Hot Blooded (16 page)

Over the past few nights, Sam had steered the subjects of her nightly discussion away from sin, punishment and redemption and back to relationships, which, of course, was the basis for the show. Things were getting back to normal. The way they were before John had first called. So why had the electricity she’d felt every time she sat in this chair not abated, but in fact, heightened?

Melanie signaled through the glass and the intro music filled the booth. John Lennon’s voice, singing “It’s Been A Hard Day’s Night,” boomed from the speakers, then faded.

Sam leaned into the microphone. “Good evening, New Orleans, and welcome. This is Dr. Sam with
Midnight Confessions
here at WSLJ and I’m ready to hear what you think…” She started talking, relaxing, cozying up to the microphone as she invited her listeners to call in. “I just spoke to my dad a couple of days ago, and even though I’m over thirty, he thinks he can still tell me what to do,” she said as a way of connecting with her audience, hoping that someone would identify with her and phone in. “He lives on the West Coast, and I’m starting to feel that I should be closer to him, that he might need me now that he’s getting up in years.” She went on for a while talking about the
relationship between parents and children when the phone lines started to flash.

The first was a hangup, the second a woman whose mother was suffering the aftereffects of a stroke; she was torn between her job, her kids, her husband and her feeling that her mother needed her. The third was from a hostile teenager who resented her parents trying to tell her anything. They just didn’t “understand” her.

Then there was a backlash, from parents and kids who thought the teenage caller should listen to her folks.

Sam relaxed even more. Felt at ease behind the mike. Sipped from a half-drunk cup of coffee. The debate waged on and finally a woman called in on line three. She was identified as Annie. Sam pressed the button for the call. “Hi,” she said, “This is Dr. Sam, who am I talking to?”

“Annie,” a frail, high voice whispered. A voice that was vaguely familiar. But Sam couldn’t place the name with a face. She was probably a regular caller.

“Hello, Annie, what is it you want to discuss tonight?”

“Don’t you remember me?” the girl asked.

Sam felt the warning hairs on the back of her neck rise.
Annie?

“I’m sorry. If you could remind—”

“I called you before.”

“Did you? When?” she asked, but the raspy voice hadn’t stopped, just paused to draw a breath and kept right on whispering through the studio, on the airwaves.

“Thursday’s my birthday. I would be twenty-five—”

“Would be?” Samantha repeated and a chill swept through her blood.

“—you remember. I called you nine years ago, and you told me to get lost. You didn’t listen, and—”

“Oh, God,” Sam said, her eyes widening. Her heart stopped for a second in a horrid nightmare of deja vu. Annie?

Annie Seger?
It couldn’t be. Her mind spun wildly, backward to a time she’d tried to forget.

“You’ve got to help me. You’re a doctor, aren’t you? Please, you’re my only hope,”
Annie had confided all those years ago.
“Please help me. Please.”
Guilt took a stranglehold on Sam’s throat.
Dear God, why was this happening again?
“Who is this?” Sam forced into the microphone. From the corner of her eye, she glanced at the adjacent booth, where Melanie was listening, shaking her head, her palms turned toward the ceiling, as if the caller had, once again, gotten past her. Tiny was staring hard through the glass, his eyes trained on Sam, the can of soda in his big hand forgotten.

“—and you didn’t help me,” the breathy voice accused, hardly missing a beat. “What happened then,
Dr.
Sam, you remember, don’t you?”

Sam’s head was pounding, her hands slick with sweat. “I asked for your name, Annie—your full name.”

Click.
The line went dead. Sam sat frozen.

Annie Seger.

No! Her stomach clenched.

It had been so long ago and yet, now, sitting in the booth as she had been then, it all came rushing back, like a tidal wave, crashing through her brain, leaving her numb and cold. The girl had died. Because of her. Because she couldn’t help.
Oh, God, please not again.

“Samantha! Samantha! Snap out of it!” Melanie’s voice permeated her brain, but still she could barely move. “Jesus Christ, pull yourself together!” As if from a distance, Sam felt Melanie’s hands on her arms, yanking her out of her chair, thrusting her across the small space, toward Tiny, pushing her away from the desk and the microphone. Still in shock, Sam stumbled, her ankle twisting. She snapped out of it. Realized she was here, in New Orleans and on the air. “Don’t you know there’s all this dead airtime going
on? For God’s sake, pull yourself together.” Melanie was saying as she slipped on the headphones and reached for the mike. “Get her out of here,” she ordered Tiny.

“Wait a minute. I’m okay.” Sam wasn’t about to budge.

“Prove it.” Melanie glared at her and waved her into the hallway. Tiny pulled Sam out of the room as Melanie leaned into the microphone and, as she flipped it on, her voice became smooth as warm silk on a hot Louisiana night. “Please excuse the interruption, we’ve experienced some technical difficulties down here at WSLJ. Thank you for your patience.
Midnight Confessions
with Dr. Samantha Leeds will be back in a few minutes, after our local weather update.” Expertly Melanie pressed the buttons for the automated recording that would play the weather forecast and a couple of pretaped advertising spots.

“What went on in there?” Tiny asked, then realizing his fingers surrounded Sam’s upper arms, he let go and put a little distance between them. The hallway seemed eerie and darker than usual, the glass case holding old records giving off an odd, ethereal glow. But of course that was crazy. It was just Sam’s nerves. The corridor and record case hadn’t changed.

Drawing in several deep breaths, Sam pulled herself together. She couldn’t allow another prank to rattle her so.

“Who was that girl on the line?”

“I don’t know,” Sam admitted, leaning against the wall. She wiped a hand over her forehead and forced some starch into her spine.
Think, Sam, think. Don’t let some crank caller get the better of you.
“I—I don’t know who it was. Can’t imagine who would do anything so sick, but whoever it was she wanted me to think she was Annie Seger.”
Oh, God, not Annie. What was happening? The girl had been dead nine years.
Dead. Because Sam hadn’t read the situation correctly, hadn’t heeded the girl’s cries for help. Sam’s head
pounded, and the coffee she’d drunk earlier curdled in her stomach.

Don’t let it get to you, Sam. Don’t!

“She said she was Annie and then you freaked out,” Tiny accused. “You acted like you knew her.”

“I know…but I don’t…er, didn’t…it’s all so unbelievable.”

“What is?” He seemed about to touch her again, but, thinking better of it, shoved his hands deep into the pockets of his oversize jeans.

“Annie Seger was a girl who called into my program a long time ago when I was working in Houston.” It seemed like it was just yesterday. Sam remembered pushing the button, answering the call and listening as a teenager hesitantly explained that she was pregnant and scared to death. “Annie phoned in several nights in a row, asking for advice.” Inside Sam cringed when she remembered the girl’s calls. At first Annie had seemed scared, but no matter what Sam offered as advice, she rejected it, claimed she had no one to talk to, no one to confide in, not her parents, not her pastor and not even the father of her baby. “I tried to help her, but she ended up committing suicide.” Sam pushed the hair off her face and saw the pale shimmer of her reflection in the window of the booth. Beyond the glass Melanie sat at her desk, talking into the microphone, controlling the show. It all seemed surreal, being here late at night in the dim hallway, remembering a time she’d tried so hard to forget.

“You think it was your fault she killed herself?” Tiny asked.

“Annie’s family blamed me.”

“Heavy.”

“Very.” Sam rubbed her arms and tried to grab hold of her composure. She had a show to do; a job to finish. She saw Melanie tear off the headset and roll back the chair.
Within seconds she flew out of the room. “You’ve got sixty seconds before you’re back on the air,” she said to Sam. “Are you okay?”

“No,” Sam admitted.
Dear God, I’ll never be okay again.
She started for the booth. “But I’ll wing it.”

“Eleanor’s on line two. She wants to talk to you.”

“I don’t have time.”

“She’s furious,” Melanie said.

“I imagine. Tell her I’ll talk to her after the show.” Sam couldn’t deal with the program manager now; not until she was off the air.

“What was the deal with that girl who called in?” Melanie asked, as Sam slid into her chair and automatically checked the controls.

“You tell me,” Sam snapped. “You’re supposed to be screening the calls.”

“I have been! And I recorded her request. She didn’t talk in that stupid falsetto voice, either, she just said that she had a problem with her ex-mother-in-law and wanted your advice.” Melanie glowered at her boss. “So are you going to pull yourself together and take charge or what? Otherwise, I’ll take over.” Her voice softened slightly and her defensive attitude slipped away. “I can do it, you know. Easy as pie. Tiny can run the call-in booth. Just like when you were in Mexico.”

“I can handle it, really. But thanks.”

Melanie flashed a smile that seemed to hide some other emotion. “I’m a shirttail relation to Jefferson Davis, you know.”

“I’ve heard.”

“I can step up to the plate if I have to. It’s in my genes.”

“Well, thank God for your genes, but I’m okay.” Sam wasn’t going to let another crank call spook her out of her job. “I’ll handle it. You two”—she motioned to Tiny and Melanie—“just screen the calls and tape “em. We’ve only
got another fifteen minutes. Tell Eleanor to sit tight.” She adjusted her headphones and pulled the microphone close to her mouth, adjusting the angle as the advertisement for a local dot com company faded.

“Okay, this is Dr. Sam, I’m back in the saddle. Sorry for the interruption. As you probably already heard, the station’s experiencing some technical difficulties tonight.” It was a bald-faced lie, and she probably lost a few credibility points with her listeners, but she couldn’t deal with the issue of Annie Seger right now. “Okay, so let’s pick up where we left off a few minutes ago. We were talking about our parents interfering in our lives, or needing us, or telling us what to do. My dad is the greatest, but he can’t seem to accept it that I’m a grown woman. I’m sure you’ve had similar experiences.”

The phones lines were already blinking like mad. If nothing else the crank calls were drawing interest. The first caller, on line one, was identified as Ty.

A lightning quick image of a tall man with a killer smile and flinty, unreadable eyes seared through her brain. Her stomach tightened, though she told herself the caller wasn’t necessarily her new neighbor. “Hello,” she said, “this is Dr. Sam, who’s this?”

“Ty,” he said, and she felt a mixture of relief and wariness as she recognized his voice. She wondered why he’d been listening to her program, how he’d managed to be the first caller after the woman who had claimed she had been Annie had been on the line.

“What can I do for you, Ty?” she asked, and tried not to notice that her palms were suddenly damp. “Are you having trouble with your parents? Your kids?”

“Well, now, this is a little off tonight’s subject. I was hopin’ you could help me out with a relationship problem.” “I’ll try,” she said, silently questioning where this was leading. Was he telling her that he wasn’t available, that
there was already a woman in his life? Then why the flirting just the other afternoon? “What’s the problem, Ty?”

“Well, I just moved into a neighborhood and I’ve met this woman that I’m interested in,” he said in his soft drawl, and some of her apprehension fled.

“Is the feeling mutual?” Sam couldn’t help but smile.

“Oh, yeah, I think so, but she’s playing it pretty cool.”

“Then how do you know she wants to get to know you better? Maybe her being cool isn’t an act.”

“That’s what she wants me to believe, but I can see it in her eyes. She’s interested, all right. More than interested. Just too proud to admit it.”

Samantha’s grin widened, and heat washed up the back of her neck. “She’s that transparent, is she?”

“Sure is, only she doesn’t know it.”

Great.
“Maybe you should tell her.”

“I’m givin’ it some serious thought,” he said slowly, and Sam’s heartbeat accelerated into overdrive. She wondered how much of the undercurrents in the conversation Melanie and Tiny were hearing…or for that matter, if everyone tuned into WSLJ caught the subtleties.

“But prepare yourself, Ty, this woman might not be as captivated with you as you’d like to think.”

“I guess I’ll just have to find out now, won’t I? I’ll have to make a move.”

Oh, God.
Her lungs tightened. “That would be the logical next step.”

“But you and I both know that sometimes logic doesn’t have a whole lot to do with what happens between a man and a woman.”

Touché.
“So what are you going to do, Ty?”

There was just a half a beat of hesitation.

“I’m going to find out just what the lady likes,” he drawled, and Sam’s mouth went dry.

“And how’re you going to do that?” Rapid, sensual images of Ty Wheeler with his broad shoulders, dark hair and intense eyes flitted through her mind. She wondered what it would be like to kiss him, to touch him, to make love to him.

His laugh was deep. “I think I can figure it out.”

“So you’re going to try and take your relationship to the next level?” she asked, her throat tight.

“Definitely.”

“When?”

“When it’s least expected.”

“Then you’d better not tip your hand.” She was having trouble breathing.

“I won’t.”