Jessica Andersen - With the MD...at the Altar?

I am , she thought, but knew she would have to tread lightly if she wanted to get anything out of the combative ex-fisherman. “We’ve split up to pursue various angles of the investigation. I’m collecting samples from the main food sources in town.” She gestured to the door behind him, which led to a long, narrow room where the fish were filleted and weighed out. “Can I get back there? It won’t take long.”

“What won’t take long?” It took a second for Smith to process her intention. When he got it, he narrowed his eyes. “You want to take my fish?”

“I just need a small sample of each type,” she assured him, though she fully intended to take samples from multiple fish of each variety. The fact that the disease hadn’t struck everyone who’d eaten fish over the past bunch of days suggested the source might be a certain type of fish, or maybe even one specimen that had yielded multiple cuts, or had gone through a certain processing machine.

“You going to pay for it?”

“Of course,” she said, though it irked her to do so. A call to the police chief or the mayor probably would’ve cleared her way, but she preferred to handle things on her own. Besides, Mayor Wells had plenty to cope with right now—besides the outbreak, he was dealing with a vociferous group of locals who, at the town meeting the night before, had started pushing him to let local businessman Theodore Fisher buy and refurbish the burned-out Beacon Lighthouse, which some residents believed was the seat of all the bad luck Raven’s Cliff had suffered in recent months.

Rox didn’t put much stock in curses, but if rebuilding the lighthouse gave the town a common goal she didn’t see why it was such a bad idea. The mayor, however, was doing his damnedest to block the project for some reason.

“Okay,” Smith finally said, reluctance etched in his body language as he flipped up the pass-through and let her come behind the counter, then led her through the door to the processing area. “I guess I can’t stop you from buying fish, can I?”

“Thanks.” She moved among the big ice chests, trying not to make it obvious that she was checking each thermostat, each coolant line, looking for malfunctioning equipment that might be associated with the illness. “Do you supply the Cove Café?” she asked, trying to keep her voice casual.

“Why?”

“Just curious. I had an amazing cod sandwich there the other day and I was wondering if they purchased their fish through you.” That wasn’t entirely a lie—she’d had a good fish sandwich at the café, but it’d been more like a month ago, and she hadn’t particularly cared where the fillet had come from. She was looking for an easy connection among the sick people.

He shook his head. “Nope. They buy straight off the boats.”

Okay, so there went that theory. “You buy off the boats too, though, right? Have they been bringing in anything special lately?”

“Special in what way?” he asked, continuing to answer most of her questions with questions of his own, a technique she suspected was designed to put her on the defensive.

It was working, too. She found herself growing more tense as she worked her way into the processing room, toward where the narrow space opened directly onto one of the fishing piers. Smith followed close behind her, making her feel as though she was being stalked.

Or herded.

She turned to him. “Can you get me twenty or so of those little bags you use for small shellfish orders? I need to keep each of the samples separate. A grease pencil would be good, too.”

He didn’t budge, instead moving closer. His voice dropped to a growl. “What, exactly, are you going to test for?”

“That’s up to the CDC team,” she said, playing dumb.

“Where else have you taken samples?”

She was almost positive he would call and check, so she didn’t lie. “You’re the first.”

Catching movement out of her peripheral vision, she turned her head and saw two men enter from the pier. One was moving strangely, shuffling his feet as though he was having neurological problems.

Panic knotted Rox’s gut and her heart hammered in her ears. “Maybe I should come back later.”

“I don’t think so.” Smith blocked her exit on one side, and raised his voice to call, “Hey, boys, the lady doctor here seems to think our fish is poisoning the town. What do you think about that?”

There was an ugly mutter from the men, and they moved to stand shoulder-to-shoulder, blocking her on that side as well.

She was trapped.

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