Mac stepped off the elevator carrying his suitcase and the strap of his carryall slung over his shoulder. His stride was long and swift, his gaze steady as he counted off the room numbers he was passing. Caitlin Bennett’s image had been in his mind ever since he’d gotten Aaron’s call. His gut was in knots.
Please God, just let her be all right.
When he reached Room 420, he paused, then took a deep breath and walked in.
Almost immediately, he saw Aaron on the other side of the bed. When their gazes met, Aaron stood abruptly, his finger to his lips to signify quiet. Mac stepped inside and set his bags by the door, then glanced at the bed. The knot in his belly tightened. The woman who usually ripped a strip off his ego was lying far too still. Dark purple bruises shaded the left side of her face, giving her the appearance of being masked. A couple of stitches above her eyebrow were oozing, and her lower lip was swollen.
God almighty, Caitie girl, what have you gotten yourself into?
Then Aaron was throwing his arms around him and patting him on the back.
“You’re here. Thank God you’re here,” Aaron whispered.
“How is she?” Mac asked.
“She’s fine.” When Mac frowned, Aaron added, “Really, she’s fine…or at least she’s going to be. Nothing’s broken. Her concussion is mild. She’s bruised, on her face and her shoulder, and her wrists are sprained from the fall, but she’s going to be okay.”
“Have the cops got any leads?” Mac asked.
Aaron shook his head.
“Why isn’t there a guard on her door?”
Aaron rolled his eyes and then pulled his brother out into the hallway, so they could talk without fear of waking her up.
“Because they don’t see the imminent danger, that’s why,” Aaron said. “I called them a few hours ago, and they said that even though we have the letters and the bomb threat, they don’t consider what happened as anything more than an accident. They think she was jostled at the curb and, because of everything else, imagined she was pushed.”
“She’s been getting letters, too?” Mac asked, and then cursed when Aaron nodded.
Aaron grinned. “That’s one of the things I always admired about you. You have such a succinct way of stating the obvious.”
Mac managed a smile, then glanced back into the room where Caitlin lay sleeping.
“Go home, Aaron. I’m here now, and you look beat.”
Aaron hesitated. “I don’t know…if she wakes and I’m not here, I’m afraid she’ll feel as if I’ve abandoned her.”
Mac shook his head. “She can look at me instead. Maybe she’ll be pissed off enough to forget she’s afraid.”
Aaron sighed. “I don’t understand it,” he muttered. “You are the two people I love most in this world, and you fight like cats and dogs.”
Mac shrugged. “Chemistry. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Go home. Get some rest. There’s a lot to be done tomorrow, and I’ll need your help.”
“You’re right,” Aaron said, then pointed to Mac’s bags. “Would you like me to take those to my apartment?”
“No. Take them to Caitlin’s instead.”
Aaron’s eyes widened. “But she won’t—”
“Hell no, she won’t like it, and frankly, neither will I. But someone’s going to have to play bodyguard until this mess is straightened out, and you’re afraid of guns.”
Aaron blanched. “So is she. You better not let her know you’re carrying one.”
“Just go home, little brother, and leave the woman-stuff to me,” Mac said, cuffing Aaron’s shoulder in a teasing manner.
Aaron sighed. “She’s going to kill me for bringing you into this.”
“Then we’ll just have to remind her that if someone hadn’t tried to kill her, I wouldn’t be here.”
“Right…. I’m going home now.”
“See you in the morning.”
Aaron picked up Mac’s bags. “Thank you again.”
“For what?”
“For always coming to my rescue.”
“That’s what family is for.”
Aaron looked back at Caitlin. From the doorway, she was almost invisible in the darkened room.
“It’s a damn shame she doesn’t have any,” he said.
Mac laid his hand on Aaron’s shoulder. “She has you.”
“And now you,” Aaron added.
From the doorway, Mac watched his brother get on the elevator, then walked into Caitlin’s room, quietly closing the door behind him. The air in the room was still, broken only by the intermittent sound of her breathing. He moved toward the bed, then stopped at the foot, making himself look at the bruised and battered woman beneath the covers. He wished she was awake, spitting fire and spearing him with her dark, expressive eyes. Then he wouldn’t feel this horrible empathy, this need to gather her up in his arms and hold her close against the night.
He pulled off his coat and sat down in the chair that Aaron had been using, well aware that that put him at eye level with her—that when she awoke, his face would be the first thing she saw.
He sighed.
So be it.
She needed help, and he was here.
Let the games begin.
Four
B
uddy slipped through the fourth-floor exit door, pausing quietly at the doorway before moving any farther. He hated the smell of a hospital. It reminded him of the days and nights spent sitting by his mother’s bedside and watching her die. Money would have made such a difference in their lives and, in her latter days, in the type of care she received. But they’d had none to spare. His gut knotted. In this world, money was so unevenly distributed. The bulk of it rested in the hands of a few, while the majority of people never had enough.
He thought of the woman he’d come to kill and took a deep, calming breath. Death had no prejudices. It took rich and poor, young and old alike, and that was what he wanted—to put Caitlin Bennett on the same level as his mother. Caitlin didn’t deserve what she had, because she had what should have been his.
Satisfied with the lack of activity, he glanced at his watch. It was forty-five minutes after three in the morning. Except for the sound of an old woman moaning at the far end of the hall, the floor was silent.
He ran a nervous finger over the fake mustache he was wearing, tested his wig for security and ran his hand down the front of his borrowed lab coat. The name tag signified it belonged to a Dr. Frost. He grinned. When he was ten, he’d wanted to be a doctor. Tonight he was living out his fantasy. Then his focus shifted as he stared down the hall. At best estimate, it was less than fifty yards to Caitlin’s room.
Aaron Workman had gone home more than three hours ago. He knew, because he’d waited outside the hospital, watching as the man had gotten into a cab. And then he’d waited some more, making certain that the shift change at midnight had come and gone and the nurses were finished with all the bed checks and meds.
As he stood, a nurse came out of a hallway and headed toward the far end of the hall. He waited until she disappeared into a room, then made his move.
His soft-soled shoes made almost no noise on the highly polished floor as he hurried down the hall. When he reached Caitlin’s door, he pushed it open, taking comfort from the dark within.
Satisfied that she was sound asleep, he slipped inside and closed the door, looking back over his shoulder as he went. It wasn’t until the door was completely shut that he realized she was not alone. In the shadows, he could see the outline of a man sitting in a chair beside her bed. His head was bent, his posture slumped.
Shock coupled with a sudden need to urinate had him fumbling for the door, but before he could get out, the man suddenly lifted his head.
“Who’s there?”
Buddy froze. Thinking more quickly than he’d realized he could, he said, “Dr. Frost. I’m here to check on Mr. Benton.”
“You’ve got the wrong room,” the man said and started to rise.
“Sorry,” Buddy said quickly, and turned and walked out the door.
The moment he cleared the room, he bolted down the hall toward the stairwell, afraid to look back. He ran down the stairs, then continued on to the basement, dropping the lab coat into a laundry cart as he passed. The basement door he’d jimmied was still ajar. Glancing back over his shoulder one last time, he smiled. Satisfied he wasn’t being followed, he slipped outside into the alley, then paused again, double-checking that no one was behind him.
To his intense relief, no one was in sight. But Buddy was a careful man, staying in the shadows as he walked away. Three blocks over, he tossed the wig and mustache into a Dumpster and headed for the nearest subway station. That had been a very close call. He thought he’d known everything there was to know about Caitlin Bennett, but he’d been wrong. He didn’t like surprises.
While Buddy was making his getaway, Mac was in the hall, looking for the nearest nurse. It had taken him a few seconds to circle Caitlin’s bed, and by the time he’d reached the hallway, the doctor was nowhere in sight. At that point, his instincts had gone into overdrive. The flesh on his arms was still crawling from the shock of awakening to find a stranger in the room, even though he knew that it could have been a simple error in names. Bennett and Benton weren’t all that different, but he had a gut feeling that something wasn’t right. A nurse emerged from a nearby room, and he stopped her on her way back to the desk.
“Ma’am, I need to ask you a question.”
The nurse recognized him. “Is Miss Bennett all right?”
“Yes, she’s still sleeping. A few moments ago Dr. Frost came into her room looking for a Mr. Benton. Is there a patient by that name on this floor?”
The nurse frowned. “No.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yes, and you must be mistaken about the doctor’s name, too.”
The skin started tightening on the back of his neck.
“Why?”
“Dr. Frost is an OB/GYN. He doesn’t have patients on this floor, and even if he did, they wouldn’t be male.”
“Shit,” Mac said, and headed toward Caitlin’s room.
The light was on over her bed, and she was reaching for the button to call a nurse. It was hard to say who was more surprised.
Caitlin gasped. “You!”
Mac sighed. “Yes, it’s me.”
Shock mingled with confusion. She’d fallen asleep listening to Aaron’s voice and woken up to find herself alone. And now Mac was here. If she hadn’t been in so much pain, she could almost have believed this was all a bad dream.
“What are you doing here, and where is Aaron?”
“I’m here because he asked me to come. And he’s at home, where I sent him.”
Caitlin’s eyes flashed angrily. “He asked you? Why?”
“To help.”
“I don’t need
your
help.”
Ignoring the emphasis she put on the word, he shoved his hands into his pockets and glared back.
“Oh, I think you do. And if I wasn’t sure before, I am now.”
Caitlin knew as she asked that she wasn’t going to like his answer, but she asked it just the same.
“Why?”
“A few minutes ago, someone came into your room. I don’t think he expected me to be here.”
Her heart skipped a beat. Again she imagined the feel of that hand on her back, pushing.
“What do you mean?”
“I asked him what he wanted. He said his name was Dr. Frost and that he was looking for a Mr. Benton.”
“Our names are similar…Bennett, Benton. Maybe it was an honest mistake.”
“There wasn’t anything honest about it, Caitie girl. There is no patient named Benton, and the real Dr. Frost is a gynecologist.”
Caitlin ignored the diminutive he’d made of her name and focused on stifling a scream. She stared at Connor until her eyes filled with tears, and then she covered her face with her hands.
Mac groaned beneath his breath and crossed the floor in long strides. Struggling with an urge to hold her, he settled for an awkward pat on her shoulder instead.
“Don’t worry, kid. We’ll figure out what’s going on, and before you know it, it will be nothing but a bad memory.”
“I want to go home,” Caitlin whispered.
“Yeah, I know. Maybe in the morning, okay?”
She dropped her hands and nodded while looking away, still unwilling to let him see her cry. But when he turned, she grabbed his wrist before she thought.
Mac stopped, looking down at the fingers encircling his wrist and wondered if she screamed when she came. The moment he thought it, he felt ashamed. When he looked up, he got caught in her fear and knew he was a goner.
“What?” he muttered.
“Don’t leave.”
A muscle jerked in his jaw as he tried to smile.
“I’m going over there to get the cell phone out of my coat, okay?”
She nodded, and then, realizing she was holding his wrist, reluctantly turned him loose.
Yeah baby, I know just how you feel,
Mac thought as he took the phone out of an inner pocket.
“Who are you calling?” Caitlin asked.
“The cops. Now close your eyes and try to get some sleep. Want me to turn out the light? I can go into the hall to make my call.”
“No, it’s okay.”
He nodded, then dialed Aaron’s number, well aware that he was going to incite a small panic in the process, but he wanted the name of the person to contact regarding Caitlin’s case. Aaron answered on the second ring, his voice thick with sleep.
“Hello?”
“It’s me. Sorry to wake you.”
“Oh, that’s all right,” Aaron mumbled, reaching for the lamp as he sat up in bed. The light came on at the same time he looked at the clock, and he groaned. “It’s freakin’ four o’clock in the morning. Couldn’t this have waited until daylight?”
“Someone came into Caitlin’s room, lied about who he was and why he was here, and disappeared before I could get into the hall to talk to him.”
“Oh shit.”
“Exactly.”
“Have you called the police?”
“Not yet. I wanted the name of the person to contact before I made the call.”
“I could have told you that,” Caitlin muttered behind him.
Mac turned, eyeing her with trepidation. That slightly belligerent tone in her voice told him she was regaining her strength. Ignoring the frown on her face, he tried not to glare. It would seem that the honeymoon was over.