Sandra Orchard - Critical Condition

“Help restrain the patient,” Whittaker ordered.

Mr. Parker clutched Tara’s arm and muttered a desperate prayer.

“It’s okay,” Tara soothed. “We’re taking good care of your wife. Don’t worry.”

The man’s gaze shifted to the team around the bed. “You have to stop—” He gasped for air. “Stop the killer.”

“The killer? I don’t understand. No one’s been killed.”

Mr. Parker’s grip relaxed. And a moment later, his arm flopped lifelessly to the floor.

ONE

Detective Zach Davis turned up his collar against the brisk October weather and joined the hospital staff gathered outside Niagara’s newest cancer wing. The sooner he proved a murderer wasn’t behind the recent deaths at Miller’s Bay Memorial, the sooner he could escape.

He couldn’t imagine why a couple of deaths in a palliative-care unit—a ward where people go to die—would warrant an undercover investigation. But his former partner Rick Gray had needed a detached officer from out of town and had refused to take no for an answer.

Not that Zach had felt like explaining why this was the last place he wanted to be. He’d never told Rick he’d been married, let alone that his wife had died of cancer. As far as Rick was concerned, the five months Zach had spent posing as a computer-store owner made him the perfect candidate for his new cover as an information-technology consultant. End of discussion.

At the front of the crowd, Dr. Whittaker—the namesake of the hospital’s new addition—slid giant scissor blades around the obligatory ribbon and offered the media a smile as polished as his two-hundred-dollar shoes.

As spectators jockeyed to be the first through the doors, Barb, the real IT consultant, bumped her arm against Zach’s. “Come on, let’s get started.” The petite brunette hadn’t questioned her boss’s request to let Zach learn alongside her. He just hoped she’d be too distracted by her own work to notice what he really did.

He followed Barb into the happy hum of staff sharing cake and juice with patients, smiling and clothed in bathrobes and brightly colored caps. The kind of caps that masked chemo-razed hair.

His stomach knotted into a hard, tight ball.

He’d held his palm to spurting bullet wounds, wrestled drug-crazed addicts, immobilized the fractured bones of abused wives. But not one of those encounters had hit him like this, with an unnerving sense that if he looked one of these patients in the eyes, his grip on his emotions would completely unravel.

Someone—a nurse—cupped his elbow. “You okay? You’ve gone white.”

“Yeah, I’m fine. Thanks.” An antiseptic odor coiled through his nostrils, raking up memories of nightlong vigils at his wife’s bedside. Lord, why have You brought me here? I don’t want to remember.

“You’d better sit a minute. You don’t look so good.” The nurse ushered him to a chair along the wall. “I’ll bring you a glass of juice.” Her compassionate voice pulled his thoughts from the edge of a dark abyss.

His colleague had kept walking, but now, her three-inch heels clicked quickly toward him. As she drew closer, her puzzled scowl softened.

Zach scraped a hand over his face. “That bad, huh?”

“Oh, yeah. I take it you don’t like hospitals?”

He shook his head. “Just cancer wards.”

“You lost someone close to you?”

Zach let out a heavy sigh. “Yeah.” Close. The word didn’t begin to describe what he’d lost. His wife had been everything to him. His best friend. His confidante. His very being.

The nurse hurried back with a cup of juice. “This should bring back your color. You’d be surprised how many visitors we have who get a little faint. You’ll be okay in a few minutes.”

He doubted more time here would do the trick, but he kept the thought to himself. Undercover work was all about attitude. With the right attitude, even in uniform, he could convince the wariest drug dealer to sell him a fix. He’d never allowed a situation to get the better of him. And he sure didn’t intend to start today.

He downed the juice, crushed the cup in his hand and rose to his feet. “Thanks, I’m good to go, Miss...” Seeing the woman’s doe-size brown eyes smile up at him, Zach backed into the chair’s arm. A jabbing pain to his thigh anchored his feet.

“Peterson.” She tilted her head as if questioning whether they’d met before. “Tara Peterson.”

He blinked, then swallowed to clear the roar from his ears and the image of his dead wife standing two feet away, arm outstretched in greeting.

Not his wife. The mouth was wider, the reddish-brown hair wavier and longer. She looked a few inches taller, too. But, those eyes...

Zach blinked again, and chalked up the leap of his heart to the woman’s uncanny resemblance to his wife.

Forcing a smile, he extended his hand. Then her name clicked in his brain and turned his “pleased to meet you” to paste in his mouth.

This was the nurse who’d reported the murders.

Tara glanced at the ID badge hanging from his neck, and then to Barb’s. “I guess you two are the IT specialists we were warned about.”

“Warned?” Zach repeated, scrambling to regain his equilibrium.

Tara chuckled. “Sure, we finally got the hang of the last system, and now you’re going to change it on us again.”

“I thought your present system was over five years old?” He looked to Barb for confirmation.

Barb rolled her eyes and mouthed, “Stone age.”

“I heard that.” Tara’s grin belied her offended tone. “You computer gurus just like to torture us. But if there’s anything I can do to help, don’t hesitate to ask.”

Zach nodded his thanks. He liked the woman’s playful sense of humor. She didn’t seem like the type to cry wolf. Maybe his reluctance to take the case had made his negative assessment of its merits too hasty.

Zach shadowed Barb for most of the day to acquaint himself with the job. Then he forced himself to return to the cancer ward, where the alleged murders had occurred. Implementing a new software system gave him a perfect excuse to question staff, not to mention peek at their online activities.

As he passed the staff lounge, a commotion erupted.

“You have to let this go,” a female voice soothed.

“I won’t let it go. Someone murdered those people.” Zach recognized Tara’s voice and the flint of pain behind her words.

“The coroner disagrees,” the other woman responded.

“For all we know the murderer paid him off.”

Zach tensed. The last thing he needed were rumors of a killing spree spreading through the hospital.

“You’re talking crazy,” a different woman spoke up.

“Am I? Someone shoved me into the bed. Clearly, he didn’t want to be seen.”

“Are you sure you didn’t just trip? You hit your head pretty hard.”

“No!” The slap of a hand against a table punctuated the denial. “How many times do I have to tell you? Someone murdered Mrs. Parker. Her husband begged me to stop the killer.”

Zach rushed to the door. Tara might as well have painted a bull’s-eye on her forehead. He needed to get her out of there before she made the situation any worse.

Two nurses and a doctor were in the room with her. Tara reached for a lunch container in the fridge and deposited it into a cloth bag on her arm. Absorbed in the discussion, no one acknowledged his arrival.

“I was there and I didn’t hear Mr. Parker say anything,” the older nurse said. “How about you, Dr. McCrae?”

The young resident standing at the counter with his coffee shook his head. “Afraid not.” He took a sip from his mug and shot Tara a sympathetic look.

“Well, I know what I heard.” Tara’s voice sharpened. “And if the police won’t—”