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She had failed her patient. Her department.
Herself.
The stranger spat a curse. “He could have killed you! What kind of hospital policy is that? What kind of safety do you people have here? The guy’s a nut. He should be punished!”
“He’s already been punished,” Ripley snapped over Harris’s rising howls. “He’s lost his wife.” Though she didn’t believe in happily ever after for herself, it worked for some. It had worked for the Harrises. She thought of the rose stem in her pocket. He’d bought Ida Mae a glass flower to celebrate their fiftieth anniversary. Now he’d spend it alone.
The sting of guilt pierced like a thorn.
The stranger snarled, “That’s bull and you know it. Grief doesn’t give a man the right to hurt other people.”
“Give it up, pal,” the officer suggested. “We get these calls every few months. Boston General won’t press charges and we’ve never had anyone seriously hurt. For better or worse, their system seems to work. Now, if I could have your names for my report, I’ll get out of your hair.”
Ripley gave her name and department. The stranger clenched his jaw when she mentioned Radiation Oncology, but he merely glared at the officer. “My name is Zachary Cage. I think this is bull, I’m soaking wet and I’m late for a meeting.” With a final glance at Ripley, he stalked away, dripping.
That was the new Radiation Safety Officer? Ripley stared at him in disbelief. The rumors had been right on about his attitude, but they hadn’t said he was gorgeous.
“Hell,” she muttered, and lifted a hand to brush the hair away from her face. That was when she noticed the hand was still shaking. Her whole body was shaking. And she was going to throw up.
If you must fall apart, do it someplace private, Howard Davis’s stern voice said in her mind. Davises must never be weak in public. Never.
She was halfway across the atrium on her way to the ladies’ room when she saw the ER attending give Harris a sedative jab in the upper arm. The weeping man’s voice abruptly rose above the atrium din. “The voice on the phone said Dr. Davis killed my wife!” Then he slumped to the floor, unconscious.
Ripley made it to the bathroom, barely. But it was a long time before she stopped shaking.
“JUST WHAT I NEED. Another damn doctor trying to save her own hide. Typical. Well, we’ll see about that, won’t we?” Cage yanked the warm-up pants out of his gym bag and dragged them over his clammy legs. He cursed when his bad shoulder protested. The surgeons had repaired the joint as well as they could, but the ligaments just weren’t strong enough for underwater wrestling matches.
“What’s that, boss?” Whistler stuck his head around the corner but kept his butt firmly planted in the computer chair lest he lose the rhythm of his solitaire game.
“Nothing. Come on, we’re late for the meeting.”
“You wearing that?”
Cage scowled down at the faded baseball jersey, warm-up pants and scuffed sneakers. “Not much choice, is there? My work clothes are soaked. Come on.”
His nominal assistant obediently tagged along to the meeting Head Administrator Leo Gabney had set up.
“Why the hell won’t the hospital prosecute that guy?” Cage snarled. “He attacked one of your doctors with broken glass, for God’s sake.” He had told Whistler the bare bones of the story. The radiation tech, twentyish and faintly geeky, had barely batted an eyelash. Then again, Whistler hadn’t reacted to much yet, except to offer a small grin when Leo Gabney had announced that Cage was replacing George Dixon as Radiation Safety Officer.
The other five members of the team hadn’t been as kind. Two had rolled their eyes, one had made a pointed reference to the failed Albany Memorial lawsuit, and the others hadn’t bothered to look up from their card game. Cage had considered firing all of them on the spot.
The day had gone downhill from there, culminating in him stumbling upon a woman being held at knifepoint in the hospital lobby. He could still feel the echo of rage. Though Cage knew exactly how the widower felt, there was no excuse for physically harming a woman.
Even if she was a doctor.
“If the guy freaked out because his wife died unexpectedly, they’ll hush it up,” Whistler said with a sidelong glance.
“Why is that?”
“The administration doesn’t want a malpractice suit. They’re bad for business and for BoGen’s chances at Hospital of the Year.”
Cage stiffened, and when the memory tried to come, he stuffed it deep down, hidden where it belonged. He growled, “Malpractice my ass. Doctors shouldn’t ‘practice’ on anyone. They should know what the hell they’re doing before they start mucking around.”
Whistler shrugged. “Don’t see much of it here. Boston General has an excellent record. The administration has seen to it, one way or another.” He pushed open the door to the Radiation Oncology conference room and gestured Cage through.
“You’re late.” Head Administrator Leo Gabney pounced just inside the conference room. His scowl lacked some of its intended punch because he barely topped five-foot-six. “And what the hell are you wearing?”
Cage brushed past him. “Long story. But for the record, your security sucks.”
“Lucky for you, our security isn’t your problem. You’ll adjust to the way we do things here soon enough.” Gabney shooed Cage up to the front of the room. “Let’s get on with it, the natives are restless.”
That was an understatement, Cage decided as he took the podium. Fifty or so faces stared at him with varying degrees of annoyance, anger and downright hostility. Nothing unexpected. A few coffee-shop conversations and a scan of the files had shown him that his predecessor had been neither well liked nor particularly effective. It seemed that George Dixon had been more interested in women than radiation safety—whether or not the women returned his affections.
Well, Cage thought, the female population at Boston General was in no danger from him. His priority was the job. Period.
But as he adjusted the microphone to chin height and scanned the room, an unfamiliar tingling skittered through Cage’s chest, and he couldn’t help glancing at the only face that reflected something other than hostility.
She was here.
The woman hadn’t been far from his mind, he realized, since the incident in the atrium. She’d brushed it off and hidden behind hospital policy, but he had saved her life and they both knew it. The adrenaline still thrummed through his veins as he peered past the podium and focused on her face.
Dr. Ripley Davis. The statistics in her personnel file hadn’t prepared him for that first meeting. Hadn’t prepared him to see her as a woman instead of a doctor. A suspect.
In those first few seconds, he’d seen only a beautiful woman with dark, springy curls fastened behind her head, a few left free to brush her jaw and long, elegant neck. The moment their eyes had met, the water he’d been standing in hadn’t felt cold anymore. Neither had his body.
It had been a long time since sex had been a part of his vocabulary; even the need for it had been burned out of him. But desire had flowed through him then, as it flowed through him now when their eyes locked in the auditorium and the electricity surged again.
Dr. Ripley Davis. Radiation Oncology. He didn’t trust R-ONCs as far as he could pitch them, and he’d already heard rumors of suspicious doings in her department. His investigation was already underway. The fact that she was a beautiful woman shouldn’t matter one bit.
It wouldn’t matter, he told himself firmly. If she was responsible for the hidden radioactive material Dixon had supposedly found in the R-ONC broom closet, Cage would bring Dr. Davis down and be glad of it. He had no patience for sloppy doctors. Especially R-ONCs. And it was beyond unacceptable for unlogged radioactive materials to be scattered throughout the hospital.
Cursing the rev of his body when she smiled tentatively and mouthed, “Thank you,” Cage gritted his teeth and glared out at the rest of the assembly. He could deal with their animosity more easily than he could deal with Ripley Davis’s smile.
“Attention. Everyone, please!” The Head Administrator waved the crowd to silence. “As you know,” Gabney began, “the final ballots for Hospital of the Year will be cast at the end of the week, and Boston General is up for the title and the ten-million-dollar grant. This money would not only go far in easing our recent budget concerns, it would also fund the new Gabney Children’s Wing.” There was little reaction from the room, but the administrator beamed and nodded as though there had been a standing ovation. “Now, as part of my continued commitment to improving Boston General, I’d like to introduce Zachary Cage, who is replacing George Dixon as Radiation Safety Officer.”
There was a quick, speculative buzz, but it died when Cage cleared his throat and leaned toward the microphone. “I know there have been complaints about fines levied by the previous RSO, and I promise to look into those incidents.”
There were a few nods and a faint smile or two. These were wiped clean as Cage continued, “But…the radiation safety here is a joke. You know it, and I know it. I intend to bring each and every doctor in this hospital back into strict accordance with federal radiation safety guidelines. There will be no exceptions, no allowances. You will comply or you will be shut down until the guidelines are met.” An angry hum skittered through the crowd and Cage saw Leo frown. Undaunted, he barked, “Radioactivity is not a toy, ladies and gentlemen. It is a weapon.”
A quick memory of angry red burns on soft skin had his stomach clenching. He glanced down at the notes he didn’t need and ignored the hands that shot up around the room. He ignored the chocolate-brown eyes he could feel on his face like a touch and tried to imagine wounded blue ones in their place.
Heather. He was doing this for Heather. He hadn’t been able to save her. Hadn’t been able to punish her killers. But he could make the hospitals safer for other women. For other men’s wives. The widower’s cry echoed in his head. Dr. Davis killed my wife!
Cage leaned forward into the microphone and made the final pronouncement, the one that was likely to be the most unpopular. “I will be performing a full audit of your radiation use for the last two years, starting in the labs with the most recent fines and infractions.” He glanced up and was caught in her eyes. The sudden angry babble faded into the background when he saw the surprise on her face.
And the sudden flash of…worry?
He glanced down at the unnecessary notes again, needing to sever the contact. “My team and I will start our audit tomorrow.” He paused and his eyes found Ripley Davis again. It was as though he was speaking only to her. “We’ll begin with Radiation Oncology.”
This time, the fear was unmistakable and Cage felt an unaccountable thread of disappointment knife through him. Ripley Davis had something to hide.
She was just like all the others.
The meeting wound down quickly after that. Cage saw Dr. Davis slide from her seat as he opened the floor to questions, but she didn’t meet his eyes. She hurried from the room while he answered a query about waste containment systems and Cage had a sudden, mad impulse to follow her.
As quickly as he could, he turned the microphone over to the Head Administrator and walked to the door. There was no sign of her in the hallway. Gabney droned in the background, “I will be personally overseeing the public affairs events scheduled over the next two weeks as the Hospital of the Year voting draws near…”
Cage slipped out of the conference room and headed for the Radiation Safety office, intent on rereading her personnel file. Ripley Davis had piqued his interest. Not because of the way she looked, or because of how she’d handled the situation in the atrium, he assured himself, but because she was a doctor. A R-ONC. And because George Dixon had told several people about finding a jar of radioactive material in the R-ONC broom closet. Unlabeled. Unshielded. Unauthorized.
Unacceptable.
Now it was Cage’s job to figure out where the jar had come from. Where it had gone. And why.
He found the Rad Safety office deserted and he grimaced. Dixon had run a sloppy office in more ways than one. “Those technicians had better step up to the plate, or they’ll find themselves looking for new jobs,” he muttered into the echoing emptiness.
He crossed to the cardboard box that held his paperwork, pulled out the stack of files he’d requested from personnel, and thumbed through until he reached Davis, Ripley. He froze.
That morning, the folder had been thick with commendations and biographical material. But not anymore.
He pulled the now-thin folder from the box and opened it.
The file was empty.
Chapter Two
Ripley spent that night going over Ida Mae Harris’s lab workups backward and forward until the notations blurred together. Then she staggered to bed and slept a few hours, plagued by a tangle of waterfalls, hot black eyes and unfamiliar aches. The shrill ring of the alarm was almost a relief, but when she reached her office at Boston General, the tension she’d felt after Harris’s attack returned in force.
A book she remembered leaving open to a page on cardiac complications was closed. Her chair, which she usually pushed all the way under the desk, was askew.
Had someone been in her office? She glanced at the door. It had been locked as usual. She shook her head.
She was still rattled from the day before, that was all. She was shaky from being assaulted, and worried by Mr. Harris’s strange choice of words. The voice on the phone said Dr. Davis killed my wife. Had he meant her phone call when Ida Mae died? It seemed the likeliest answer, but the phrasing bothered Ripley. What if someone else had called Mr. Harris and told him R-ONC was responsible for his wife’s death?
She’d be looking at a malpractice suit, and even worse, it meant that someone in her dwindling department couldn’t be trusted.
“He’s late.”
Ripley jumped, cracked her elbow on the corner of her desk, and swore. It wasn’t often that her best friend, Tansy, snuck up on her. Usually, the pretty blonde entered the room with a flourish and an invisible fanfare. Men lit up. Women smiled. Her energy was infectious.
Not today. Ripley grimaced. “You look about how I feel. What’s wrong?”
“Nothing important.” Tansy’s smile barely flattened the frown. A sleepless night was etched in the slump of her shoulders and the dark circles under her eyes. “How are you feeling after yesterday?”
“Jumpy and sore,” Ripley replied. “And I know Cage is late.”
The new RSO’s threatened audit was another reason for her nerves. Though Ripley and her technicians were scrupulous about their radiation practices, Zachary Cage was reputed to be on a mission. And Leo Gabney was looking for an excuse to close the R-ONC department and shuffle their expensive patients elsewhere across the city, where Ripley knew they’d get adequate care.
Adequate, but not exceptional. And though she’d originally taken the R-ONC position to prove to her father that she wasn’t going to join him in his cushy private practice, over the years the department had become her baby. Her family.
It was the only family she was likely to have, Ripley knew, and she wasn’t about to let the administration, or the new RSO, take it away from her.
“Ida Mae Harris’s autopsy is today, you know,” Tansy broke the silence, shooting her a sidelong glance.
And there was her biggest worry in a nutshell. She touched the manila folder on her desk. It was all that was left of a sixty-eight-year-old woman who’d been looking forward to a milestone anniversary she would never reach. “Yes, I know.”
“They won’t find anything that Gabney will be able to use against us.” Tansy gave her a one-armed hug. Though she spent much of her time on loan to Hospitals for Humanity—HFH—an international group of doctors who took assignments under the worst of conditions, Tansy worked in R-ONC when she was at home. She understood.
“I almost hope they do find something, you know? At least then we’d have an answer.” Ripley shrugged. “It’s always better to know than to wonder.”
“Well, whatever they find, it wasn’t anything R-ONC did wrong. It wasn’t anything you did wrong.” Of anyone in the hospital, only Tansy knew how much Ripley needed to hear the words. Only Tansy knew how insecure the seemingly invincible Dr. Davis was about her work, how much it frightened her to play God.
How much it hurt when she lost a patient. A friend.
Ripley squeezed her eyes shut. “I hope you’re right. And I hope the new RSO doesn’t cause problems.” Her temperature spiked as her mind flashed back to black eyes and the hot whispered promises of her dreams.
Or had that been a nightmare?
“What sort of problems would those be?” The rough rumble came from close behind her, too close, and the sizzle that lanced through her midsection was unmistakable.
Ripley spun and faced the door. Cage. She stifled a curse that he’d walked through the outer office and into the inner sanctum without her realizing it, before she’d been able to prepare herself to see him again.
She didn’t want him to know about the autopsy. Didn’t want him to know that she couldn’t explain Ida Mae’s death. Her past experience with Radiation Safety had taught her it was best to tell them as little as possible.
And her own reactions told her it was safest to keep her distance from this RSO in particular. With R-ONC’s future uncertain, she couldn’t afford the weakness that came with an emotional entanglement.
Her father had taught her that, as well.
Cage’s face gave away nothing as they squared off in her doorway, and once again Ripley felt that click of connection. Something primitive flared deep in his black eyes and he held out his hand like a challenge. “We weren’t properly introduced yesterday. I’m Cage, the new RSO.”
She took the hand and felt her heart kick when his fingers closed over hers. “Dr. Davis.” He held on a moment longer than necessary before allowing her to pull away.
“A pleasure,” he replied, but a lift of his heavy brow told her it was anything but.
“Though I’m grateful for your help in the atrium yesterday, I’m not thrilled about a full audit. I have patients to treat, and the violations you mentioned were Dixon’s way of getting back at me for refusing to date him.” A hint of temper seeped into Ripley’s voice and she gestured toward the outer office, feeling tired and cranky. Twitchy. Tense. “Never mind. Come on, I’ll show you where we keep the radiation logs.”
She tried to brush past him, but the RSO didn’t budge and she ended up too close, staring up into his dark, dark eyes. A tremble began in her stomach and worked its way out from there. Irritation, she told herself. Nerves.
Lust, whispered her subconscious. Sexual awareness.
It took her a long moment to realize that he wasn’t gazing into her eyes with mirrored desire. He was focused over her shoulder, staring at Ida Mae’s paperwork piled on the corner of her desk. “What is that, your personnel file?”
Ripley spun away and slapped a hand on the pile. “This is confidential patient information, Mr. Cage. Off-limits unless you’re a doctor.”
Something dangerous flashed in his eyes, but he stepped back and inclined his head. “My apologies. After you, Dr. Davis.”
Why had he thought it was her personnel file? Ripley had no idea, just as she had no idea why the outer office suddenly seemed crowded and hot.
Hyperaware of him following close behind, she walked to a padlocked refrigerator, pulled out a green binder and handed it to him. “Here’s the main radiation log. It’s up to date as of this morning.”
