Doing It Right. MaryJanice Davidson
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Capone go down for tax evasion? The D.A. would be glad to get Carlotti on trespassing and attempted assault, if only so that he could introduce his suspicions to a judge.
If word got out that there was one eyewitness, others would certainly follow … the D.A. could build a case from whispers. God knew they did it all the time. And Carlotti’s worst fear was doing time. When he was thirteen, he’d killed a witness to his shoplifting, just to avoid being shipped back to juvie.
The doctor was in very real danger. Carlotti had to shut him up, the sooner the better. The psycho wouldn’t have to worry about her—the D.A. was at least as interested in putting her behind bars as he was in Carlotti—but he had to worry about the doctor. He probably had thugs working on the problem already.
“Crap,” she sighed, and got up to make the first of several cups of coffee.
The next night, Jared was still thinking about the woman and still mentally yelling at himself to forget about her. You’ll never see her again, he told himself, followed by, Also, the whole thing was probably a hallucination brought on by too much paperwork. Proof that spending too much time on chart work is bad for you. Trouble was, he couldn’t get her out of his mind. Even now, when he was supposed to be snoozing in the third-floor on-call room, he was tossing and turning on the narrow, smelly bunk, fantasizing about what’s-her-name instead of getting the sleep he needed. And the first rule of internship and residency was to sleep whenever you could. Sleep standing up if you had to.
He’d asked around, but no one knew of a beautiful blond goddess who ran like a deer and punched like a middleweight champion. Some of the nurses had suggested it was time he started dating again. One of the orderlies told him once he got more sleep, the hallucinations would stop. That was the trouble with being the hospital wiseass … when you had a serious problem, no one believed it.
Tap-tap.
Hell, it wasn’t like he was hard up for female companionship. He worked with at least ten female docs and three times that many nurses. Not to mention X-ray techs, the lab ladies, the social workers—heck, wasn’t the hospital chaplain a woman? One of the benefits of being an ER doc was that he got to visit all the wards, got to meet all the—
Tap-tap.
—staff outside his department and he should just—
Tap-tap-tap.
“What the hell is that?” he muttered, getting up and crossing the room. He had a flashback to one of his literature classes. “Who is that tapping, tapping at my chamber door?” he boomed, pulling back the curtain and expecting to see … he wasn’t sure. A branch, rasping across the glass? A pigeon? Instead, he found himself gazing into a face ten inches from his own. “Aaiiggh!”
It was her. Crouched on the ledge, perfectly balanced on the balls of her feet, she had one small fist raised, doubtless ready to knock again. When she saw him, she gestured patiently to the lock. He dimly noticed she was dressed like a normal person instead of a burglar—navy leggings and a matching turtleneck—and wondered why she wasn’t shivering with cold.
He groped for the latch, dry-mouthed with fear for her. They were three stories up! If she should lose her balance … if a gust of wind should come up … The latch finally yielded to his fumbling fingers and he wrenched the window open, grabbing for her. She leaned back, out of the reach of his arms, and his heart stopped—actually stopped, ka-THUD!—in his chest. He backpedaled away from the window. “Okay, okay, sorry, didn’t mean to startle you, now would you please get your ass in here?”
She raised her eyebrows at him and complied, swinging one leg over the ledge and stepping down into the room as lightly as a ballerina. He collapsed on the cot, clutching his chest. “Could you please not ever ever do that again?” he gasped. “Christ! My heart! What’s going on? How’d you get up there? Did the nurses lock all the entrances again? They do that when they’re overworked—”
“‘Quoth the Raven, nevermore’,” she said, and helped herself to a cup of coffee from the pot set up next to the window. At his surprised gape, she smiled a little and tapped her ear. “Thin glass. I heard you through the window. ‘While I pondered, nearly napping, suddenly there came a rapping, rapping at my chamber door.’ I think that’s how it goes. Poe was high most of the time, so it’s hard to tell. Also, the man you saw me bludgeon into unconsciousness dropped a dime on you today.”
“He what?”
“Dropped a dime. Rolled you over. Put you out. Phoned you in. Wants to clock you. Wants to drop you. Made arrangements to have you killed, pronto. Sugar?”
“No thanks,” he said numbly.
“I mean,” she said patiently, “is there sugar?”
He pointed to the last locker on the left and thought to warn her too late. When she opened it (first wrapping her sleeve around her hand, he noticed, as she had with the coffee pot handle), several hundred tea bags, salt packets, and sugar cubes tumbled out, free of their overstuffed, poorly stacked boxes. She quickly stepped back, avoiding the rain of sweetener, then bent, picked a cube off the floor, blew on it, and dropped it into her cup. She shoved the locker door with her knee until it grudgingly shut, trapping a dozen or so tea bags and sugar packets in the bottom with a grinding sound that set his teeth on edge.
She went to the door, thumbed the lock with her sleeve, then came back and sat down at the rickety table opposite the cot. She took a tentative sip of her coffee and then another, not so tentative. He was impressed—the hospital coffee tasted like primeval mud, as it boiled and reboiled all day and night. “So that’s the scoop,” she said casually.
“You’re here to kill me?” he asked, trying to keep up with the twists and turns of the last forty seconds. “You’re the hitman? Hitperson?” Who knocked for entry? he added silently.
“Me? Do wet work?” She threw her head back and pealed laughter at the ceiling. She had, he noticed admiringly, a great laugh. Her hair was plaited in a long blond braid that reached halfway down her back. He wondered what it would look like unbound and spread across his pillow. “Oh, that’s very funny, Dr. Dean.”
“Thanks, I’ve got a million of ’em.” Pause. “How did you know my name?”
She smiled. It was a nice smile, warm, with no condescension. “It wasn’t hard to find out.”
“What’s your name?” he asked boldly. He should have been nervous about the locked door, about the threat to his life. He wasn’t. Instead, he was delighted at the chance to talk to her, after a day of thinking about her and wondering how she was—who she was.
“Kara.”
“That’s gorgeous,” he informed her, “and I, of course, am not surprised. You’re so pretty! And so deadly,” he added with relish, “you’re like one of those flowers that people can’t resist picking and then—bam! Big-time rash.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I think.” She blushed, which gave her high color and made her eyes bluer. He stared, besotted. He didn’t think women blushed anymore. He didn’t think women who beat up thugs blushed at all. He was very much afraid his mouth was hanging open, and he was unable to do a thing about it. “Dr. Dean—”
“Umm?”
“—I’m not sure you understand the seriousness of the situation.”
“Long, tall, and ugly is out to get me,” he said, sitting down opposite her. He shoved a pile of charts aside; several clattered to the floor and she watched them fall, amused. “But since you’re not the hitman, I’m not too worried.”
“Actually, I’m your self-appointed bodyguard.”
“Oh, well, then I’m not worried at all,”