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Truth Or Lies
Kylie Brant
Dr. Shae O'Reilly followed the rules–but Cade Tremaine caused her to break them.With a criminal father and a brother in jail, she knew the last man she should ever get involved with was a cop. Especially one who didn't know her past. But when an injured–and then escaped–drug dealer decided Shae was his angel of mercy, she found herself getting very close to the charming detective.Cade couldn't help but be intrigued by the sassy, independent and sexy-as-hell doctor. She held the key to finding a cop killer–but would he risk her life to catch his man? Or would this be the time he caught–and kept–the woman?
“We’re not so different. We both try to keep people alive.”
Professionally, at least, she knew his words were true. But personally…Cade Tremaine would be shocked to discover just how far apart they were.
Cade moved closer to Shae, his head tilted intimately toward hers, and his voice went low and persuasive. “C’mon, Doc. What’s the harm?”
With new eyes she reassessed him, not as a doctor but as a female. He had a smoker’s voice, slightly raspy, with more than a hint of the South in it. Coupled with those penetrating jade eyes and rangy build, she didn’t doubt that he found it far too easy to persuade women to do just about anything he asked.
He reached for one of her hands, held it in his as his thumb skated over her knuckles. At the touch, she let her eyelids lower, her lips part.
“Tell me something,” Shae murmured throatily.
Although he hadn’t moved, somehow he seemed closer. “Hmm?”
“Does this little act of yours usually work?”
Truth or Lies
Kylie Brant
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
KYLIE BRANT
lives in Iowa with her husband and children. Besides being a writer, this mother of five works full-time teaching learning-disabled students. Much of her free time is spent in her role as professional spectator at her kids’ sporting events.
An avid reader, Kylie enjoys stories of love, mystery and suspense—and she insists on happy endings! She claims she was inspired to write by all the wonderful authors she’s read over the years. Now most weekends and all summer she can be found at the computer, spinning her own tales of romance and happily-ever-afters.
She invites readers to check out her online read in the reading room at eHarlequin.com. Readers can write to Kylie at P.O. Box 231, Charles City, IA 50616, or e-mail her at kyliebrant@hotmail.com. Her Web site address is www.kyliebrant.com.
Contents
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Prologue
The dim spill of light from the nearby street lamp barely disturbed the oppressive shadows deep in New Orleans’s City Park. Even the glow of the night’s half moon couldn’t penetrate the thick canopy of trees. Darkness held untold fears for some, but for others it provided a much-needed cover. Some business was best conducted far from the light of day.
“He’s late.” Detective Cade Tremaine checked his watch. “I thought you said he was dependable.”
“Freddie’s reliable as long as he hasn’t been shooting up or snorting.” Brian Hollister, Cade’s partner, shrugged. “If he’s using again, I can’t vouch for him.”
Scanning the area, Cade said, “We’ll give him a couple minutes.” He wasn’t thrilled with the idea of losing any more sleep. But the snitch represented a chance for a lead in a case that had been damn short of clues lately. And catching the dealer responsible for at least three deaths from overdoses was well worth the inconvenience.
He heard footsteps moments before a figure stepped out of the shadows. “Is that him?”
“Yeah.” Hollister straightened, waited for the man to get closer. “You must have us confused with one of your junkie bitches, Freddie. We don’t much like being kept waiting.” The words were accompanied by a slap alongside the man’s head.
Freddie flinched away. “Stuff came up, Hollister. You know how it goes.”
Cade shoved the snitch under the street lamp, noted the pinpoint pupils, the glassy stare. “He’s high,” he said with disgust. Releasing the man’s filthy shirt, he turned to his partner. “Let’s go. We’re wasting our time.”
“No, hold on,” the snitch said hastily. “You wanted information and I have some for ya.” He gave a look around as if they were in danger of being overheard and lowered his voice. “That guy you’re investigating? The one who’s putting pure stuff on the streets? I can get you in contact with someone who knows him.”
“Then start talking, Freddie, ’cause we’re ready to walk,” Hollister said impatiently.
“Okay, okay.” The man turned to the side, dug in his pocket. “I got his name written right here on this napkin. Not the dealer, but the guy I told ya about. I can tell ya where he hangs out, too.”
He’d finally managed to get Cade’s attention. Not that he was ready to believe a hopped-up junkie, but a name would give them a contact they didn’t have right now. Hollister stepped forward to snatch the creased napkin from Freddie, and while he unfolded it, Cade moved closer.
In the next moment, however, Freddie was backpedaling furiously, the words tumbling from his mouth. “Got you what you wanted, didn’t I? So pay up, guys, pay up.”
At first Cade thought the words were directed at them. Then he saw the glint of metal. “Gun!” Reacting instinctively, he reached for his own weapon. He’d barely cleared it from his holster when the first bullet hit him in the chest, the impact sending him stumbling backward. He squeezed off a couple of shots before the next two slugs hit him, knocked him to the ground.
After the first searing jolt there was no pain, only a cold numbness that seemed to spread from one internal organ to the next, shutting down physical functions. Distantly Cade was aware of more shots being fired, shouting, but he couldn’t move. Couldn’t feel. He could only lie on the sidewalk, cheek pressed to its gritty surface. It took every ounce of his rapidly draining energy to drag his eyes open. He saw the stream of blood eddying out from him to join an ever-widening pool. Saw his partner’s body crumpled in a heap next to his.
Cade didn’t see his life flash before his eyes. Didn’t see a powerful white light that drew him deeper into its center. Death was a yawning black hole that sucked the life from his body bit by bit until there was finally only darkness.
Then there was nothing at all.
Chapter 1
Two months later
“Gunshot wound to the abdomen. Blood pressure is one-ten and dropping. His name is Jon LeFrenz.” The paramedics helped transfer the moaning patient from the ambulance cot to an emergency-room cart. They ran alongside as the Charity Hospital E.R. employees rolled it through East Hall to triage.
“Room four is open,” Dr. Shae O’Riley said to her colleagues. Then she addressed the closest paramedic. “How’re his sounds?”
“Lungs are clear. But we had trouble stopping the bleeding. That’s the third pressure dressing. We already gave him a unit of O negative. He’s lucid and responsive.”
Nodding, she said, “Okay, thanks.” She left the ambulance crew behind as the cart was rolled into the tiny trauma cubicle. The area was jammed with people and equipment. Drawing the curtain to separate the area into two separate compartments left barely enough room to move. “Okay, Jenna, type him and get a couple of units of blood ready.” The lab tech nodded, reached for the patient’s hand.
Shae looked up, saw the lines the ambulance crew had put in to replace fluids. Both IV bags were nearly empty. “Let’s get another couple of bags in him. How’s his blood pressure doing?”
The emergency room RN looked at the screen. “One hundred over sixty.”
Not dangerously low yet, but dropping. “Roll him to his side.” Shae leaned in and lifted the dressing used to staunch the bleeding on the abdomen. The bullet had torn through the flesh, leaving a relatively small entry. She looked up at Boyd DuBois, the emergency-room resident. “Is there an exit?”
He lifted the dressing on the man’s back and nodded. Shae moved around the cart and looked at the angry gaping hole, which was oozing sullenly. “Wessels and Lyndstrom still on duty in surgery?”
DuBois checked his watch. “I think so.”
Shae looked at the triage nurse next to her. “Could you give them another call, get someone down here for a consult?”
“I called as soon as we heard he was coming in.”
“But no one’s here yet, are they?”
The woman shrugged and headed to the phone on the wall. The consultation would be merely a formality. Virtually all gunshot wounds to the abdomen had to be explored.
Shae turned her attention back to stabilizing the patient. The paramedics had cut his blood-soaked T-shirt up the center, baring his chest. He was awake, his face sheened with sweat. No more than twenty, she guessed, although it was difficult to tell for sure with pain and shock twisting his surprisingly innocent features. Leaning down, she shone a flashlight into each eye, noting normal pupil reaction.
The patient turned his head from the light, raised his hand to knock the flashlight away. “Get that outta here.” The oxygen rebreather mask the paramedics had placed on him made his words difficult to make out, but his meaning was clear enough.
“You’re in Charity Hospital, Mr. LeFrenz, and we’re going to help you.” She put a stethoscope to his chest to check his sounds. “You will probably require surgery. Do you have any family you want us to call?”
“No,” he muttered, turning his head back toward her. His eyelids fluttered open and he stared fixedly at her. Then he reached up and dragged down the mask. “Must be alive. Ain’t no angels where I’m going.”
Shae pushed it back into place. “We’re stabilizing you now, and a surgeon will come to assess your condition.” As she spoke, she pressed lightly on the skin surrounding the wound, watching his face carefully for signs of increased pain. When he flinched and moaned loudly, she said to Boyd, “Slight swelling to the upper quadrant.” She probed the area a bit longer. The belly was hard, rigid, indicating possible internal bleeding. “Let’s do a DPL and see what’s going on in there.”
She stepped aside to allow the RN to prepare an area on the skin where they could insert the catheter. Moving back up to the patient’s head, she spoke evenly, pitching her voice above the man’s loud moaning. “Mr. LeFrenz, we’re going to do a test that will let us know the extent of the bleeding in your abdominal cavity. The discomfort will be minimal, but one of us will let you know what we’re doing every step of the way.”
“No! Just patch me up and let me go!” He’d pulled his mask down again to scream the words. Then he spewed a stream of obscenities as he rolled from side to side, grimacing in pain. Boyd made a grab at him, but not before one of his flailing arms had knocked Shae back a step.
With no more than a look she directed two of the staff to restrain the man. Preparing the plastic catheter, she performed the direct peritoneal lavage and withdrew the catheter, handing it to the RN. “Get that to the stat lab and have them do a cell count.” The woman nodded and exited. It was only then that Shae noticed the man leaning against the far wall.
Her first thought was that he was a family member. She immediately realized her mistake as second and third impressions followed on the heels of the first. She didn’t need the gold shield hanging around the man’s neck to identify his occupation. There was cop in his eyes, in the cold steady way he was regarding her.
“Detective Cade Tremaine,” he said by way of an introduction. “I need to talk to him. Is he lucid?”
“Pressure’s dropping, Doctor. Ninety-eight over sixty.”
Shae acknowledged the resident’s words with a quick nod, but never looked away from the detective. “He’s as lucid as anyone would be with a bullet in his belly. Did you put it there?” She wasn’t even certain where the note of censure had come from, but she heard it in her voice.
If it had any effect on him, it didn’t show in his expression. “Yes.” He brushed by her, took up a stance next to the patient. “Hello, Jonny.” The patient abruptly stopped struggling. Tremaine turned to look at Shae. “Does he need that mask on?”
It was on the tip of her tongue to assure him that the man did. To tell him in no uncertain terms to get out of her trauma room and wait as long as it took for his little talk. But that urge sprang from the personal side of her, not the professional. So instead, she stepped in next to him, took out her stethoscope and listened to the patient’s breathing. It was shallow, but still even. Without a word, she reached up and pulled the man’s mask down.
“Sorry it took so long.” Jenna appeared around the edge of the curtain, holding two units of blood. “The lab was pretty backed up.”
Shae looked up at the monitor again. The pressure was still dropping. “Use a power infuser to transfuse him.” The device would warm the blood and deliver it far more rapidly than an ordinary infuser.
“You gonna keep protecting him, Jonny? What the hell for? You don’t see him here asking after your health, do you?”
The conversation between the detective and her patient diverted Shae’s attention as she flushed the wound of particles of fabric and dirt. There was no doubt in her mind which of the pair was the more dangerous. Tremaine’s six-foot-plus frame seemed overly spare, his unshaven angled face just shy of gaunt, as if he’d recently been through his own trauma. But the aura of quiet menace that radiated from him effectively quelled any sympathy his appearance might have elicited.
“I got nothing to say to you. Angel Eyes, get him away from me.” LeFrenz grasped her fingers.
Shae gave Boyd a sharp glance and the resident restrained the man again. The monitor beeped and her gaze flicked to the screen, noting that the pressure was hovering at ninety-six.
Tremaine shoved his face closer to the patient’s. “All you need to do is give me a name. No one has to know where it came from. That kid’s death is on your hands, LeFrenz.”
“Not my hands,” LeFrenz wheezed. His face twisted in pain and he cried out at Shae’s ministrations. “His choice…to take it…all at once.”
“But you’re the one who sold it to him.” The detective’s voice was unforgiving. “If you cooperate, I can arrange for your protection, but otherwise you’re going down for this kid’s death. I’ll bury you.”
“Doctor, I’ve got the labs.”
It took a moment longer than it should have for the lab tech’s voice to register, for Shae to turn away from the human drama unfolding before her. As she was looking over the results, Dr. Lyndstrom hurried into the room.
She looked up at the surgeon, then pointedly at her watch. “Busy up there?”
“We’re starting to stack them up, so don’t give me any grief. It’d be best if your guy could wait an hour or two.”
“I don’t think so.” Deliberately Shae shifted her attention from the detective’s hard persistent voice, LeFrenz’s moans interspersing his belligerent replies. Handing the results to the surgeon, she gave him a rundown of the case, ending with, “His count is high. There’s rebound tenderness in the upper quadrant and his BP is dropping, despite two transfusions. His liver may be bleeding.”
The surgeon’s muttered curse was drowned out by the RN’s voice. “Blood pressure’s ninety.”
Shae leaped back to the patient’s bedside, elbowing the detective out of the way. DuBois and Lyndstrom joined her, and the cubicle became a flurry of emergency maneuvers to save the patient from flat lining.
“Let’s get him upstairs.” Lyndstrom and Shae helped Boyd shove the cart out of the room, the RN running alongside with the IV stands and infuser.
“Wait a minute. Where are you taking him?” The detective jogged after them to the elevator.
“Surgery.” Shae switched her attention to the intern, Sara Gonzalez. “Stay with him for the duration, okay?” The woman nodded.
“LeFrenz.” Frustration laced the detective’s voice. “Dammit, LeFrenz, do the right thing.”
