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Using the phone on Brady White’s desk, Rye had called Atlanta Center to tell them that he was on the ground. He didn’t tell them the manner in which he’d gotten there. He’d save that for the FAA.
Standing in the open doorway of the office, he’d looked toward the end of the runway where he would have touched down. Whoever had shone the laser at him could have been in that very spot. The angle would have been perfect.
While waiting for the ambulance, Brynn had continued monitoring the injured man’s condition.
She’d taken his pulse every couple of minutes and periodically checked his pupils. When she’d gently parted his thinning hair and assessed the gash, she’d gotten a groan out of him, which she’d seemed to take as a good sign, because she smiled faintly and patted his shoulder.
Rye had left her to her doctoring and stayed out of her way by propping himself against the far wall under a paint-by-numbers portrait of a snarling bear. From this observation point, Rye had watched Brynn take off her coat and hang it alongside Brady’s on the rack just inside the door.
She was wearing a black sweater over skinny, dark-wash jeans tucked into tall, flat-heeled black suede boots. They all looked damn good on her. Rye couldn’t help but notice and appreciate the way the garments hugged this and molded to that.
Whenever she timed Brady’s pulse by her wristwatch, an alluring vertical dent appeared between sleek eyebrows the same dark color as her hair. By contrast, her eyes were light. Best he could tell from a safe distance, they were more gray than blue.
Her hair hung past her shoulders, and there was a hell of a lot of it. She had a habit of absently hooking strands of it behind her ears, where they never stayed for long. Too heavy, he thought. He doubted he could gather up all her hair even using both hands. He’d like to try, though.
No sooner had that thought popped into his mind than he questioned where it had come from. He shouldn’t be looking at her closely enough to notice the color of her eyes. Speculating on the weight of her hair, and how double-handfuls of it would feel?
Jesus.
And all this time, while he’d stood silently by, assessing her attributes, she’d ignored him as though he were invisible.
But she’d been aware of him,
all right. Why else had she done everything within her power to keep from looking in his direction? Was he so bad to look at? Irritated by that thought, he decided to heckle her.
“Hey.”
She looked at him.
“Did I say something to offend?”
She opened her mouth to speak, but just then they heard the wail of approaching sirens. At the distant intersection, flashing red, blue, and white lights split off from the two-lane highway and started up the pockmarked road that he and she had walked along earlier.
The lights created kaleidoscope patterns in the swirling fog. As they got closer, the vehicles took form: an ambulance and two police units, all running hot.
Suddenly, Brynn whipped her head back around to him. If he could have captioned her expression in his terminology, it would have been “Oh, shit.”
His gut clenched with foreboding. He pushed away from the wall and took a step toward her. “What?” He emphasized the t, making the word a demand.
She wet her lips, which at any other time would have distracted him. Now, however, the nervous gesture served as a herald for something he sensed he didn’t want to hear.
“Before they get here…” She’d stopped, swallowed. “I should clear up a misapprehension.”
“What did I misapprehend?”
“You assumed that I was Dr. Lambert.”
He shot a look toward the black box, then placed his hands on his hips and glared at her. “I fuckin’ knew you weren’t legit. You’re not a doctor? Who the hell are you?”
She cast a quick look over her shoulder. The emergency vehicles were screeching up outside. “I am a doctor. Dr. Brynn O’Neal. I came in Dr. Lambert’s place.”
“Why?”
“I can’t explain now.”
His head nearly exploded with fury. “What the hell have you gotten me into, lady?”
3:02 a.m.
