A Doctor's Watch

“I’m working on it.” He raised his head, cupped her chin and looked into her eyes again, his own fires now banked. “I—” His fingers tightened on her face. “Damn.”

“What?”

“Did the ER doctor give you something when he treated you? Pain medication? A sedative?”

“No.”

“Your pupils are big as dinner plates.” He let her go and cursed again. “I can’t sign off on the evaluation if you’re medicated.”

She followed him when he turned his back and marched away. “I don’t need to be evaluated. I just need to go home. To my son. Please.”

He groaned like a man in pain. “I can’t. I have to talk to you when your head is clear. I can’t afford to mess this up. Director Serrat—”

“Uncle Karl?”

He stiffened, and she knew she’d made a mistake mentioning her uncle. His boss.

He picked up his jacket and shrugged into it without turning. “I’ll come back to finish the evaluation tomorrow.”

“Let me go home and I’ll come to you in Belier in the morning.”

He shook his head. “I’m sorry. I just can’t risk it.”

Understanding exploded with a burst of bitterness on her tongue. “Worried about my life or your career?”

“Neither,” he said stiffly. “You have a son.”

Rage rose to the surface. “I would never hurt my son. Never!”

“I’ll talk to you tomorrow.” He headed toward the door, but stopped just inside, shoulders stiff.

“Wait. Please!” Desperation propelled her across the room after him. She stopped just short of touching him, her arm extended.

“Tomorrow,” he said without turning. “Try to get some rest. I’ll be back early.”

He was gone before she could argue. Before she could plead.

Alone again, Mia propped her hips on the edge of the bed, fighting back the desperation. The humiliation.

Maybe he was right. Maybe they were all right, and she’d imagined someone else with her on the bluff. A sinister shadow behind her.

Three hundred and ten days, she thought, her eyes welling with tears. She’d had three hundred and ten good days.

And tomorrow, she’d have to start over again at one.

Chapter 3

Ty felt like a heel as he left the Eternal Emergency Care Clinic. Not because he’d admitted Mia Serrat for overnight observation when she so clearly wanted to go home—standard procedure was standard procedure, and he dared follow nothing but when the patient was Karl Serrat’s niece. There was also her son’s safety to think about.

What troubled him was the niggle of pleasure he’d felt at the knowledge that, by admitting her, he’d have to see her again in the morning.

She was a patient, for Christ’s sake. He knew better than to think of her in any other terms.

She was also a woman, though. A spirited, strong-willed, self-reliant woman.

Exactly the kind of woman he liked.

Shivering, he turned the heater on full blast in his ancient VW Beetle and pulled out onto Highway 18 toward Belier. Snow swirled furiously around his little car, falling faster now than when he’d driven in, and whipped into a frenzy by a fierce north wind. Windshield wipers and headlights hardly penetrated the miasma.

He leaned forward, peering into the blizzard to make out the road, but instead he kept seeing her defiant green eyes, the determined set to her full lips.

He shook his head at himself. Mia Serrat was completely off-limits.

She also had a history of mental illness. She’d backed off her story about being pushed off the bluff this morning without argument, but she wasn’t convinced. He could see it in her eyes. She just knew the psychiatry game well enough to know better than to sound paranoid.

The sooner she was out of his life, the better.

Still, she pulled at him on a lot of different levels. Sure, she was beautiful. But she’d also overcome a lot of tragedy. She was a survivor, Mia Serrat. No way a woman trying to pick out a Christmas present for her kid had tried to kill herself. Suicidal people didn’t make plans for a future they wouldn’t be around to see.

On his left a steep rock wall angled back from the roadway. He slowed, squinting up at what he could see of Shilling’s Bluff. On impulse he swerved to the shoulder, parked and got out for a closer look.

More than the cold made him shiver as he stared up at the rough slope. How the hell had she come down that and into a busy road without being seriously hurt?

Killed.

It would, he thought, be a good place to kill someone.

He crossed the road and found a trail in the woods to one side of the bluff. Without stopping to question why, he climbed to the top.

He knelt. Lots of footprints in the snow here. Rounded and shallow as the wind smoothed off the edges and new snow filled the impressions, but definitely more than one person’s prints. Someone could have waited. Hidden in the trees—

His cell phone chirped, nearly sending him headfirst over the edge of the cliff.

He stood and turned away from the precipice to answer. His mother’s voice screeched at him across the line.

“Ty-baby? Is that you? You sound like you’re sitting on the wing of an airplane.”

He capped one ear with his hand. “I’m outside, Ma. It’s windy.”

“Outside?” she chattered. “In this weather? You’ll catch your death. What are you doing outside?”

He looked over his shoulder at the bluff, the nothingness beyond. What the hell was he doing? Trying to prove that Mia Serrat was as stable as she seemed? That she hadn’t imagined someone pushing her?

Or trying to eliminate one of his reasons for keeping her at arm’s length?

He swore and pulled his collar up as he started back toward his car. It was friggin’ freezing out here. Sure there were lots of footprints. The sheriff’s deputies would have checked out the scene after the accident.

“I’m headed back in, Ma. What did you need?”