the girls, and it would be nice to bake a batch of cookies for someone. Besides, she was tired of being confronted by the dark monitor, tower and printer every time she went into the study. “I guess,” she answered.
“Done deal,” Olivia confirmed brightly, and then she was out the door, gone.
Ashley held the kitten in front of her face. “You’re not staying,” she said.
“Meow,” Mrs. Wiggins replied.
“Oh, all right,” Ashley relented. “But I’d better not find any snags in my new chintz slipcovers!”
The helicopter swung abruptly sideways in a dizzying arch, setting Jack McCall’s fever-ravaged brain spinning. He hoped the pilot hadn’t seen him grip the edges of his seat, bracing for a crash.
His friend’s voice sounded tinny, coming through the earphones. “You belong in a hospital,” he said. “Not some backwater bed-and-breakfast.”
All Jack really knew about the toxin raging through his system was that it wasn’t contagious—the CDC had ordered him into quarantine until that much had been determined—but there was still no diagnosis and no remedy except a lot of rest and quiet. “I don’t like hospitals,” he responded, hoping he sounded like his normal self. “They’re full of sick people.”
Vince Griffin chuckled at that, but it was a dry sound, rough at the edges. “What’s in Stone Creek, Arizona?” he asked. “Besides a whole lot of nothin’ ?”
Ashley O’Ballivan was in Stone Creek, and she was a whole lot of somethin’, but Jack had neither the strength nor the inclination to explain. Given the way he’d ducked out on her six months before, after taking an emergency call on his cell phone, he didn’t expect a welcome, knew he didn’t deserve one. But Ashley, being Ashley, would take him in, whatever her misgivings, same as she would a wounded dog or a bird with a broken wing.
He had to get to Ashley—he’d be all right then.
He closed his eyes, letting the fever swallow him.
There was no telling how much time had passed when he surfaced again, became aware of the chopper blades slowing overhead. The magic flying machine bobbed on its own updraft, sending the broth he’d sipped from a thermos scalding its way up into the back of his throat.
Dimly, he saw the ancient ambulance waiting on the airfield outside Stone Creek; it seemed that twilight had descended, but he couldn’t be sure. Since the toxin had taken him down, he hadn’t been able to trust his perceptions.
Day turned into night.
Up turned into down.
The doctors had ruled out a brain tumor, but he still felt as though something was eating his brain.
“Here we are,” Vince said.
“Is it dark or am I going blind?”
Vince tossed him a worried look. “It’s dark,” he said.
Jack sighed with relief. His clothes—the usual black jeans and black turtleneck sweater—felt clammy against his flesh. His teeth began to chatter as two figures unloaded a gurney from the back of the ambulance and waited for the blades to stop so they could approach.
“Great,” Vince remarked, unsnapping his seat belt. “Those two look like volunteers, not real EMTs. The CDC parked you at Walter Reed, and that wasn’t good enough for you because—?”
Jack didn’t answer. He had nothing against the famous military hospital, but he wasn’t associated with the U.S. government, not officially at least. He couldn’t see taking up a bed some wounded soldier might need, and, anyhow, he’d be a sitting duck in a regular facility.
The chopper bounced sickeningly on its runners, and Vince, with a shake of his head, pushed open his door and jumped to the ground, head down.
Jack waited, wondering if he’d be able to stand on his own. After fumbling unsuccessfully with the buckle on his seat belt, he decided not.
When it was safe, the EMTs came forward, following Vince, who opened Jack’s door.
Jack hauled off his headphones and tossed them aside.
His old friend Tanner Quinn stepped around Vince, his trademark grin not quite reaching his eyes.
“You look like hell warmed over,” he told Jack cheerfully.
“Since when are you an EMT?” Jack retorted.
Tanner reached in, wedged a shoulder under Jack’s right arm, and hauled him out of the chopper. His knees immediately buckled, and Vince stepped up, supporting him on the other side.
“In a place like Stone Creek,” Tanner replied, “everybody helps out.”
“Right,” Jack said, stumbling between the two men keeping him on his feet. They reached the wheeled gurney—Jack had thought they never would, since it seemed to recede into the void with every awkward step—and he found himself on his back.
Tanner and the second man strapped him down, a process that brought back a few bad memories.
“Is there even a hospital in this hellhole of a place?” Vince asked irritably, from somewhere in the cold night.
“There’s a pretty good clinic over in Indian Rock,” Tanner answered easily, “and it isn’t far to Flagstaff.” He paused to help his buddy hoist Jack and the gurney into the back of the ambulance. “You’re in good hands, Jack. My wife is the best veterinarian in the state.”
Jack laughed raggedly at that.
Vince muttered a curse.
Tanner climbed into the back beside Jack, perched on some kind of fold-down seat. The other man shut the doors.
“I’m not contagious,” Jack said to Tanner.
“So I hear,” Tanner said, as his partner climbed into the driver’s seat and started the engine. “You in any pain?”
“No,” Jack struggled to quip, “but I might puke on those Roy Rogers boots of yours.”
“You don’t miss much, even strapped to a gurney.” Tanner chuckled, hoisted one foot high enough for Jack to squint at it and hauled up the leg of his jeans to show off the fancy stitching on the boot shaft. “My brother-in-law gave them to me,” he said. “Brad used to wear them onstage, back when he was breaking hearts out there on the concert circuit. Swigged iced tea out of a whiskey bottle all through every performance, so everybody would think he was a badass.”
Jack looked up at his closest and most trusted friend and wished he’d listened to Vince. Ever since he’d come down with the illness, a week after snatching a five-year-old girl back from her noncustodial parent—a small-time drug runner with dangerous aspirations and a lousy attitude—he hadn’t been able to think about anyone or anything but Ashley. When he could think.
Now, in one of the first clearheaded moments he’d experienced since checking himself out of the hospital the day before,
