Fatal Hearts

by Norah Wilson

  “Then I guess you can both take off. It’s probably just as well you’re not here when the media gets wind of this. Which should be any minute.”

  Oh, crap. The media. Hayden hadn’t even thought of them. She most definitely didn’t want to be on the front page of tomorrow’s paper, standing on Dr. Gunn’s lawn.

  Boyd thanked the detective again and the two men shook hands. A minute later, they were in Boyd’s car, driving away.

  At the first red light, he turned to her. “Hungry?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s well past noon.”

  Hayden couldn’t be less hungry. Her stomach still lurched when she thought about the scene back there in Dr. Gunn’s study. But if Boyd wanted to eat, they should eat. She had the feeling that once he let this new information soak in, he’d throw himself into the investigation and would need the fuel.

  “Good idea.” She suggested a unique burger joint downtown that had been a favorite of Josh’s. He could get a big burger while she had a turkey burger with brie and no bun. Surely she could manage that much.

  He glanced over at her. “You okay? I know that was rough back there.”

  “I’m fine. I’ve seen worse in the ER.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  He turned his attention back to traffic, leaving her to think about what she’d said. Yes, she’d seen worse in the ER. Sometimes a lot worse. But this had shaken her.

  Not the blood, and not the fact that she’d touched a dead body. She’d seen lots of that stuff in her career to date. Rather, it was the whole tableau. Seeing blood and ravaged bodies in a clinical situation was one thing. Seeing it in the field was entirely different. It was so much worse, knowing that mere hours earlier, Dr. Gunn had been on the phone with Boyd. Gunn had probably made his decision during that very conversation. He’d probably hung up, taken out his scalpel, poured himself a whiskey or whatever had been in that old-fashioned leaded crystal glass she’d seen on the desk. Had he tossed it back and done the deed immediately? Or had he sipped it as he contemplated ending his life?

  How many scenes like this had Boyd seen? A lot, she was pretty sure.

  The silence stretched between them until Hayden felt compelled to break it. “It was good of Ray Morgan to share that stuff with you.”

  “Yeah, it was.” He flicked his gaze over to her, then back to traffic. “He said from the beginning he’d share anything that pointed to a health risk for me. But I was thinking more along the lines of toxicology reports.”

  “Do you think they’ll let you see the file or have a copy of it?”

  “Eventually, maybe. But I doubt I’ll see it anytime soon. There are no legal documents to back up my claim that I’m one of those twin boys and therefore next of kin with a right to see it. I wouldn’t be surprised if it took a court order to make them open it up.” He shot her another glance. “I’m sure Detective Morgan is of a similar mind. That’s no doubt why he told me as much as he did, so I’d have enough information to start putting the puzzle pieces together myself.”

  She studied his face in profile. “Will you do that? Bring an application to the courts to get the records?”

  “I will, but I expect it’ll take a while,” said Boyd. “I’ll have to connect the dots, and, thanks to lost files and fabricated birth certificates, those dots are damned few and far between.” He stopped for a yellow light that was about to turn red. “I was thinking about something else, though. Morgan said the file contained my mother’s signed consent to the adoption. Yet thirty-five years later, people seem to be dying over it. In what world does that make sense?”

  “Maybe she didn’t consent, you mean?” She glanced at him. “That could explain why Dr. Gunn felt guilty enough to commit suicide over this.”

  “If it was suicide.”

  “Either way, I’d assumed he must have helped someone to obscure the trail so no whiff of scandal could come back on them. You know, put a fake name on the birth record or something. But you’re right—he could have done so much more. He could have practically stolen you guys away from your mother.”

  “That’s what I was thinking.” He took his eyes off traffic long enough to flick her a glance. “For a doctor to help a family pull off an untraceable adoption, that’s bad. Really bad. But if everyone consented, is it kill-yourself bad? Especially thirty-five years later?”

  She glanced at his profile. “Okay, I’m on board with the idea he might have done something worse than help cover something up. But for the record, for some people, especially professionals, reputation is everything. The professional disgrace from an investigation could definitely be enough to drive someone to suicide. Or maybe he just felt responsible for Josh’s death somehow. Maybe that guilt layered on top of the old stuff was enough to put him over the edge.”

  “Again, that’s if he actually committed suicide.” The light had turned green, and he accelerated through the intersection.

  She swept her hair to one side. “So, before I jumped in with my speculation, where were you going with that thought? That your mother might not have consented, I mean.”

  “The thought occurred to me that maybe he coerced our mother’s consent. She might have been manipulated or railroaded into giving up her babies. Her family, lover, physician, priest . . . they could have ganged up on her, made her sign that paper. For chrissakes, documents have been forged or altered all over the place with this case. I was just thinking, why should you trust that consent form any more than any other document?”

  He braked hard, signaled, and pulled into the crowded parking lot of a Tim Hortons.

  She put her hand on the dash to steady herself. “Boyd, are you okay?”

  “You know those Internet sites that try to help reunite people with their birth parents?”

  The sudden subject change threw her. “Um . . . yeah?”

  “Josh had been combing those sites since he was old enough to register us. I used to think what a bitch she was. Not for giving us up—hell, even before I became a cop and saw some damned sad cases, I knew there were times when kids were way better off when their mothers gave them up. But what I did blame her for was not registering at one of those damned sites. He never lost faith that he’d find her. I’m sure he nurtured a fantasy of some fairy-tale ending where we’d get to know her and discover we had a big, happy extended family, but year after year, nothing. Then he got the lead that pointed him to Fredericton and turned his life upside down to chase it.”

  Hayden’s heart fell. “And now it looks like your mother has been dead all this while.”

  “Yeah. Looks like.” He rubbed his face, looking suddenly tired. “I mean, I knew that it was a possibility she could have died somewhere along the line, but it was just that—a possibility. Shit, she’d still be a relatively young woman if she were still alive. The far bigger probability, to my way of thinking, was that she was alive and well but just didn’t want to connect. I guess this makes me a jerk, huh?”

  “Never.” She put a hand on his leg. “It makes you a good big brother. You were just trying to look after Josh, protect him from hurt and disappointment.”

  He snorted. “Yeah. And what a bang-up job I did at that.”

  “Oh, Boyd, no. Josh was a grown man. And you weren’t his keeper. Whatever happened, happened. We’ll get to the bottom of it. But none of it is your fault. None of it.”

  He turned to her. “I could have helped him more.”

  “You were trying to help him,” she said simply.

  He looked away. “I should go to the library and see what I can find in the newspaper archives.”

  She grimaced. “It’s Sunday. They won’t be open today. But I’ve got tomorrow off. I’d be happy to go with you then, do whatever I can to help.”

  He laughed softly.

  “What?”

  “This was your day off, and look what
I’ve dragged you into. I sure know how to show a girl a good time, huh?”

  “You’re not allowed to feel bad about that either,” she said. “You know I’m anxious to get to the bottom of this. Josh wasn’t my brother, but he was my friend, and I need to know what happened to him.”

  “Fair enough.”

  Something about his voice made her look at him closely. His color seemed off. Maybe some food and a caffeine injection would fix him up.

  “Hey, why don’t we eat here? They have a great panini, and I love their green tea.”

  “Tea at Tim Hortons?”

  “It’s good. Come on.”

  When they climbed back in the car half an hour later, Boyd looked better. Hayden felt a lot better too. She’d actually found her appetite.

  “Okay, so what do we do now?” she asked.

  He checked his watch. Hayden had just checked her own, so she knew it was just after one.

  “Actually, maybe I should go back to Sylvia’s.”

  Her eyes sharpened on him. His color looked better than it had before, but he still looked off. “Are you okay?”

  “Just tired. I think it’s the yo-yoing.”

  “Yo-yoing?”

  “One minute, we’re on our way to talk to Dr. Gunn to get all the answers; the next minute he’s dead, possibly murdered, and the critical information I need is out of reach again. But then it turns out that the file’s there, a little blood-soaked but legible, which probably means he committed suicide. But then Morgan lets us see a name. Awesome! I finally have the necessary information to locate my birth mother. But whoops, she’s actually been dead almost as long as I’ve been alive. So, yeah, yo-yoing. I feel like I could sleep for a week.”

  Hayden smiled. This was good. Not that he was exhausted, but that he’d confess to it. Or more specifically, to owning all those emotions.

  “Want to come back to my place?” As soon as the invitation was out, she wanted to call it back. He probably wanted to be alone. He’d already said he wanted to go home.

  “God, that would be heaven. You wouldn’t mind?”

  “I’d love it. I need to unplug too. I see blood most days, but that scene . . . I don’t know how you cope with that kind of thing.”

  “Sleep will help.” He reached over and clasped her hand.

  Touch helped too, which he clearly knew. When he put the car in gear and reversed out of the parking space, he did it one-handed. In fact, he held her hand in his all the way up Regent Street to her apartment building.

  Inside, Hayden dropped her purse. This time, she took his hand, leading him to the bedroom.

  He knew where Hayden was leading him but he needed to make a quick stop by the bathroom. After he washed his hands and was about to leave the room, he caught a glimpse of his face in the mirror over the dainty vanity. He looked like shit. No wonder Hayden had asked if he was all right. He was just feeling worn-out, literally, from the emotional roller coaster he’d been riding since Dr. Gunn’s call. A month ago, he wouldn’t have admitted that under pain of torture.

  So why was he opening up to Hayden?

  Because he wanted her to know him. Wanted her to really see him.

  He held that terrifying truth, turned it around and around in his mind as he looked into his own eyes in the mirror. Examined it from every angle. What in the hell was that about? He hadn’t felt anything remotely like this since Laurie. He’d left himself wide-open to her, and then she’d excised him from her life and sewed the wound up as neatly as she’d sutured the lacerations on that dog he’d brought her. After that, he’d pretty much let people see what they wanted to see. Never again would he be tempted to expose so much of himself. That kind of openness was for the young in the first blush of love. And in his experience, people didn’t seem to notice the difference. They took what they saw and heard, extrapolated a little, and voila. They’d built their own version of Boyd McBride, one that suited their ends.

  Which suited him.

  So why was he feeling like that with Hayden?

  Then another thought occurred to him, one that eased his mind. Clearly, it was the no-strings deal. Hayden expected exactly nothing from him. No, better than nothing. Her only stipulation had been that he go back to his own life when the investigation was over and leave her to hers. What did it matter if she saw behind the curtain? He would likely never see her again once he left here.

  Man, he must be tired, because that thought made him feel both better and worse. And what was with all this navel-gazing? That was more self-examination than he’d done in the past decade.

  Well, prior to Josh’s death. A person didn’t weather something like that without some soul-searching.

  He glared at himself in the mirror. Screw this noise. He needed to sleep. Shit had a way of sorting itself out and falling into place when you left the brain alone to process it. That’s what he’d do.

  Hayden met him in the hallway. She was dressed in yoga pants and some kind of spandex-infused workout top—a comfortable layer that screamed “sleep” not “sex.” As she squeezed by him in the hallway, he wondered if she had any idea how appealing she looked. Or how great she smelled. But she was right. They needed sleep. And in this strange mood he was in, avoiding sex right now might be a really good idea.

  “Mind if I grab a nap?”

  “Go ahead.”

  He had almost dozed off in the moments it took her to brush her teeth or whatever she was doing. He opened his eyes when he heard her enter the room.

  “Hey, you’re on my side. Push over.”

  “Sorry.” He scooted over. “I had the other side figured as yours.”

  She grinned. “Because of the clock?”

  “Yep.”

  “I keep it over there to maximize the chance that I’ll actually get up rather than hitting the ‘Snooze’ button.”

  He arched an eyebrow. “Not a morning person?”

  “I’m a great morning person. After I actually get up. And after I’ve had coffee. And a shower. And food.” She climbed into bed, then climbed right out again. “Hop up. I’ll pull the bedspread back so we can get under it.”

  He waggled his eyebrows. “I could keep you warm.”

  “Sleep,” she said sternly. “We need to give our minds and bodies a chance to rest and reset.”

  She was right. He rolled off the bed and climbed back in under the coverlet. “I hope there’s no prohibition against snuggling, because I could really use it.”

  “You are such a liar,” she said, moving into his arms. “I know you’re doing all of this to comfort me. That whole thing back there with Dr. Gunn—”

  “Hush.” He absolutely was doing it for her, but the moment she laid her head on his shoulders and nestled into his side, he felt his own burdens lighten. “Sweetheart, any time I can get you in my arms, I’m going to do it, and I’m not being selfless. Believe me.”

  She sighed and laid her hand on his chest. She was silent for a moment. Just when he’d begun to wonder if she’d fallen asleep already, she shifted her position. A few more fidgety moves and he felt her relax fully against him in a way a body could only do in sleep.

  Feeling incredibly full of some nameless tender emotion, he closed his own eyes and reached for sleep.

  CHAPTER 23

  His first conscious thought was that he was right where he wanted to be. Hayden had rolled away from him in sleep, and apparently he’d rolled after her. They both lay on their sides, with his body curled protectively around hers. Her delectable ass was pressed into his groin. No, not just pressed there. She was wriggling against him.

  He locked a hand on her hip and held her still. Peering around her shoulder to see her face, he called her name softly. “Hayden?”

  Her eyes came open and she looked up at him. “You’re real.”

  Yeah, real hard. And getting harder when
she used that sleep-husky voice. “Yep. As real as it gets.”

  “I thought I was dreaming. Or I was dreaming. I don’t know. Was I . . . ?”

  “Grinding that sweet ass against me?”

  She lifted her hands to cover her face.

  He grinned. “Don’t be embarrassed. It’s the very nicest kind of dream, but I don’t have a condom on me.” He slipped a hand around her to cup one of her breasts and closed his mouth on the point of her shoulder. “We rushed out this morning and I left them in my shaving kit.”

  “Don’t look at me. I don’t bring men home to spend the night with me, remember?” She gasped and arched, a reaction to his fingers tweaking her puckering nipple. Or maybe to the nip of his teeth against her skin.

  He grinned against the shoulder he’d been nibbling. “I don’t know about you, but I can think of some things we can do that don’t require a condom.”

  “Oh, yes,” she breathed. “And it’s my turn.”

  The fingers that had been plucking her stiffened nipple stopped. “Your turn?”

  She twisted away from him, tossed the coverlet off, and sat up. “Yes, my turn. To torture you. To make you crazy.” She moved up onto her knees beside him and looked down at the tent he’d pitched in the thin material of his track pants. “I can see you like the idea.”

  “I’m all yours, darlin’.” He reached to cup her head, intending to pull her down for a kiss.

  “Uh-uh-uh. No touching.” She pushed his hands away. “How quickly we forget the rules.”

  He groaned. “Baby, I don’t know if I’ll be able to keep my hands off you. They seem to have developed a mind of their own when it comes to you.”

  Her smile was absolute wickedness. “I’ll make you the same offer you made me. I can tie them up. I’m not really a dress person, but think I have some pantyhose lying around here somewhere.”

  His cock jerked, a fact that didn’t escape her attention.

  “Much as I appreciate your willingness to sacrifice your pantyhose, that won’t be necessary,” he croaked. “I’ll be strong. No hands. Well, until you ask me to use them.”