With the MD...at the Altar?

How could you leave me like that? she wanted to ask him.

Instead, she lifted her chin and said, “Thanks for the rescue. Then again, you always were good at making a grand entrance.” Implying that his exits weren’t nearly so slick.

His eyes went dark and his expression flattened, but he didn’t rise to the barb. Instead he gestured to Aztec, who had gone limp with the aftereffects of the Taser zap. “I take it this is what you meant by ‘some patients have been exhibiting violent tendencies’ when you called the CDC?”

“Trust me, if I could’ve handled it on my own, I never would’ve put out the SOS.” Her voice was sharp enough to have Luke’s three teammates shifting and looking at each other behind his back.

There were two men and a woman. One of the men was a tall, lean guy with a pronounced right tilt to his aquiline nose, while the other was shorter and stockier, and wore a beard. The woman was dark-haired and pretty, and stood a little apart from the men. All three of them, along with Luke, were wearing jeans and sturdy boots, and blue hooded raincoats emblazoned with the CDC’s sun-ray logo.

Luke crouched down beside Aztec without touching the fallen man. “Talk to me,” he ordered Rox.

So much for introductions, she thought. She sent an apologetic glance toward the rest of the team, but they looked as if they were used to their leader’s rudeness.

Then again, she remembered how that worked. You either figured out how to live with Luke’s mannerisms or you hit the road. It wasn’t like he was going to change.

“Roxie?” Luke prompted.

Gritting her teeth at the nickname, and the familiar peremptory tone she’d once found sexy, she ran through the typical symptoms of the Violents. They developed red-tinged eyes and yellowed skin, followed by fever and a profound shift of mental paradigm—as compared to the nonviolent patients, who typically presented with the same red eyes and yellow skin, but progressed to fever and malaise, followed by neurological symptoms such as loss of coordination and speech. In both cases, the patients became catatonic approximately six hours after the initial symptom onset, though some had gone down almost immediately, while one of the Violents had lasted nearly a day before collapsing, and had taken two innocent victims during that time.

She finished by saying, “Symptomatic treatments are maintaining the patients’ conditions so far, but they’re not showing any improvement, and my gut says they could crash at any moment. The two diseaserelated deaths were people I didn’t get to in time.”

And the guilt of that weighed heavily. She’d been too slow to recognize that what she’d initially thought was a low-grade flu epidemic was actually far worse. Because she’d been too slow to institute the house-to-house searches, there had been four deaths. Retired fisherman Elmer Tyson and his wife Missy, who had lived in a small cliff-side cottage north of town, had died holding hands in their shared bed. Michael Thicke, the chef recently hired to improve Raven’s Cliff’s single Italian restaurant, and his sous-chef, Brindle MacKay, had both died of stab wounds sustained when local boat mechanic Douglas Allen went Violent in the middle of his appetizer course.

All because of the disease, and Rox’s too-slow reaction time.

When she finished her recitation, Luke nodded slowly, still staring at Aztec. “Is it infectious?”

“Not as far as I can tell, thank God,” she answered. “There’s no evidence of second-stage transmission.” Meaning that she hadn’t identified any cases where one victim had contracted the symptoms from another. “Unfortunately, that’s about all I know. There just hasn’t been time to go any deeper.”

She told herself she shouldn’t feel guilty, that she’d done the best she could. But deep down inside, small insecurities kept saying, You know how to handle outbreaks.You should’ve been able to get the diseaseunder control in the first day or so. If she had, there wouldn’t have been any need to call in reinforcements.

“No help from the locals?”

“The area hospitals aren’t willing to risk having a patient go bad. They’re just not set up for the level of restraint the Violents could need if they break out of catatonia.”

“And you are?”

“I’m making do,” she said firmly. “The Violents we’ve identified so far are restrained on cots in holding cells at the police station, and the cops are doing door-to-door sweeps twice a day, looking for the early symptoms. The chief of police has instituted a curfew, and Mayor Wells held an emergency town meeting this evening to let people blow off some steam.”

Luke glanced up at her, brown eyes intent with the look she knew meant he was shuffling and filing every bit of information in the mental log he kept of each case. “You don’t like the mayor.” It wasn’t a question.

Shoot, Rox thought. She’d been trying to keep her voice neutral. “You should probably form your own opinion.”

“I trust your judgment.”

The simple four-word statement probably shouldn’t have annoyed her, but she found herself bristling, wanting to scratch at him for acting like he respected her opinions after he’d treated them like they meant nothing before.

But that was the key, she reminded herself. That was then. This was now. So she took a deep breath to settle the flare of anger, and said, “Wells is a little on the slick side for my taste, and rumor has it he’s got his eyes on bigger and better, and doesn’t mind making deals to get things done.”

Luke shrugged. “Sounds like a politician to me.”

“Yeah.” Rox left it at that because she didn’t have any real reason to dislike Mayor Wells. Just her gut feeling that his charming smile hid things that weren’t in the best interest of Raven’s Cliff or the town’s inhabitants.

“This disease have a name?” Luke asked.

“The residents are calling it the Curse.”

“Why?”

She lifted one shoulder. “Local legend about a fishing captain and a lighthouse—not important.” She didn’t think now was the time to get in to the town’s recent problems, which had ranged from the loss of the mayor’s daughter, Camille, in a freak wedding-day accident, to the discovery that they had a serial killer in their midst, one who thought he could lift the Captain’s Curse by brainwashing women and sacrificing them to the sea.

Some said the bad luck had come with the arrival of the reclusive stranger who’d bought a property outside of town, some that it was attached to the destruction of the Beacon Lighthouse five years earlier…while others said that it dated as far back as the late 1700s.

As far as Rox was concerned, the superstitions were nothing more than a way for the locals to deal with a serious run of bad luck.

She didn’t deal with luck, she dealt with science.

Luke frowned. “Since when do you discount legends? You were usually the first one looking to bring in the local medicine man and ask him to do his voodoo schtick and help heal the village from the inside out.”

“That was Africa and this is Maine—it’s a little different. Besides, this time I’m the local medicine man,” she said, but her voice lacked bite as she felt the weight of the responsibility, and the failure. “And so far my ‘schtick’ hasn’t made a dent, so I’d appreciate it if you and your team could get to work ASAP.”

Luke looked at her for a long moment, expression far more complex than the surface charm she remembered. Finally, he nodded. “You’re the boss. That is, assuming you want us to stay.”

He was giving her an out, an option of sending him away. Only there wasn’t any possibility of that, because her people were dying and she couldn’t help them on her own. He’s here and there isn’t time to requestanother team before more people die, she told herself. In the end that was what it came down to.

She’d come back to Raven’s Cliff because she’d wanted a more personal relationship with her patients than the here-today-gone-tomorrow life of relief medicine. Now, the town needed her to set aside her past history with Luke and accept his expert help.

Telling herself that she could handle this, that forewarned was forearmed when it came to men like Luke Freeman, she turned to his three teammates, who were still ranged behind him as though waiting for the go-ahead.

Rox stuck out her hand. “I’m Dr. Roxanne Peterson. Welcome to Raven’s Cliff.”

FROM THE DARK SHADOWS beside Lucy Tucker’s junk store, Tidal Treasures, the Seaside Strangler stood in the rain and watched the doctors carry Aztec’s motionless form to the police station.

Part of him was disappointed that the others had arrived when they did. He’d been poised to come to Roxanne’s rescue, ready for her to see him as a protector rather than just another part of the town’s background scenery. Then again, it was probably best that he hadn’t needed to expose himself like that. He had far more important work to do.

Secure in the knowledge that Roxanne was safe for the moment, he eased back along the junk store porch, knowing what he had to do next to ensure that she and all the other innocents in Raven’s Cliff would be released from the threat that hung over the town.

He’d done it once before, and his sacrifice had bought the town peace for five long years. Then, just a few months ago the curse had come back and the gods of the sea had risen up and demanded another sacrifice. He’d tried to appease them once already, but he’d been thwarted, and the townspeople had rejoiced at the woman’s safe return.

Just look what that got them, he thought in a flare of righteous indignation. An epidemic. A diseasestraight from the halls of hell, one that turns mentwisted and evil.

As far as he was concerned, there was only one way to abate the curse and bring peace to the town of Raven’s Cliff.

Another Sea Bride would have to be sacrificed.

Chapter Two

Within twenty minutes of Luke and the others carrying the groggy Violent into the Raven’s Cliff Police Department, the briskly efficient officers on duty had gotten the patient secured in a cell and called in the chief of police and the mayor to meet with the CDC team.