pants and a flannel shirt beneath the white lab coat that flapped open as he moved closer. He smelled of cinnamon.
She watched him move something around in his mouth. He made a smacking sound, then pushed what appeared to be a round candy into his cheek as he eyed her with pale blue eyes faded by age.
Although he had a stethoscope around his neck, he looked nothing like any doctor she’d ever seen.
“Hello,” he said, giving her a smile, the candy making his cheek protrude on the one side. “I’m Dr. Gene Brubaker.”
She was in a hospital. Anna wet her dry lips as she glanced around the room, her thoughts jumbled, her head aching. The drapes were drawn on the window, but she could see through a slim opening. It was dark out.
She glanced at her wrist. No watch. Instead, she found that her arm was hooked up to an IV. “What…time…”
“Almost three—a.m.,” he said.
She nodded, time meaning absolutely nothing right now.
The doctor handed her a glass of water from the nightstand beside her bed and waited while she drank greedily.
“Easy,” he warned as she choked on the water. “You’re in a hospital, miss. You’ve had a car accident.”
She blinked. A car accident? Her heart began to race. “My son. Tell me my son is all right.”
He frowned, his thick gray eyebrows beetling together. “Your son?”
“Tyler. Where is Tyler?” She tried to sit up, but he rested a heavy hand on her shoulder as he took the empty cup from her.
“Easy now. Let’s just take it a step at a time. Can you tell me your name?”
“Anna…” For a moment, she couldn’t think of her last name. She swallowed, her throat raw, the headache blinding. “Collins. Please, I have to see my son.” Her voice broke. “Tell me he’s all right. Tell me he made it.”
“Try to remain calm,” he said, frowning down at her with grandfatherly concern. “Your son was in the car with you? How old is your son?”
“Tyler’s four. You have to help him!” Her voice rose and she began to sob as she clutched at one edge of his white lab coat. “Just tell me he’s alive. Please.”
She was hysterical now, sobbing and gripping at his coat, crying, “Save my son. Please save my son.”
“Sheila,” the doctor said, and the nurse she’d seen before moved into her line of vision. Anna felt something prick her skin. Darkness moved along the edge of her vision again, that silent black emptiness calling her back.
She’d been in the dark too long. She clutched tighter at the doctor’s white lab coat. “My son. Please.” Her voice rasped as the heavy weight of the drug worked to pull her under.
Dr. Brubaker nodded. “Don’t you worry now. We’ll take care of it.”
Her fingers loosened on his coat, her arm dropping back to the bed. Her eyes fluttered. She felt the dead weight of her body as she was dragged down, back into that dark nothingness.
OFFICER D.C. WALKER SHOOK the rain off like a duck as he entered the small, quiet hospital. He caught his reflection in the window as he passed the empty nurses’ station. He looked like hell. But he felt worse as he pushed open the door to the doctors’ lounge.
Doc Brubaker glanced up from the chair where he was sprawled. It gave Walker little comfort that Doc looked worse than he did.
“Any luck finding the boy?” Doc asked anxiously.
Walker shook his head as he shrugged out of his rain jacket and tossed it onto one of the orange plastic chairs. He helped himself to a stale doughnut.
Without asking, Doc reached for the coffeepot and poured him a cup, then refilled his own.
“Thanks,” Walker said as he took the coffee and plopped down in an empty chair. The coffee looked like black sludge, but as long as it contained caffeine and was hot, he wasn’t about to complain. He couldn’t remember a longer night and it still wasn’t over.
“I called out Search and Rescue,” he said, between bites of the doughnut. “They’ve combed the shoreline and the woods, but so far nothing. It’s so damned steep where the car went off. Water’s deep there and with the spring runoff, real murky. The dive team’s gearing up to go down.”
Doc shook his head. “I hate to think of a four-year-old out there, as cold as it is. I suppose he could still be in the car.”
“If he was strapped in a car seat in back, she might not have been able to get him out.”
Dr. Brubaker rubbed a hand over his face. “The only way the boy might have survived is if there’s a trapped air bubble. Stranger things have happened.”
Walker studied him for a long moment wondering if the doc really put much store in that. “Mac’s gonna get his biggest tow truck up there at soon as it gets light. He’s not sure he has enough cable to pull the car out though. Might have to borrow a newer towing rig from one of the large towns. Your patient say anything else?”
Doc shook his head. He definitely looked older since his wife had died. Walker thought about the rumors he’d heard that Doc was dying. He didn’t put much stock in them though. Rumors were always circulating in Shadow Lake. And just because Doc was getting his affairs in order, so what?
Like the rumor going around about Police Chief Nash’s pretty young wife, Lucinda. But who the hell married a woman half his age and thought she’d be faithful? Walker had learned the hard way about infidelity during his one and only marriage. Not that he was bitter. Much.
Shadow Lake was a hotbed for affairs, especially during the long cold winter months when the population dropped. There was a standing joke that the residents who wintered-in here switched wives and girlfriends and then held a roundup in the spring to divvy up the kids. He used to think that was funny.
“Were you able to reach her husband?” Doc asked. He sounded tired and he certainly hadn’t been looking well lately. But Walker figured that was to be expected given how many years he and Gladys had been together. He imagined it must have been hell for Doc to watch his wife waste away like that and in so much pain.
“No answer at the husband’s house,” Walker said. “I left a message, but for all we know the husband was in the car too. Hell, he might have been the one driving.”
“I hadn’t thought of that,” Doc said. “All I could think about was the little boy.”
It was too bad Doc had never had any kids of his own, Walker thought.
Fortunately Anna Collins had been in a vehicle with an in-car emergency system that had notified the police department the minute her air bag deployed and tried to raise the car’s occupant on the built-in cell phone.
When no one responded, the operator had given the police dispatcher the location of the car via the in-car global-positioning system and the Shadow Lake dispatcher had radioed the police department where Walker had taken the call.
Walker
