Embarra.s.sment flared briefly in her eyes. "I can...do it."
"Sure you can. I"ll just...give you a hand, okay?"
"Just let me..." Her hands fluttered at the zipper of her jumpsuit, but her fingers were too stiff to function.
"This isn"t the time for modesty, Abby, okay? I"m a professional. You can trust me."
"I can do it...." Her fingers fumbled the zipper. "d.a.m.nit."
"Let me take care of you, okay?"
Jake knew he couldn"t wait any longer. Every minute counted when her body temperature was dropping. They were hours away from the nearest medical facility. The cabin was barely above freezing inside. He didn"t have an IV or heated oxygen or even a warming blanket to treat her with should this turn serious.
He knelt beside her. "I put some logs in the fire. It"ll be warm in here in a few minutes."
She had the zipper partway down, but he could see she wasn"t going to succeed. Her hands were blue. The ends of her hair had frozen. Setting his jaw, he reached for the zipper. She tried to push his hands away, but he firmly set them aside. With impersonal efficiency, he stripped the jumpsuit from her. Lifting her slightly, he worked the wet material from her body and tossed it aside. Down to her bra and panties, her flesh was colorless and cold to the touch.
Jake handed her one of the blankets. "Here."
"Thanks."
"Sit up for me." Putting his hand beneath her shoulders, he helped her to a sitting position. He kept his eyes averted as much as possible when he unhooked the wet bra from around her. He tried not to think about that crazy kiss they"d shared, or the way his body jumped to attention every time he thought about doing it again.
Quickly he wrapped her in his sleeping bag. "Better?" he asked.
She nodded.
"Take those wet, uh...underwear off, too," he said. "I"ll hang them by the fire to dry for you."
Looking embarra.s.sed even through her weakness, she reached down and removed her panties. Without looking at them, Jake moved to the hearth and draped them over the rustic mantel. He tossed another log onto the fire. The cabin was beginning to warm up, but it wasn"t well insulated. The water had started to boil, so he lifted it from the embers and took it over to the table. He removed a package of instant soup from his saddlebag and made a cup, and took it back over to her.
"I want you to sip this," he said. "Slowly."
Her eyes were clear when she looked up at him. Relief swamped him when he saw that she was shivering again. That was a good sign; her body was trying to warm itself.
"What kind of soup?" she asked.
"Hot." Kneeling beside her, he helped her to sit up again.
"I hope it"s better than your coffee."
"I didn"t think I"d ever be glad to hear one of your smart-aleck comments."
"I"ve got more where that one came from." She took the cup, but her hands were shaking so violently, she could barely hold it. Jake steadied the cup, and she sipped tentatively. "You saved my life," she said after a moment.
Her gaze locked with his. The impact made him feel gut-punched. How was it that this woman could undo him without saying anything? Just hit him with those violet eyes and he was a goner? He tried to blame his reaction on the close call with death and the remnants of fear left in its wake. But he knew there was a h.e.l.l of a lot more going on between them than that.
"You didn"t leave me much choice," he said.
"I thought the ice would hold."
"If you"d gone under I might not have been able to get to you." The thought made him feel nauseous. He tried to be angry, but he was still too scared. "h.e.l.l, Abby, you could have drowned."
"I warned you I was really good at s.c.r.e.w.i.n.g up, so stop yelling at me."
"I"m not yelling. I"m just trying to figure you out."
"Don"t bother. I don"t even have myself figured out, so it"s probably a losing proposition for you."
He thought about that for a moment, then let it go. "You gave me your word you wouldn"t run away."
She turned those eyes on him. Even though he"d moved back to a safe distance, her gaze touched him with the intimacy of a caress. "How far would you go to stay out of prison if you were convicted of a crime you hadn"t committed?" she asked.
"I"d go through the proper legal channels before I"d risk getting myself killed."
"Those proper channels failed me, Jake. They cost me a year of my life. A year of h.e.l.l that I won"t ever be able to get back. Am I supposed to just stand by and let the legal system destroy my life?"
"The legal system is all you"ve got."
"No. I"ve got the truth."
He hadn"t expected her to say that; felt his walls go up. She was going to tell him something he didn"t want to hear. She was going to ask him to trust her. Jake wasn"t up to it. Not now. Not ever. It didn"t matter that for an instant, when she"d told him about the death of her patient, when he"d seen the devastation in her eyes, he"d almost believed her.
Rising, he scooped his rifle off the floor and set it on the table within easy reach. He looked out the windows on the east side of the cabin, studied the ridges beyond for the sniper, but the snowscape outside remained serene. Without looking at Abby, he picked up her jumpsuit and sneakers. The jumpsuit was waterlogged and still frozen in places. The bra was nothing more than a thin sc.r.a.p of cotton. h.e.l.l. Trying to ignore the silky feel of it in his hands, Jake hung both over the back of a chair and set it next to the fire. When he turned back to her, she was still watching him with those eyes. Those beautiful, haunting eyes that had kept him awake until the wee hours of morning.
"Are you warm enough?" It was a dumb question considering her teeth were rattling like dice in a roulette wheel.
"I don"t think I"ll ever be warm again."
"Yes, you will." He went to her and knelt, putting the cup of soup to her lips. "Drink it. I"m not kidding around. You need fluids. It"ll help warm you up."
She sipped. "Why was someone shooting at us?"
He held the cup for her and urged her to take another sip. "I was just going to ask you the same question."
What little color she had in her cheeks fled. Her eyes were troubled and dark against her pale flesh. Jake steeled himself against the sudden need to raise his hand and touch her cheek. But he wouldn"t do that to himself. Wouldn"t do it to her. Certainly not after what had happened between them earlier.
"Maybe it was a hunter, and he didn"t even realize-"
"Hunters don"t shoot at people, Abby."
"Well, maybe it was an accident. A stray bullet."
Frustration, with her and the situation, made his voice gruff. "Those shots were taken from at least a half mile away. Those bullets were close. Too close. That takes some marksmanship. The guy has a long-range rifle and knows how to use it."
Jake didn"t want to ask her about who might be trying to kill her. But after what had happened with the sniper just now, he was forced to reconsider his original judgment about her guilt. "Last night, you told me you thought someone was trying to kill you."
She didn"t respond, but he saw the dawning realization in her eyes, the quick stab of fear.
"Who do you think is trying to kill you?" His own words echoed inside his head like the cliff-hanger of a badly written play. Jake studied the soft lines of her face, her worried eyes, and wondered how she"d gotten herself into such terrible trouble.
"You"re not going to believe me," she said after a moment.
"Try me."
She hesitated, and Jake got an odd feeling in the pit of his stomach. A gut feeling that told him there was more going on than he"d initially realized, a h.e.l.l of a lot more than she"d told him. And he knew none of it was good.
"My guess is that Dr. Jonathan Reed wants me dead," she said after a moment.
"Who"s that?"
"He"s the chief of surgery at Mercy General."
"Why does he want you dead?"
She pulled the sleeping bag up to her chin. Jake could see that her teeth wanted to chatter, but she kept them still by clamping them together. "Because I know something about him I"m not supposed to know."
"Like what?"
Abby didn"t answer.
Jake studied her closed expression, felt that feeling in his gut augment. He wasn"t sure exactly what it was that had his suspicions kicking in. Maybe the way her entire body had stiffened when he"d pressed her about Reed. Jake couldn"t pinpoint what was going on, but his years of experience in law enforcement told him she wasn"t lying. Still, it didn"t make a d.a.m.n bit of sense that she wouldn"t talk to him.
"Why do you think he wants you dead, Abby?" he repeated.
A tremor went through her body. With a sudden burst of insight Jake knew her shaking wasn"t from the cold. She was trembling because she was afraid.
She started to turn away, but Jake reached out and grasped her bicep, stopping her. "Why?" he pressed.
Easing her arm from his grasp, she looked directly at him then. The kind of stare that was so intense he wanted to look away but couldn"t.
"Because he"s a murderer," she said after a moment. "And he knows I know it."
Chapter 8.
Abby had known telling the truth would be difficult. She"d been through the interrogation nightmare a hundred times with the cops. Another hundred times with her lawyers. None of them had believed her then. She didn"t expect Jake to believe her now.
It was a crazy story, and she wasn"t certain of any of it. She knew how it would sound to Jake. Like a desperate lie based on some bizarre Hollywood movie. She didn"t want to look into his eyes and know he thought she was a liar-or crazy.
"That"s a serious allegation," he said after an interminable moment.
"Murder tends to be pretty serious."
He studied her for a moment, his expression inscrutable. "Tell me what you know." When she hesitated, he added, "I can"t help you unless you talk to me."
She held his gaze, felt the familiar pinging of her heart against her ribs. She wanted badly to confide in him, longed to tell him everything and get it all out in the open. Even so, she wasn"t sure if she could bear it if he didn"t believe her.
"It"s a crazy story, Jake."
"I"m a cop, remember? Crazy"s right up my alley."
"You"re not going to believe me." She looked down at her hands, realizing that was the worst part of this. Knowing he wasn"t going to believe her. No one else had. Over the past year she"d learned to live with that. But she knew it would be infinitely worse with Jake.
"Let me be the judge of that," he said. "Just...tell me what you know."
Closing her eyes, Abby sucked in a fortifying breath. "I"d been working at Mercy General for about two years when I met Jonathan." The normal tone of her voice surprised her, considering she felt as if she were coming apart inside. She told herself it didn"t matter what Jake thought of her. Abby didn"t want it to matter. But at some point in the past two days his opinion had become important to her. "Jonathan was a heart surgeon. He was talented. Dedicated. And brilliant. Everyone wondered why he stayed at such a small hospital. He always said it was because that was where he was needed most. He was well respected at Mercy and throughout the medical community. He was older. Influential. I was an emergency room nurse and we became...friends."
Jake"s eyes sharpened on hers and she resisted the urge to squirm. She"d already resolved not to tell him just how close she and Jonathan had been. The shame and humiliation were too great. She"d resolved to keep that part of it separate-the betrayal, the lies, that the man she"d been sleeping with...a man she"d given her naive heart to...had lied to convict her to save his own neck. She knew it would only muddy the waters if she got into the personal aspects of the case. She had to keep this impersonal. She had to sound credible to Jake if she wanted him to believe her, if she wanted his help.
She desperately needed both.
"I was devastated after my patient died that night," she continued. "There was an investigation. At first it was routine. But after the autopsy report got back to the cops, they started sniffing around the hospital, asking questions, and eventually the finger was pointed at me. I couldn"t believe it when charges of negligence were brought against me. I was put on administrative leave without pay. A couple of weeks later, I was arrested for murder."
Abby looked away, unable to hold his gaze. The arrest had been devastating, both professionally and personally. Two detectives had come to her apartment on a Sat.u.r.day afternoon. They"d cuffed her just outside her door as her neighbors looked on in astonishment. She"d been taken downtown, booked and sent to a cell. It had been the most shocking and humiliating experience in her life.
Remembering, she turned away from Jake"s discerning eyes to stare into the fire. "It took me two days to make bail." Two h.e.l.lish days of not understanding why she"d been arrested, of not knowing if or when she would ever be free. Two nights of wondering why her lover hadn"t come forward to help her. "I had a lot of time to think during those two days. All that time, I kept thinking the police would realize it was all a big mistake. But they didn"t. My bail was set at five hundred thousand dollars the following Monday. My grandmother put up the cash. And I knew I was in very serious trouble."
"What did you do?"
"The instant I got out, I started...researching."
"Researching what?"
"Well, I"d seen some things at the hospital in the last couple of months."
"Like what?"
"Things that didn"t mean much at the time," she hedged. "But when I added them all together, I started getting suspicious."
"Suspicious about what?"
The laugh that escaped her tasted bitter on her tongue. "You know, I felt incredibly guilty about that patient"s death. I had nightmares for weeks. I couldn"t sleep, couldn"t stop thinking about him. I couldn"t bear to think I was responsible for that man"s death. I almost convinced myself that maybe I had made a mistake. Maybe I had screwed up and injected him with the wrong medication.
"Anyway, I was doing a lot of soul searching at that point. A lot of thinking. Recalling everything I did that night. Recalling things that had happened over the last few months at the hospital. I"d remembered hearing about another unexplained death a few months earlier. I had a good friend who worked in the records department. Her name was Kim.
"I called her and asked to see the records for that patient. Kim was afraid for her job and refused, but she liked me and wanted to help. She knew me well enough to know I would never make a mistake like that. When I kept pressing her for help, she finally agreed to leave the door and file cabinets of the records room unlocked one night.
"I sneaked into records and spent a couple of hours going through the files. And I realized Jim wasn"t the only homeless person who had died at that hospital."
She took a deep breath. "I didn"t have much time, but in less than two hours, I was able to find out that in the prior six months, four other dest.i.tute people-three men and one woman-had been brought in to the emergency room for relatively minor injuries or illnesses, and never left. People who were homeless, without any money and without family. No one to ask questions if they were to die unexpectedly. But before I could make copies, one of the security officers caught me in records that night."