papers on your desk.”
Ripley wrapped her hands around her coffee cup and wished it were his neck. She decided to meet rude with angry. Anger was better than the guilt of knowing she couldn’t explain Ida Mae’s death. She snapped, “I don’t like your tone, Mr. Cage, and I don’t like your implication. I—” Her cell phone rang. “Excuse me.” She flipped open the slim phone. “Dr. Davis.”
“Ripley! You’ve got to get down to autopsy right now.” Tansy’s voice was tight with tension and Ripley fought the quick panic as she remembered where her friend had gone.
To oversee Ida Mae’s autopsy.
Ripley kept her voice steady, professional, all too aware of the RSO sitting across from her. Aware of the pressure of his knees against hers, the accusation that hung in the air as she said, “I’ll be right there. Can you tell me what’s wrong?”
“It’s Ida Mae.” Tansy paused and in the live silence Ripley heard Cage’s beeper sound. He looked at the display, cursed and stood just as Tansy said, “The body’s radioactive, Rip. She’s so hot she’s practically glowing.”
Chapter Three
“I hope this is Whistler’s idea of a joke,” Cage muttered as the elevator descended. His beeper read 911C-B110, which translated to “emergency—contamination in room B110.” Nukes in the basement? That didn’t make any sense.
Aware of two nurses and a civilian sharing the car, he didn’t ask about Ripley’s phone call, but she was headed down to the basement on the double. The thought that they were bound for the same place bothered him, though he couldn’t have said why.
“Coming?” Ripley held the door with obvious impatience. He stepped out into the long, damp hallway, aware of the faint hum beneath his skin, a tingle left over from the intimate press of her knees beneath the café table. He frowned.
This was neither the time nor the place for desire. And it certainly wasn’t the right woman.
Still, he moved closer to her side as they strode down the hall. Harris had said something about a phone call, and her file was missing from his desk. His instincts, which he’d learned to heed, gave him a sharp poke, a hint of suspicion. What if Ripley Davis wasn’t a sloppy doctor after all?
What if she was in trouble?
His mind rejected the idea, but his heart wasn’t so sure. And he’d be damned if he let another woman be hurt while he concentrated on other things.
“Rip!” Tansy Whitmore was waiting in the hall, and Cage thought she looked even worse than she had that morning, when he’d noticed the dark shadows beneath her eyes and the deep grooves beside her mouth. Pretty and blond was one thing. Pretty, blond and haunted was another. It made him wonder just what Dr. Whitmore might be hiding. What she knew. “Ida Mae’s body is—”
“Tansy!” Ripley interrupted with a quick look back at Cage. A line had just been drawn with him on one side, the women on the other. Inclining his head in acknowledgement, he opened the door to B110 and gestured them into the autopsy room. He grimaced when the smell hit.
Death, with a pathetic overtone of air freshener.
“Hey, boss.” Whistler leaned over a body bag with no apparent regard for the funk in the room or the smear of…something on his shirt. Cage had thought before that his nominal second-in-command was a tad strange. Now he was sure of it.
“What’ve we got?” He hadn’t meant to bark the question, but it echoed in the fetid room and battled with the cheerful hip-hop blatting from a radio sitting high above the metal slabs.
Whistler straightened unhurriedly. “We started the radiation sweeps you ordered down here in the basement. You know, work the hospital from bottom to top?”
Cage noticed that the pathologist and the women were huddled at the end of the room. “You paged me for contamination. Where is it?”
And why the hell was there radiation in the morgue?
Whistler jerked his chin at the body, which had been only partially unzipped from its bag. “Right here. Ida Mae Harris is hotter than a Las Vegas showgirl.”
What the—? “Then stand back,” Cage snapped. “You’re not wearing a protective suit, you idiot.” No wonder the others were plastered against the far wall. When Whistler obligingly ambled out of range, Cage said, “Where’s she contaminated?”
“Not ‘where,’ boss.” The tech shook his head and shrugged to indicate that he didn’t understand it. “She’s hot everywhere, and I don’t think it’s surface contamination.” He picked up a portable Geiger counter, cranked it on and waved the wand toward the body bag.
The machine’s howl drowned out both the music and Ripley’s gasp. Cage looked over at her and their eyes met and held. He saw surprised horror. Confusion. And…guilt? Then she glanced over at her friend, and Cage saw the curtain drop over her emotions.
He’d get no more from Ripley Davis. Her priorities were clear. Herself first, the members of her department second and the hospital third. Then maybe the patients fourth or fifth.
Just like every other R-ONC he’d ever dealt with.
With unaccountable disappointment sliding through him, Cage glanced down at the pathologist’s notes. The woman’s name jumped out at him. Ida Mae Harris.
This was the wife of the man who had attacked Ripley the day before. Coincidence? He thought not. Suddenly, the distraught husband’s words in the atrium took on a far more sinister meaning.
Dr. Davis killed my wife.
Cage glanced over at her. It was difficult to see the slender brunette as a killer, but he’d learned the hard way that death in a hospital was not always a simple thing. There were often many players. Many mistakes. In his mind, she slid back from “victim” to “suspect” as he reached for his phone and called the Rad Safety Office. “We need all of you down here, pronto,” he barked when one of the techs answered, grouchy at having his card game interrupted. “We need to isolate the morgue, decontaminate everything in it, and dispose of this body.”
“You can’t do that!”
He glanced over at Ripley. She’d advanced to the center of the room with her hands fisted as though she’d fight him for the body. Her breasts lifted with the force of her agitated breathing, and he fought the elemental sexual awareness that clawed at him when she took a step closer.
He leaned down and had the satisfaction of seeing her eyes widen a fraction, though the surge of heat between them was less satisfying. “Yes, I can and I just did. Dixon may have used the RSO job to harass the female doctors who turned him down for dates, but I’m here to keep this hospital safe. That includes isolating radioactively contaminated items.”
Ripley snapped, “That’s not an ‘item.’ It’s a woman’s body. Her name was Ida Mae Harris, and her husband wants to know why she died. Remember him, Cage? Are you going to tell Harris that he can’t bury his wife because she’s going to spend the next thirty half-lives in a fifty-five-gallon drum in the subbasement? Are you going to tell him we won’t autopsy her because we’re afraid of contamination? He doesn’t care about any of that. Frankly, I don’t care about
