"Oh, Abby." Shaking his head, Jake dragged a hand through his hair.
"He called the police. G.o.d, it was a nightmare. I got arrested again. I mean, this guy caught me red-handed. I tried to tell the cops what I"d found, but no one would listen. No one believed me. And any defense I may have had went downhill after that."
Jake nodded, knowing how bad something like that would look to the police. "They thought you were trying to cover your tracks."
She nodded. "I wasn"t. I was looking for information. Anything that would prove I was innocent."
"Did you find proof?"
"It took me a while to figure it out, but I finally did." Abby took a deep, shuddering breath and looked at Jake.
His eyes were the color of a thunderhead, his jaw set as if in stone. "Tell me," he said.
"Each time those patients died, Dr. Jonathan Reed was the doctor on duty."
"That doesn"t prove anything, does it?"
"Each of those patients were cremated after their deaths," she said.
"A lot of people choose to be cremated these days."
"Each time Reed was the doctor who p.r.o.nounced them dead."
"That"s still not proof."
"There"s a reason those people died, Jake. There"s a reason why their bodies were cremated. There"s a reason why they were chosen. And there"s a reason why all of those things happened on Reed"s watch."
"Abby, are you telling me this respected surgeon killed four homeless people? What possible motivation could a man in his position have to do something like that?"
Abby swallowed. Her mouth was dry. Her heart was beating fast and unevenly. She was still cold, only now the ice seemed to be seeping from the inside out. "I think Reed murdered those people for their organs."
Jake wasn"t the kind of man to react, but Abby saw him recoil, saw the flash of surprise in his eyes. She held her breath, waited for the disbelief to follow. When it didn"t come, she lowered her head and put her face in her hands and fought a hot rush of tears.
"Do you have anything to back that up?" he asked after a moment. "Any kind of proof?"
Taking in a deep, calming breath, she raised her gaze to his. "No."
"Abby...you know how that sounds..."
"Of course, I do," she snapped.
"You could have fought this legally."
"He was going to kill me."
"You could have asked for protection."
"Jake, I was dying in prison," she cried. "A little bit every day. I couldn"t bear it. Having my dignity and my humanity stripped away a little bit at a time. I didn"t even feel human some days. It was like my mind and my body no longer connected. My G.o.d, I didn"t kill that patient. I couldn"t bear the thought of spending the rest of my life in prison for something I didn"t do."
For the first time, his gaze faltered, and Abby knew he understood. He was in law enforcement, after all. He"d been inside prisons before. He knew what it was like.
"How do you tie this in to black market organs?" he asked.
"When I was in prison, I had access to an entire library. I was going through archived newspapers and ran across an article from the Rocky Mountain News. Two years ago, there was a story done on Jonathan Reed when he became chief of surgery at Mercy General. There was a photograph of him with another surgeon from Paris. They"d gone to medical school together. This other surgeon, Dr. Jean LaRue, had a four-year-old daughter who needed a liver transplant. She"d been on the recipient list for over a year, but it wasn"t looking good. He didn"t think she was going to get the new liver in time.
"By accident, I ran across another article from a Paris newspaper when I did a search on LaRue. It seems some miracle happened and Dr. LaRue"s daughter got her new liver in time to save her life."
"How does that involve Reed?"
"The first homeless patient at Mercy died the same day Dr. LaRue"s daughter received her liver."
"Connecting Reed to that patient and then to the liver transplant is a stretch, Abby. I mean, in this day and age, how could something like that work?"
"Reed has a private clinic not far from Aspen."
"Aboveboard?"
"Yes, but I think he does a lot more than treat bronchitis and set broken legs." When Jake continued to stare at her, she elaborated. "I think he has a list of recipients. Wealthy friends, more than likely.... When a possible donor checks into the hospital-a patient whose sudden death won"t raise too many questions-Reed plugs the information into a computer. If he gets a match, he injects the patient and takes what he needs."
"But doesn"t the patient have to be kept alive?"
"Just long enough for serology testing and testing for certain diseases such as Hepat.i.tis C and HIV. That usually only takes about six hours. Once the testing is done, the organs can be removed from the body. The organs are then profused in a cold-storage medium high in electrolytes and nutrients. Kidneys are flushed. Then the organs are put on ice, to be jetted to wherever a recipient is already in an operating room and under anesthesia.
"A heart and lungs can only be out of the body for five or six hours, so the serology is done while the donor is alive. Kidneys and pancreas can last up to forty-eight hours. Livers up to eighteen hours." She looked at Jake. "Aspen is only an hour away by jet."
"So the timeframe is feasible."
She nodded.
"Criminy." Jake heaved a huge sigh. "It"s feasible, but it"s still a stretch."
"Reed is in a position to pull it off. He"s an important man at the hospital. He"s a trusted, respected surgeon. He"s well connected. Wealthy. My G.o.d, if one of his friends were to come to him in need of an organ transplant-or even the friend of a friend or a child...Reed could have a long list of possible recipients. He could do the surgeries himself. An anesthesiologist and nursing team wouldn"t be hard for him to find if he paid them enough."
She paused to take a breath. "Jake, he murdered those people. Then he kept them on life support until he could harvest the organ he needed. He put the organs on ice and flew them to his clinic in Aspen."
"How could he cover up something like that?"
"Mercy General is a small, privately held hospital. Maybe he had someone on staff helping him. As terrible as it sounds, Reed knew no one was going to ask questions about a homeless person dying. He knew his actions would never come into question. When that homeless person died on my watch, he wasn"t expecting the man to have family who cared. He wasn"t expecting them to ask for an autopsy. When they did, he needed a scapegoat. I was convenient."
"d.a.m.n, Abby, that"s a wild theory."
"You"re a cop, Jake. Tell me you believe in coincidence."
"I don"t."
She stared at him, her breath clogging her throat. "You could look into Reed"s financial records. I"m betting my life he"s come upon some huge sums of money in the last couple of years."
"All we have is a theory, Abby. I can"t act on something that"s based solely on circ.u.mstantial evidence and-"
"And what? The word of a convict?"
"I wasn"t going to say that."
"You don"t have to. I see it on your face." Wrapping the sleeping bag more tightly around her, she tried to rise.
Jake stopped her by putting his hand on her arm. "Don"t walk away from me."
"I can"t stand it when you look at me like that."
"I"m trying to take this in and make sense of it."
Sighing, she sank back down to the floor, but the air between them snapped with tension. Jake scrubbed his hand over the stubble on his jaw. "You told me you believe someone is trying to kill you. Did Reed try to get to you inside the prison?"
"I think he hired someone to kill me. One of the other inmates came at me with a knife in the shower room." The memory of her narrow escape made her shiver. "She nearly got me, Jake. If I hadn"t already been in good physical condition, she would have killed me."
"Why does Reed want you dead now? I mean, you"ve already been convicted."
"I don"t know if you"ve noticed, Jake, but I"ve got a big mouth. I was making noise. People weren"t listening, but all it would have taken was one hot-shot lawyer and Reed knew I could foil his little empire."
"Reed didn"t want to take a chance that someone might listen to you."
"Would you?"
"You think he hired someone to track you up here?" he asked.
"That"s his style." Abby laughed, but there was no humor in it. "Reed never does his own dirty work. He gets other people to do it for him. He"s got money. A lot of it. I"ll bet he hired a hit man."
Jake contemplated her for a moment. "Exactly what evidence convicted you?"
"Remember when I mentioned that my prints were on the syringe in the biohazard disposal unit?" When he nodded, she continued, "That was bogus, because no medical professional injects a patient without gloves these days. Still, the syringe had traces of Valium in it. One of the other nurses saw me give an injection. But as I already told you I swear it was the teta.n.u.s injection. I swear I wouldn"t make a mistake like that. I"m too careful. But no one could find the teta.n.u.s syringe. No one went to bat for me." Not even Jonathan Reed-the man she"d been sleeping with at the time.
"They left you swinging in the wind."
She nodded. "With a noose around my neck."
"Do you have any proof of any of this?"
"I"ve been in prison for the past year, Jake. It"s not like they let me out on weekends to investigate the crime." Her voice shook with vehemence. "But I know Reed did it. d.a.m.n it, I know it."
"Why you?"
"Why me what?"
"Why did Reed choose you?"
Abby stared at him, her steadfastness faltering. "Because I was vulnerable."
"Why were you vulnerable?"
Leave it to Jake to ask the tough questions. That"s what he did best. The man was a deputy, after all.
When she didn"t readily answer, his cop"s mask fell into place. "Abby?"
A sense of hopelessness gripped her. She didn"t want him to know why she"d been vulnerable. She knew that knowledge would obliterate what little credibility she had.
"As soon as I realized the investigation had focused on me, I went to Reed," she said, skirting the question. "I was scared and had nowhere else to turn. I asked him to support me and tell the police I wouldn"t have made a mistake like that. Reed promised to do what he could." Abby closed her eyes. "Instead, he went to the police and told them I"d confessed to him."
"What?" Jake asked incredulously.
"Reed told them I was a disturbed young woman who needed help. That I was obsessed with death. That some drugs were missing from the drug locker. He told them I"d stolen drugs. My bail was revoked shortly after that."
"It was your word against his."
"Yes."
His eyes narrowed, probing hers uncomfortably. "What aren"t you telling me?"
She looked away, feeling trapped. "I"ve told you everything that matters."
"Abby, why were you vulnerable?"
"Don"t," she said.
"d.a.m.n it, if you want my help, you"re going to have to trust me."
The simple request brought tears to her eyes. She longed to trust him, but knew she could never put that much of herself on the line ever again. She"d trusted Reed, and he"d cut her heart out. The betrayal had killed something inside her forever.
After several tense minutes, she turned her gaze back to him. "Reed knew about my past. He...used it against me."
"What past?"
Shame pierced her, coldly familiar and scalpel-sharp. "When I was seventeen I...had a breakdown. An emotional breakdown. I"d...confided in Reed about it. And he...used it against me. That"s why I was vulnerable, Jake. That"s why he chose me."
Breakdown.
The word echoed like a scream inside Jake"s head. Of all the things she could have said, that one surprised him the most. He recalled the corrections officials"s warning that she was emotionally unstable. He"d put it out of his mind because he hadn"t seen any evidence of instability. He considered himself a pretty good judge of a person"s frame of mind, and Abby Nichols was as sane as the day was long.
Something wasn"t right about this case. Something that was cunning and cruel that chafed his sense of justice like a steel rasp.
Yet at the same time an uncomfortable doubt rose up inside him. He remembered another woman he"d tried to help. A woman he"d trusted and loved. He would have laid down his life for Elaine and her sweet little boy. Instead, he"d let her twist their relationship into something ugly, then stood by dumbly when she cut him off at the knees.
Jake knew better than to get involved in Abby"s plight. He"d been sharing close quarters with her and wasn"t thinking clearly. He hated to admit it, but she"d gotten to him. At some point in the past twenty-four hours he"d lost his emotional distance. He couldn"t think of a worse fate for a man who prided himself on walking the straight and narrow.
The kiss had changed everything, he realized. He"d stepped over a line, broken a staunch personal rule. He needed distance. Needed to get the h.e.l.l out of this cabin and down the mountain before he made another mistake. A mistake that wouldn"t be quite as harmless as a kiss.
But every time he looked at her, he wanted her. Wanted her in a way that was as strong as the need to take his next breath. When he closed his eyes, he could still feel the heat of her against him, the softness of her body, the sweet wetness of her mouth. And the need clawed at him, like a trapped animal desperate to get out....
Jake gave himself a hard mental shake. Sweat glistened on his brow, and he loosened the top b.u.t.ton of his flannel shirt. Across from him, Abby stared into the fire. Even in profile, she was breathtaking. He knew better than to ask the next question; he knew it would only bring him one step closer to knowing her. He didn"t want to know her. He didn"t want to get inside her head or, G.o.d forbid, let her get inside his. But Jake had never been one to back away from danger.