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“Just one more thing,” said Josie, turning her phone screen toward him. “I’m going to scroll through these names and photos. Let me know if you recognize the doctor your mother used to work for.”

“Um, sure.” He watched as she scrolled through the doctors. Three lines appeared on his forehead as he carefully read each name.

Gretchen leaned against the door, waiting. After a couple of minutes, his eyes widened and he pointed at the screen. “This guy. I’m pretty sure it’s this guy.”

There was no photo but the name read Dr. Jacob Holmes.

Thirty-Five

The first thing he noticed when she let him inside was that her apartment smelled like smoke. The furniture was old and saggy. The couch cushions were lumpy but he ignored the discomfort and concentrated on the woman beside him. This one didn’t talk much and it had taken very little manipulation on his part to get her to let him in. Convincing her to let him kiss her took no effort at all. Her body didn’t tense when their lips met. In fact, she leaned into him, seeking more but she tasted like smoke and tequila and he didn’t like it. It wasn’t right.

“What’s wrong?” she breathed when he pulled back.

With the back of his hand, he wiped her kiss away. “Nothing.”

Her expression changed from lusty to disappointed to suspicious. Before she could start asking questions he didn’t want to answer, he said, “Do you have anything to drink?”

She stared at him for a beat before sighing noisily. “Yeah, sure.”

Instead of drawing things out so he could toy with her until he was so on edge with excitement that he couldn’t take it any longer, the moment her back was turned, he jumped to his feet and threw the cord over her head, tightening it, and when she began to fight, the revulsion he’d felt earlier slipped away.

Her struggle was magnificent.

He wondered then if her struggle would be like this. Or would the reality fall short of his fantasies?

Thirty-Six

Denton Memorial’s emergency department was well over capacity. The waiting room was filled with the usual types of cases. A man in a wheelchair whose leg was definitely broken. A woman hunched over, vomiting into a plastic bag. A man with a bloody kitchen towel wrapped around his hand. Another woman paced back and forth with a wailing infant in her arms. In the time it took Josie and Gretchen to get through security, three cases of chest pain had been rushed into triage. There had also been a late-summer surge of COVID, several heat-related emergencies at a local outdoor summer camp for kids, and a four-car pileup on the interstate.

As they were about to follow one of the guards back to the exam rooms, a familiar pair of figures caught Josie’s eye. Nudging Gretchen with her elbow, she said, “Hang on.”

Gretchen turned back toward the automatic doors. “Well, this is interesting.”

Carter and Dean West stood just inside the emergency department. They’d both changed clothes. Dean’s hair was wet, as if he’d just stepped out of the shower. The black shirt and gray shorts he wore were loose on him. Carter must have lent them to him since he couldn’t get back into his house yet. Josie noticed the clenched fists at his side. The way his nostrils flared with each breath. The skin at the nape of her neck tingled.

“Just a minute,” Josie told the security guard.

She and Gretchen strode over to the brothers. Dean ignored them. Carter looked apologetic. “Carter,” Josie said. “Dean. What are you doing here?”

Dean’s jaw was set in an angry line. He pointed to his brother. “He needs stitches.”

Gretchen said, “You said you didn’t need stitches.”

Carter ran a hand through his thick hair. “Dean’s worried. He wanted me to get checked out in case I do.”

“Urgent care would be a lot faster,” Gretchen informed him. “There’s one two blocks away. Security said it’s a four-hour minimum wait here.”

Dean said, “We’re already here.”

Gretchen arched a brow. “Why are you really here?”

When neither brother answered, Josie looked at Dean. “Is it because I asked you about Dr. Holmes? You found out your brother was injured and figured it was a good excuse to come here and see if he was on shift, and then what?”

“Then I’m gonna ask him when he saw our mother last and where he was Sunday morning and today,” Dean snarled.

“Dean—” Carter put a hand on his brother’s shoulder but Dean shrugged it off.

“That’s our job,” said Gretchen.