CHAPTER ELEVEN
“How’d you sleep last night, doc?” Steven Janowski asked as he took the seat opposite Dr. Dylan Roberts in the hospital cafeteria.
About two weeks ago he’d joined the surgical department as a scrub technician and a traveling medical temp to help ease the hospital’s manpower shortage. Unlike most new hires, he needed little training. Said he’d worked as a medic for years in the army. Dylan had to admit he knew his way around in a surgery, wielded instruments like a mechanic with highly tuned tools and kept his head in an emergency. All qualities she admired in any coworker.
She liked the big man. His sense of humor—as macabre as hers—helped ease the tension and relax the team when they seemed to need it most. She’d even considered a romantic interest in him for a day. That was, until she saw him eyeing Dr. Richards—the very handsome, very smart and very gay chief radiology resident—one afternoon. Steve, as he’d asked her to call him, caught her watching him, winked and went back to ogling. From that moment on they were friends.
“Luckily the weather kept most of the idiots inside last night and I was able to get a little sleep after that last case. Thank God there’s designated sleep rooms for the residents. And how about you? Did you find somewhere to sleep?” she asked just as he scooped up hot oatmeal.
Steve grinned, like a mischievous little boy with two frogs in his pocket. “Labor and Delivery was almost completely empty. They took pity on me and let me have a birthing room for the night. Closest I ever plan to come to one of those.”
She laughed then zeroed in on the double scoop of scrambled eggs on her plate.
“Good God, how can you eat those?” he asked, staring at her in absolute horror.
“Like this,” she teased, and slipped a spoonful between her lips, making a moaning sound of appreciation as she ate.
“You are a very sick woman. Powdered eggs? Always reminds me of MRE’s I had to tolerate in the field. And you got two…two helpings! Gag me now.”
She washed down her preferred hospital food with a large drink of orange juice. “I’ll have you know powdered eggs sustained me through middle school, high school, college and four years of medical school.”
“You couldn’t eat anything better?” he asked, working on his own breakfast.
She took another bite, shaking her head. “Not really. My sister was working as a beginning teacher to raise me and my other sister after our parents died. We qualified for free breakfast and lunches at school. Chloe, that’s my middle sister, she lived on junk food and processed sugar. I preferred protein, so powdered eggs it was. It was that or go hungry.”
“I was lucky. My mom worked nights and usually made oatmeal overnight in the crockpot, so I’d have something hot when I got up. Living in Wisconsin makes you appreciate hot food in the mornings.”
“Wisconsin. Wow. So this blizzard probably seems like no big deal to you, then, huh?” she asked as she continued her meal.
“Sleet and snow are pretty much the norm back home. That wind was pretty impressive last night, though.”
Buzzing came from her cell phone lying on the table beside her plate. She glanced at it. The ER. She read the text. Two car collision. Four admits. Fractured legs, contusions, no internal injuries suspected.
“Anything we have to hurry for?” Steven asked before gulping down more oatmeal.
“Some ortho cases. Nothing that can’t wait until we finish breakfast.” She went back to her eggs. “As my sister Bobby always said, breakfast is the most important meal of the day.”
“That the sister that raised you?”
“Yes. She got custody of me and Chloe and set about keeping us all together while working full time.”
“She sounds pretty amazing.”
Dylan couldn’t help a smile. “She is. Last year she gave up teaching to become a private investigator.”
“A private eye?”
She almost laughed at the surprise on her friend’s face. “Yes, sir. She had one case that turned into a major Meth lab explosion northeast of Columbus and the take down of a narcotics ring.”
“I read about that. Almost killed the sheriff in a land slide or something.”
“Cave-in. My sister not only helped save him, she married him two weeks ago and is now a deputy sheriff.”
“Congratulations,” he said, lifting his coffee mug in salute then taking a drink. “So, what does the other sister do?”
“Argues.”
Steve choked on his coffee. “Excuse me?”
Dylan laughed, ate the last bite of food and wiped her mouth. “She’s a lawyer. Which fits her perfectly. Never knew any topic she wouldn’t delight in debating with you. So she argues for a living. Which reminds me.” She picked up her phone, double checking the call list. Still no call from Chloe.
“Something wrong?”
“I’m the youngest, so usually both Bobby and Chloe check in on me, especially when the weather is bad. Bobby called last night and I assured her I wasn’t traveling.”
“But Chloe hasn’t called?”
She shook her head. “Nope. Which is so unlike her.”
“Maybe the storm knocked out her cell service,” Steve said and drained his cup.
“Could be.” She pocketed her phone in her lab coat and stood. “I’ll check on her later. Right now, I have a date with some broken legs in the ER.”
“I’m sure she’s somewhere safe,” Steve said, staring straight into her eyes.
For some reason his confident gaze reassured her that Chloe was probably just fine, somewhere safe and warm.
* * * * *
“How soon do you think it will be before power is restored to the new subdivision?” Mayor Tobias Rawlins asked Harold Russett, the county engineer.
Gage leaned back in his chair while the members of the town council discussed the state of emergency the blizzard blew into Westen the night before. When he’d first taken over as Westen’s sheriff he’d barely tolerated meetings with Tobias and the town council, seeing them as leaches sucking at the marrow of the town to line their own pockets and inflate their egos. What he’d found one night last spring when his world had literally caved in on him, was that these men would step up when necessary. They’d helped to rescue him and then help Westen not only heal from the near destruction a crazed man had planned for the town, but saw it thrive.
These meetings might bore him to tears, but he knew the group would make decisions affecting all the citizens of Westen. Input from every person, including him, was valued and measured into the decisions.
“The electric company has us on their list. Power’s out in sections all over the state, not just our area,” Harold said.
“Which means we’re low man on the totem pole again,” grumbled Grady Conner, a thirty-year-old farmer elected this past fall to represent the local farming interests on the town council.
“The town center, most of the businesses and civic buildings have power,” Harold continued.
“I checked in at the jail over at the courthouse. Power and heat working just fine, as well as communications,” Gage added.
“Good. Good,” Tobias jotted all the information on the legal tablet in front of him. “I checked in with Doc Clint. He was at the clinic. Everything is functional there, too.”
“Lucky for him, he lives right across the street from it,” Gage said, getting chuckles from the others. “Took me nearly an hour to shovel out my truck before Bobby and I could head into the office. Clint said Harriett let him know the electricity was out at her place, so we can assume all the residents north and east of town, as well as near the river, may be without power.”
Tobias made some more notes. “Thanks to Harold having André keeping the county road plow working, the main roads into and through the downtown area are passible. So, our first order of business should be to check with residents to see if they have power.”
The door to the meeting room opened. Fire Chief Deke Reynolds entered. “Sorry it took us so long. Had to shovel out my truck, drop Libby off over at the courthouse, then get gasoline for the snow blowers,” Deke said, taking the vacant seat by Gage.
“You have more than one?” he asked.
“Kyle and some of his football buddies are going to spend the day helping people get out from under the snow.” Deke turned to Colm Riley, the town treasurer. “Connor was in the crew.”
The tall red-headed man grinned. “Good thing. Keep them out of trouble.”
“I told them not to charge, but I suspect some people will be happy to give them tips.” Deke turned to Gage. “Libby’s getting that list together Bobby asked for.”
“What list?” Tobias asked, peeking up from the tablet.
Gage filled him and the others in on the plan to check on the elderly and any residents outside of town with no phone or electricity.
Tobias leaned back in his chair. “How are you going to do that with the roads impassable in the outskirts of the county?”
“Same way Harriett got into work.” Gage grinned at the image of the older lady making her way to work as he left the office to head to the meeting. “Snowmobile.”
* * * * *
The buzzing of his smartwatch alarm woke him. He hit the button and squinted at the message flashing for his attention.
All courts closed due to inclement weather. Office closed through Thursday.
He swiped the screen to bring up the time function. Nine.
Shit. He’d fallen asleep.
Had she come home and found him? Were police on their way?
Panic hit him and he struggled to untangle his arms and legs from the quilts and blankets he’d wrapped around himself in the cold of the night. Sitting with his legs over the side of the bed, he froze and clenched the linens in his gloved hands. He heaved in some air, forcing himself to stay still and listen. At first the drumming of the pulse in his head sounded like someone pounding on the door. Slowly, with each breath, the pounding dimmed. Nothing but the whirring of the furnace broke the almost eerie silence of the condo.
Careful not to make any noise, he walked through her home—past the mess he’d made when he’d trashed it in his frenzy to punish her last night. Collecting his spray paint cans, he hurried out of the apartment and downstairs to the front entrance. He opened the door to find the world had been transformed into an arctic winter wonderland.
Once again, eerie silence greeted him. Nothing moved. No cars. No people. Ice covered all the trees and hung like long daggers from the branches and the edges of the houses’ gutters. Everything else was white. Snow lay on everything and judging from the height of it against the cars, at least half a foot had fallen during the night.
Most importantly, there were no footprints. Anywhere.
Which meant the whore had spent the night with the man from her office.
Laughter bubbled up inside him. He might be trapped inside her home, but no one was going to worry or wonder about him. All of Cincinnati was trapped somewhere.