by Laura Scott
“I can help paint,” Jonas said. “Bella is here to relax.”
“I don’t mind painting.” She didn’t love it, but she didn’t mind it. “But I think for now I’ll take a shower.”
“I’ll catch up with you in a little while.” Jonas crutched to the bathroom. She watched for a moment as he set the crutches against the wall, then carefully bent down to pick up the sander. Bracing his left hand on the wall, he went to work, the muscles in his arms flexing as he moved the sander over the bumpy seam.
Tearing her gaze from him wasn’t easy. Calling herself every kind of a fool, she turned and headed down the stairs. The sunshine was blinding, and she shaded her hand over her eyes as she looked around the small parking lot.
There was no sign of Hackbarth. Just her car, Jonas’s car, and the cherry red truck that she knew belonged to Jazz.
No other guests at the B&B at the moment, although according to Jemma there were several bookings that were due to arrive tomorrow, which was Friday, and staying through the weekend.
She brushed off as much dust as she could before walking inside the house and up to her room. Oddly enough, she was looking forward to going into town with Jonas. Had he been teasing about wanting to paint her? Did she even want to sit there while he studied her?
Goose bumps rippled along her arms, and she told herself to stop thinking about this upcoming trip as anything but two lonely people sharing a ride into town. She’d planned to visit the quilt shop while he went to find his art supplies.
They were carpooling, nothing more.
When she finished showering the dust off, she donned a pair of white capri pants and a light blue tank top. Sliding her feet into a pair of light blue flip-flops, she was ready to go.
Upon leaving her room, she noticed that the door to Jonas’s room was closed. Figuring he was getting ready, she made her way back downstairs to wait. Wandering through the dining area, she went out the French doors to find Jemma and Trey playing with an adorable yellow curly-haired dog.
“Goldie, this way. Follow me,” Trey was saying as he scampered around the yard. The puppy followed, attempting to pounce on Trey’s heels. Trey’s laughter was infectious, and she found herself wishing for what Jemma had.
“Hi, Bella. Meet Trey and Goldie.” Jemma rose to her feet. “Jazz and Dalton are bringing Chinese for lunch if you’re interested.”
“Oh, no, really, I can’t keep bumming meals off you.” Bella suspected Jemma was trying to throw her and Jonas together, so she decided against mentioning they were driving into town in the same vehicle.
Carpooling. Saving gas and the environment. Right? Right.
“It’s no bother,” Jemma insisted. “Dalton and Jazz always buy enough to feed a small army.”
“I take it your sister doesn’t like to cook?”
Jemma laughed. “You got that right. Not that she can’t cook, but she sees it as a chore. We have a deal, I cook breakfasts and dinners, while she and Dalton spring for lunch. It’s the least I can do considering all the work they’re doing on the garage apartment for me.”
Bella caught a whiff of Jonas’s aftershave as he came up behind her. “Well, I’ll grab something to eat in town, no need to worry about me. See you later.”
Bella turned and moved to step around Jonas. He stayed back, saying something to his sister that she didn’t quite catch because of Trey’s squeals of excitement.
“Wait up,” Jonas said.
She paused and waited for him to catch up. “Ready?”
“Sure.”
The interior of the car was stifling from sitting in the sun. She cranked the air and opened the windows while Jonas stashed his crutches in the back seat, then slid in beside her.
There was an awkward silence as she pulled out of the parking area and out onto the highway.
“Who was the guy who showed up last night?”
“Dr. Eli Hackbarth. But I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Is he a surgeon?”
“What part of not talking about it didn’t you understand?” She knew she sounded testy, but this wasn’t a topic open for discussion. Time to change the subject. “I’m planning to park by the quilt shop if that’s okay with you. I don’t know where the art supply store is located, but I can drop you off along the way.”
“Look out,” Jonas said. A large, lumbering tractor pulled out from a driveway hidden by trees. She pushed on the brake, but the pedal went straight to the floor.
“What in the world?” Tightening her grip on the steering wheel, she quickly pumped her foot up and down on the brake pedal.
Still nothing.
In the distance she could see a car on the horizon coming from the opposite direction on the two-lane highway, so she couldn’t go around the tractor. There was no way to avoid a collision. She cast a quick glance at Jonas. “The brakes are out!”
His expression turned grim. “Aim for the farmer’s field.”
She did as he suggested, wrenching the wheel to the side, narrowly missing the tractor. But they were going way too fast, trees were flying past her as the car picked up speed. Upon leaving the road, the car bounced up and down wildly, then jackknifed, flipping over onto the hood.
The airbag blew into her face blinding her. Pain hit hard, then everything went dark.
5
Jonas groaned and peered through the cloud of dust from the airbag deployment. His entire body ached. The shoulder and lap harness of the seat belt cut painfully into his torso, and it took a moment to realize he was hanging upside down.
They both were.
Bella appeared to be unconscious. Concern for her spurred him into action. Refusing to be hampered by his disability, Jonas reached down to brace the palm of one hand on the interior roof of the car. With the other, he released the seat belt.
Collapsing on the ground, he winced as pain shot up his injured leg. The constant throbbing pain he’d learned to live with had turned into a fierce blaze of agony. Ignoring it wasn’t easy, but on his hands and knees, he inched toward Bella.
“Bella? Can you hear me?” He reached up and gently placed his fingers along the side of her neck, feeling for a pulse. For several long seconds he didn’t feel anything, but then palpated the rapid beat of her heart. He let out his pent-up breath in a whoosh.
“Huh?” Her eyelids fluttered, then opened, revealing her clear blue eyes. Up close he could see a narrow yellow ring around the dark pupils. “What happened?”
“We flipped over. Do you hurt anywhere?”
“Everywhere,” she whispered. She flexed her wrists and ankles. “I don’t think I have any broken bones. My head hurts, though.”
He braced her with his hand. “I’m going to release the seat belt, okay?”
“Yes.” She was more docile than he liked, and he ridiculously found himself longing for the sharp edge of her tongue.
The belt gave way, and she literally dropped on top of him. He closed his arms around her, swallowing a muffled groan of agony as her foot kicked the lower part of his left leg.
“Sorry,” she murmured, trying to put distance between them. There wasn’t a lot of space in the crushed vehicle, but they managed to get untangled.
“We need to get out of here.” He didn’t like being confined in the cramped space, it reminded him of the caves in Afghanistan. Using his elbow, he knocked out the remaining bits of broken glass from the passenger side window.
“Where’s my phone?” Bella was looking around the interior of the upside-down car in confusion. The contents of her purse were strewn about.
“Leave it. I have mine.” He maneuvered his upper torso toward the window. His body was larger than hers, and if anyone was to be cut by remnants of glass, he wanted it to be him.
By the time he was outside the vehicle, sitting in the farmer’s field, he could hear the shrill sound of a police siren. The tractor driver must have called it in. He reached in to help Bella wiggle out through the broken window.
“I do
n’t understand what happened.” She pushed her dark hair out of her face. “My brakes were fine on the trip here to McNally Bay from Battle Creek. And yesterday when I drove into town.”
While Jonas knew brakes could fail at any time, he didn’t believe for one minute that this was a random accident. “The surgeon you don’t want to talk about must have had something to do with this.”
“Dr. Hackbarth?” Disbelief laced her tone. “Are you kidding? The man wouldn’t risk soiling his precious surgeon hands to mess with my brakes. And that’s assuming he even knows anything about cars. He’s the type to take his car in to a mechanic, not work on it himself. Besides, he showed up wearing a three-thousand-dollar suit.”
Three thousand for a suit? Talk about crazy! Although now that she mentioned it, Jonas couldn’t deny her impression of Hackbarth, he’d thought the same thing. “I don’t like the coincidence of his arriving and your car brakes going out.”
She sighed. “I know, the timing is suspicious.”
He swiveled around to reach back into the car, searching for his crutches. He found and tugged them out. Thankfully they weren’t broken, the lightweight aluminum frame looking no worse for being in a wreck. “I know you didn’t want to tell me what’s going on with you and that guy, but you’d better tell the cops. They need to know everything.”
As he spoke, the brown squad with the Clark County Sheriff’s Department logo etched along the side pulled over to the side of the highway adjacent to their crash site. He wasn’t entirely surprised to recognize Jemma’s fiancé, Garth Lewis, striding toward them.
“Are you both okay?” Concern darkened Garth’s eyes. “There’s an ambulance on the way.”
“We’re fine. No need for an ambulance,” Bella said.
“Don’t listen to her, she lost consciousness and needs to be assessed for a possible concussion.” Jonas awkwardly stood, leaning heavily on his crutches for support. “Do you have a forensic garage nearby? We have reason to believe her car brakes were tampered with.”
“What?” Garth’s expression turned grim. “Maybe you should start at the very beginning.”
Bella didn’t say anything for a long moment. Jonas couldn’t help being upset that she wouldn’t confide in him. “I’ll give you both some privacy.” It wasn’t easy to use the crutches to navigate the farmer’s field, but he did his best, albeit slowly.
“Jonas, don’t go. It’s fine.” Bella’s voice gave him pause.
“Are you sure?” Now that she was willing to speak frankly in front of him, he was hesitant to hang around. As if by hearing her secrets she’d expect him to reveal his.
And that wasn’t happening.
“Yes. To be honest, there isn’t much to tell.” Bella stopped for a moment, then continued, “I’m a nurse and work in the VA hospital in Battle Creek.”
That much he’d already known, but he noticed Garth made a notation in his small notebook.
“We were working on a case that had been added onto the surgery schedule at the last minute. Dr. Eli Hackbarth was the orthopedic surgeon doing the procedure along with his assistant Emily Archer, and he begged me and Aaron Campbell, the surgical tech, to stay late for him. We reluctantly agreed. But things were rushed, and Dr. Hackbarth was getting in our way, moving stuff around in the room instead of leaving it to us.”
There was a frustrated note in her voice, and he understood where she was coming from. It was the same way that the officers dictated to the men with boots on the ground without really knowing exactly what they faced each and every day.
“Okay, so what happened?” Garth asked.
Bella sighed. “It’s hard to explain, but I’ll give it my best shot. Each surgeon has a case cart, a list of supplies, meds, instruments, etc. that they’ll need to use for the procedure. As I checked the patient’s history, I saw that he had an allergy to penicillin, which happens to be the usual medication Dr. Hackbarth has on his case cart. I went to the pharmacy to get an antibiotic called Cipro to use instead. But somehow, during the procedure, the joint infection was cleaned out by Dr. Hackbarth, and he used the penicillin instead of the Cipro, which sent the patient into anaphylactic shock. The patient coded and died.”
Jonas frowned and took a step toward her. “Are you saying this idiot surgeon is blaming you for his error?”
Bella nodded. “Yes. And his physician assistant, Emily Archer, backed up his story, claiming she saw me place the penicillin solution on his table, even though her back was turned at the time. I had the Cipro on the table, too, and didn’t place the penicillin on the sterile field. I believe he must have done that and, therefore, used the wrong solution. Instead of owning his error, he blamed me. So now I’m on a paid administrative leave while the boss figures out who they’re going to believe.”
Jonas scowled, knowing that it wasn’t likely that the hospital would take the word of a nurse over that of a surgeon. “The jerk.”
“Yeah.” Bella nodded. “He’s a slime-bucket of the lowest level.”
“I still don’t understand what this has to do with your brakes failing?” Garth interrupted. “Battle Creek is three hours away. You really think his surgeon came here to mess with your car?”
“Hackbarth showed up at the B and B last evening,” Jonas said. “He claimed he wanted to talk to Bella, but she refused.”
“You both saw him?” Garth asked, writing down the surgeon’s name. The deputy’s scowl deepened. “You’re right, that’s not a coincidence.”
“Maybe not, but I’m telling you, Hackbarth wouldn’t mess up his suit by crawling beneath my car,” she insisted. “And I can’t imagine cute little Emily doing that either.”
Jonas narrowed his gaze. “What do you mean, cute little Emily?”
Bella lifted her hands. “Hey, it’s no secret Emily Archer, the physician assistant, and Hackbarth have a thing going on between them. He’s married, but apparently that doesn’t mean much to some people. Emily falls all over herself in an effort to make him happy.” She hesitated, then added, “If you’re asking me if she’d lie to cover for him? I say yes. She absolutely would.”
Garth let out a low whistle. “Okay, I can see why Jonas thinks your vehicle was sabotaged. I’m no expert on cars, but from what I hear it’s not easy to prove brakes have been tampered with.”
“You’ll need an expert, which is why I suggested a forensic auto body shop.”
“Yeah, well, we don’t have that in Clark County. I’ll have to call in someone from Battle Creek or Kalamazoo to find one.”
“Not Battle Creek,” Jonas quickly interjected. “Kalamazoo is okay, but maybe you could find someone from the Chicago area? It’s bigger. More options.”
Garth nodded thoughtfully. “You’re right.” The ambulance pulled up behind the squad car. “Let the EMTs check you out, okay?”
“Bella first.” Jonas wasn’t taking no for an answer. Now that he knew the details behind Bella’s impromptu visit to The McNallys’ B&B, he wasn’t sure what to think. It seemed like a stretch to go after a nurse by cutting the brake lines of her car. And how did the guy know which vehicle was hers in the first place? His vehicle had been parked there, too.
He didn’t like the situation one bit. He was glad to be there to help keep her safe. Yeah, he only had one leg, but he was still a good marksman.
Time to get his Glock out from the bottom of his duffel, keep it close at hand.
He had a bad feeling he might need it.
Bella was irritated with the EMTs poking and prodding her. Yes, she had a mild concussion. So what? Her vision wasn’t blurry, and she didn’t feel like throwing up. Well, maybe a little but not bad enough that she felt as if she needed a trip to the local emergency department.
“I’m fine,” she insisted for the third time. When the EMT frowned, she scowled right back. “I’m a nurse. I know that I have a mild concussion, and I know the proper things to do to take care of myself. Hand me your stupid waiver and I’ll sign it. That way you can leave to take c
are of someone who needs you more than I do.”
“Bella.” Jonas’s deep voice saying her name made her shiver with awareness, a malady that she decided to blame on her concussion and the recent hair-raising events rather than on her ridiculous penchant for soldiers.
“I’m done here.” She pushed past the EMTs. “Deputy Lewis, would you be willing to call for a car service to pick us up?”
“Car service?” The deputy flashed a wry grin. “There isn’t much need for that here in McNally Bay. I’ll give you and Jonas a lift back to the B and B.”
She suspected Jemma would be upset with her fiancé if he didn’t help out her brother, so she didn’t argue. Glancing back at her upside-down car, she understood she’d need to find a rental car of some sort if she didn’t want to be stuck at the B&B all day and all night for the next nine days straight.
Despite Jonas’s suspicions, she didn’t really think Eli Hackbarth had anything to do with her brakes failing. The man wouldn’t dirty his fingernails, and it was a stretch to imagine him calling some mobster friend of his to do the dirty work.
Hey, Guido. I gotta job fer you.
The image of Dr. Hackbarth speaking in a heavy Bronx accent made her smile despite the fact that there wasn’t much to be cheerful about. Thankful that she and Jonas hadn’t been hurt in the wreck, for sure. But there was no reason to smile when her car was obviously totaled, an added expense she didn’t need when her career was on the line.
Enough. She pulled herself together. Maybe her concussion was worse than she thought.
“Take my cell number,” Garth said, drawing her attention to the issue at hand.
She didn’t think she’d have a reason to call him directly but entered his number into the phone she’d rescued from the car wreck. The screen was cracked, but it still worked.
“Ready to head back?” Garth asked when she’d finished.
“Sure.” She followed the deputy to his car, slowing her pace when she realized how Jonas was struggling on the uneven turf.