Dangerous Disguise

Maren vetoed the idea. “It’ll be faster if I just drive her there.” She turned toward Jared. “C’mon, let’s go.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he murmured, a little surprised. Somehow, the woman had managed to take the command away from him.

Chapter 3

“That’s my car.”

Maren pointed her security device at a light blue Toyota coupe. The vehicle squeaked in response as its four doors unlocked simultaneously.

Moving ahead of him, Maren opened the rear passenger door before hurrying around to the driver’s side. “Get in.”

Jared angled April into her seat before slipping in next to her. The woman had regained consciousness. Hysteria was quick to follow, and she began screaming again. He did his best to calm her.

He took her wrapped hand and held it up while securing her seat belt around her with his free hand. He left his own seat belt open, something he hoped he wouldn’t regret as Maren pealed out of her spot and hit the road. Hard.

The woman wove in and out of traffic as if she were in hot pursuit of a fleeing vehicle, flying through lights that had begun to turn red. Jared braced his body as best he could.

“It’s going to be all right,” he assured April, repeating the phrase over and over again until he’d finally managed to calm her down.

There was a plea in the young woman’s eyes that begged him to tell her the truth. Jared knew he had a gift for convincing people of his sincerity in the face of contradiction. He used it on April. She seemed to vacillate between wanting to believe him and being terrified that she was going to remain maimed by her own carelessness.

“But I cut it off,” April cried just as he thought she’d finally gotten herself under control. “I saw it just lying there—”

“Maren packed it in ice.” He nodded toward the woman in the driver’s seat. “They’ll reattach it. They can work wonders these days. Six months from now, you won’t even remember which finger it was.”

A brand new fear entered the girl’s brown eyes. They darted from Jared’s face to the back of Maren’s head. “I didn’t sign up for the insurance. I couldn’t afford it. They won’t—”

“They will,” Maren told her firmly.

She took another turn. Because he’d failed to brace himself, Jared hit the back of the front seat. He fumbled for his seat belt clasp, trying to anchor himself before there was another turn. Maren’s eyes met his in the rearview mirror.

“Sorry about that,” Maren murmured before glancing in the mirror to look back toward April. “The accident happened at work. Everything’ll be covered under workman’s compensation. Don’t worry about the cost.”

April’s sobs subsided in volume, then finally faded. She hiccuped, wiping away her tears with the back of her good hand. “Are you sure?”

“I’m positive,” Maren told her with the kind of authority that would calm the worst of fears.

They’d reached St. Luke’s Hospital in record time. After making a left onto the newly renovated compound, Maren pulled into the first available space she saw. The parking lot behind the E.R. entrance was small in comparison to the others, but for once it was relatively empty.

Maren jumped out of the front seat, rounding the hood and hurrying to April’s side of the vehicle. The man she’d had misgivings about hiring beat her to it. He already had April’s door open and now picked April up as if she weighed nothing. It was cold out and he’d rolled up the sleeves on the shirt he was wearing. She saw his biceps bulge as he turned from the car with the girl in his arms.

Maren led the way into the E.R. room. The electronic doors sprang open the second she stepped in front of them. The area was filled with personnel, none of whom seemed to notice them coming in. Looking around, Maren was just about to grab an older-looking nurse when Jared called, “I need some help here!”

Redirected by the entreaty, the nurse Maren was about to buttonhole terminated her conversation with an orderly and focused on the situation.

“What happened?” the matronly looking woman asked Jared.

He rattled off the particulars of the incident quickly and crisply, ending by saying, “Her fingertip was packed in ice.”

The dark-skinned woman whose badge proclaimed her to be Rowena O’Brien looked expectantly from him to Maren. “Where is it?”

“Right there.” Jared nodded toward Maren. The latter quickly produced the plastic bag out of her purse.

Pleased, the nurse nodded her approval. “Good work.” Scanning the area, she pointed toward the first empty bed that came into view. Long floor-to-ceiling curtains separated each bed from its brethren. “Put her right there,” the nurse instructed.

Maren noticed that Jared placed the girl on the gurney as if he were handling something delicate and precious. His compassion impressed her more than the way he conducted himself in an emergency situation.

April clutched at his arm as he began to withdraw. A fresh wave of panic had entered her eyes. “Are you going?”

Jared paused to squeeze her good hand, communicating support and comfort as best he could. “We’ll be right outside,” he promised. “In the waiting room.”

The nurse indicated outer doors that would take them there. It was only as he followed Maren through them that he realized he was still wearing his apron. He slipped the loop off his neck and took off the apron, bunching it up in his hand like an unwanted appendage. He dropped it in the first empty chair he came to.

They had their choice of places to sit since the waiting room was largely empty.

“I take it you’ve been here before.” Maren took the seat beside him.

She looked restless, he thought, as if she didn’t want to be here. Two of his cousins hated hospitals. His uncle Mike had died in one, Aurora General. A bullet to the chest in the line of duty had taken him permanently away from them.

He shrugged in response to her question. “One emergency room is pretty much like another.”

A note of interest entered her eyes. “What was the matter?”

He caught himself thinking that her eyes were beautiful. So blue if you stared at them for any length of time, they could make your soul ache. For a second, he lost the thread of the conversation. “What?”

She wanted to distract herself. Papa Joe had been in a place like this. She was eighteen at the time, about to go off to college, to stand on the brink of new horizons, when he’d been in a car accident. She remembered how terrified she’d been, praying in the small chapel on the premise that he wouldn’t die and leave her alone. One moment he was this big, larger-than-life man, the next, she was facing the possibility of his being taken from her. The edifice of her confidence was never the same again because she’d discovered that the foundations were built on sand.

She’d spent the spring nursing him back to health and the summer arguing with him that she wasn’t going to college, that she couldn’t leave him alone. Eventually he prevailed upon her to go, that he was fine.

Being here brought it all back to her; the fear, the uncertainty. She needed something to get her mind off that. So she turned to the man beside her, hoping for some kind of respite. “Why did you need to go to the emergency room?”

Because my partner was shot buying drugs off a dealer we spent two months setting up. Two cops wandered in, thought we were junkies. Messed up the sting.

It wasn’t the kind of explanation he could give her. Jared thought for a moment, digging around in his past for something plausible that he would remember in case she asked about it later. “My sister had appendicitis.”

A family threat. Instantly she related to it. “Did you get her there in time?”

It had been his father who’d brought Janelle in, but he let that part go, nodding instead in response. “The appendix burst on the operating table. Doctor said it was touch and go at the time.”

So this wasn’t an isolated incident. Maren took new measure of the man beside her. “You’re pretty cool under fire, aren’t you?”

The smile he offered her was almost shy. Maren felt herself warming to him despite resolutions not to. “Don’t see much point in losing your head. Just makes things that much worse.”

She liked that. The man didn’t fold under pressure. So many people stood back, waiting for someone else to do something, never wanting to be the first. Maybe hiring him was not such a bad thing, after all. “Your sister, how old is she?”

He found it safest and easier to stick as close to the truth as possible. Lies had a way of tripping you up. He’d played so many people since he’d joined the force, the various names were hard to keep straight. If he’d added a different life for each, it would have been impossible. Besides, something told him that Maren Minnesota reacted well to tales of hearth and home. “Younger than me by a couple of years.”

“Just the two of you?”