Chapter Five
The nurse stared at Kini, horror chasing all the blood out of the woman’s face, and she said much too loudly, “The CDC is here?”
Behind her, the sudden and complete lack of noise from the rest of the room told Kini a large portion of the people waiting had heard the receptionist’s question.
So much for keeping it on the down-low.
“No.” Kini really had to work to keep from clenching her teeth and shredding every word out of her mouth. “I’m here on behalf of the CDC. Where is your chief of staff?”
She pointed over her shoulder. “In the back.”
Well, wasn’t that helpful. Not.
Hanging on to her temper with both hands, Kini stepped around the desk and went through the doorway behind the reception desk. If that idiot’s inability to lower her volume started a panic, she was going to say something…unpleasant.
She passed through a hallway that opened out into a circular bullpen with exam rooms radiating off of it like spokes on a wheel. A half dozen people, all in scrubs, were working like the room was on fire.
No one seemed to have noticed Smoke or her.
One of the women seemed calmer that the rest, typing with a speed that should have had the keyboard giving off radiation. Kini strode over to her. “I need to speak with the doctor on duty.”
The woman glanced up, a frown on her face. “I’m sorry, you can’t be—”
“My name is Kini Kerek,” she said, interrupting the other woman. “I’m a nurse with the CDC.”
“Oh.” The woman’s posture relaxed a bit. “Thank God Dr. Flett called you in.” She turned before Kini could correct her assumption and called across the room to a tall, lean man with salt-and-pepper hair. “Dr. Flett. The CDC is here.”
Did everyone think the CDC showed up in force at every suspicious infectious hot spot? They didn’t have that kind of money.
God didn’t have that kind of money.
Dr. Flett looked at her then gave Smoke a quick once-over. “The CDC?” He didn’t sound impressed or happy to see them.
Kini walked toward him. “Kini Kerek, CDC Public Health department.” Smoke stood so close behind her she could feel the heat radiating off his body. “This is Lyle Smoke—”
“CDC Outbreak Task Force,” Smoke finished for her.
She had to work to keep her attention on Flett because she really wanted to gape at Smoke and ask, really?
He gave her a brief nod and said one word. “River.”
River had managed to recruit Smoke already? “That was fast,” she said under her breath.
“Who called you?” Dr. Flett demanded. He pointed an accusing gaze at the woman she’d just spoken to. “Did you call them, Janet?”
“No, sir. I thought you called them.”
Before he could accuse anyone else, Kini spoke up. “No one called us. We’re following up on a tip from a member of the public.”
Flett rolled his eyes. “You investigate every crackpot and conspiracy theorist in the state?”
She gave him a tight smile. “When they assault me and accuse me of killing people with an infection I know nothing about, yes.”
The doctor shook his head and went back to the chart he’d been looking at. “People are overreacting. It’s just the start of flu season.”
“So, you admit you have patients with flu-like symptoms? What about breathing difficulties? Pneumonia?”
He stared at her like she was asking for military launch codes.
Idiot.
Kini gathered all the patience she could muster and tried to project it into her voice. “Right now, it’s myself and Mr. Smoke investigating. If all you’ve got is a few people with the flu and nothing more serious, we’ll be in, out, and gone before you know it. If what you’ve got is more than that…” She paused to lean toward him and lowered her voice. “You want us on the ground here early.”
“This is my hospital,” he said, his tone sharp, contempt curling his lip.
Don’t go there. Do not go there.
“These are my people.” He continued looking down at her as if he were standing on a pulpit and she was a lowly petitioner. “I’m in charge.”
He went there.
Moron.
Kini managed to hang on to her temper well enough to say, “Not my call to make, but the CDC doesn’t take over if it doesn’t have to. We’d rather work with you behind the scenes. Things stay calmer that way.”
He stared at her for a couple of seconds then glanced at Smoke before, finally, saying, “We’ve had three deaths in the last couple of weeks, all from rapid onset pneumonia. Testing hasn’t come back yet on whether it’s bacterial or viral.”
Finally cooperation.
“Any current cases?”
“Four. I just admitted a new one about ten minutes ago.” He paused and cleared his throat. “There may be more in the waiting room.”
If he suspected more, what the hell were they doing in the waiting room? Gleefully infecting all those other people?
Saying that out loud would not lead to continued cooperation. She sucked in a breath and held it. No telling the idiotic man he was not only narcissistic, but stupid, too. He’d just get all arrogant and whiny.
By the time she was done talking to this jackass she was going to have a hernia.
Behind her, Smoke shifted his weight.
When had he gotten that close?
He tapped her on the shoulder. “A word?” He didn’t wait for her response, looking at Dr. Flett and giving the man a nod before guiding her away.
“What is it?” she asked him. “Did you get a text from River?”
“No.” He glanced at a couple of nurses who’d paused to read charts a couple of feet away.
They moved off.
“You looked like you were going to go boom.”
She winced. “That bad, huh?”
He nodded once and gave her a thorough visual examination that left her with a full-body blush. “Okay?” His gaze was…hot, possessive, and completely inappropriate.
She wanted more.
No. No. No. More was bad. More would lead to another morning of waking up naked on his chest. Her libido had barely survived the first time; it couldn’t take a second time without tying the man down and having its wicked, wicked way with him.
She cleared her throat instead of fanning herself. “I’ll try not to have a stroke.” She practically ran back to Dr. Flett. “My apologies. Would it be possible for me to obtain your patients’ recent histories and take blood samples?”
He looked at her like she’d just crawled out from under a rock. “Fine, but stay out of the way of my staff.”
“Of course.” She pinched her lips together to prevent the words, prick and dick, from coming out of her mouth. Her mother would rise from her grave to stick a bar of soap in it.
Flett called over a nurse and ordered her to assist Kini, then turned on his heel and disappeared into an exam room.
Kini gave the woman a commiserating smile. “Sorry to disrupt things, but all I need is the histories on the patients with pneumonia. I’ll also need to come back to take blood samples from them.”
“Okay.” She led them over to a stack of charts, grabbed four, and handed them to Kini. “Why do you need to come back for the samples?”
“I didn’t bring my collection kit with me,” Kini said. She would have, but Smoke’s monster machine would have needed a sidecar. “Will returning later for them be a problem?”
“We’ll mention it at shift change if you’re not done before then.”
“Thanks.” Kini looked at the charts then at her new colleague. How the hell had he gotten hired in just one day?
He met her gaze with a self-contained I’m innocent expression that was beginning to drive her crazy.
She took the charts, found an unoccupied bit of space on the counter, and began reading.
Three of the four patients all reported having flu-like symptoms for the last week. Fever, tiredness, achy muscles in the chest and back. What drove them to the ER was a worsening shortness of breath. One patient described it as feeling smothered by heavy blankets.
Blood had been drawn for chemistry and blood cell analysis, but the results weren’t in the chart yet.
An alarm went off in the one of the exam rooms. Two nurses and Dr. Flett rushed over and went inside. The alarm was shut off, but the nurse who came out of the room ran to a cart of medical supplies and pushed it at a run back to the room.
Kini glanced at Smoke then headed toward it.
She didn’t need to go inside to see Flett inserting a trach tube down the patient’s throat and into their lungs, then connect that to a ventilator. The patient had lost the battle to breathe on her own.
She looked at the room number then at the charts in her hands. It was one of the hantavirus possibilities.
Another nurse came over and poked her head into the room. “Lab results are back.”
Flett nodded at her but didn’t pause as he listened to the patient’s chest.
“Is the patient’s hematocrit elevated?” Kini asked. When the nurse hesitated, she added, “I’m with the CDC, evaluating this patient.”
“Um.” The nurse turned away and consulted some paperwork on the desk. “Yes, it’s slightly elevated. White cell count is up a little too.”
She winced. Well, that wasn’t good news. “Thanks.”
The nurse returned to her work.
Smoke stepped into her space. “What does an elevated hematocrit mean?”
“Hm, oh, often at this stage, the body overreacts to the presence of the virus by flooding the lungs with fluid. It shows up in the blood as a kind of dehydration, which raises the hematocrit. It’s one of the diagnostic criteria for Hantavirus Pulmonary Syndrome. That would be the official diagnosis if the patient has the hantavirus. Most non-health-care people would just call it pneumonia.”
“So, it’s here.”
“Very possible.”
He looked at her. “Now what?”
She squared her shoulders. “Dr. Flett isn’t going to like the now what. So, I’ll have to be sure I follow procedures perfectly. I need to go over these charts and write an analysis/summary of them, take samples, and make my recommendations.”
“Doesn’t sound quick.”
“I can’t afford to make mistakes.” Mistakes could kill. “How long will it take before the tires are fixed on my rental?”
Smoke’s answer was to take out his cell phone and call his uncle.
“Twenty minutes,” he reported after a series of one- and two-word sentences.
She looked up at him. “How do you do that?”
“What?”
“Say in a couple of words what most people have to use entire sentences to communicate.”
He shrugged, his wide shoulders stretching the fabric of his T-shirt. “Talented?”
He was going to drive her crazy.
She pulled out her tablet from her purse and began making notes. It took her about fifteen minutes to finish, and Smoke stayed with her the entire time. He didn’t wander around, pace, or ask questions. He watched the entire room like he expected bad guys to stroll in looking for an argument.
“Stop it,” she hissed at him.
“Stop what?” He sounded confused.
She glanced at him. He looked it, too.
“You’re like a coiled cobra ready to strike, and it’s making me…edgy.”
“Coiled cobra?”
She sighed. “You know what I mean.” She waved her hand in front of him, indicating all of him. “You’re ready to go into battle, only there’s no one here for you to beat up.”
He grunted, seemed to consider her complaint, then spoke softly. “That’s who I am. My grandfather says I live up to my name. A silent watcher who knows to wait until the right moment to make my move.”
A shiver went down her back and she stared at him.
“I’m not a nice man.” It almost seemed like an afterthought. A confession he hadn’t thought to make until now.
“Are you trying to scare me?”
“You…you’re the last person I want to scare.” He smiled and it was so full of sexual promise it devastated her.
It took two deep breaths for her to recover and say, “You’re a menace.”
“Yep,” he said, drawing the word out.
Kini focused her gaze on her tablet. Work. She had work to do, and salivating all over her partner shouldn’t be on her list. As she made note of this last patient’s name and address, she realized she’d seen it before. Or something close.
She scrolled through her notes and wondered if she was seeing connections where there weren’t any.
“Smoke, would you look at these addresses? Are they close together?”
He went through them. “Yeah, they’re all within a five-mile radius.”
“Oh.” Damn, she’d thought she’d found something useful, but five miles was a lot of space.
“They’re all on the edge of the Zion National Park. There isn’t anyone else out there, just them.”
Understanding animated her voice. “Oh.”