Case File: Canyon Creek, Wyoming. Paula Graves
slipped out of the room and headed down the hallway toward the nurses’ station, where the nurse he’d met previously was making notes in a chart behind the desk. She looked up, her expression turning stern. “You didn’t stress her out, did you?”
“Is there a waiting area on this floor?” he asked.
The nurse pointed out a door a few feet down the corridor.
Riley entered the room, which was mostly empty, save for a weary-looking woman stretched out across an uncomfortable-looking bench in the corner. Riley grabbed a seat near the entrance, where he could keep an eye on the door.
He hadn’t wanted to worry Hannah Cooper, but it had occurred to him that, target of opportunity or not, she’d seen the killer and lived to tell.
The son of a bitch wouldn’t like that one bit.
ONE OF THE DIRTY LITTLE secrets of hospitals was how shoddy hospital security was, especially in a place like Jackson, Wyoming. Jackson Memorial Hospital had a single security camera trained on the main entrance and a few guards scattered throughout the hospital in case trouble arose. If you looked like you belonged and knew where you were going, nobody gave you a second look.
That’s how it worked in institutions of all sorts.
He wasn’t on duty that evening, but it was a piece of cake to enter right through the front door, wearing his work garb, without anyone lifting an eyebrow. Now, he had just one more job to do to cover his tracks, and then he’d finish what he’d come here to do.
He slipped inside the empty security office and closed the door behind him.
SHE DREAMED OF HOME, with its glorious vista of blue water, green mountains and cloud-strewn skies. The lake house where she’d spent her first eighteen years of life had been built by her father’s hands, with lumber and stone from right there in Gossamer Ridge, Alabama. Though she’d lived on her own for almost eight years, the lake house remained home to her, a place of refuge and a source of strength.
She didn’t feel as if she was dreaming at first, the setting and companions as familiar and ordinary as the sound of her own voice. Out on the water, her brother Jake was taking a fisherman on a guided tour of the lake’s best bass spots. Nearby, her brother J.D. worked on the engine of a boat moored in one of the marina berths, while his eleven-year-old son, Mike, shot a basketball through the rusty old hoop mounted on the weathered siding of the boathouse.
She basked in the sun on her skin and breathed in the earthy wildness of the woods and the water from her perch on the end of the weathered wooden pier. Her bare toes played in the warm water, drawing curious bluegills close to the surface before they darted back down to safety near the lake bottom.
Suddenly, the pier shook and creaked beneath her as footsteps approached from behind. She turned to look up at the visitor and met a pair of brilliant blue eyes gazing out from the chiseled-stone features of Riley Patterson.
“Wake up,” he said. “You’re in danger.”
The dream images shattered, like a reflection in a pool displaced by a falling stone. She woke to the murky darkness of a hospital room filled with alien smells and furtive movements. A shadow shifted beside her in the gloom, and she heard the faint sound of breathing by her bed.
She froze, swallowing the moan of fear rising in her throat. It’s a nurse, she told herself. Only a nurse. In a minute, she’ll turn on the light and check my pulse.
But why hadn’t the nurse left the door to the hallway open?
She felt the slightest tug on the IV needle in the back of her hand. Peering into the darkness, she caught the faint glint of the IV bag as it moved.
The intruder was putting something into her IV line.
Panic hammering the back of her throat, she swallowed hard and tried to keep her breathing steady, even though her lungs felt ready to explode. Slowly, quietly, she tugged the tube from the cannula in her right hand until she felt the cool drip of liquid spreading across the bed sheet under her arm. She had no idea where the nurse call button was, but it didn’t matter anyway. She was too terrified to move again. The last thing she wanted to do was let the intruder know she was awake.
Instead, she focused on her breathing, keeping it slow and steady. In and out. Her heart was racing, her head was aching, but she kept breathing until she felt the intruder move away from her bedside. A moment later, the door to her room opened and the silhouette of a man briefly filled the shaft of light pouring inside. But he was gone before she got more than a quick impression of a solid, masculine build.
The door clicked closed and she jerked herself to a sitting position, groping for the nurse call button that hung by a cord from the side of her bed. She flicked the switch that turned on the bedside light and frantically pressed the call button.
A few seconds later, a woman’s tinny voice came through the call-button speaker. “Yes?”
“Someone just came into my room and tried to put something in my IV line,” she said, her voice shaking.
After a brief pause, the nurse’s voice came through the speaker again. “I’ll be right there.”
A few seconds later, the door opened and a nurse hurried inside. She hit the switch by the door, flooding the room with light. Her brow furrowing, she looked at the tube Hannah had extracted from the cannula. “Are you sure someone was in here?” she asked, checking the IV bag.
“He was standing right there. He put something in that port thing.” Hannah pointed toward the bright orange injection port positioned a few inches below the IV bag.
The nurse’s frown deepened.
The door to the room whipped open and Riley Patterson entered, his tense blue eyes meeting Hannah’s. “What’s going on? I saw the nurse run in here—”
Hannah watched him close the distance between them, unsettled by how glad she was to see the Wyoming lawman again. The memory of her dream, of his quiet warning, flashed through her mind, and she felt the sudden, ridiculous urge to fling herself in his arms and thank him for saving her life.
Instead, she murmured, “I thought you went home.”
“You thought wrong,” he said drily. “What happened?”
She told him what she’d just experienced, watching with alarm as his expression darkened. “I wasn’t imagining it,” she said defensively.
He looked at her. “I didn’t say you were.”
“I’ll call security,” the nurse said, heading for the door.
“I think we should call the Teton County Sheriff’s Department, too.” Riley reached for the phone.
“So you believe me?” Hannah pressed.
“Any reason I shouldn’t?” He started dialing a number.
Hannah sank back against her pillows, reaction beginning to set in. She tried to hold back the shivers, but it was like fighting an avalanche. By the time Riley hung up the phone and turned around, her teeth were chattering wildly.
He sat beside her on the bed and took her hands in his. “It’s okay. You’re going to be okay.”
His eyes were the color of the midday sky, clear and brilliant blue. They were a startling spot of color in his lean, sun-bronzed face. He seemed hewn of stone, his short-cropped hair the rusty color of iron ore, his shoulders as broad and solid as a block of granite. His lean body could have been chiseled from the rocky outcroppings of the Wyoming mountains. He had cowboy written all over him.
Aware she was staring, she looked down at his hands enveloping hers. They were large, strong and work-roughened. A slim gold band encircled his left ring finger.
She tugged her hands away, acutely aware of her own bare ring finger. “I should have screamed. I let him get away.”
“There