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“If someone is kind enough to stop and offer help, Casey, I’m not going to turn them away and accuse them of being a psycho killer.” I just hoped they didn’t turn out to actually be a psycho killer.
“I’m not saying to accuse anyone of anything, just exercise some caution.”
“Sure, I’ll call you when I get home. Love you to bits, babe.” I ended the call before he said anything else, took a deep breath, and stepped out of the car with what I hoped was a friendly but badass smile. “Hey, thanks for stopping.”
“No problem, ma’am. What seems to be the problem?” The man was a little scraggly, with stringy blond hair and an unkempt beard, but his work boots looked clean and relatively new, the flannel shirt a little too loose for his lean frame.
“Flat tire. I tried to change it myself, but the rain squashed that idea pretty quickly.”
The man smiled and I relaxed. He was a nice guy. A good Samaritan who’d stopped to help because it was the right thing to do. “That’ll happen. I can get you fixed up, if you have the tools?”
I nodded and pointed my thumb toward the trunk. “Back here. I really appreciate this. Roadside help is backed up thanks to the rain.”
“I’ll bet.” He held a greasy hand out and accepted the spanner with a smile.
I watched carefully to see if it was just brute strength that allowed the man to loosen each nut with ease, or if there was some trick I had yet to master. He worked fast, probably eager to get the heck out of this rain.
“So, it’s just muscle,” I said with a sigh of disappointment.
“Not just that, but yeah, this is one of those times where size kinda does matter.” He sat back and examined the last nut. “Here’s your problem. There’s a key on the final nut. You have it?”
Key? “No, I didn’t even know that was a thing.” I leaned in and squinted at where he pointed. “I don’t see a key,” I said, and before I could turn a questioning look at the kind stranger, I felt a searing pain right on the back of my head. It brought me to my knees, so sharp that the wet ground, the pouring rain, barely registered.
I tried to look up at the man, to ask him why, but the move sent me falling backwards until the cold cement hit my back, my head. I stared up at the sky, seeing nothing but the drops of rain just before they touched my skin and sent a chill through my body.
I couldn’t move. Couldn’t close my eyes. But I could hear the man, neither a good Samaritan nor a psycho killer, just a common thief, as he rifled through my belongings.
No, not just a common thief—two common thieves.
“Grab the purse,” another unfamiliar voice called loudly over the sound of the rain.
A minute or two, maybe an hour—who knew—later and I heard one door slam, and then two more before the engine roared to life and faded as it sped down the road.
The last thought I had before I succumbed to the cold and the pain was that Casey would get to issue a very satisfied, “I told you so.”
Yeah, you did.
Casey
“Hey, Casey, do you have a minute?”
The sound of Melanie Gibbon’s voice pulled me from the paperwork required after every surgery, and the VIP seemed to have double the usual.
I looked up and instead of her typical smile, Melanie wore a worried expression that formed a knot in my stomach. “Sure, Mel, what’s up?” The head nurse rarely made an appearance on the surgical floor since we had our own nurses, which only increased my tension.
“I need you to come with me to the emergency department.”
I frowned. “Sure.” I got called down to the ER for patient consults all the time, which meant this must be someone I knew. “Any details on this consult?” I held out a hand for the tablet that usually contained the patient’s file.
“No.” She let out a heavy sigh. “It’s not a consult.”
“Okaaay.” I drew the word out and shrugged my shoulders as I fell in step beside Melanie, who remained stiff and quiet. Unusually quiet. “What’s wrong?”
She didn’t answer, just walked with her head down until we reached a door to one of the private rooms. Moving as slowly as I’d ever seen her, Melanie wrapped a hand around the doorknob and looked at me with a sad expression and a tired sigh before she pushed the door open. “Right in here.”
I stepped inside the room and found my friend, Dr. Cal Rutledge, an ER doctor, waiting with a uniformed officer and a detective. Instantly, I was on edge, and I felt my knees wobble.
“What’s wrong? What’s going on, Cal?”
