Maggie shut down my plans to storm the castle and forced me to lower my metaphorical sword. A quick call to one Valerie Burke, the school nurse at John W. Rosen Elementary School, where Maggie also worked, gave us the inside scoop.
Valerie, it seemed, picked up shifts on the weekends at the hospital to earn extra money, and she claimed the vultures were already circling Madison Memorial. One whiff of my presence would send them divebombing to pick my brain like a ripe carcass for tidbits about Jane. That was how we ended up parked at a Blue Hippo gas station two blocks from the medical complex.
“This will work,” Maggie assured me. “Valerie is good people.”
Squirming in my seat, I kept my mouth shut. I didn’t like dealing with unknowns. Especially when the variables were people I hadn’t met to evaluate.
“That’s her.” A tentative smile formed on her lips. “Let’s do this.”
Valerie was all smiles as she exited her minivan and aimed a wave at us. A plastic grocery store bag swung from her fingertips, a metronome indicating the level of her excitement, and all I could think was how much I wanted to snatch it from her hand and duck into the bathroom to change.
“You’re really her,” she said, sounding starstruck. “I heard around town you’d joined the force like the man who—” She snapped her mouth shut before compounding her faux pas. “I meant to say like your father.”
“I really am me.” I resisted the urge to tug my sleeves lower. The way Valerie stared at my arms left me twitchy and eager to get this done. “I appreciate your help. I would appreciate it more if you didn’t mention this to anyone.”
“Not even my husband?” She tugged on her earlobe. “It’s just that he’s big into cryptozoology, and he’s always been fascinated by your case.”
A monster hunter was interested in me? Tabloids had called me an alien a few times, but a monster . . . That was new. Maybe I ought to send him a cast of my feet as a thank you for his wife’s help.
The sharp intake of Maggie’s breath heralded an avenging angel taking wing, and I almost felt sorry for the woman. Almost.
“Thanks for all your help, Valerie.” She placed herself between me and the woman she now viewed as a threat instead of as a friend. “We have to scoot, but I’ll call you later. We can do lunch next week and discuss those immunizations pamphlets you mentioned.”
“Do you think I could get just one. . . ?” She reached in her purse, retrieved her phone and waggled it at Maggie. “My husband will never believe me without proof. Pics or it didn’t happen, you know?”
“I asked for this favor as your friend,” Maggie said in a tight voice.
“It’s fine, Mags.” I waved her off and took my place next to Valerie. The sooner I fed the troll, the sooner she would give us what we came for and crawl back under her bridge. “Do the honors?”
Maggie accepted the phone, framed the shot and glared over the screen at Valerie. The other woman’s excitement caused her to miss the death of their friendship in Maggie’s eyes, but I saw it, and my heart squeezed at being the cause. “Three . . . two . . .”
Valerie flung her arm around my shoulders like we were old pals and hammed it up for the camera while my flesh crawled under her hand. She formed a gun with the fingers of her free hand, then blew across the tips like she had bagged and tagged one of the mythical beasts her husband played at hunting.
Gooseflesh rippled up my arms in a stinging wave. Once my voice reached my ears, the words diffused, as though they had traveled lightyears in order to reach this moment. “I don’t like to be touched.”
The thumping of my pulse grew deafening. Maggie rushed forward, her lips moving on soundless words I was past hearing. She pried Valerie off me, slapped the phone across the woman’s palm and marched her to the van. Not until after the driver-side door slammed shut in a fit of temper and the vehicle dipped out of the lot did I realize I had taken a step toward her parking spot.
“Are you okay?” Maggie moved to touch my hand but stopped short. “You look . . . odd.”
“I’m fine,” I mumbled, still staring in the direction the van had gone. I rubbed my arm where Valerie had touched me until the sting of violation lessened and dragged my gaze to Maggie. “I just—People still manage to surprise me. Not in a good way, either.”
“Go change.” Maggie pressed the bag into my hands. “I don’t know how much time this bought us.”
I let her shuffle me off to the bathroom where I traded my jeans and top for peach-colored scrubs. Valerie had included a light jacket made from coordinating material, though its deep wrinkles convinced me it been living in the bottom of her locker at work since the weather turned hot. I emerged and let Maggie tug down my hair and finger-comb it into a curtain of soft waves that fell around my shoulders. I never wore my hair loose. Even Dad would do a double take before IDing me.
“Come on.” She jogged to her car, and I followed. “Let’s make this snappy.”
Part of me expected the local skunk ape—or whatever they’d dubbed the bigfoot rumored to live in Cypress Swamp—enthusiast club to be camped out and awaiting our arrival at Madison Memorial. But it seemed Valerie had been content with her photo.
We parked in the back of the lot, and Maggie exhaled, her hands flexing open and closed around the wheel. “Do you want me to go in with you?”
Thanks to her job, Maggie knew a gaggle of parents, grandparents and other assorted student relatives. Going out with her was like being the plus one of a minor celebrity in its own way. Everyone knew her or knew someone who knew her through their kids or her parents. Inconspicuous, she was not.
“It’s probably best if you don’t.” I held the door handle in a death grip. “You don’t have to wait. I can get a ride home.”
Maggie pinched my thigh, and I jumped. “And miss the recap? Are you crazy?” She gestured to a box on the backseat. “I have papers to grade. I can keep myself occupied. Take all the time you need.”
“Here goes nothing.”
“Or everything.” She said what I had been thinking. She leaned over, opened the door and shoved until I worked up the courage to exit the car. “Call if you need an extraction. I can fake an exploding appendix, you know, cause a distraction.”
Huffing out a laugh, I shut the door and set out for the front entrance. As much as I wanted to duck my head, that would draw attention. So I set my shoulders back, kept my chin high, and walked in like I owned the place. No one looked twice at me. No one stopped me. Scrubs were their own kind of camouflage in this place. I hit the bank of elevators, rode up to the third floor and wandered around until I located the correct room. I stood there with my palm flattened against the wood for so long an actual nurse came to check on me.
“You must be new.” She cocked her head at me. “I’m blanking on your name, but you look so familiar.”
I offered her a bland smile. “I just have one of those faces.”
“Maybe so.” She lowered her gaze to where my nametag ought to be and wrinkled her forehead. “What did you say your name was again?”
My lips parted to deliver the first lie that popped into my head—Valerie Burke at your service—when the door opened under my hand.
“I thought I heard voices.” Buck glanced between us. “Everything okay out here, ladies?”
“I came to check on the patient,” I blurted, and both of them glanced at me.
Buck’s mouth fell open when he looked at me, really looked, then he snapped his jaw shut and stepped aside so I could enter the room. “I’ve been expecting you.”
The actual nurse started to protest when he cast her a dazzling smile. “Thanks so much for your help earlier. I thought I would die of thirst before my relief got here. You’re a peach.”
“I brought you a refill.” She offered him a foam cup. “Call down to the nurses’ station if you need anything else. I’ll be here until midnight.”
“I’ll do that.” He winked before shutting the door on her pinkened cheeks, then he turned and flashed his dimples at me. “Hello, nurse.”
“You said Jane was awake.” I shoved him aside and drank my fill of the slight figure propped up in the hospital bed, tubes snaking over her face and slithering down her arms, her fair skin as pale as the starched white sheets tucked under her. “Has she spoken?”
“She was awake when I called you, but they aren’t sure it’s going to stick.” He kept his voice low. “She hasn’t spoken, but she appears to understand what’s being said to her.”
I passed a hand across my mouth to keep my warring thoughts contained.
“I’ll give you two a minute alone.” He reached for the door. “You were smart to play dress-up, Boudreau. I had to unplug the room’s phone. Otherwise it rings off the hook. The press has gotten wind of her, and you don’t want them to pick up your scent while they’re at it.”
“Thanks, Buck.”
After he exited the room and the door snicked shut, I approached the bed. Jane wore a standard hospital gown, the short sleeves exposing her bare arms and the rose gold ribs that matched mine down to the spacing. I reached for the thin sheet, intending to tuck it under her chin and hide her arms from the curious. It was what I would have wanted. But her eyes snapped open and latched onto me.
“Hi.” I cleared my throat and tried again. “I’m Officer Luce Boudreau.”
“You . . . ” she whispered “ . . . where there.”
“You remember.” That had to be a good sign. “How are you feeling?”
Jane gave a weak shrug in answer.
“Can you tell me your name?” I inched closer so she didn’t have to strain to see me from the corner of her eyes. She had yet to turn her head, as though it were too heavy to shift on the pillow. “Do you remember how you ended up in the water?”
No answer, but her fingers twitched. No. She was curling them. Asking me to hold her hand.
The automatic response—I don’t like to be touched—never made it past my lips.
Her right palm flexed open again, and I slid my left across hers. She laced our fingers in a steady grip and raised our joined hands until the topside of her forearm brushed the underside of mine. The metal in our skin struck, and a harmonious chord resonated in the quiet between us, as though we were tuning forks testing our pitch against one another.
A lukewarm wave of energy lapped against the distant shores of my mind, the sensation at once alien and yet familiar, the ragged contrasts so marked as to make me question if the sensation left in its wake ought to be labeled as pleasure or pain.
“What was that?” I tugged on my hand, but she held fast. “What does it mean?”
A shuddering gasp parted Jane’s lips in the faintest hint of a smile, but that small exertion—whatever it had been—caused her eyes to droop, too heavy for her to prop open another minute. Her muscles relaxed in a cascade until her arm hung suspended by our joined fingers. Careful not to brush metal against metal a second time, I lowered her arm to the mattress.
“Jane?”
Her chest rose and fell in even sleep.
“I’m going to let you rest.” The longer I stayed, the higher the risk for us both. And I had to get out of here, had to process what had just happened. “When you wake, if you want to see me again, tell the officer on duty. He knows how to reach me. They all do.”
Jane didn’t stir again, so I exited the room and left the same instructions with Buck. I hit the elevators, my skin paper-thin; fragile in a disturbing and familiar way. Lost in the possibilities, I didn’t sense the danger until the sliding doors locked me in a metal box with a predator.
“It’s dangerous for you to be here.” Cole kept to his corner of the elevator, which didn’t mean much when he could stand in the middle and brush his fingertips against either side. “The press got tipped off about ten minutes ago about a woman matching your description who stole scrubs from an employee’s unlocked vehicle then proceeded to impersonate a nurse to gain admission to a restricted area.”
Valerie. That little twerp. Covering her tail in case I got caught.
“I had a plan.” I set my jaw. “Looks like that plan needs to change.”
“I can help with that,” he offered.
“Why?” I situated my back in one corner and faced him. “Why are you here and why help me?”
“I’m here for the same reason as you, I imagine. Members of my firm helped facilitated Ms. Doe’s rescue. I have a vested interest in her welfare.” He didn’t look at me, just watched the numbers ticking down to the lobby. “I have an SUV waiting in the employee parking deck under the hospital.” I didn’t ask how he’d made that happen. “You fill me in on Jane’s condition, and I’ll give you a lift home. Sounds like a fair trade to me.” He cut his eyes toward me, his lips twitching at one corner. “You can call Ms. Stevens and tell her that her services are no longer required.”
“How did you—?” I vibrated with rage. “You followed me.”
“Yes or no.” He lifted his chin, drawing my attention to the countdown. “Do you really want to explain how you got those scrubs or what your interest is in Ms. Doe?”
“Yes,” I bit out from between clenched teeth.
His wide palm smacked the grid, and the button for the first floor went dark. A circle marked with a P, I assumed for parking deck, illuminated. This time he didn’t bother retreating to his corner but stood his ground, crowding me without meaning to, invading my space just by existing.
The doors opened on a shadowy concrete tomb I’d had no idea existed until this moment. I had taken a step before Cole swung one of those tree trunks he called arms out and barred the exit. While he scanned the area, treating me as a civilian and as a liability, I considered facing the vultures to escape a solo car ride with him.
“We’re clear,” he pronounced, shoving off the doors as they whirred in distress over their inability to close, and left me to match my strides to his. We reached his black SUV, and he stopped. “This is me.”
“Yeah, I saw you in it earlier.” I climbed in once he unlocked his behemoth. “Canton is a small town, but it’s not so small that we should keep meeting like this.”
Cole didn’t rise to the bait. He strapped in, waited until I had done the same, then turned over the engine and cut a sedate path out the exit into the more familiar parking lot at the rear of the facility.
“You can drop me at the Blue Hippo the next block over.” There. That sounded polite. Ish.
“I can drive you—”
“No.” I strove for calm while my nerves jangled from the strange resonance that still vibrated through my bones. “No thank you.” I shot my ride a text. “Maggie and I have unfinished business in town.”
Cole didn’t need to know that business involved stuffing my face with all the greasy junk I had banned from the house. Burgers, fries, onion rings, milk shakes . . . All items on Dad’s forbidden-foods list. All items I needed stat so I could drown my worries in canola oil.
“Yesterday was your birthday.”
I waited for the other shoe to drop. “And?”
He rolled a shoulder, and I swear the car dipped to one side. “Happy birthday.”
“Thanks, but it’s not really my birthday.”
“That’s why you don’t care if your friends celebrate it a day late.”
The way he said it, with zero inflection, as a known fact, had me tasting blood as I bit down on my tongue in an attempt at civility. The guy had helped me out twice now, and I owed him. To pay him back, I would give him a pass on his invasion of my privacy.
“Oh, look. There’s Maggie.” I didn’t wait for him to turn in to the gas station. I jumped out when he yielded to a pedestrian on a crosswalk. The glass whirred down behind me, and he glared through the open window. Backing toward the parking lot, I threw up my hand. “Bye, Cole.”
He did this thing with his lips, twisting his mouth into a vicious curve that wasn’t a smile—a silent snarl maybe? Either way, it looked much better from across two lanes of traffic than it would have from across his console.
A horn blared behind him, and he was forced into traffic. I watched until he vanished out of sight then trotted over to Maggie, who was busy shuffling papers and cleaning out the passenger seat for me. A red pen balanced over her left ear, and I didn’t mention it even after she put her other supplies away.
“Maybe we should consider upgrading Cole’s friend status,” she said when I opened the door. “He did you a solid back there. One minute I’m grading papers, minding my own business, and the next a news van almost rear-ends me getting into position by the front doors.”
“We can thank Valerie for that, I’m sure.” I shifted my hips and pulled a highlighter out from under me. “Cole said someone called in a tip about a stolen nurse uniform and gave them my description.”
“I had no idea she was married to a fanatic.” She pulled out into traffic and aimed us toward Miss Pansy’s. “I’ll make sure the uniform gets washed and returned.”
“Mags, stop beating yourself up over it. You’d never let a crazy within spitting distance of me on purpose.”
“I keep replaying it in my head, and it looked so bad.” She winced. “Really bad. Like a setup. Like I had traded favors with her. I would suspect me if I were you.”
“Canton is a small town. Our friendship is common knowledge. It’s more likely she put herself in your path, you absorbed her into the Maggie Collective the way you do, and she abused that trust.”
“The Maggie Collective?” She scoffed. “What am I? The Borg?”
“No. You’re a good person with a robust social circle thanks to the school, the church and your parents.” The Stevenses belonged to that rarified class best known for being rich, the origin of their wealth so shrouded with the mysteries of time no one outside their family could pinpoint where their vast fortune had originated. “People take advantage of your kindness to exploit your connections.”
“Okay, okay. I get it. I’m a sucker. Write it on my forehead already.”
I rolled the highlighter through my fingers, tempted, but tossed it on the backseat.
“We’ve got company.” She ogled the side mirror. “Maybe friend wasn’t the right word. Maybe we should upgrade Cole to stalker status.”
“What?” I twisted in my seat, and sure enough, the grill of his SUV filled the rear window. “Sunday witch.”
“We should head to a public place, right?” She stomped on the gas to put a gap between our bumpers. “Confront him there?”
Confrontation was one word for what I was about to do to him.
Five minutes later, Cole still breathing down our necks, she cut the wheel and angled for a spot in front of Miss Pansy’s. I sprang from the car before it stopped rolling, causing Maggie to curse behind me, and marched over to Cole as he threw his SUV into park. He lowered his window, braced his forearm on the lip and kicked up one of his eyebrows, the one I was just getting around to noticing was bisected by a faint scar.
“What is it with you and jumping out of moving vehicles?” Lines bracketed his mouth. “Were you a stunt woman in another life? Do you want to kill yourself?”
“What is it with you tailing me everywhere I go?” I returned with equal ire. “You’ve been my freaking shadow all day.”
“Small town,” he said flatly.
“I want you gone by the time we finish our lunch, or I will call this in. You’re on the job? Great. Congrats. I wish you the best of luck. But I’m not. Not today and not tomorrow. See, there are these things called days off, and I’m making use of mine.”
“By stealing a pair of scrubs and infiltrating a hospital to visit Jane Doe incognito.”
“I borrowed them, thank you very much.” I sawed my teeth until my jaw popped. “Goodbye, Cole.”
I seemed to be saying that a lot. Too bad he was refusing to hear it.
Cole braced his wrist across his steering wheel like he had nowhere to be in a hurry. “See you around, Luce.”
Maggie leaned out her window. “We’re not eating at Miss Pansy’s today, are we?”
“Nope,” I snapped, rounding her car and sliding back in my seat. “Drive through it is.”
She uttered mewling noises in the direction of the restaurant, but I couldn’t shake the sensation of Cole’s eyes between my shoulder blades or Jane’s soft voice and resonating touch. And Ezra. Where did he fit in all this? Now that the shock was wearing off, I had to face the similarities between what Jane had done and what he could do. I had no name for what had passed between Jane and me. A knowing. A recalibration. A centering. Something primal tied to the metal under our skin. Something more intimate than what Ezra and I shared and yet . . . and yet . . .
Pressing my cheek against the cool glass, I let it numb my chaotic thoughts.
We hit the golden arches, which cost me serious friendship cred. Maggie was forced to drown her sorrows with a vanilla sundae she dumped over two apple pies. And no. She didn’t offer to share.
We crashed at my house, watched sappy movies and decided on having an honest-to-God sleepover since Justin Sheridan, her live-in love muffin and husband-to-be, was out of town on business. I had just started digging for the pump that went along with the air mattress we used for guests when a light flipped on upstairs.
No junk food in the house was my bright idea, but I’d broken that rule into chicken nugget-shaped pieces tonight.
Maggie and I scattered like cockroaches back to the dark living room where we hosed the air with a vanilla lavender aerosol. We bundled up our trash, ran it out to the can at the end of the road, then rushed back inside to brush our teeth and gargle. We had just collapsed on the couch when Dad walked past. Hair smashed flat on one side, he wore boxers, one sock and a T-shirt. We froze, clinging to each other, waiting to see if he sniffed contraband in the house, but he only grunted what might have been a greeting on his way to the downstairs bathroom. Once the water turned on, we exchanged loaded glances, then burst into giggles like we’d been tossing back vodka shots instead of mouthwash.
Even with it being just us chickens, as Maggie would say, it was still the best unbirthday I’d had in years.