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Her voice rose a notch. “He implied that I’d better keep my mouth shut if I knew what was good for me.”

  “Whittaker actually threatened you?”

  “Not in so many words. But don’t you see? He must’ve charmed the Parkers into changing their will, and then bumped them off.”

  He quirked a brow. “Kind of a big risk for him to take when he doesn’t personally benefit.”

  “Then who do you think it is?”

  “I don’t know, Tara. I don’t know how killing a couple of terminally ill patients can score anyone a payoff.”

  Tara threw up her hands. “Why does it have to have anything to do with personal gain?”

  “It doesn’t. But it usually does.”

  “Well, that scratches the doctors.” She sighed. “They can hardly be in need of more money.”

  “Not necessarily. Many graduate from med school with enormous financial debt.”

  The doorbell rang and Suzie sprang to her feet.

  “No,” Zach chided gently. “You mustn’t open the door unless your mommy says it’s okay.” Heartened to see that being back in familiar surroundings had at least eradicated the youngster’s fears, he glanced out the window. “It’s Detective Gray and your pizza,” he said to Tara.

  “All right, Suzie. You can open the door this time. But next time, remember what Zach said—ask first.”

  Suzie’s little legs scurried to the door in a blur that could outrace Wile E. Coyote.

  “Well, hello,” Rick’s voice carried into the room. “Is your mommy home?”

  Tara set her hands on Suzie’s shoulders. “Come on in. Thanks for coming. And bringing supper.”

  “It’s no trouble.”

  Tara leaned down and whispered in Suzie’s ear, “You go wash your hands before we eat.”

  Suzie eyed Rick and the female officer curiously, then skedaddled down the hall.

  Rick introduced the brunette at his side as Officer Kelly Teal, Tara’s bodyguard for the evening. The attractive young officer wore jeans and a T-shirt and carried an overnight bag.

  Tara gave Kelly an apologetic look. “I’m sure Zach’s concerns are overblown. Officer Nelson was certain the shooting was a random gang thing.”

  Rick handed Tara the pizza box. “Let’s pray so. In the meantime, Kelly will keep an eye out for any signs of trouble.”

  The kettle whistled. Tara let out a resigned sigh, set the pizza box on the coffee table and excused herself.

  “What do you think?” Rick whispered to Zach as Kelly stowed her bag behind the sofa.

  “No sign of anyone watching the place. The windows and doors have decent-enough locks. And, like she said, this could be a false alarm. Then again...”

  Tara’s scream split the air.

  Zach rushed to the kitchen, Rick at his heels. The back screen door hung open. In the faint pool of light beyond the threshold, Tara stood frozen, her hand splayed over her throat, her gaze fixed on a convulsing baby raccoon.

  Suzie darted into the room, but Kelly immediately corralled her into the living room. Zach clasped Tara’s upper arms from behind and urged her back inside.

  She whirled to face him and his heart wrenched. She’d gone ashen, her eyes glazed, her body trembling. It was all he could do not to fold her in his arms.

  He spotted the upturned compost bucket and shot a glance to Rick.

  “What was in that bucket?” Rick asked.

  “My leftover lunch.” Tara choked on the words as her terrified eyes met Zach’s. “Someone tried to poison me.”

  FOUR

  Detective Gray’s voice registered faintly in Tara’s churning mind. He cupped his hands over her shoulders. “We need to get you to the hospital and have you checked.”

  “We can’t take her to Memorial,” Zach said.

  Tara’s breaths came in short gasps. Someone tried to poison me!

  She gripped the edge of the counter, forcing herself to inhale deeply as she waited for the room to stop spinning.

  “She needs an ambulance, now,” Detective Gray barked.

  “No, I don’t think I ingested enough to—”

  “I’ll take her to Hamilton,” Zach said, cutting off her argument. “We don’t want whoever did this to know we’re onto them.”

  “I can stay here with your daughter if you like,” chirped the female cop assigned to be Tara’s bodyguard.

  Feeling like a child at the mercy of grown-ups determined to make the decision for her, Tara looked from Detective Gray’s grim face to Zach’s.

  “You need to be checked,” Zach said softly.

  Tara nodded. He was right, of course. But she hated being the patient. She returned to the living room, her gaze shifting to the inky blackness outside. Whoever had done this to her could be out there even now. Watching her.

  She yanked the drapes closed, then kneeled in front of Suzie playing with her toys. Tara’s heart raced. She didn’t know the female officer. Could she trust her alone with her daughter? Did she dare, when a killer clearly wanted to silence her?

  “Honey, Mommy needs to go back to the hospital for a little while. Would you like to come?”

  Suzie rubbed her eyes with tiny fists. “No. Don’t wanna.”

  “Would you like Miss Kelly to stay here with you, then?”

  Suzie’s gaze darted from Kelly to Zach. “Want Dak.”

  The female officer chuckled.

  Zach hunkered down in front of Suzie. “I’d like that, but I can’t this time. Your mom needs me to drive her to the hospital. Kelly will take good care of you. Okay?”

  Tara’s heart clenched at the disappointment that clouded Suzie’s eyes. She pulled her into a warm hug. “I won’t be long. I’m sure if you ask, Kelly will read you lots of stories.”

  “Oh, I love to read stories,” Kelly gushed.

  “O-kay,” Suzie said, with enough reluctance in her voice to heap up the guilt Tara battled every time she had to leave her daughter in someone else’s care.

  Zach rose. “Come on. The sooner we get you looked at, the sooner you’ll be back.”

  Detective Gray emerged from the kitchen with her lunch container. “I’ll have this dusted for fingerprints and tested for poison. Who had access to your lunch?”

  An involuntary shiver trembled through her entire body. She tightened her hold on Suzie, shutting down the thought of how differently this day could’ve turned out.

  Suzie squirmed.

  Tara loosened her hold and sat back on her heels. For her daughter’s sake, she fought to keep her voice even. “I put my lunch in the staff-lounge fridge when I got to work.”

  “I’ll need a list of everyone who might’ve accessed that fridge.”

  “Dozens of people have access. Housekeeping staff, doctors, nurses. Sometimes we even let the spouses of our long-term patients use the fridge.” A lump swelled in Tara’s throat. What was she saying? How could one of her coworkers try to kill her?

  Blackness crept into the edge of her vision. She caught the corner of the coffee table.

  Zach cupped her elbow. “Easy.” He coaxed her to her feet. “Come on. We need to get going. You can jot down names as I drive.”

  Tara took a fortifying breath and gave Suzie one last squeeze. “Be good for Kelly, okay?”

  Already absorbed in her play, Suzie merely nodded.

  Tara rushed out to Zach’s truck before she could change her mind about letting Suzie stay behind. Zach quickly corralled her inside, shielding her from the road with his body and scanning every hedge and tree where a shooter might hide. Once inside the truck, he flipped on the dome light and handed her a notepad and pencil, his expression so sympathetic she had to look away.

  He pulled onto the road. “Tell me about Suzie’s father.”

/>   “Why?” Tara’s heart pinched. Wasn’t it bad enough she’d been shot at and poisoned? Did he have to pry into the humiliation of her failed marriage, too?

  “We’ve assumed the attacks are connected to the deaths at the hospital, but we need to consider all the possibilities.”

  Tara squared her jaw. “I haven’t seen my husband since he walked out on us.”

  “He hasn’t stayed in touch? Not even to see Suzie?”

  “No.” Last week’s two-line note asking if he could drop by—three years too late—could hardly be considered staying in touch. “His lawyer served the divorce papers, and Earl surrendered all custodial rights.” He’d remarried, and if the grapevine could be believed, his wife was infertile. The Earl she knew would’ve been fine with that, which had made his sudden attempt to reconnect all the more strange.

  “I see,” Zach said through gritted teeth. “You deserve better.”

  Tara’s heart gave a little kick at the fervency behind his words. Everyone had always loved Earl—his friendly, outgoing charm. No one had ever told her that she deserved better. No one.

  “What about neighbors? Former colleagues? Former boyfriends? Can you think of anyone who might have a vendetta against you?”

  “No. Well...I suppose a patient’s loved one might. Sometimes relatives blame medical personnel after a family member’s death.”

  “Any patient in particular?”

  Tara peered into the darkness. “No, none that I can think of.”

  “You mentioned that Alice had a grudge against you. Do you think she could’ve done this?”

  “Alice?” Tara’s voice rose at the ludicrousness of the idea. “She wants me demoted. Not dead.”

  “You never know what someone is capable of.”

  The image of the convulsing baby raccoon spiraled across Tara’s vision. Her stomach roiled. What if she’d fed her lunch leftovers to Suzie?

  She shoved the pad and pencil to the floor and grabbed the door handle. “Pull over.”

  Zach stomped on the brake.

  Tara shot from the truck and heaved. Oh, God, why are You letting this happen to us? I tried to do what was right, and now some psycho is coming after me. How can I protect my baby?

  Zach raced to her side, patted her back. “You okay?”

  She flung out her arm, knocking away his hand. “Do I look okay? Someone tried to kill me!”

  “Yes, and you’re angry. But please know that we’ll do everything in our power to keep you safe.”

  That was more than she could hope for from God. She wiped her mouth and tramped back to the truck.

  Zach started to follow, then stopped, his attention riveted to the road behind them.

  Tara spun in her seat, the tick-tick of the hazard lights reverberating through her chest.

  The car behind them slowed to a crawl, then sped past.

  A gawker? Or someone following them?

  Zach whipped out his cell phone and made a quick call before returning to the driver’s side.

  “Who was that?” Tara blurted the moment he opened the door.

  “Probably no one. But I called in the license plate and told Rick to run extra patrols past your place.”

  “You think this guy’s watching my house?”

  Zach veered back onto the road and punched off the hazards. “Anything’s possible, Tara. It would be safer if you got out of town for a while.”

  “I can’t. I already told you that.”

  “Your safety, not to mention your daughter’s, is more important than a promotion.”

  “Don’t you think I know that? I am not some money-grubbing workaholic—I’m a single mom. If I want to keep my daughter clothed and fed, I need this job.” Not to mention she needed to avoid giving Earl any leverage, in case a desire to reclaim custody was behind his recent contact.

  “Okay.” Zach didn’t bother tempering the exasperation in his voice. “But tomorrow, you call in sick. The attacks have all been centered at the hospital, even the shooting, if it’s connected. With the weekend and your regular day off Monday, that’ll give me four days to flush this guy out. With any luck, he’ll assume he managed to scare you off.”

  Tara could only pray he was right.

  * * *

  The next day, Zach wasn’t sure what would’ve been less distracting—having Tara at the hospital or spending the day worrying about who might be terrorizing her. The investigating officer had no leads on the shooter. Rick had managed to recover one usable thumbprint from the lunch container, but it didn’t match any in the database. And an unknown enemy was the most difficult to defend against. What kind of monster laced a young mother’s lunch with arsenic?

  Zach shook off a surge of anger and forced his attention to the computer in front of him. He couldn’t afford to let his emotions get in the way. Last night Tara and her little girl had invaded his dreams, muddled with memories of his late wife.

  He’d been prepared for those flashbacks. Spending time in a cancer ward again, they’d been inevitable.

  He could handle them. Tara and Suzie, he wasn’t so sure about.

  He inserted his pass card into the nurses’ station computer and tuned in to the conversations around him.

  Alice Bradshaw stopped at the desk and picked up a file. A teenage volunteer, pushing a cart of paperbacks and newspapers, halted at her side. “Miss Clark had a friend over, too, but he left before the ambulance got there. Weird, huh?”

  Zach zeroed in on the nurse to gauge her reaction. Were they talking about Ellen Clark, the most recent alleged victim of their phantom killer?

  “How do you know she had a friend over?”

  “My Gran lives in the apartment next door. She heard someone just before the paramedics showed up.”

  “You shouldn’t talk about this here,” Alice reprimanded. “You’ll upset the patients. Some of them knew Ellen.”

  Zach’s fingers stilled over the keyboard. So they were talking about the victim.

  The pair headed up the hall. “I’m just saying,” the teen continued, “what kind of friend calls an ambulance for you and then splits?”

  Good question. He pulled out his cell phone and texted Rick—Need report on Ellen Clark’s 9-1-1 call. Zach mentally reviewed what he knew about the woman. Single, thirty-five, she’d been hospitalized three times in the past year.

  Rick rang back immediately. “The call came from Clark’s home phone. Male voice. The message was ‘A woman’s seizing. Send an ambulance.’”

  Yes! They were finally getting somewhere.

  “What’s the significance?”

  “The caller scrammed before the ambulance got there.” Zach scanned the vicinity and lowered his voice. “We could have a voiceprint of the killer.”

  “Why would a killer call for an ambulance? Never mind. It doesn’t matter. Ellen Clark died from natural causes—an infection. I got the coroner’s report this afternoon.”

  “The coroner said the same thing about Debra Parker.” Yesterday Zach would’ve jumped on the excuse to shelve this investigation, but not after the attacks against Tara. “This guy’s disappearance begs the question—why didn’t he want to be seen at Ellen Clark’s apartment?”

  A loud smack snapped Zach’s focus from the computer to the hallway. “I gotta go.” He snapped shut his phone and rounded the doorway of the nurse’s station to see what was going on.

  A male in jeans and a disheveled shirt, mid-twenties, face twisted in pain, slapped his palm against the wall.

  “Hey, you okay?”

  The guy, eyes red-rimmed, stared blankly at Zach for a second before answering. “Yeah. Just peachy.” Muttering to himself, he paced several feet down the hall, turned, paced back, turned again.

  Deciding the guy’s problem wasn’t p
hysical, Zach backed off. But he’d seen enough desperation in his career to want to keep an eye on him. At the moment, the hallway was empty, and the guy was a lightweight, no more than five-ten. If he started doing more than slap a few walls, Zach figured he could handle him.

  The next time the guy turned, he covered his head with his hands and slumped heavily against the wall. With an anguished moan, he slid to the floor as if his legs couldn’t hold him up. With his knees crunched to his chest, he banged the back of his head against the wall.

  Zach rushed to his side. “Hey, buddy. Do you need a nurse?”

  The guy jerked away from Zach’s touch. Dropping his arms from over his head, he stared at the opposite wall. “No, I need a priest.”

  Zach offered him a wry grin. “Sorry, not my specialty.”

  The guy looked at him a moment, and then one side of his mouth quirked up a fraction. “I’m okay. Just thought if a pastor was handy I could convince my fiancée to marry me.”

  Confused, Zach looked around. Then understanding dawned. “She’s a cancer patient?”

  The man’s shoulders sank four inches with the breath that whooshed from his chest. “Yeah. And I don’t know what to do.”

  Zach urged him to his feet and ushered him to a chair. “Tell me what happened.”

  The young man hung his head. “Melanie’s not responding to treatment.”

  Muffling a groan, Zach pulled up a chair beside him. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

  “And now she says she doesn’t want to marry me. She says it wouldn’t be fair.”

  “Fair to who?”

  “That’s what I said. No one comes with guarantees. I could be hit by a truck driving home.” This time, when the guy met Zach’s gaze, he had fire in his eyes. The fire of youth—bold, impetuous and naive. “What matters is that I love her.”

  “Enough to hold her head over the toilet while she pukes her guts out?” Zach felt compelled to ask, even though the shadows circling the young man’s eyes and the worry lines lashed across his brow said he did.

  “I’d do anything I could to make this miserable disease easier on her.”

  Memories of anguished prayers and endless bedside vigils whispered through Zach’s mind, wrenching the breath from his lungs. He knew this man’s lament too well. He wouldn’t wish it on anyone. Lord, show me what to say, how to comfort.