last locker on the left and thought to warn her too late. When she opened it (first wrapping her sleeve around her hand, he noticed, as she had with the coffee pot handle), several hundred tea bags, salt packets, and sugar cubes tumbled out, free of their overstuffed, poorly stacked boxes. She quickly stepped back, avoiding the rain of sweetener, then bent, picked a cube off the floor, blew on it, and dropped it into her cup. She shoved the locker door with her knee until it grudgingly shut, trapping a dozen or so tea bags and sugar packets in the bottom with a grinding sound that set his teeth on edge.
She went to the door, thumbed the lock with her sleeve, then came back and sat down at the rickety table opposite the cot. She took a tentative sip of her coffee and then another, not so tentative. He was impressed—the hospital coffee tasted like primeval mud, as it boiled and reboiled all day and night. “So that’s the scoop,” she said casually.
“You’re here to kill me?” he asked, trying to keep up with the twists and turns of the last forty seconds. “You’re the hitman? Hitperson?” Who knocked for entry? he added silently.
“Me? Do wet work?” She threw her head back and pealed laughter at the ceiling. She had, he noticed admiringly, a great laugh. Her hair was plaited in a long blond braid that reached halfway down her back. He wondered what it would look like unbound and spread across his pillow. “Oh, that’s very funny, Dr. Dean.”
“Thanks, I’ve got a million of ’em.” Pause. “How did you know my name?”
She smiled. It was a nice smile, warm, with no condescension. “It wasn’t hard to find out.”
“What’s your name?” he asked boldly. He should have been nervous about the locked door, about the threat to his life. He wasn’t. Instead, he was delighted at the chance to talk to her, after a day of thinking about her and wondering how she was—who she was.
“Kara.”
“That’s gorgeous,” he informed her, “and I, of course, am not surprised. You’re so pretty! And so deadly,” he added with relish, “you’re like one of those flowers that people can’t resist picking and then—bam! Big-time rash.”
“Thanks,” she said. “I think.” She blushed, which gave her high color and made her eyes bluer. He stared, besotted. He didn’t think women blushed anymore. He didn’t think women who beat up thugs blushed at all. He was very much afraid his mouth was hanging open, and he was unable to do a thing about it. “Dr. Dean—”
“Umm?”
“—I’m not sure you understand the seriousness of the situation.”
“Long, tall, and ugly is out to get me,” he said, sitting down opposite her. He shoved a pile of charts aside; several clattered to the floor and she watched them fall, amused. “But since you’re not the hitman, I’m not too worried.”
“Actually, I’m your self-appointed bodyguard.”
“Oh, well, then I’m not worried at all,” he said with feigned carelessness, while his brain chewed that one—bodyguard?—over.
“You could take on an assassin with one hand while writing a grocery list with the other. You’re certainly a match for whoever that guy sends after me. So, do I pay you? Should we even be talking about money? What’s the etiquette here?”
She blinked. “Uh … that won’t be necessary. Dr. Dean—”
“Jared.”
“—may I say, you’re taking this remarkably well?”
“Work in an ER for a year,” he said, suddenly grim. “You learn to recover your equilibrium pretty damned quickly.”
“Touché,” she said quietly.
“So now what?”
“Now you don’t get killed.”
“I mean, what happens now? What do we do?”
“We?”
“We’ve got to sic the cops on the bad guy, right? Do we, er, drop a dime on him?”
“No cops!” she yelped, startling him. She hadn’t been this rattled when Uggo had been trying to smash her face in. “We’ll keep you out of trouble until this blows over. End of plan.”
“Blows over?” he practically shouted. “I have to—we have to put our lives on hold until ole One Eyebrow goes away? Forgive me, but I thought you were a little more pro-active than that.”
“You’re right,” she admitted, “but when the law is involved, I can’t be as pro-active as I’d like.”
“But … aren’t you in trouble, too? Won’t Jerk-off try to kill you?”
“Oh, he’s been trying,” she said casually, as if a large, frightening, ugly man trying to kill her was of as much consequence as a threatened spring shower. “For years. He’ll never get me. Too dumb. Too slow.”
“Too lame a bad guy, sounds like,” he muttered. “It’s almost embarrassing to be on his shit list.”
She frowned. “This is serious. You’re a sitting duck because you’re different.”
“You mean because I have two eyebrows?”
She giggled into her cup and he was absurdly pleased with himself. “I mean, you’re a citizen. A taxpayer, one of the good guys. Not like Carlotti.”
He pounced. “Not like you?”
The smile vanished, poof! “You ask a lot of questions, Dr. Dean.”
“Jared. And you’re still in trouble with this guy, same as I am. Who’s going to look out for you? I mean, if you get sick or short of breath or have chest pains, I’m your man, but if a hit squad starts shooting at you to shut you up, I’ll be the one cowering in the corner with my hands over my ears.”
She smiled and tried to hide it, but he saw it and grinned back at her. “Carlotti knows he has nothing to fear from me in court,” she explained, getting up to refill her cup. She disdained the sugar locker and drank it black, making an appreciative face. He couldn’t believe it—of all the things to happen this evening, beautiful Kara enjoying the hospital’s interpretation of coffee was the strangest. “I can’t testify against him.”
She didn’t elaborate, but Jared was able to figure that one out. There were only two reasons not to testify against anyone: fear—which Kara didn’t seem to know the meaning of—and having something to hide. You didn’t testify for the D.A. if the D.A. had something on you as well.
He wondered what she had done.
“So let’s go see the D.A.,” he said, seizing the bull by the horns.
“You may, if you like,” she said quietly, “but you’ll go alone and I would prefer to wait and see what happens.”
Which meant she knew a lot more than she was telling. He had the feeling that if he insisted on seeing the D.A., he’d for a fact never see her again.
He
