Her Colton Lawman. Carla Cassidy

      “If she ever gets here,” Lucas said darkly. “By that time everyone in town might be sick. In the meantime, my hope is that I’ll find the cure for this scourge before she arrives. Every day it seems like we have a new patient or we lose somebody else.” He heaved a weary sigh.

      They stopped at the door of one of the closetlike offices the doctors had been given to work in or take a break in while dealing with the virus. “Get some rest, Lucas,” Rafe said kindly, knowing the kind of hours Rand had been putting in. “Right now that’s what you need more than anything.”

      “I should be able to save them,” Lucas said in frustration. “I’m a good doctor. I’m a smart man. I’m just missing something. I’m afraid if we don’t figure this out soon, eventually everyone in town will be dead. This is killing people, and we don’t know how to stop it.”

      His words hung for a moment in the dim hallway, and then he turned and entered his office and closed the door behind him.

      Rafe rubbed his own gritty eyes and decided sleep was exactly what he needed, too. He only hoped while he slept no other patients arrived with the virus symptoms. He was already exhausted by the sick and the dead. All the doctors and nurses had been working side-by-side with the CDC personnel since their arrival at the beginning of the quarantine, but so far they’d had little success. He could only pray that when CDC Dr. Colleen Goodhue, a virus expert, arrived, she’d have the advanced equipment and the knowledge to save Dead River before it was too late.