felt they needed it.
The same officer who’d let her make her phone call came over to say goodbye. “We’ll call you if we have more questions. And we’ll need you to come down in the next day or two and sign a statement.”
“I understand.”
The man paused, then looked her in the eye. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
The words were meant to be kind, but with them came a sense of relief. Because although she was sorry that Matthew had killed himself, she wasn’t sorry that the threat of what he might do was gone. He would never be able to reach out and hurt his daughter. She was glad that he’d aimed his fury at her and no one else.
Still, she thanked the officer and asked him to call her when they were ready for her to sign that statement. Then he strode toward the elevator.
Tomorrow there would still be talk, and maybe for a few weeks after that, but the horror of today would hopefully fade. Maybe once the glass in her office door was replaced.
But would her guilt? None of this would have happened if she had followed her head rather than her heart all those years ago. Her hands clenched at her sides.
“Don’t.” Kaleb’s voice came to her, reminding her he was still there. Still beside her.
She looked at him. “Don’t what?”
“Blame yourself for this. I can see the wheels turning.” He touched one of her hands.
She sucked down a deep breath, forcing her fingers to relax. “He was my ex-husband.”
“Did you tell him to come here and do what he did?”
“No, but—”
“No buts. This was all on him.” He gave her arm a gentle squeeze. “Seriously, are you okay?”
She shook her head. “No. But I will be. I have to be.”
“Do you want me to drive you home?”
“No. I have my car.”
His glance brushed over her face. “You’re sure?”
“I am. Thank you again.” She hesitated. “If you hadn’t locked that door when you had...”
She could be dead. Matthew hadn’t come to the hospital just to talk to her. Not with a gun. If Kaleb hadn’t secured the door, he could have charged right into the room and shot her. And then what would have happened to Chloe?
“It worked out.” He followed her into her office and glanced at the items that had fallen onto the floor when he’d sailed across her desk to get to her. “I’m sorry about your phone and laptop.” The screen had detached from the keyboard and was lying next to the wall. He picked up the pieces and put them on the desk, along with her ruined cell phone.
“It’s nothing.” And really it wasn’t, compared to everything that could have happened.
Then she picked up the framed picture of Chloe. Just a little while ago she’d been trying to hide it from Kaleb for reasons that weren’t entirely clear to her. Even when she was on the phone with Roxy, she hadn’t mentioned Chloe’s name. Why? Was she trying to protect her daughter? Or herself in the face of a handsome man?
Kaleb nodded at the frame, a frown between his brows. “Your sister?”
Sister? Oh, Patricia.
It would be so easy to say yes, that it was a picture of her late sister as a child. But she wouldn’t. Because none of it mattered anymore.
“No. It’s not my sister. It’s Chloe.” There was a long pause. “My daughter.”
MADDY HAD A DAUGHTER?
Four days later, on his way to see a patient, Kaleb was still dumbfounded. He’d wondered what kinds of other things she had hidden beneath that cool exterior. Well, now he knew. She had a child.
It should make it even easier to keep his distance, but it didn’t. It made it harder. Especially when the news media kept replaying the story over and over. The hospital had hired additional security guards and were installing more cameras at the entrances.
He had an ex who had done some pretty terrible things, but he certainly couldn’t picture Janice coming to the hospital in hopes of killing him.
And Maddy had been terrified for her child. He remembered her trying to get to her phone when he’d pinned her under the desk. How she’d been desperate to make a call. She’d been frantic that she might have lost her daughter that day.
Kaleb knew the exact moment he’d lost his daughter. It hadn’t been to a crazed gunman, but it had been to a killer nonetheless. No, he’d lost his sweet little girl to an aggressive cancer, the disease yanking the life from her body almost before he’d got to know her.
Only Kaleb had no pictures of her scattered around his apartment. They were all hidden deep in a closet. He couldn’t bear to look at them. And maybe that was the reason Janice hadn’t been able to look at him. But she’d sure been able to look at someone else.
Forget about it. Dwelling on things he couldn’t change did no one any good.
He strode into the hotel and stopped at the desk. “Which room?”
“One thirty. Marian Jennings. She thinks she’s having a reaction to some pain meds she received after surgery.”
One of the things that places like the Seattle Consortium were good at was keeping their guests’ private lives private. That included helping sequester them after surgeries and procedures. Patients were now going to fancy hotels that had spa-like atmospheres to recover. With room service and someone at their beck and call twenty-four hours a day, it was the perfect setup. Especially with concierge medicine to help ease the way.
Kaleb went up in the elevator, doing his best to forget what had happened at the hospital, but it wasn’t easy. Maddy’s face kept coming to mind, the terror he’d seen in it. Then there was the crazed look of her ex-husband as he’d stared at them through that window. The man had wanted to kill her. It had been there in his eyes. If Kaleb hadn’t been there, would Maddy still be alive?
Something else he needed to stop dwelling on.
Kaleb found the room and knocked on the door.
“Yes?”
“Dr. McBride here to see Marian Jennings.”
A man opened the door. Tall and thin with a nervous twitch beneath one eye, he ushered Kaleb into the room. “It’s my wife. She’s breaking out in hives. We think it might be from one of her medications.”
Propped up in a huge bed, the petite woman had a bandage wrapped over her head and under her chin. Both of her eyes were black and swollen.
Plastic surgery. He’d seen it many times
