to carry out her threat on the count of five. She’d only got as far as four when she heard a single whispered word before the connection was abruptly broken.
She was sitting there, staring at the receiver still clasped in her shaking hand, when a familiar baritone voice nearly had her jumping out of her skin.
‘Vicky? What on earth’s wrong with you?’ Joe demanded when she’d shrieked and dropped the phone. He picked it up from the floor and put it to his ear before he deposited it where it belonged.
Whether he was checking to see if there was someone still on the line or whether the thing was still working, she didn’t know.
She was trembling all over now, and it wasn’t because Joe had startled her.
‘Are you all right?’ he demanded, so she knew she must be looking as shaky as she felt. ‘Is there something I can do or would you rather I came back later?’
‘No!’ she said hurriedly, suddenly far more worried that he might leave than that his presence might be an embarrassment. She’d been dreading this first meeting, after her blurted revelation, but that phone call had really given her the creeps. ‘No, Joe, please, don’t go.’
‘What’s the matter? Aren’t you feeling well?’ He perched one hip on the corner of the desk, bringing those changeable hazel eyes almost down to her level. The clear concern in them was like a balm to her jangling nerves.
‘I’m all right, except…except for that weird phone call. And I don’t think it was the first one.’ Now that she thought about it, there had been something similar yesterday, too.
‘Weird? How was it weird? Who was calling?’
‘I don’t know who it was.’
‘So, what did they want?’ He was patience itself but that didn’t do anything for her agitation.
‘I don’t know what he wanted,’ she retorted snappishly. ‘The first couple of times he didn’t say anything at all but this time—’
‘Whoa! What do you mean, the first couple of times?’ he interrupted sharply. ‘What’s going on here? It can hardly be a disappointed suitor—there hasn’t been time since your engagement to Nick. Wait a minute! You’re not telling me you’re being stalked, are you? How long has this been going on?’
‘No! Of course I’m not being stalked,’ she countered dismissively, then paused, feeling sick.
It was crazy to even think about it in a place like Edenthwaite, but suddenly she found herself wondering if the idea made sense. Had there been too many ‘silent’ calls over the last few days for it to be an accident?
‘Oh, Joe, I don’t know,’ she admitted in a small voice. ‘Perhaps I am.’
‘Hey, Vicky, take it easy.’ He reached for her hand, and when he tucked it warmly and firmly between his she suddenly had the crazy feeling that Joe was going to keep her safe. ‘Now, take a deep breath and tell me what’s been going on.’
‘There hasn’t really been anything going on except for a few phone calls, and they could have been anything. I didn’t even know it was a man calling until this last time, when he spoke.’
‘So, where were the calls coming from? Inside the hospital through the internal switchboard or from outside? What was the reception like? Could the caller have been using a mobile perhaps? And his voice—did you recognise it? Did it sound local or did it have a different accent?’
‘He only said one word. My name.’ She shuddered at the memory of the strangely menacing whisper, or was her imagination working overtime to make it sound menacing?
‘Your name?’ he prompted keenly. ‘Did he say Vicky or Sister Lawrence?’
‘Neither. He said Victoria. And could you let me answer one set of questions before you ask another? Were you Sherlock Holmes in another life?’
He chuckled ruefully and gave her hands a squeeze. ‘Sorry, but one idea leads to another. Can you remember what you said when you answered the phone? Did you give the caller your name, or just the name of the ward?’
The way he’d kept hold of her hand and the gentle smile that softened the usual sombreness of his face made her feel warm inside, but Vicky fought off the distraction to replay that last phone call in her mind.
‘I think it was an outside line,’ she said slowly, mentally sorting through her impressions. ‘There was a sort of hollow crackle that you don’t get with the hospital lines, so I would automatically say, “Sister Lawrence, General Ward.”’
‘And he said…?’
‘Nothing at first. It was only when I told the caller that I was too busy to waste time and I was going to put the phone down that he spoke, and then he hung up.’
‘And the other times?’
‘I hadn’t really noticed them,’ she confessed. ‘It was only this time that made me realise that the other “nobody there” phone calls could have been from the same person.’
‘Did he say anything else or make any noises?’
‘Just my name,’ she said with a renewed shiver.
‘And how did he say it? What tone of voice did he use? Was it normal volume or whispered?’
‘Not exactly a whisper, more like…Victoria.’ She tried to give it exactly the same stress that he had, in the same singsong way. ‘But I didn’t recognise his voice and I couldn’t really say whether he had a local accent or not.’
Those changeable hazel eyes of Joe’s were dark with concentration and she could tell that he was going over everything she had told him. She knew it was stupid but she really wanted him to be able work it all out, to be able to come up with a simple answer to what was going on.
‘Has anyone else taken one of these calls for you?’ he asked suddenly, his gaze almost too analytical for comfort.
‘Anyone else?’ She frowned as she tried to work out the significance of the question. When it struck her she was devastated at the implication and dragged her hand away from him to leap up from her seat. She refused to let herself dwell on the pang of loss she felt when the contact was broken between them. What was the point of physical contact when there was suspicion between them?
‘You mean, can anyone corroborate my story or am I making the whole thing up?’ she glared down at him, lounging so nonchalantly on the corner of the desk as though he hadn’t just accused her of fabricating a stupid lie. What on earth would be the point? It wasn’t as if she lacked a social life, in spite of the fact that her wedding hadn’t taken place. ‘Do you think I’m inventing it to get the sympathy vote now that I’ve been left on the shelf? What kind of misfit do you think I am?’
‘Calm down, Vicky,’ Joe ordered, grabbing for her hand as she stomped past him for the second time, trying to control her rising temper by striding up and down in the restricted space. ‘That’s not what I meant at all. I was only wondering if he’d said more than your name so another person might have picked up on an accent or something.’
‘Oh.’
