First Do No Evil: Blood Secrets, Book 1 (5 page)

She auscultated the chest with the stethoscope again. It was quiet, too quiet.

Paul followed her movements with his eyes and shook his head. “What the hell?”

Maybe Paul had pushed the ET-tube in too deeply. A poorly positioned breathing tube could collapse the left lung, mimicking a pneumothorax. But if that wasn’t the case, if the tube was positioned properly, then the gunshot wound had caused a tear—a
real
pneumothorax—a far more deadly condition. Danny needed to catch a break.

Just let it be the tube.
“Pull the tube back,” she ordered.

Paul eased the tube back. But Danny’s sats continued to dive, his pulse rocketed, and his pressure disappeared. No break for Danny today. She was going to have to wing it.

Sky relaxed. She was
good
at winging it.

“It’s not the tube.” She made a platform of her extended fingers and used her thumb to percuss Danny’s lungs like a drum. “Hyper-resonate sounds on the left. He’s popped a pneumo. Give me a large bore needle. How much time I got?”

“Thirty seconds. Fourteen gauge okay?” Mac held out his offering.

She accepted and jammed the needle in at the mid-clavicular line. A whooshing noise confirmed her diagnosis. A
real
pneumothorax. Air had accumulated in the pleural space, squashing the heart and lungs. The needle let the air escape and allowed the lungs to re-expand. Danny’s heart rate slowed, and his oxygen saturations climbed. A thrill of hope accelerated the beat of her heart. She threw her hands in the air. “Get the hell out of here!”

Heaving Danny’s gurney off the ground, the men raced out the door.

Sky checked her watch, and her pulsing hope grew faint.

Five and a half minutes.

Goddamnit
.

Chapter Four

Three Months Later

Just as the Bella vaccine was her brother’s legacy, this clinic was hers. She and Edmond had built this place from nothing, and now that Edmond was gone, it was up to Sky alone to preserve the good they had accomplished together.

Smoothing her hands over her thighs, she drew in an invigorating breath, and then, with steely resolve, marched down the windowless corridor of the family medicine clinic.

As she passed Edmond’s office, a rustling noise drew her attention to his door, which was slightly ajar. Edmond’s office was not a shrine, but Sky had turned it into something of a sanctuary. Since his death, she’d spent more time in Edmond’s office than her own. Maybe because it was larger and more organized than her office, or maybe because his presence still permeated the room.

The tick of his watch, which she’d placed on the desk atop a note written in his distinctive hand, soothed her. An ultramarine scrub top lay where he’d left it, neatly folded on a side stool waiting to be laundered. Now, a crazy idea that she would open the door and find Edmond inside stopped her pulse.

Then, remembrance cooled her hope and started her numb heart thudding again. Without expectation, she nudged the door the rest of the way open and peeked inside. What she saw caused her brow to pinch and her shoulders to jerk to attention. There was no mistaking the knockout blonde bending over Edmond’s desk.

What was Halston Reece doing in
this
office?

Sniffing in the itchy scent of Halston’s expensive perfume, Sky negotiated her way across the frayed carpeting that betrayed the precarious financial plight of Flagstaff’s one and only nonprofit clinic. With her index finger, she rubbed out the crease that stung her forehead and gave away her displeasure. “Hello?”

Halston whirled, slapped a hand across her chest and blurted, “Dr. Novak, you scared the crap out of me.”

Considering how full of crap the leggy pharmaceutical rep was, Sky doubted that one little scare had been enough to clean her out. She was tempted to throw in a “boo” for good measure.

A manicured hand wafted to Halston’s side, and her tight smile relaxed. Her voice caramelized into crème brûlée. “It must be fantastic having Dr. Garth Novak for a brother.”

The non sequitur compliment to her brother, Garth, was no doubt intended to confuse Sky and soften her irritation, and to some degree it succeeded. But not enough to distract her from the fact that Halston had no business being in the doctors’ private area, much less Edmond’s office, unescorted. Searching out her most courteous tone, she replied, “As a matter of fact, Garth is a fantastic brother. Thank you for saying so. Is there something I can help you with? This is…this was Dr. Guerretin’s office.”

Cheeks flushing, Halston whisked a hand from behind her back and patted a desk drawer closed.

Sky clenched her fists and then relaxed them. Perhaps out of morbid curiosity Halston had poked her nose in where she shouldn’t have, but more likely, Sky had inadvertently left the desk drawer open, and Halston had merely closed it out of habit.

With a guilty quirk of her mouth Halston said, “I just dropped off some antibiotic samples up front, and I need a signature. I was looking for
you
, and well, your medical assistant—what’s her name again?”

“Soyla.”

“Right. Weird name. I never can remember it. Anyway, Soyla mentioned you’d taken to doing your paperwork in Edmond’s, I mean Dr. Guerretin’s, office, so I figured I might find you in here.” Halston’s lips parted to reveal a flash of over-whitened teeth. “And look it, here you are. Just give me one sec to pull you up on my blackberry.”

Sky accepted a stylus from Halston and scribbled her name on the screen next to the X.

“Thanks, Dr. Novak, and hey, do a gal a favor and thank the
other
Dr. Novak for me, will you? Last month, I found out I have the BRCA breast cancer gene mutation, and I ran straight to your brother for his new vaccine.” Leaning in, Halston cupped her hand around her mouth. “But I tell ya the truth, that Bella stung like a mother-you-know-what. For a second I thought I’d rather get breast cancer.”

Sky took a hasty step back.

“Oh, I hope I didn’t offend. I guess joking around is my way of keeping the boogieman away. I don’t mind telling you I was living scared after I tested positive for the gene, and if it weren’t for your brother’s vaccine… Well, you will tell him I’m grateful, won’t you?”

Of course, any woman who’d just learned she carried a deadly gene would be frightened. Regretting her abruptness, she stepped forward and gently touched Halston’s shoulder. “I promise I’ll convey your appreciation. Garth will be so pleased he was able to help.”

“Great. I’ll drop by with more goodies and samples later this week.” Halston backed out of the office, long legs jumping like a grasshopper crossing a minefield, but her stiletto heels caught a loose carpet thread now and again anyway. Stilettos might be appropriate footgear for calling on a posh Scottsdale office, but in this place, they were downright dangerous.

With some difficulty, Sky resisted humming a reminder verse from Johnny Rivers’ “On the Poor Side of Town.” After Halston’s exit, Sky moved behind Edmond’s desk and checked to see that all the drawers were indeed properly closed. A wash of nostalgia burned her throat as she noted the sleek, copper-framed photo of Edmond and her, heads converging over a young patient, occupying center-stage on his desktop.

Reaching out, she squared up the picture frame. Edmond hated a messy desk. And yet he had loved her. Despite his flawless ordering of his own universe, Edmond had never criticized her disorderliness. Never hinted that she might be late less often if she wore a watch or kept her keys in a set location. Never frowned at her desk, piled high with charts and unsorted mail, or lifted a disapproving eyebrow when she showed up for dinner with shoes and dress unmatched. If she apologized, he hugged her and said he’d happily escort her barefoot to a charity ball if only she’d smile.

Wishing she’d smiled for him more often, she exited the office and made her way down the long narrow hallway that separated the doctors’ offices from the rest of the family medicine clinic. The discordant noise of infants wailing and couples chiding each other in Spanish, English and Farsi alerted her that she was nearing Chaos Central.

“Hi, guys.” Sky jutted her chin at her patients, and their frazzled expressions changed to grins. She brushed Cheetos dust off the sign that read “NO FOOD OR DRINK ALLOWED,” removed a climbing toddler from a table top and picked her way across the waiting room, pausing once again to dust yet more orange residue off the “PARENTS PLEASE SUPERVISE YOUR CHILDREN” sign before finding herself toe to toe with the world’s greatest—and testiest—medical assistant.

No mistaking what the stern set of Soyla’s brow meant. She knew that look all too well. “How backed up are we?”

Soyla’s hand rested on her hip. Her elbow accused Sky. “
We
aren’t backed up at all.
You
, on the other hand, are going to need a plumber with a turbo snake. You’re an hour behind already and double-booked all the way ‘till seven tonight.”

“Ouch.”

“I don’t wanna hear any bellyaching from the girl who can’t say no. Have you thought of sending some of these repeat offenders to the ER? When was the last time your doctor got you in same day?” Soyla extended a no-nonsense arm, palm forward in a shush sign. “Never, that’s when. Nobody expects to get in when they call last minute.”

“Nobody expects to get sick either, but they do.”

“You could train them to call earlier, and only when they’re super sick.”

She batted Soyla’s arm away. “I don’t think my job is to train them. My job is to help them. Now, where do I start? Are the patients roomed in order?”

“Yep. Room nine’s first, then thirteen, eight, and eleven.”

This nutty, dynamo of a woman was Sky’s rock. Trying to cover the fact that she found even Soyla’s shortcomings endearing, Sky huffed, “Lord help us if we ever need you to alphabetize the charts.”

I’ve come about the case
.

Danny mentally rehearsed the words, admonishing himself to mind them, wincing at a pain that came not from the throbbing in his left shoulder, but rather from a tightness in his chest, lower, nearer the heart—an ache brought on by the sight of Sky Novak. From a row of narrow windows, cold evening light filtered down into Edmond’s office, darkly tinting Sky’s face and accentuating a new gauntness in her features. Her hair fell about her shoulders in long brown waves, untended and wild. Seated behind Edmond’s desk, in a massive chair that engulfed her too thin form, she clasped a photo.

He hadn’t seen her since the day of the robbery. He hadn’t seen her since she sat rocking a corpse in Jolene’s diner, and he still wasn’t ready to face her. But he couldn’t put it off any longer. He’d come about the case, and no amount of personal discomfort could deter him from doing his duty.

He took a few steps forward, but she was too deep in her thoughts to notice him. The air was saturated with the musk of old books, and his throat started to itch. When he coughed, she dropped the photograph, and its metal frame clattered against the desktop. Then an image of Sky and Edmond, their faces close, glared accusingly up at him.

“Didn’t mean to sneak up on you.” That was a lie. He’d been studying her silently from the doorway. Not long, but long enough to glimpse something he wasn’t meant to see: Her desolate expression as she stared at the photograph. He’d memorized that expression, and then tucked away the intimacy of the moment. Locked it in an inner vault—though for what purpose he didn’t know. Maybe so he could goad himself later with the knowledge that he was the man responsible for her suffering. Maybe so he could be certain never to forget that he’d failed both Sky and Edmond. Hands fisted, he took another step forward and planted himself in front of her.

Reaching out, he righted the photograph and arranged the frame so it stood secure. She’d been gazing at Edmond’s picture with a tenderness he knew would never shine from her eyes for him. His jaw clenched as he realized just exactly how indecent it was for him to be thinking of such things when a good man like Edmond Guerretin had lost his life—a good man who was dead, quite simply, because Danny had ignored department policy.

Off-duty officers were supposed to carry their guns.

Backing away from the desk, his fingers pulled a loose thread on his jacket, and the air he breathed seemed to disintegrate before he could fill his lungs. “I’ve come about the case,” he said, clearing the itch from his throat, and he hoped, the gravel from his voice. “And to thank you for saving my life. I’m afraid I’m long overdue on that score, Dr. Novak.”

Looking past him, she blinked moisture from her eyes.

Clearly, he was intruding on a private moment, but he had a hell of a lot of questions on his mind, and he had no intention of leaving without getting some answers. Giving her a moment to compose herself, he glanced around Edmond’s office. It was neat, well-ordered. “Like I said, I didn’t mean to startle you, but your nurse said I could find you here. She also said you come in here every night.”

He should just stick to the case. “You okay?”

On the desktop in front of her, a book thicker than Geberth’s text on homicide investigation lay open. Jerking to attention, she slammed the book closed. “I’m fine. How may I help you, Detective Benson?”

When he furrowed his brow, she added, “All right then…Danny. I’ll drop the formality if you will.”