Justice for All

She hadn’t until the night when…Callie’s thoughts were thankfully interrupted by Mikki’s boisterous arrival.

“Hey, no food yet? What’s the holdup, Jake?” Mikki took the stool next to Callie’s. “A woman could starve in this place.”

“Keeping it hot for you,” Jake answered.

“Max Zirinsky, meet Dr. Mikki McCallister,” Callie said, making the introductions. “Mikki is a pediatrician on staff at the hospital. Max is Courage Bay’s chief of police.”

The two of them reached across Callie and shook hands just as Jake arrived with the food.

“I’ll get out of here and let you two party on,” Max said.

“There’s always room for one more at a party,” Mikki offered.

“No, we’ve already established I’m a dud.”

“We did no such thing,” Callie chided. “We only established the fact that you work too much.”

Max stood and placed a hand on Callie’s shoulder. The touch sent a shiver of awareness shimmying through her system. That’s what she got for letting those old memories creep back into her mind.

“I’ll call you in the morning,” she said. “Will you be home?”

“Call my cell.” He picked up a napkin and scribbled the number on it. “It was good seeing you. You look great.”

“Thanks. You, too.”

He said a quick goodbye to Mikki, then headed for the door, his cop swagger as pronounced as ever.

“Did I just break up a magical moment?” Mikki asked.

“Whatever gave you that idea?”

“I sensed a sizzle.”

“No way. Max is an old friend.”

“Doesn’t look that old to me, and he does great things for a pair of jeans. Terrific butt.”

“Do you check out every guy that way?”

“Like you didn’t. I saw you watching him walk off. But I’m more interested in that phone number he scribbled down for you, and the way he was eyeing you when he told you how good you looked. I could feel the heat over here.”

“That was fumes from the chili.”

“So, what’s the story on him?”

“Max is an old friend, just like I said. And my ex’s cousin.”

“Tell me more.”

“That’s it. Max and Tony are probably as opposite as two people can be, but they’re kin. And the phone number is so I can let him know about a patient whose symptoms seem a little suspicious.”

“Playing detective again?”

“Just being cautious.”

Mikki picked up her overstuffed burger and somehow got her small mouth opened wide enough to take a chunk out of it. Watching her eat never failed to amaze Callie. Mikki was five-two and couldn’t possibly weigh much over a hundred pounds, but she had the appetite of a teenage boy. And the energy of one as well.

She was also an excellent pediatrician and very insightful. But this time she’d definitely misread the signs. Max had come to Callie’s rescue once, but he’d backed miles away after that and let her know in silent but certain terms that he had no interest in her as a woman.

Callie let the memory of being in his arms slip into her mind for one heated second, then pushed it back to the hidden crevice where she planned to leave it.

CALLIE LOOKED UP when Dr. Alec Giroux tapped on her open office door. “Mind if I come in? I’m bearing gifts, that is, if you can call a toxicology report a gift.”

“Then by all means come in. It’s not often I have an E.R. doctor stop in to deliver lab reports.”

“Just brown nosing the chief of staff,” Alec said.

“Nice try, but you buck me on too many issues for me to buy that. So what’s up?”

Alec handed her the lab printout. “I’d walked over to the lab to pick up a report on one of my patients, and the technician brought Bernie Brusco’s results to my attention.”

“Why is that?”

“His results look a lot like those of the teenager we lost in E.R. last week.”

“The ephedra overdose?”

He nodded. “There was a notable amount of ephedra in Bernie’s bloodstream as well, along with a trace of cocaine and considerably more than a trace of alcohol.”

She scanned the report. “That would explain his symptoms.”

“You don’t look or sound surprised.”

“I’ve heard that Bernie runs his own drug empire in Los Angeles, so I’m not too shocked that he had the cocaine in his system. He could be selling ephedra, too, since the FDA pulled products containing it from the shelves.”

“If he’s in the biz, he should have known better than to mix and match volatile drugs.”

“You’d think. I’ll talk to Max Zirinsky and make him aware of the similarity in the two cases.”

“Good idea. And I’ll get back to the E.R. Never know what a Saturday morning might bring.”

“Just be thankful we’re not dealing with a heat wave like the one we had last summer.”

“Amen. Never want a summer like that again. A heat wave and a deadly viral epidemic.”

An epidemic that had hit Alec particularly hard, since his daughter had almost died from the virus. “How are Cameron and Stacy?” she asked.

“They’re great. And Janice has become quite the mother. She’s an amazing woman.”