Carla Cassidy - Her Colton Lawman

Lucas had been inconsolable. He’d known about Mimi’s pregnancy and initially had assumed the baby was his. He’d done the stand-up thing and had been financially supportive from the moment the baby was born. It had only been when Mimi had confirmed that the baby was Theo’s that Lucas had stepped back from the role of potential fatherhood. Lucas had heard through the grapevine that a DNA test was in the process to assure the paternity of the baby.

Other victims had followed Mimi, and while everyone at the clinic was working nearly round the clock to find the source and a cure for the virus, nobody had taken the illness and deaths as hard as Dr. Lucas Rand.

No place else in the country had the virus shown up. It was as if it had specifically chosen the little Wyoming town to grow and breed.

Rafe gave a quick knock on the door and then opened it. Lucas didn’t look up from whatever was in front of him on his desk. It was as if he was unaware that anyone had entered his office.

“Lucas.” Rafe walked over and dropped a hand on the man’s broad shoulder, and Lucas started and whirled around in his chair to face Rafe.

Lucas Rand was a handsome man, with dark hair and eyes, but at the moment his eyes burned with feverish desperation. “I feel like I’m so close to figuring out a cure that will save everyone, but I can’t get it right. There’s something I keep missing. I’ve got to get it right. We’ve got to fix this before we lose more people.”

“I know, and we will, but it’s late, Lucas,” Rafe said gently. “Why don’t you knock it off for a while and get some rest. You’ve been pushing yourself so hard, and eventually you’re going to crash and then you won’t be good to anyone.”

Lucas leaned back in his chair and ran his hand through his thick dark hair. “Maybe you’re right. Maybe a little sleep will bring everything into better focus. I am tired,” he admitted.

He rose slowly, as if the mere act of pulling his tall, muscular frame out of the chair was almost too much for him. He appeared haggard, much older than his thirty-two years. “I just feel like I’m missing something, and if I could figure it out I could solve this.”

“Surely we’ll get the answers we need when the expert from the CDC, Dr. Colleen Goodhue, gets here,” Rafe said as the two men left Lucas’s small lab.

“If she ever gets here,” Lucas said darkly. “By that time everyone in town might be sick. In the meantime, my hope is that I’ll find the cure for this scourge before she arrives. Every day it seems like we have a new patient or we lose somebody else.” He heaved a weary sigh.

They stopped at the door of one of the closetlike offices the doctors had been given to work in or take a break in while dealing with the virus. “Get some rest, Lucas,” Rafe said kindly, knowing the kind of hours Rand had been putting in. “Right now that’s what you need more than anything.”

“I should be able to save them,” Lucas said in frustration. “I’m a good doctor. I’m a smart man. I’m just missing something. I’m afraid if we don’t figure this out soon, eventually everyone in town will be dead. This is killing people, and we don’t know how to stop it.”

His words hung for a moment in the dim hallway, and then he turned and entered his office and closed the door behind him.

Rafe rubbed his own gritty eyes and decided sleep was exactly what he needed, too. He only hoped while he slept no other patients arrived with the virus symptoms. He was already exhausted by the sick and the dead. All the doctors and nurses had been working side-by-side with the CDC personnel since their arrival at the beginning of the quarantine, but so far they’d had little success. He could only pray that when CDC Dr. Colleen Goodhue, a virus expert, arrived, she’d have the advanced equipment and the knowledge to save Dead River before it was too late.

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