* * *
As the surgeon backed away from the operating table, McKenna Randall, RN, wiped her wet hands on a bloody white towel. They had saved this patient, and for that she felt immense relief, though saving only one out of three severely wounded people in a row wasn’t great odds.
Nodding to the rest of the staff in the operating room, she headed for the door. Someone else would take over now. She’d been on her feet for twenty hours, and though at twenty-six years old she was the youngest nurse in the ER, a break was long overdue. She needed a shower, fresh clothes, food.
She was bone-tired. Her teeth hurt from grinding them together. Her shoulders quaked with spasms. She felt light-headed and a little dizzy from the kind of fatigue that brought back the long days of her past. Though she liked helping people, part of her still yearned for the excitement of her former profession. Nurse Randall tried to fix things that were broken, but Officer McKenna Randall had gone after the cause, hoping to keep things like slashed throats and stabbings from happening in the first place.
The injuries to the patients on the operating table tonight had been grisly. She’d had to keep a tight rein on her emotions in order to curb the desire to head out to the streets for a look at the crime scenes where her patients’ wounds had been inflicted. Her old partner would be at those scenes, plus a lot of other guys she missed on a daily basis—guys who placed their lives on the line every damn day in the name of the law.
But that was then.
This was now.
The tickle at the base of her neck was a telling sign of her inability to remain upright for much longer. Also telling was the insistent ringing in her ears. Another ten minutes on duty and she wouldn’t have been good for anything. Faintness had begun to hover like a big dark cloud. She was imagining things. Voices.
Hell of a thing.
In that operating room she’d been sure someone called to her. Lingering traces of that voice remained with her now, drifting like a breeze in her wake.
“Unacceptable,” she muttered. She’d have to be careful when driving home to keep from becoming a liability.
The hospital was large and filled near to capacity. At 10:00 p.m. the corridor was busy, but no one seemed to notice when she stopped to take in a lungful of air and lean a shoulder against the wall. Not one person, staff or otherwise, paused to ask if she needed help, a stiff cocktail or a chair.
After all, she was the caregiver here.
But for the first time since she’d landed this job, McKenna wasn’t sure she’d make it to the elevator. Weakness was overtaking her. Her nerves were dancing on thin ribbons of fire, as if her body were anticipating something she had no real knowledge of. As if the dizziness might be connected to some kind of premonition.
If she made it to that hot shower just one floor down, she’d get her core temperature back up and lose the shakes that came with too many hours spent in an icy operating room. She’d feel a whole hell of a lot better.
Just have to put one foot in front of the other.
Managing to push off the wall, McKenna headed for the elevator, forgoing her usual habit of taking the stairs. She avoided eye contact with the elevator’s other occupants and fled when the door opened. In the locker room, she stripped quickly and stepped under the showerhead.
Head bowed, eyes closed, she let the stream of water bring new life to her overworked muscles. Turning her face to the rising steam, she tried not to think backward, but couldn’t help it.
One bullet. One damn bullet with her name on it had ended her brief career as a cop. And that was just too frigging bad.
Fifteen minutes later she was dressed and out the hospital’s front door, face scrubbed, wet hair combed. Walking was doable now that the quakes had ceased. Her car wasn’t far away—just across the street in the new parking garage. The crisp fall air was bracing.
When the traffic light turned green, she almost stepped off the curb. Something stopped her.
McKenna spun around.
The sidewalk was fairly crowded with people heading in and out of the hospital. None of those people faced her, spoke to her or addressed her. Not one of them seemed to notice her at all.
Thinking that someone had called her name made McKenna reevaluate the current state of her health. Certainly her brain had been through a lot after being grazed by a bullet. Still, voices?
This time when the light changed, she made it halfway between the curbs before an odd sensation of being shadowed forced her to take a second look at her surroundings. Like most big cities, Seattle could be dangerous if people weren’t careful. Single women out alone at night were wise to be on guard. No one knew that better than a cop.
Former cop.
Another look around showed no one suspicious and gave her no cause for alarm. Yet the sensitive skin at the base of her neck tingled. Strange fluttering sensations deep down inside her body forced her to briefly shut her eyes.
If this weird shit kept up, she’d be better off calling a cab or taking a bus the couple of blocks home. Hearing imaginary voices was scary stuff. The psychiatrist who had cleared her at Seattle PD after her incident wouldn’t like this new turn of events any more than she did.
Not that clearing her had helped, since hopes of returning to the force had been lost with that damn bullet. The Seattle PD demanded retirement after an injury like that. Her next choice had been to finish the nursing degree she had started right out of school.
McKenna walked on. After hopping the next curb, she paused to search the street again. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. She saw the usual long line of parked cars and the vague outline of a guy on a motorcycle pulling over.
Her smile was a symptom of feeling silly, because there was nothing unusual here. Plus, she had options. She could turn around, go back to the hospital, find a bed and sleep this off. A short nap might put things into perspective.
The stubborn tingle on her neck was a persistent sucker, though. She muttered a choice four-letter word she’d picked up on the force and tried to convince herself she was making things up.
“Where are you?”
McKenna whirled, nerves prickling, sure she heard that voice. If she was making it up, she had one hell of an imagination. That voice seemed real, even when logic told her the question couldn’t have been addressed to her. No one waited for her or wondered where she was. She had no family left. The few people who mattered to her knew her schedule and were busy elsewhere at this time of night.
So why did the voice sound familiar?
Steadying herself with both hands on the nearest signpost, McKenna worked to calm herself down. This didn’t have to be a premonition or a warning sign of disaster about to strike...though she distinctly remembered how the bullet entering her skull two years ago had spoken to her just before taking her down. As if that bullet had her name on it. As if that shot had been meant for nobody else.
She had experienced the same flutter of nerves back then, too, seconds before the bullet struck. She hadn’t told anyone about those things. Cops weren’t supposed to be crazy. She’d kept her mouth shut about premonitions and perceptions,
