LITMIR.BIZ

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      “And you didn’t smell any smoke at that time?”

      “No, I reheated leftovers and went to my room.”

      “You didn’t check the other doors?”

      “I did.” She gulped. She was always checking and double-checking the locks, because Mrs. Harboyle had a bad habit of letting out the cat and not relocking the door.

      “And you didn’t hear anyone break in? See any evidence of a break-in?”

      “No.” Kara’s throat constricted at the possibility that Mrs. Harboyle had left the back door unlocked before her daughter picked her up. That the arsonist might’ve still been in the house when she got home.

      The sheriff flipped over a page in his notebook. “How did you get out?”

      She fixed her gaze on the sheriff’s badge. “I covered myself with a wet towel and tried to get downstairs, but—” The words clogged in her throat. The flames had moved so fast.

      “That’s how you burned your arm?”

      She hugged it to her belly and nodded. “I ran back to my room and jumped out the window onto the roof of the woodshed and from there to the ground.”

      “Did you see anyone then?”

      “A car stopped on the street and I hid in the bushes.” Her heart ratcheted in her chest at the memory—the fear that she’d escaped the fire only to face the man who’d set it.

      “Our 9-1-1 caller. Yes, I talked to him. He said he pounded on the door. Why didn’t you show yourself? Tell him no one else was inside?”

      “I—” She gulped. “I guess I was in shock.”

      The sheriff drilled her with the same questions, phrased a dozen different ways, for what seemed like forever. Finally the nurse shooed him out to make way for the doctor. To Kara’s relief, he said he had all the information he needed for the moment.

      By tomorrow, she’d be out of town and it would be the marshal’s problem to explain her disappearance.

      The nurse returned with a tall, dark-haired doctor who immediately started into his own litany of questions as the nurse removed the arm dressing so he could examine the burn.

      The more questions he asked, the edgier Kara grew, but she couldn’t figure out why. There was nothing weird about his questions. Except...

      He never actually looked her in the eye. Not once. Was he afraid she’d be able to read something there?

      She muffled a gasp. What if the adoption ring was connected to organized crime and they had a hold over him, like that doctor on the TV show, and they’d ordered him to kill her?

      She swallowed. Okay, get a grip. He could just be preoccupied. He wore a wedding band. Maybe he’d just got off the phone with his wife about a problem at home. He had to at least be a doctor, right? Otherwise the nurse wouldn’t have brought him in.

      The doctor glanced at her now-bare wound. “That doesn’t look too bad.”

      And it didn’t. Aside from a few blistery spots, she’d had sunburns that were worse.

      “You can go,” the doctor said, turning to leave.

      “I can?”

      Someone stepped around the curtain on her other side, and she practically springboarded into the air.

      The person glanced at her in confusion. “Sorry, wrong bed.”

      Meanwhile the nurse hurried after the departing doctor. “Are you sure? Her BP is low. And look at her eyes. I’m concerned she’s still in shock.”

      Kara blinked. What was wrong with her eyes? Aside from her overreaction to Mr. Wrong Bed.

      The doctor stopped, and for the first time met her eyes, for all of a fleeting nanosecond. “She’s fine.”

      Kara swung her legs off the bed, not about to wait around long enough for the nurse to change his mind. Maybe it was her imagination, but the woman seemed a little too anxious to keep her here.

      As Kara pushed aside the curtain to leave, the nurse trotted up carrying a hypodermic. “Hold on a second.”

      “What—what’s that for? The doctor said I can go.”

      “Yes, but he just ordered this to help with the pain.”

      “I don’t need it.” Kara edged sideways, putting the bed between her and the needle-happy nurse. How had she not clued in to that maniacal glint in her eyes sooner? It was the exact same glint she’d seen in that goon’s eyes back in Boston when he’d spotted her snapping his picture and pulled his gun.

      An orderly popped a wheelie with a wheelchair at the end of her bed. “You the one who’s getting sprung?”

      “That’s me!” Kara jumped into the wheelchair.

      The orderly didn’t get three feet before the nurse rounded the bed with the needle. “She’s not going yet.”

      “Yes, actually, I am,” Kara insisted, reaching for the wheels herself. “The doctor released me.”

      The orderly hesitated.

      “Let’s go,” Kara prodded, cranking the chair out of the nurse’s reach.

      “Fine, take her,” the nurse relented, and the orderly snapped into action.

      “Your ride waiting outside the E.R.?” he asked, wheeling her past the long row of beds and into the hall.

      “Uh, no ride.”

      He pulled the chair into an abrupt U-turn.

      “What are you doing?”

      “Taking you to the front doors. There’s a cab company across the street.”

      As they passed the E.R.’s reception desk, she glimpsed the nurse talking on the phone and eyeballing her. What if she’d alerted a cohort to cut her off out front?

      Spotting an exit sign at the end of the next side hall, Kara said, “Stop, I’ll get out here.”

      “Oh, you drove yourself?” the orderly asked.

      She shot a glance over her shoulder to see if the nurse was looking. She wasn’t. “Is that the back parking lot?”

      “You got it.” The orderly accepted the detour easily.

      Maybe too easily, Kara thought as they approached the exit—the uncomfortably dark exit.

      “You want me to wheel you right to your car?” he asked.

      “No!” Kara hauled down her voice. “Here’s fine. Thank you.”

      Two seconds later, the orderly was already halfway back up the hall as she hovered inside the doorway scanning the poorly lit back lot. She dug into her pocket for her cell phone, except...did she really want to hang around here waiting for Ray if maniac nurse had called goons to nab her on sight?

      Two blocks. She could run that in under five minutes. Clutching her phone, she yanked up her hoodie and plunged into the misty darkness.

      The slap of footsteps on the wet pavement sounded behind her.

      Heart pounding, she quickened her pace.

      The sound got louder, closer.

      Breaking into a sprint, she glanced over her shoulder. The shadowy figure behind her abruptly stopped. “Whew,” Kara breathed, and then slammed into a solid wall of muscle.

      Powerful hands clamped around her upper arms. “I gotcha.”

       TWO

      “Kara?”

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