With the MD...at the Altar?

Rox’s instincts told her to call the cops to investigate. Under normal circumstances she never would’ve bothered them with something so mundane…but these were far from normal circumstances. Sure, it might be an animal, or teenagers refusing to let the curfew spoil the start of their summer fun. Then again, it was possible that Captain Swanson’s last house-to-house sweep had missed seeing the red-tinged eyes and faintly jaundiced skin tones that were the only warning signs before the disease hit full-force.

Better to call the cops and have it be a raccoon thanhave a new Violent on the loose, Rox thought.

That was what the townspeople were calling the patients whose symptoms leaned toward psychosis: Violents. More accurately, as far as Rox could tell, they became uninhibited. The good tendencies in their personalities decreased and their negative sides took over, amplifying their normally controllable impulses and making them uncontrollable.

Of the four dead, only two had died from the disease itself. The other two had been murdered by one of the Violents. The threat of more such cases had left the townspeople locking their doors tight, and watching each other with grave suspicion. Are you gettingsick, everyone was thinking. Am I?

Knowing she was far better making the call than not, Rox turned the lights back on and headed for the phone on the waiting room desk. She was halfway there when someone knocked on the glass door.

Her heartbeat kicked into overdrive as she turned and looked back. The glare of the lights reflecting on the glass panel meant she could only make out the indistinct figure of a man outside her door. She couldn’t tell who it was. More importantly, she couldn’t see his eyes or skin.

Training and compassion told her to answer the door in case someone needed her. Logic said she should wait for the cops.

Logic won, but just as she grabbed the phone, the man outside kicked his way in.

Rox screamed when the safety glass spiderwebbed and shattered inward.

Fingers trembling, she stabbed 9-1-1 on the phone. “It’s Roxanne. I need help!”

It took her a second to realize the phone line was dead.

The wind howled through the broken door and driving rain spattered against the figure of local fisherman Aztec Wheeler as he stepped through the door.

He’d gotten the nickname Aztec from his straight, dark hair, sharp features and prominent nose, and his take-no-prisoners style on the high school basketball court. But this wasn’t the easygoing young jock Rox had known in school, and it wasn’t the grown man who’d asked her out twice since she’d come back to town and opened the clinic. This was someone else entirely.

Or rather, something else.

Aztec’s dark hair was plastered to his skull and he was soaked to his yellow-tinged skin, but he didn’t seem to notice the discomfort—his attention was locked on Rox, and his reddish eyes were hard with anger. With rage.

Smiling terribly, he lunged across the waiting room and grabbed her.

Panicked, Rox screamed and thrashed, trying to break free from his grappling arms. She elbowed him in the ribs, but he twisted, putting his face near hers. It took her a terrified moment to realize he was actually trying to kiss her.

“Stop!” She shoved at him, but he was an immovable wall of muscle. “I said stop!”

“You should’ve said yes.” His clothes were soaked and cold, but his skin and breath were fever-hot. “You shouldn’t have turned me down like that.”

Her panicked brain made the connection. He’d been interested in her, had asked her out a couple of times and she’d said no. Now, the Curse had warped his brain, turning a harmless crush into an obsession and loosening his normal control over his emotions.

She braced her forearm against his collarbone and pushed away, trying to reason with him, trying to talk to the man she knew him to be. “Listen to me, Aztec. You’re sick. You don’t really want to do this, the Curse is making you—”

He got his lips on her ear, but instead of kissing her he bit down, hard.

Pain lanced and Rox screamed, then screamed again when he yanked at her white doctor’s coat, tearing the buttons and leaving the garment hanging half off her. Panic-stricken, she kneed him in the crotch, praying he would feel it.

Aztec doubled over with a howl.

Sobbing, Rox yanked away and bolted for the broken front door. She slipped and almost went down on the rain-slicked threshold, but kept going, running into the darkness.

The rain slashed at her, soaking through her clothes within seconds as she fled through the nearly impenetrable fog, headed for the town hall and the RCPD entrance around the side of the building.

The air smelled of the sea, thick and salty. Thunder grumbled in the distance and the wind howled like a living thing.

Rox ran for her life. Tears mingled with the rain on her face as Aztec’s footsteps slapped on the wet pavement too close behind her. He howled something that might have been her name, and she realized she wasn’t going to make it to the police station before he caught up.

No! she screamed inwardly. She put her head down and pushed harder, her legs burning as she pounded up the street.

Aztec closed on her. He grabbed her white coat, but she pulled free and kept going. She had to keep going, had to—

She saw headlights pause at a cross street up ahead. They turned toward her, creating bright halos in the thick fog.

Heart jammed in her throat, Rox waved her arms and ran into the light. “Help me!”

For half a second nothing happened, as if the driver didn’t see her—or more likely couldn’t believe what he was seeing. Then the big black SUV accelerated toward her with a roar. When it was nearly on top of her, the driver slammed on the brakes, slapped the transmission into Park and lunged out of the vehicle, snapping to his companions inside the big car. One of them tossed something to him, and he caught it and spun toward Roxanne, shouting, “Hit the deck!”

Though she couldn’t see his face through the fog, the sound of his voice instantly kicked her back two years, to another epidemic on another continent. Another lifetime.

“Down!” he barked, and she obeyed automatically, throwing herself onto the wet pavement just as Aztec grabbed her hair. His wet fingers slipped and she fell free.

Something hissed over her head and hit Aztec with a sizzling thump. Seconds later, electricity jolted through Rox as the Taser’s 50,000-volt charge transmitted through Aztec and across the wet pavement, giving her an unpleasant shock.

Aztec, though, bore the full brunt of the blast. He gurgled, collapsed in a heap and lay twitching.

The wand hissed again, retracting into its telescoping handle where it would remain coiled like an electrified version of Indiana Jones’s bullwhip. Rox knew this because she knew the weapon, just as, without even looking, she knew the man who carried it.

Luke Freeman, hotshot CDC toxicologist…and the ex-lover who’d deserted her, sick and miserable, in a third-world hospital two years earlier, proving once and for all that “in sickness and in health” wasn’t in his vocabulary when adventure called.

Damn him.

There was absolute, utter silence for a half second, broken only by the sound of the wind and rain. Then Luke muttered a curse and crouched down to touch her shoulder. “Rox? You okay?”

No, I’m not okay, she wanted to snap, because her body was still vibrating with electricity, along with another sort of heat, one that came from memory and hurt. Her stomach balled on a heave of denial and the small, childish wish that she could close her eyes and make all of this go away.

None of it was okay. It wasn’t okay that people were dying in Raven’s Cliff. It wasn’t okay that turning down Aztec’s casual dinner invite had nearly cost her her life. And it was seriously not okay that when the CDC finally got around to answering her call, they’d sent the one person she’d specifically requested they not send: Luke “I’ll love you when it’s convenient” Freeman.

Ignoring his helping hand, she pulled herself off the wet pavement and turned her back on him. She took her time swiping her hair out of her face, trying not to think about what she looked like—sopping wet with the stress and grief of the past seventy-two hours written on her face.

Then again, why should she care? Whatever they’d had between them had died years ago. She was a different woman than the one he’d known, smarter and stronger and far more aware of what mattered and what didn’t in the long run.

Telling herself that their past relationship fell squarely into the “doesn’t matter” category under the present circumstances, she gave up on her appearance and turned to face her ex.

He stood in the street, heedless of the rain, with three other people at his back. Silhouetted against the fog-diffused illumination from the streetlights above, he looked larger than life, like a hero come to the rescue.

And he’d probably practiced the pose, she thought sourly as she limped to close the distance between them, and took stock.

With short brown hair, glittering brown eyes, chiseled features and a mouth that was—as usual—tilted in a crooked grin, Luke looked good. Then again, he’d always held up under even the worst circumstances, so she’d expected him to look good. What she hadn’t expected was the flare of memory that sucker punched her in the gut at the sight of him.

Her chest tightened and heat flashed through her, a complicated mix of heartache, anger and betrayal. She’d thought she was over him, that she’d gotten past wanting some sort of explanation for what he’d done. Now she realized she’d been lying to herself.