Sandra Orchard - Critical Condition

EVERYONE’S AT RISK

There’s a murderer in the hospital, and nurse Tara Peterson is determined to prove it. With mysterious deaths in the cancer ward, anyone could be next. But no one wants to believe her...except undercover agent Zach Davis. The murderer wants Tara’s suspicions silenced, permanently. To protect Tara, Zach lets her in on his secret, and unwittingly into his heart. Tara and her three-year-old daughter are like the family he lost years before. Zach will risk everything to keep them safe, no matter the cost.

“What I’m about to tell you is for your ears alone. Understand?”

A flicker of confusion crossed Tara’s face, but she nodded.

Zach glanced around to make sure no one was listening in. “My name is Zach Davis.”

She glanced at his hospital badge—Zach Reynolds—and scooted closer to her daughter.

“I’m a cop, working undercover to investigate the deaths you reported.”

“You are?” she said excitedly. “Why didn’t Detective Gray tell me?”

“The fewer people who know, the less likely my cover will be compromised. You are the only one at the hospital who knows why I’m really here.”

“I won’t tell anyone. I promise. In fact, I can help you.”

“I’d appreciate that.” Tara’s inside knowledge could prove invaluable to closing this case quickly.

“Cop,” Tara’s daughter Suzie parroted. With the purple crayon clutched in her chubby fist, she drew a circle on her paper, jabbed dots in the middle and scratched two lines from the bottom. “Dak, cop,” she repeated gleefully.

Zach’s heart sank. This assignment had just gotten a whole lot more complicated.

SANDRA ORCHARD

lives on a small hobby farm in rural Ontario with her real-life hero husband and college-age children. Although she taught high school math before starting her family, her childhood dream of becoming a writer never strayed far from her thoughts. She dabbled in writing articles and book reviews, but for many years needle crafts, painting and renovating a century-old farmhouse satisfied her creative appetite.

Then she discovered the world of inspirational fiction, and her writing took on new direction.

In 2009 she won the Daphne DuMaurier Award for Excellence in Mystery/Suspense, and the following year, on her “graduation day” as a home educator (i.e., her youngest daughter’s first day of college), Sandra learned that Love Inspired Books wanted to publish her first novel. And so her Undercover Cops series began.

Check out her website, www.SandraOrchard.com, for interesting series extras. Sandra loves to hear from readers and can be reached through her website, on Facebook at www.Facebook.com/SandraOrchard or c/o Love Inspired Books, 233 Broadway, Suite 1001, New York, NY 10279.

Critical Condition

Sandra Orchard

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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The path of the righteous is like the first gleam of dawn, shining ever brighter till the full light of day.

—Proverbs 4:18

For Garth

THANKS:

As always to my husband and children

for their unwavering support and encouragement. You’re the best!

To my critiquers and brainstorming buddies,

Eileen Astels, Laurie Benner, Wenda Dottridge

and Vicki Talley McCollum for their encouragement and invaluable suggestions.

To my accountability partner Patti Jo Moore

for her cyber hugs, prayers and cheers.

To my wonderful readers, blog readers and Facebook fans who encourage and bless me in

so many ways. Your letters, posts, comments

and “likes” spur me on in the face of

uncooperative characters and plots.

And most important, thanks to my Lord Jesus

for the greatest love of all.

Contents

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

EPILOGUE

Dear Reader

Questions for Discussion

Excerpt

PROLOGUE

Strange. Tara Peterson stepped out of a patient’s room only to be greeted by yet another call bell. Except this one blipped off as quickly as it sounded.

It blipped again.

A malfunction?

Seeing no sign of the other on-duty nurse, she hurried down the hall to check on the cancer patient herself. Most days she loved being a nurse. But today, she would’ve happily traded in her orthopedic shoes for a pair of sling-backs and a plush leather chair behind a computer monitor. Eleven and a half hours of racing from one call to another, a stack of charts awaiting her attention, made it easy to forget she hated sitting still almost as much as she hated paperwork.

She paused outside the room to ease a knot in her back and froze midstretch at the sound of something clattering across the floor, followed by a thud.

Tara threw open the door. “Mrs. Parker, what’s wrong?”

The frail young woman’s body stiffened, her hands contorting at an odd angle, her unseeing eyes rolling upward.

A sudden shove propelled Tara across the room. She grabbed the bed rail, twisting her arm as momentum slammed her knees to the floor. Her head clipped the corner of the bed frame and stars exploded in front of her eyes. Biting back a cry of pain, she glanced over her shoulder in time to see the tail of a white lab coat whisk out the door.

“Wait,” she shouted, a metallic taste filling her mouth.

The bed rocked frantically, but a groan snapped Tara’s attention to the floor beyond, where a man lay sprawled on the cold tile. Blood spurted from a gash over his eye.

He mumbled something Tara couldn’t make out.

Gritting her teeth against the white-hot pain that shot up her arm, she grabbed a towel and pressed it to his cut. “Mr. Parker, you need to hold this so I can see to your wife. Can you do that?”

Taking his grunt as a yes, Tara surged to her feet.

Mrs. Parker thrashed wildly in the throes of a seizure.

Tara pulled the code alarm, then checked Mrs. Parker’s airway. Clear—for now—but the woman was burning up.

“You have to save her,” Mr. Parker croaked, his tortured gaze reaching out to his wife.

Dr. Whittaker rushed into the room, his white lab coat flapping behind him.

“Give her fifty c.c.’s of diazepam stat,” Whittaker barked.

Alice Bradshaw, the other nurse on duty, shoved the crash cart through the door. “I’ll get it.”

Dr. Whittaker steadied the patient’s arm, soothing her in the dulcet tones that had earned him the moniker Dr. Wonderful from more than one patient.

As Tara tapped a vein to insert the intravenous, Mr. Parker cried out and clutched his chest.

“Take over here,” Tara commanded the instant Alice returned with the diazepam. “I need to see to Mr. Parker.” Pulling a stethoscope to her ears, Tara knelt at his side. Parker’s breathing was shallow, his pulse thready.

Dr. McCrae hurried in and glanced from Tara to the bed, where Alice was still struggling with the IV.