Candace Irvin - In Close Quarters

“Why am I here? Perhaps we should start at the beginning, no? Why are you here?”

“I work here, remember?”

“A good try, Cariño. But you yourself told me you did not start for two weeks. You came to confront him, no?”

“Doug? Of course not.”

A single dark brow rose.

She ignored it. “Look, all I did was stop by to drop off some stuff and check out a few medical journals. I’m way behind in my reading. I was out of the country for six months, you know.”

“This, I know. I also remember seeing a stack of journals on your kitchen counter last night.”

Damn. Busted again.

She shrugged. “So I’m missing a few. I like to read them in order.”

He shook his head, actually chuckling as he stared at her ears. “Cariño, if you intend on persisting with these lies, you may want to consider growing your curls again.”

Oooh, she really did not like this man.

So why did her heart have to start thumping erratically as he leaned back against Eric’s desk? And why did she have to notice the way the muscles of his chest strained against those blasted coveralls as he leaned over to pick up the crystal paperweight?

Undercover—ha! Suiting TJ Vásquez up like a janitor was tantamount to slapping a collar on a panther and passing it off as a newborn kitten. His arms flexed as he tossed the crystal globe in the air. He caught it neatly, then stared into it.

“This man, you know him?”

“Who? Eric?”

“Sí. Eric.”

“I met him two minutes before you walked in.”

He glanced up. She could have sworn he was startled. “And yet you date him?”

What the…? “No, I’m not dating him. I told you, I just met the man.”

“But you agreed to have lunch with him, no?”

“He asked, I accepted. Then he canceled. Are you finished with the third degree?”

“Why?”

She blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“Why did you accept?”

What the devil was he getting at? And why was he staring into that stupid crystal again as if it could divine the future of the world? “Because he offered.”

“I have…offered.”

That was what this was about?

Perversely, she smiled. “His was interesting.”

Liar.

TJ flipped the crystal into the air again, waiting until the last possible moment before catching it. His gaze narrowed as he studied the clear depths. “This lieutenant, have you considered he may be involved?”

“Because he asked me out? Thanks. That says a lot about your own invitation if you’re so sure he had to have an ulterior motive.” But she remembered Eric’s hands—in her desk. “Besides, I want to help. I need to. Not only that, someone obviously thought I could. If the note’s even real. Maybe if I get to know Eric and some of the other residents, something will click.”

“What?”

“I don’t know. Something.”

TJ tossed the paperweight a final time before setting it back down on the desk. He folded his arms across his chest, his gaze dark and brooding as it met hers. “Cariño, I must ask you to stay away from the hospital for a few days. Take your vacation, visit your mother.”

She frowned. “My mother lives an hour away in La Jolla.”

“Visit her, anyway. You have been gone awhile. Or go to the beach, read your journals. Just stay away from here.”

“Why?”

“Just do it. Please.”

“No.”

He sighed.

“I mean it, TJ. If you want to get rid of me, you’ll have to do better than that. Tell me what you’re holding back—and don’t tell me you’re not keeping something from me. What is it you said about the note last night? Oh, yes, ‘Most likely this means naught, but I will look into it.”’

At least he didn’t pretend to misunderstand. “It was necessary.”

She stared at his coveralls. “Necessary to poke your nose in this deep or necessary to lie to me about it?”

“I did not lie.”

“Oh, no?” She jerked her chin toward the cleaning cart. “I suppose that’s your idea of looking into something discreetly?”

“The situation has changed.”

“That much is obvious or you wouldn’t be so damned anxious to get rid of me. What I want to know is how? Exactly how has the situation changed and what was it like to begin with?”

He glanced over his shoulder at the door, then turned back. “Not here. Meet me later. We will speak then.”

Dammit, she knew he’d been holding out on her. And from the look in those deep-brown eyes, whatever he was holding on to was something big. It figured. Another he-man who just had to take care of the little lady—for her. Well she wasn’t bowing to it.

Not with him.

She shook her head firmly. “You’ll tell me now, or I’ll do what I should have done yesterday. I’ll— Oh, God. You told Dr. Manning, didn’t you?” She slumped onto the edge of her desk and closed her eyes, as she watched her short career flash before them. The coveralls, the cleaning cart. Suddenly it all made sense. “That’s why you’re here. Manning knows I found the note.”

“No.”

She opened her eyes.

TJ shook his head.

“But he does know you’re here, right?”

Again he shook his head.

“You mean to tell me, you came in here undercover and you didn’t even clear it with the head of anesthesiology? What did you find out about Doug?”

TJ tugged off his ball cap, staring at the bill as he curled it.

“Just tell me.”

Dread slid down her spine as he continued to study the cap. He finally sighed and looked up. “I do not know if this Señor Callahan is involved or not. Three days ago—well before you got your note—my office received a call from San Diego General. Two teenagers were brought into the emergency room just after midnight. They were dead when they arrived. Drug overdose.”

Oh, God.

Class twos are walking.

The dread reversed its track, snapping back up her spine and slamming into the base of her skull. She rubbed the resulting knot. “It was morphine, wasn’t it?”

“Fentanyl.”

“Fentanyl? But that’s…” She couldn’t even finish.

He nodded. “Much deadlier.”

“But…teenagers?”

Another nod.

She wrapped her arms about her chest, desperately trying to ward off the sudden chill swamping her. “You think it’s related to the note, don’t you? You think the fentanyl came from this hospital.”

“Perhaps. I do know it was surgical quality, definitely not street, because they still had the glass ampules on them, but the stock numbers were etched off. When you showed me the note, I had hoped to check around a bit more before I came in undercover. To be sure the ampules were from this hospital.”

“Then why didn’t you?”

But she knew.

His frown deepened, confirming her suspicions. “There was another overdose last night. 2:00 a.m. She was sixteen, perhaps seventeen. I cannot be certain because I have not yet been able to identify her.”

Karin bypassed her desk and slumped straight into her chair with a thud. “So young.”

“Sí.”

Sixteen years old.

A sophomore in high school.

She should be going on her first date, learning to drive a car, looking forward to college. She certainly shouldn’t be out at 2:00 a.m. on a school night, shooting up a drug that was seventy-five times more potent than morphine. The girl had to have suffocated within minutes. Where the hell had she gotten it?

“Doug.”

TJ hunkered down in front of her, reaching for her hands as she locked her fingers together and stared at them.

In a way, this was her fault. She should have nailed Doug Callahan’s ass to the wall last summer when she’d had the chance. But no, she’d kept her mouth shut. She’d been so damn worried about making waves for fear she’d lose her slot that she hadn’t even tried to turn him in—not to mention the fact that her stepfather would find out—that all she’d done was deny the charges. Without proof, it was Doug’s word against hers. When hers finally won out, no doubt aided by her stepfather’s reputation, Doug had even had the gall to call her up and warn her that someday he’d get even.

Well, it looked like someday was here.

She really should have gelded him when she’d had the chance. She glanced up as TJ squeezed her fingers. “If Doug is behind this, I want his head on a pike. You just tell me what I have to do to get it there.”

“Dine with me.”

“Excuse me?” Of all the requests she’d expected, that was not one of them. At the very least, she was sure he’d be telling her to leave town again.

“Sí, dinner. I want you to sit down with me tonight, go over the list of names I have. Doctors, residents, interns, nurses. As the USS Baddager’s doctor these past two years, you had to have consulted with some of them, no? I must learn as much as I can about each one. Information that will not be in their files, information you may have.”

She nodded. “Anything you want.”

“Good. Then after dinner, I would like you to pack your suitcase. I want you to visit your mother, Cariño, and leave the remainder of this case to me.”

She’d do anything, all right.

Anything but that.

He was late.

Karin kicked off her heels and stalked across the kitchen tiles in her stockings, stopping just short of the cordless phone on the wall. She glared at the chunk of silent plastic before wrenching her gaze back to the clock on the stove. No, TJ was worse than late.

He was dead—or he’d better be.

He’d stood her up.

Why she was even surprised, she didn’t know. But she was. Correction, at six-thirty, when he was still just half an hour overdue, she was surprised. Perhaps even a little worried. But now? At ten o’clock? She was beyond worried.

She was livid.

Karin ripped the refrigerator door open and stared inside. The bottle of wine she’d left to chill in the middle of the empty shelves taunted her. She slammed the door and turned back to the stove. Back to the clock. Back to that damned silent phone. Not only had the rat stood her up, he hadn’t even had the decency to call and let her know. As if he would.

They never did.

Not the smooth ones.

Oh, no. They just cruised in, hours late, flowers in hand with a new lie dripping from their lips. No doubt his would be a doozy. Probably twenty-five with long brown hair and legs even longer. Not that he’d phrase it quite like that. Lord knew TJ was experienced enough to couch it better. He’d have been running late, there’d been an accident, he’d stopped to help. Or maybe he’d been called out on a case. Hell, given his past, he probably had a hundred prime excuses stocked inside some corner of that philandering brain, each just waiting its turn.

Well, it didn’t matter.

By the time she was five years old, she’d heard them all.

She spun around and jerked the refrigerator door open again, this time reaching for the bottle of wine. But as she thunked it onto the counter and opened the drawer to grab the corkscrew, she froze as the enormity of her actions slammed into her.

What the hell was she doing?

She swung her gaze back to the bottle. To the goblet she hadn’t even realized she’d placed beside it. How many times had she seen her mother with a goblet and a bottle just like this one, on a kitchen counter just like this one? And how many times had she sworn that no man would make her do the same?

Disgusted, she slapped the corkscrew back into the nest of utensils and slammed the drawer home. She turned back to the oven and yanked the door open. Removing the still-warm containers of Luigi’s legendary take-out linguini, she dumped them into the trash compactor. Finally she added the unopened bottle of wine to the top. She was not recycling that bottle—because it was exactly where it belonged, along with any chance of ever dining with TJ Vásquez again.