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He beat the ambulance to the emergency room.
* * *
Lia struggled through the darkness that threatened to smother her. She had to get somewhere . . . or maybe she had to find someone. Whichever it was, her life depended on it.
“Kaden,” she breathed, instinctively reaching out her hand. If she was in danger, that was who she wanted at her side.
A second later, strong fingers grasped her hand and the mattress dipped as a heavy body sat next to her.
“I’m here.”
Cautiously, Lia forced open her heavy lids, trying to study the man who was leaning over her. He was oddly blurry, as if her eyes were having trouble focusing. Strangely, she could make out the stylized tattoos that crawled up the side of his neck and the thick hair that framed his face. His features, however, remained indistinct.
“Where am I?” she rasped.
“The hospital in Grange.”
Hospital? Lia frowned. It was a struggle, but she at last managed to dig up a few fragmented memories of a brightly lit emergency room and white-coated strangers who bent over her, speaking words she couldn’t understand behind their masks. And pain. A ravaging pain that felt as if it was going to rip her in two.
She had a clearer memory of the frantic trip from Pike to Grange.
“Right. You brought me here.” Her lips twisted. “How fast were you driving?”
“Not fast enough.” He leaned forward and, abruptly, his features were sharp and clear enough to see the tension that clenched his jaw and the shadows beneath his eyes, which appeared silver in the shadowed light of the room. “The trip seemed to take an eternity. How are you?”
Lia paused, doing a silent inventory. The ravaging pain was gone. Thank God. Along with the tremors that had jolted through her with shocking force. Now she felt like a dishrag that was wrung out and tossed aside.
“Weak but better.” Her lips parted as she remembered she wasn’t the only one who was sick. “What about Anthony?”
“Like you. Weak but better,” Kaden reassured her.
She swept her gaze over his tight expression. “It wasn’t food poisoning, was it?”
“No.” The word came out clipped, as if his lips were suddenly stiff. “Arsenic.”
It took Lia a full minute to process what he was saying. After all, it was one thing to worry about a meal that had gone bad or a stomach bug. But arsenic? That was a deliberate attempt to take the life of another person.
“Oh my God.” A shudder raced through her. “How?”
“It had to have been the cookies.”
Lia frowned, considering the various possibilities. It was true both she and Anthony had eaten the cookies when he visited her store that morning. But they’d also had coffee. Of course, Kaden had coffee and he hadn’t gotten sick. Plus, while Anthony had used the cream and sugar, Lia had taken her coffee black.
The cookies did seem to be the link.
“You’re right.” Lia remained confused. She hadn’t bought the cookies. She’d baked them from scratch. And she’d made batches from the same ingredients just a few days before with no one getting sick. “Did someone switch them? Or enter the building while we were gone . . .” Her breath caught in her throat as she abruptly realized that was exactly what had happened. “The intruder?”
Kaden nodded. “That’s my guess.”
She tried to recall the details from the security video. “Do you think they deliberately distracted us by taking the files and leaving behind the note?”
“Yes.”
“But . . .” The tape had been dark, but she basically was able to see what the person was doing. If not in detail. “There was no way they could have switched the cookies. We would have noticed that.”
He lifted her hand to his mouth, pressing a kiss to the back of her fingers. “I talked to the doctor. She said it’s possible someone used a liquid form of the poison. Just a couple of drops could be fatal.”
Fear squeezed the air from Lia’s lungs. After watching the security tape, she’d known someone had snuck into the store. Someone with a key. And they’d been rummaging around her office. That thought was horrifying enough. But the realization that the intruder was there to dump poison on her cookies without concern for who or how many people might eat them was shocking.
