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  “Another Missouri ER is closing near Saint Louis. The physicians there will be out of a job in two weeks.”

  “Why is it closing?”

  “The hospital couldn’t afford the increase in their insurance rates. Three of their docs are looking for temporary work, and I plan to grab them up and use them as much as possible. That’ll give all of us a break. The rest of us will hold out until they come on board.”

  “Jim, I don’t need that much time off.”

  He gestured to a stack of files on the far right corner of his desk. “Your quality control reviews have not been impressive lately.”

  That hurt. She hadn’t seen the reports for this past month. “I’ve worked fifty percent more shifts than last month, Jim. All of us are a little tired.”

  “I saw your patient this morning,” he said. His voice was soft, sorrowful.

  “Which one?”

  “The one with the chest pain. Crosby. The one who looked like Susan.”

  “But I did everything appropriately. I did a cardiac workup and EKG and she was fine.”

  “Chey, did you even consider a pulmonary embolis?”

  “No, why would I? She was young—”

  “She had multiple risk factors. She was a smoker, she took birth control pills.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “She was wearing an air stirrup splint.” He dropped the pen onto the desk and leaned back, as if he wanted to cross his legs but didn’t have room beneath the dinky desk. “She’d been practically immobilized for three days with a badly sprained ankle. I did a D-dimer test on her.”

  Cheyenne’s thoughts froze. “The result?”

  “Positive.”

  She gave herself time to recover from the blow. “The woman was having a pulmonary embolis?”

  He nodded.

  “I’m sorry, Jim. I—I told you I’m not sleeping well.” The woman could have died! If Jim hadn’t seen that ankle brace…

  “You’re not focusing, Cheyenne. That isn’t like you. Your tragedy is way too fresh. For your own good and the patient’s, I have to consider you an impaired physician and take the necessary steps to help you.”

  “Impaired! Jim, I’m not an alcoholic, and I don’t have a drug—”

  “The problem is, the last place a physician’s struggle ever shows up is at work. You must be going through some nasty stuff at home.”

  She nodded, her mind still reeling with shock.

  “It took you three weeks to recover from your flu. You worked sick during that time. I want you to take some sick leave.”

  “But I’m not—”

  “End of discussion. I’m sorry. Why don’t you go see your parents? Florida should be nice this time of year.”

  Cheyenne slumped in her chair. “They wouldn’t know what to do with me.” She heard the plaintive sound of her own voice. “Okay, I’ll take off. The whole four weeks.”

  “Eight, with an option for more the minute you request it, but give us enough notice to line our people up. And remember, we’ll have third year residents available in July.”

  “July?” He was trying to get rid of her. “No, Jim. You can’t do—”

  He held up a hand. “You don’t understand what I’m doing yet. Trust, me, Chey, I’ve been there. It took me twelve months to recover from burnout eight years ago. It nearly ruined my marriage and destroyed my family. I don’t want that to happen to you.”

  She blinked. This was news. He had three beautiful children, and the youngest was eight.

  “But I don’t have a family,” she said softly. Most of her friends worked right here in this department. What was she going to do with herself for two months? What about her nightmares, with no work to distract her from their impact?

  She forced herself to stand and walk to the door, hoping she didn’t look as stunned as she felt.

  “Chey?”

  She turned around, hoping he’d changed his mind.

  “You might want to try some grief counseling. I’m speaking to you as a friend, not your boss. We all know how losing Susan—”

  “Save it, Jim, you don’t have a clue.” She knew she sounded ungracious, but something in her had snapped, Jim couldn’t imagine her life as a single ER physician, whose schedule was never the same, who could seldom arrange for her own time off to coincide with that of her friends—even less could he understand her grief.

  What was she going to do now? How could this day possibly get any worse?

  She picked up the next envelope on the mail stack at her work space. She opened it, forgot to breathe.

  This was a request for the release of Susan Warden’s medical records to Hodgkin and Long, a legal firm. The request was signed by Kirk Warden.

  Cheyenne covered her face with her hands.

  Her former brother-in-law had meant his threat at Susan’s funeral. He believed she was instrumental in the death of her own sister.

  Was she?

  Chapter Six

  The smoky aroma of sausage and onions permeated the ranch kitchen and mingled with the chatter of the boys around the extensive breakfast table. Cook knew how to make Saturdays special with a big spread of food.

  Dane ate quietly, watching and listening. If Willy and Blaze had any idea what Austin’s visit was about, they didn’t let on as they joked and laughed with the rest.

  No way could any of them have sneaked off the property in the wee morning hours. Dane would have known.

  Wouldn’t he?

  He had good kids. Austin Barlow enjoyed reminding him of that solitary incident when a problem child had slipped through the screening process for the ranch, but nothing like it had happened since.

  Seventeen-year-old Jinx leaned toward Dane, his red hair sticking out in fifteen directions. “So what’d he want?”

  Dane sipped his coffee. “What did who want?”

  “Couldn’t’ve been good,” Willy said from the other end of the table. “The mayor never drives all the way out here just to visit. Notice he didn’t just take his boat across, like the others do. He drove all the way around.”

  Dane speared another sausage link as the platter passed by. “Our local vandal is up to more of his activities.”

  Jinx put down his fork. Willy rested his elbows on the table. One by one the boys fell silent.

  “How would Austin know it’s a him?” Cook demanded. “Could be a her.”

  “Anyway,” Dane said, “a boat burned at the new dock. The fire apparently started sometime last night or early this morning.”

  Surprise registered on all faces. Tyler and James glanced across the table at Blaze.

  “You have a local vandal?” Blaze asked. “Like this is a normal thing?”

  “It’s happened before. Dane got his tires slashed last year, and now it seems to be escalating,” Cook said. “We’re right uptown with the big boys. Anybody get hurt, Dane?”

  “Austin said no.”

  Cook grabbed the empty pancake platter and carried it to the stove for a refill. “Not sure I believe anything that blowhard would say,” he muttered, breaking a house rule against name-calling. Long strands of gray hair fell loose over his right ear, baring his shiny scalp. “You’re the one who pushed so hard to get that dock approved, Dane. So why’d he come running to you soon as something happened?”

  “Don’t know.”

  “He expect you to know something about the vandalism? Or may he just wanted to gloat a little. He never wanted that dock. Whose boat is it? Belong to anybody we know?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “He thinks one of us did it,” Willy said.

  “He does, doesn’t he?” Jinx blinked sleepily, his bright-red hair reflecting itself in the freckles that covered his face like an uneven tan. He’d been up late last night playing chess with Cook after chores and homework.

  Jinx, the “big brother” of the family, would be graduating from high school with honors in a few weeks. He took it personally when someone criticized his foster brothers. />
  “Austin ought to know better,” Cook said.

  “He wants to blame us,” Jinx said.

  Willy tugged one of Blaze’s dreadlocks. “Bet he thinks it’s you, Dr. Doolittle.”

  Blaze leaned away and shoveled potatoes onto his fork. “Blaze is my name, blazing’s my game.”

  “This isn’t something to joke about,” Dane warned. “And there’s more. Mrs. Potts found her cat shot dead on her front porch this morning.”

  The kids stopped eating. Blaze displayed an unappealing glimpse of his breakfast.

  “Close your mouth, please, Blaze,” Dane said.

  Blaze swallowed. “Somebody killed her cat?”

  “That’s what the mayor said.”

  A storm gathered in Blaze’s eyes.

  “Bet it was Danny Short,” Willy said. “He’d do it. Danny’s such a jerk.”

  “Watch the names,” Dane warned.

  “He’s always picking on the littler kids at school,” Jinx said. “And just about everybody’s littler than he is. He calls Blaze a—”

  “He don’t call me anything I haven’t been called before,” Blaze said. “Let him talk.”

  “If Dr. Doolittle didn’t wear pigtails, Danny wouldn’t pick on him,” Willy said.

  “They’re not pigtails, and he’d do it anyway,” Blaze said. “All he sees is my color.”

  “Austin has no real reason to blame any of us,” Dane said. “We’ll just have to stay squeaky-clean.”

  “I don’t know how we can get any squeakier,” Jinx grumbled.

  Blaze pushed his plate back. “I need to go check on Starface. She was limping this morning.”

  Dane nodded and watched him leave.

  As soon as the mudroom door closed, Willy said, “Blaze wouldn’t do anything like that, Dane.”

  “I know.”

  “Guess somebody started the fire, though. And somebody killed that lady’s cat.”

  Dane nodded. He hoped they caught the culprit quickly, because until the town had someone else to blame, his kids would take the brunt of it.

  “I’d like to see Barlow try to prove anything,” Cook muttered.

  Dane picked up his cup of coffee and took a sip. “Maybe we should do a little sleuthing ourselves.”

  By the time Cheyenne finished reading the final page of Susan’s medical record her whole body trembled and she felt sick to her stomach. Leaning away from the call-room desk, she rubbed her eyes and stretched her arms over her head.

  “Hey, there, pal,” came a comforting voice from the corridor. Ardis hovered in the open doorway, looking fresh and well rested in her green scrubs. Her curly salt-and-pepper hair looked damp.

  “Hey.” Cheyenne gestured for her to come in. “Raining?”

  “Haven’t you heard the thunder? What’s up?” Ardis entered the untidy room and perched on the side of the unmade bed. “You should’ve been gone hours ago.”

  Cheyenne held up the legal request for medical records.

  Ardis tilted her head backward so she could read the print through her bifocals. Her lips moved silently, then her eyebrows lowered. “You’re kidding.”

  Cheyenne shook her head.

  “Your brother-in-law hired an attorney? He’s going to sue?”

  “Maybe they’re going after the people who hit Susan,” Cheyenne said. “I don’t know.”

  “When they read the report, they won’t come after you, that’s for sure. You did everything right. You did far more than most—”

  “What I did was prescribe a controlled substance for her. She wasn’t supposed to be driving.”

  “I’m the one who administered the drug, and I heard you tell her not to drive. You told her more than once, and so did I.”

  Cheyenne returned the request form to the desk. “But she was under the influence of a tranquilizer when we told her.”

  “She also received her discharge sheet, which she signed. It clearly stated that she was not to drive under the influence.”

  “Again,” Cheyenne said, “she signed that sheet after you administered the IV dose. And I didn’t document as completely as I ordinarily would have, because she was my sister. I had…other things on my mind.”

  “I don’t know what she was doing behind that wheel, but she—”

  “Ardis, you’re a Christian. Would you tell me how someone who claims to be a good servant of God could defraud the government and a spouse?”

  A soft whisper of air escaped Ardis’s lips as they parted. “What on earth are you talking about?”

  Okay, that had sounded pretty stupid. “I’m sorry.” Cheyenne closed the folder that held the medical records. “Forget I said anything.”

  “You’re talking about your brother-in-law?”

  It was tempting to spill what she knew—that Susan’s initial visit the day of her death had been because of Kirk.

  “Fraud, huh?” Ardis murmured.

  “It’s…probably not something we should even be discussing.”

  “Okay, you’re right. If the unthinkable does happen, and Kirk decides to slap a suit on you, then I could be forced to tell what I know on the witness stand. So don’t tell me anything.”

  “Fine.”

  “But let me tell you something.” Ardis leaned forward and touched Cheyenne’s hand. “Don’t let Kirk’s behavior affect your impression of Christ.”

  “I don’t have any impression of—”

  “People attend church for different reasons. Some are earnestly seeking God, even if they haven’t found Him yet. Others are making business contacts, improving social skills, looking for entertainment or warm fuzzies. Church attendance doesn’t necessarily make nicer people with high moral standards.”

  “Good sermon, Ardis.”

  “I haven’t even warmed up.”

  Cheyenne forced a smile.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “I’ve been relieved of duty.”

  There was an uncomfortable silence. Cheyenne turned in her chair and studied Ardis’s face. Obviously, this wasn’t news.

  “Medical leave isn’t the same thing,” Ardis said.

  Cheyenne straightened. “You knew about this?”

  “Kind of hard to miss the schedule change for two months. Dr. Brillhart explained it to me.”

  Cheyenne felt as if she’d been slapped. “Jim told you? Who else did he tell, the whole ER staff?”

  “Calm down, I think he just told me.”

  “You think? How do you—”

  “Would you relax for a minute?” Ardis reached into the pocket of her scrubs. “Jim had a reason to tell me. In the first place, he knew we were friends, but he also knew I had just the thing you need right now.” She pulled out a key on a plastic ring shaped like a daisy.

  “What’s that?”

  “I’ve told you about our place on Table Rock Lake, haven’t I?”

  “Barely.”

  “It’s a farm near the Missouri-Arkansas border. It’s on sixty-five acres, about a mile drive from this tiny town called Hideaway. Closer by boat. Isn’t that the perfect place to spend some downtime?”

  “On a farm? Tell me you’re kidding.”

  “Nope.” Ardis swung the key back and forth. “Just take it and listen to me, Chey. The place is in the middle of nowhere. It belonged to my husband’s aunt before she died. We were down there last year, but we haven’t had a chance to get back. It needs a woman’s touch, but I know you helped Susan some when she was starting her business.”

  “I know how to paint under supervision. That’s it.” But Cheyenne took the key.

  “There’s some basic furniture,” Ardis continued, “and I could call and have the electricity turned on if you want. I’m not promising it would be connected over the weekend, but definitely by Monday. It’s on well water, and the pump works. The heat is electric. There’s no telephone, no television.”

  “You’re saying I should leave Columbia.”

  “That’s what I’m saying.” Ardis sat back, eyes hi
ding behind lenses that reflected the overhead light. “You’ve buried yourself here too long, even before the accident. What with the nightmares, you need a complete change of scene. Hideaway would be quite a change.”

  Cheyenne couldn’t believe she was actually considering it.

  “You’re in a rut here,” Ardis continued. “And the rut keeps getting deeper, especially now. Down at our place, there’s a dock on the water just right for fishing. You could get involved in some of the community activities, or you could hole up and read, listen to audio books, take a trip or two into Branson. The drive’s about forty minutes over winding roads. You could be in Springfield in about an hour and a half, maybe less if they’ve got the new road completed.”

  Cheyenne studied the faded green-and-yellow plastic key chain, turned it over in her hand. “This place is close to town?”

  “If you want to call Hideaway a town. There’s a general store open all year long, and I heard they’ve got a nice new boat dock, which should bring in some tourist trade. There’s a mechanic and a café, a school and a beautiful little bed-and-breakfast down by the water.” Ardis paused, fingers linked around her knees. “What do you think?”

  The thought appealed. Very much. Cheyenne had to admit that the name “Hideaway” drew her. Right now, she wanted nothing more than to hide away.

  Dane found Blaze sitting on the front porch steps, tossing pebbles over the wooden railing.

  Blaze looked up at him. “Somebody’s wicked around here.”

  Dane sat beside him. “That kind of thing has happened before.”

  “They killed an animal before?”

  “No. They’ve broken into the general store, damaged a few vegetables, knocked some boxes off the shelves.”

  “When did that happen?”

  “Couple years ago.”

  “Anything else?”

  “A tire slashed on our pickup, a hole in the canoe, maybe a year ago.”

  “You make somebody mad?”

  “Maybe a few people,” Dane said.

  “Just because you had this ranch with all us delinquents?”

  “You aren’t delinquents.”

  “The mayor thinks so.”