then shoved me down the hill.”
Vachon thought. He’d caught sight of Nikita and followed her. He hadn’t seen anyone else. Of course he hadn’t been looking for anyone, either.
“I’ll search for footprints,” he said, and would have risen if she hadn’t laid a restraining hand on his arm.
“There’s no point. People climb that hill all day and night. There’s a snow castle at the top. Didn’t you see it? Or did you go up the hill?”
He glanced at his forearm where her hand rested. “I only saw you rolling down. I never thought to look for an attacker.” Biting the inside of his lip, he took her hand and held it in both of his. “Are your patients allowed to leave the hospital at night?”
A cloud of wariness crept over her face. “Sometimes. It depends on the patient.”
“Lally Monk and Verity Whyte?”
Her eyes closed. “Yes.”
“Do you know who might have been here tonight who was also around the night Laverne Fox was killed?”
Her muscles tightened all the way up her arm. Vachon massaged his thumbs over the soft skin. “You think it was Laverne’s murderer who pushed me?”
“Don’t you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. But why go after me? I’m no threat to the killer, at least no more than anybody else.”
“In your opinion. Don’t get rattled. It’s only a possibility. It could have been a prankster.”
“It could have been Jack Frost, but I seriously doubt that.”
Careful to control his expression, he stared into her incredible blue eyes. There was no fear in them—or if there was he doubted it stemmed from the earlier attack.
Without his wanting it to happen, Vachon felt his head inclining toward her. It might have been pulled by a magnet, so unshakable was the attraction.
He’d intended to brush his lips across hers, but of course it didn’t turn out that way. His mouth covered hers in a hungry, possessive kiss that jolted him down to his loins. She tasted of summer ices and smelled of wildflowers—how did she always do that? Her hair was a curtain of silk, her skin as soft as rose petals. Her mouth responded swiftly to his own, hot, demanding and urgent.
Shifting slightly, he fitted her more
tightly against him on the hearth. The fire burned his face, but it was nothing compared to the flame Nikita sparked in him. His hand slid with savoring slowness over the curve of her breast, along her rib cage and to her back.
Her arms came around his neck. She kissed him greedily, twining her fingers in his hair and tugging hard. It didn’t last half long enough. This time, it was Nikita who managed to wrest her mouth from his, who steeled her slender body and finally pushed him away.
“No,” she said clearly, resolutely. “I don’t want this, and neither do you.”
The hell he didn’t. Vachon raised the back of his hand to his lips, his eyes steady on her flushed face. He could have called her a liar, but to what end? She was right. He didn’t want this. He desired it, but only because she drove him to damnable distraction.
“Remember your grandmother,” she said when he forgot to. She pressed her palms to her hot cheeks and rubbed, not looking at him. “I’m a psychiatrist You despise members of my profession. I want a career. I’m driven to achieve certain goals.”
His mind functioned sufficiently for him to speculate. “Before Deana achieves them?”
She swung her head around. “That’s a low blow, Vachon.”
He shrugged. “You want to beat her to the punch, don’t you? Aren’t you rivals as well as friends?”
Nikita’s eyes flashed. Her shoulders squared as if she was preparing for a fight. She opened her mouth, hesitated, then surprised him by returning her gaze to the fire. “Yes, we are,” she said at length. “We always have been.”
Vachon let his hands and wrists dangle between his knees. “I heard your grandmother talking about you, comparing you in a way that Deana’s father didn’t appear to appreciate.”
“People do that. I’ve always felt that Deana was one jump ahead of me, at school, at medical college, even here at Beldon-Drake. We both wanted the assistant director’s job when it became available a few years ago. Deana got it.”
“Why?”
“She’s good.”
“That’s a learned response. What’s the real reason?”
Her fine brows rose. “Psychoanalysis, Vachon?”