Her pager beeped to indicate a new arrival that needed her attention. “Mom, I have to go. I’ll put the money in your bank when I hang up.”
“No! Put it in my PayPal account, please.”
Cassie stretched her neck from side to side to ease the growing tension. So her mom’s account was overdrawn, and she didn’t want her play money swallowed up. “Sure. I’ll do it after I’ve dealt with this patient.”
“Could you do it before, Cassandra? I know how forgetful you can be.”
And there was the little dig she ended their exchanges with.I think you forget I’m still here, Cassandra. I think you forget who raised you, Cassandra. I think you forget how I gave up my dreams to have you, Cassandra. Yeah, Cassie was super forgetful, but she couldn’t forget the sound of her brother’s screams on the night of his death. Sometimes, she really wished she could. “Sure, Mom.” Of course the potential heart attack or stabbing victim bleeding out could wait while she dealt with her mom’srealemergency.
Cassie ended the call and made the money transfer as she rushed back to the ER. She held her ID card against the access panel and pushed the door open to see the hospital’s medical director, Harold Barr, leaning against the nurses’ desk.
“What traffic have you had through the doors so far?” he asked.
“Just the usual for a Saturday afternoon,” Rachel said. “Chest pains mostly from indigestion rather than heart attacks, stomach issues generally from over-indulging in the casinos’ all-you-can-eat buffets, and contusions from alcohol-related tumbles.”
Rachel caught Cassie’s eye and blinked twice: their coded signal for “Rescue required.”
She slipped her phone back in her pocket and headed toward the desk, ready to deflect Barr’s unwanted advances. No matter how many times Rachel shut him down, he kept coming back for more, somehow expecting Rachel’s standards to have slipped low enough to entertain him. It wasn’t his outer appearance that turned her off—he was quite the handsome man, even Cassie would admit that—it was his inner ugliness Rachel wouldn’t accept.
“What brings you down here, Harold?” Cassie asked and smiled.
He looked at her, his lustful gaze crawling over her body like a cluster of spiders.
“What a waste,” he muttered.
That was ground-breaking and original. As if she hadn’t heard that one before. “The latex glove shipment? Indeed it was.” She flashed the back of her hand in his face. “But it’s not as if any of us have long nails. The quality wasn’t good enough, and everyone was having trouble with them. They weren’t protecting anyone from anything.” She pulled a pair of gloves from her lab coat pocket and stretched them to twice their length. “You can’t cut corners on protective equipment. It puts the lives of our team at risk, and you wouldn’t want that, would you?”
“Of course not.”
The look in his eyes contradicted his words. He’d done nothing but cut budgets and shave corners to make savings, mostly to justify his phenomenal wage. Of course he’d risk the lives of staff if it saved him money and made him look good to the hospital’s board.
“So we can expect a return to our usual supplier then?” Cassie pulled the gloves on and snapped them hard against her skin. She fought against a satisfied smile when he flinched and began to back away from the desk.
“Of course. I got your memo. David was supposed to be dealing with that.” He gestured over his shoulder. “I’ll go and do that for you now.”
“Not for me, Harold for all of us. You wouldn’t want a slew of litigation suits for neglectful management, would you?”
His nostrils flared, finally giving away his irritation. “No, Cassie, we—”
“Dr. Kennedy,” she said. “Only my friends call me Cassie.”
Chapter Five
Cassie. Taryn looked at the name on her phone screen. How many times had she opened her contacts and hovered her thumb over “Call Cassie” since last night? Too many. The problem with being off-kilter was that she had no ideawhenshe was supposed to call. Or if she was supposed to text. Or WhatsApp. There were too many options, and Taryn didn’t know which to choose or when. Would Cassie think she was too desperate if she called the next day? Was it a test to see how interested Taryn really was?
“What is goingonwith you?” Andi gave her a hard shove. “I haven’t seen you stare at a screen like that since you discovered lesbian porn on the internet.”
“I think you’re mistaken.You’refascinated with that particular delectation. I’ve always been happier doing than watching.”
“I like watchinganddoing,” Andi said and chuckled.
Taryn shook her head at Andi’s wicked laugh. The light turned to walk, and they crossed the road into the shade. Their hotel wasn’t far from the Cosmos, but the hundred-degree heat made the distance feel interminable. Taryn shoved her phone in her back pocket and pulled her shirt away from her chest, already slick with sweat. Just another two hundred feet, and the cool air of the casino would blow away her discomfort. The Florida heat she’d grown up with was preferable to this dry heat that reached down her throat and sucked the moisture from the inside out, but that was about the only thing she missed about the place her family called home.
They were met at the door by a regular-looking woman in business attire who introduced herself as Polly. “Ms. Parks is looking forward to meeting you both.” Polly began to walk along the main casino floor and gestured for them to follow. “She’s followed your work for several decades, Ms. Sullivan, and she was thrilled when Ms. Taylor joined you.”
Taryn poked Andi in the ribs when she frowned at the timestamp. “You old dog,” she whispered.
“Screw you, butthead.”
