too slow,” Jamie said angrily.
“Come over here, boy.”
Alex looked back at her brother-in-law’s stern face, and the thing that had started to let go inside her suddenly ratcheted tight. Without thought she ran to Jamie, swept him into her arms and then out the door, away from this heartrending nightmare. Away from his dying mother.
Away from Bill Fennell.
Away …
Five Weeks Later
Dr. Chris Shepard lifted a manila folder from the file caddy on the door of Exam Room 4 and quickly perused it. He didn’t recognize the patient’s name, and that was unusual. Chris had a large practice, but it was a small town, and that was the way he liked it.
This patient’s name was Alexandra Morse, and her file held only a medical history, the long form that all new patients filled out on their first visit. Chris looked down the corridor and saw Holly, his nurse, crossing from her station to the X-ray room. He called out and waved her up the hall. Holly said something through the door to X-ray, then hurried toward him.
“Aren’t you coming in with me?” he asked softly. “It’s a female patient.”
Holly shook her head. “She asked to speak to you alone.”
“New patient?”
“Yes. I meant to say something before now, but we got so busy with Mr. Seward—”
Chris nodded at the door and lowered his voice to a whisper. “What’s her story?”
Holly shrugged. “Beats me. Name’s Alex. Thirty years old and in great shape, except for the scars on her face.”
“Scars?”
“Right side. Cheek, ear, and orbit. Head through a window is my guess.”
“There’s nothing about a car accident in her history.”
“Couple of months ago, by the color of the scars.”
Chris moved away from the door, and Holly followed. “She didn’t give you any complaint?”
The nurse shook her head. “No. And you know I asked.”
“Oh, boy.”
Holly nodded knowingly. A woman coming in alone and refusing to specify her complaint usually meant the problem was sexual—most often fear of a sexually transmitted disease. Natchez, Mississippi, was a small town, and its nurses gossiped as much as its other citizens. Truth be told, Chris thought, most doctors here are worse gossips than their nurses.
“Her chart says Charlotte, North Carolina,” he noted. “Did Ms. Morse tell you what she’s doing in Natchez?”
“She told me exactly nothing,” Holly said with a bit of pique. “Do you want me to shoot that flat-and-erect series on Mr. Seward before he voids on the table?”
“Sorry. Go to it.”
Holly winked and whispered, “Have fun with Ms. Scarface.”
Chris shook his head, then summoned a serious expression and walked into the examining room.
A woman wearing a navy skirt and a cream-colored top stood beside the examining table. Her face almost caused him to stare, but he’d seen a lot of trauma during his medical training. This woman’s scars weren’t actually too bad. It was her youth and attractiveness that made them stand out so vividly. Almost fiercely, Chris thought. You figured a woman who looked and dressed this way would have had plastic surgery to take care of an injury like that. Not that she was a knockout or anything; she wasn’t. It was just—
“Hello, Dr. Shepard,” the woman said in a direct tone.
“Ms. Morse?” he said, remembering that the history said she was single.
She gave him a smile of acknowledgment but said nothing else.
“What can I do for you today?” he asked.
The woman remained silent, but he could feel her eyes probing him as deeply as a verbal question. What’s going on here? Chris wondered. Is it my birthday or something? Did the staff plan some kind of trick? Or does she want drugs? He’d had that happen before: some female patients offered sex for drugs, usually narcotics. Chris studied the woman’s face, trying to divine her real purpose. She had dark hair, green eyes, and an oval face not much different from those of the dozens of women he saw each day. A little better bone structure, maybe, especially the cheekbones. But the real difference was the scars—and a shock of gray hair above them that didn’t look added by a colorist. Except for those things, Alex Morse might be any woman at the local health club. And yet … despite her usualness, if that was a word, there was something about her that Chris couldn’t quite nail down, something that set her apart from other women. Something in the way she stood, maybe.
Laying the chart on the counter behind him, he said, “Maybe you should just tell me what the problem is. I promise, however frightening it might seem now, I’ve seen or heard it many times in this office, and together we can do something about it. People usually feel better once they verbalize these things.”
“You’ve never heard what I’m about to tell you,” Alex Morse said with utter certainty. “I promise you that, Doctor.”
The conviction in her voice unsettled him, but he didn’t have time for games. He looked pointedly at his watch. “Ms. Morse, if I’m going to help you at all, I have to know the nature of your problem.”
“It’s not my problem,” the woman said finally. “It’s yours.”
As Chris frowned in confusion, the woman reached into a small handbag on the chair behind her and brought out a wallet. This she flipped open and held up for him to examine. He saw an ID card of some sort, one with a blue-and-white seal. He looked closer. Bold letters on the right side of the card read FBI. His stomach fluttered. To the left of the big acronym, smaller letters read Special Agent Alexandra Morse. Beside this was a photo of the woman standing before him. Special Agent Morse was smiling in the photo, but she wasn’t smiling now.
“I need to tell you some things in confidence,” she said. “It won’t take much of your time. I pretended to be a patient because I don’t want anyone in your life to know you’ve spoken to an FBI agent. Before I leave, I need you to write me a prescription for Levaquin and tell your nurse that I had a urinary-tract infection. Tell her that the symptoms were so obvious that you didn’t need to do a urinalysis. Will you do that?”
Chris was too surprised to make a conscious decision. “Sure,” he said. “But what’s going on? Are you investigating something? Are you investigating me?”
“Not you.”
“Someone I know?”
Agent Morse’s eyes didn’t waver. “Yes.”
