to be. It was rich and velvety and took her by surprise. “I’m not a SEAL anymore, Dee. I retired six months ago.”
Her eyes shot to his and she felt her nostrils flare. His use of her pet name was overstepping, and her glare was intended to let him know exactly where he stood.
Cole produced a business card. “I run a security firm now called Secure It. Frank called me to ask if I could install some extra features to make you all a bit safer.” He leaned over and placed the card on her bedside table. She caught a faint trace of his aftershave in the air. “But I never realized how serious it was until I got here. Whatever happened to you today was probably a deliberate attack, designed to hurt you or scare you, or both. And I want to get to the bottom of it.”
Cole’s strong, commanding voice caused the other four faces in the room to stop and turn in his direction.
“Just hold on a minute,” Frank said. “Have you considered that this might simply be a prank gone wrong? Those guys down at the morgue have a pretty dark sense of humor, you know.”
Dr. Warren exchanged a look of concern with Dr. Cortas. “Frank,” she said. “Another child became sick today with suspected renal failure—a tiny baby boy. That makes a total of six in the last three weeks. Deborah was the one who initially raised the alarm, and she’s the one who’s been pushing for an investigation, as well as extra security on the unit. That certainly would mark her as a target for anyone tampering with patient medicine.”
Frank closed his eyes and put a hand on his forehead. “The toxicology reports have all come back clean on these patients.” He opened his eyes. “There is simply no evidence to suggest foul play.”
Cole stood up. Deborah had forgotten how tall he was. His full height dwarfed everyone around him. “Deborah was attacked,” he said. “That’s evidence enough for me that she’s onto something, and somebody wants to stop her.”
“Let’s wait until an investigation is complete before we jump to conclusions about an attack,” Frank said. “The morgue staff are being interviewed by hospital security guards, and CCTV footage is being analyzed.”
Cole let out a snort of derision. “I met your security guards on my way in here. I very much doubt they could find a GI Joe in a toy store.”
Deborah suddenly felt a tear spring entirely unprompted from her eye and land on her cheek. She tried to brush it away quickly, but Diane saw it and turned to the men in the room. “You’re upsetting Deborah. She doesn’t need this now. She needs time to recover.”
Cole swiveled to look at Deborah. She refused to meet his eye, but in her peripheral vision she saw him rub his fingers roughly over his face, coming to rest on the cleft in his chin. She bowed her head low. Her tears were coming too fast to stop them, and he was the very last person she wanted to see her raw emotions.
“I’m sorry, Deborah,” Cole said. “It’s insensitive of me to argue while you need to rest.” He gesticulated toward the door. “Shall we all leave Deborah in peace for a while?”
“Thank you,” she whispered, watching the staff members leave the room until just Cole remained standing by the door. He opened his mouth to speak but seemed to change his mind. Instead, he looked at her, apparently waiting for her to acknowledge him, and she raised her head, meeting his gaze with steeliness, wiping the wetness from her cheeks.
“Close the door behind you,” she said flatly.
His face was pained as he gave a small nod. After the door clicked into place and she was alone with her thoughts, she picked up the small white card Cole had left on the bedside table. She rubbed her fingers over the gold embossed letters of his name, before taking the card gently between her thumb and forefinger and tearing it into teeny, tiny pieces.
* * *
Cole stood opposite Frank in the corridor with a cold and heavy sensation weighing on his chest. The iciness with which Deborah had looked at him was hard to bear. This woman who had once run through a thunderstorm to tell him how much she loved him now felt nothing but bitterness and regret. And who could blame her? He had broken all his promises. He had abandoned her without warning. But he sure wasn’t going to abandon her again, not when she so clearly needed somebody to protect her. This was the least he could do for her.
“I’d like to start work right away,” Cole said to Frank. “I’ll do a thorough check of all your current security arrangements and compile a list of changes I advise you to make.”
Frank shifted uncomfortably. “What kind of price are we talking about here?”
Cole raised his eyebrows. “What kind of price do you put on the safety of your patients and medical staff, Mr. Carlisle?”
“I would like to stress that these measures are just routine,” Frank said. “Despite the recent uptick in renal problems, we have no proof of drug tampering. It’s likely a coincidence.”
As if to mock the hollowness of his words, the hurried figure of Dr. Warren rounded a corner and pushed past them. “One of the kids has gone into acute renal failure. We need to get him on permanent dialysis before his organs totally shut down.”
“No,” Cole said under his breath, watching the staff rush into a room with a machine that they quickly connected to the body of a young boy, already yellow and jaundiced from the toxins in his blood.
Cole bowed his head and prayed for the life of this child, remembering the lives of many children he had already seen lost on the fateful Dark Skies mission in Afghanistan four years ago. He remembered the life of his own son, taken too soon to reside with his Heavenly Father. God had certainly never shielded Cole from the painful reality that children die, and He clearly wasn’t about to start now.
Cole silently acknowledged that something sinister had brought him back to Harborcreek and back to Deborah. Like the children in this unit, Deborah was in trouble, and whether she liked it or not, he would stick by her side and see her safely through. He couldn’t offer her all the things he had once promised, and she wouldn’t want them from him now anyway. But maybe if he could look after her for a little while, he would be able to somehow atone for the wrong he had done.
Deborah sat on the edge of the bed as Dr. Cortas gave her one final health check before allowing her to go home. She felt odd being in a sweat suit when she should have been in scrubs. She had stayed in the hospital overnight, being monitored for the potentially damaging aftereffects of her hypothermic state, and Diane had kindly gone to her home to pack an overnight bag.
Deborah’s night of sleep had been broken, full of nightmares of a shrouded man looming toward her. In her dreams she had managed to pull the shroud from the man, revealing his face as Cole’s, and she’d awoken with a start, dread invading her bones. Where was the true fear in her situation? Was it the man in the morgue, or was it Cole? Both men had strong power over her emotions.
She could scarcely believe Cole was here, looking as lean and handsome as the day he had promised to marry her. She knew they had been young at the time—only nineteen years old—but it had seemed so natural. They wrote constant emails to each other after he enlisted in the navy, but Cole’s correspondence gradually tailed off as he talked more and more about the new and exciting life he was leading. Shortly after his twentieth birthday, he had paid her one final visit, giving her the news that
