Back In Texas

ON TUESDAY MORNING, Kristin’s stomach tightened when she checked the time. Eight o’clock. By eight-thirty she felt as if tumbleweed had lodged in her throat.

She nearly jumped out of her skin when the clinic phone rang. It was a wrong number, though in small-town fashion, the caller managed to stretch that inadvertent call into a good ten minutes about local gossip and the weather.

By a quarter of ten, the waiting room was still empty and Kristin breathed a sigh of relief…until a moment later, when she heard heavy footsteps tromping up the steps and the front door of the clinic squealed open.

Ryan walked in, his face a grim mask. “Sorry we’re late.”

Senator Gallagher followed him, leveled a cold look at Kristen, and folded his arms. “I have a cardiologist in Austin.”

“But you haven’t seen him in almost two years, and he’s over an hour away,” Ryan said evenly. The set of his jaw suggested that the trip into town hadn’t been easy. “You need a local doctor, too.”

“Come on back, Senator. This won’t take long.” Facing the man who’d nearly destroyed her years ago, Kristin dredged up a weak smile. I believe someone forced your dad’s truck off the road—and I think I know who it was. Though Nora had refused to elaborate, it didn’t take much imagination to guess who that someone was she referred to.

When she was younger, Kristin had discovered just how cruel and domineering Clint could be…yet it hardly seemed plausible that an influential senator would jeopardize his privileged status with murder.

“We have some old records from the Dr. Grady days, but I’m sure we’ll need to update your history, sir. We’ll also need a release so we can get copies of your current records in Austin.”

Ryan turned to look out the window of the clinic as Kristin led his father down the hall to an exam room. Clint took a chair in the corner instead of the edge of the exam table, his face impassive.

His responses to her questions were cursory at best—and likely not entirely accurate, given the stubborn jut of his jaw. Fortunately, he signed a release for the transfer of his medical records in Austin. While he was disrobing, she faxed it to the cardiology clinic and then called them to ask if the records could be faxed back ASAP.

Back in the exam room, she found Clint sitting on the exam table, his shirt off. He sat in silence as she took his blood pressure both sitting and standing, then listened to his heart and lungs. “You said you weren’t on any medications. Is that correct?”

His mouth tightened. “Nothing I need to take.”

“I’m hearing some PVCs—an irregular beat. I’d like to do an EKG while you’re here.” When he bristled, she added, “It’s apparently been a while since you’ve been to a doctor, so it’s good to have a baseline.”

“Who reads it, you?”

His derisive tone rankled. “Yes, and then I’ll send it on to Dr. Hernandez and the cardiologist in San Antonio.”

She rolled the EKG machine from its place in the corner and attached the leads, then ran a tape on him, watching the needle trace a telltale pattern that confirmed her initial diagnosis.

He apparently noticed something in her expression, because his eyebrows drew together. “Normal, I suppose.”

“Not entirely,” she hedged. “Though in a man your age we can hardly expect a twenty-year-old heart, right? We’ll have a report back from the cardiologist by tomorrow, and we should have your old records by then, too.”