LITMIR.BIZ

       CHAPTER THREE

      MADDY HAD A DAUGHTER?

      Four days later, on his way to see a patient, Kaleb was still dumbfounded. He’d wondered what kinds of other things she had hidden beneath that cool exterior. Well, now he knew. She had a child.

      It should make it even easier to keep his distance, but it didn’t. It made it harder. Especially when the news media kept replaying the story over and over. The hospital had hired additional security guards and were installing more cameras at the entrances.

      He had an ex who had done some pretty terrible things, but he certainly couldn’t picture Janice coming to the hospital in hopes of killing him.

      And Maddy had been terrified for her child. He remembered her trying to get to her phone when he’d pinned her under the desk. How she’d been desperate to make a call. She’d been frantic that she might have lost her daughter that day.

      Kaleb knew the exact moment he’d lost his daughter. It hadn’t been to a crazed gunman, but it had been to a killer nonetheless. No, he’d lost his sweet little girl to an aggressive cancer, the disease yanking the life from her body almost before he’d got to know her.

      Only Kaleb had no pictures of her scattered around his apartment. They were all hidden deep in a closet. He couldn’t bear to look at them. And maybe that was the reason Janice hadn’t been able to look at him. But she’d sure been able to look at someone else.

      Forget about it. Dwelling on things he couldn’t change did no one any good.

      He strode into the hotel and stopped at the desk. “Which room?”

      “One thirty. Marian Jennings. She thinks she’s having a reaction to some pain meds she received after surgery.”

      One of the things that places like the Seattle Consortium were good at was keeping their guests’ private lives private. That included helping sequester them after surgeries and procedures. Patients were now going to fancy hotels that had spa-like atmospheres to recover. With room service and someone at their beck and call twenty-four hours a day, it was the perfect setup. Especially with concierge medicine to help ease the way.

      Kaleb went up in the elevator, doing his best to forget what had happened at the hospital, but it wasn’t easy. Maddy’s face kept coming to mind, the terror he’d seen in it. Then there was the crazed look of her ex-husband as he’d stared at them through that window. The man had wanted to kill her. It had been there in his eyes. If Kaleb hadn’t been there, would Maddy still be alive?

      Something else he needed to stop dwelling on.

      Kaleb found the room and knocked on the door.

      “Yes?”

      “Dr. McBride here to see Marian Jennings.”

      A man opened the door. Tall and thin with a nervous twitch beneath one eye, he ushered Kaleb into the room. “It’s my wife. She’s breaking out in hives. We think it might be from one of her medications.”

      Propped up in a huge bed, the petite woman had a bandage wrapped over her head and under her chin. Both of her eyes were black and swollen.

      Plastic surgery. He’d seen it many times here. Some of them were done at West Seattle and some at other hospitals, but it didn’t matter. He moved toward her, shifting his bag from one hand to the other in order to shake hers. “I’m Kaleb McBride, Ms. Jennings. Nice to meet you.”

      The woman nodded. “I’m sorry to call you but...” She held out one of her arms, and, sure enough, a rash had spread across the surface. “My husband was worried.”

      “Is this everywhere?”

      “Yes, it’s also on my stomach and my legs.”

      Kaleb frowned. “Any trouble swallowing?”

      “No. None.”

      He took down the name of her surgeon and checked the medication the woman was on. The amoxicillin caught his attention. A common antibiotic, it could sometimes cause a rash. “Have you ever had an allergic reaction to any kind of penicillin?”

      “Not that I know of.”

      Taking her arm, he examined the spots. “Any itchiness at all? Tingling anywhere?”

      “No.”

      He nodded. “I don’t think it’s anything serious. Sometimes antibiotics, especially amoxicillin, can cause a harmless rash.”

      Her husband came over and placed a hand on his wife’s shoulder. “So it’s nothing to worry about?”

      “Not at this point. We normally see itching or tingling in a true allergic reaction. I’ll contact Dr. Porter’s office just in case and let him know what’s going on. I’ll have him call you if he wants to make a change in your medication. If you see anything else, though, please don’t hesitate to call me or the hospital.”

      The hotel’s location made it convenient to do just that. It was another of the reasons they’d chosen to have the fund-raiser at the hotel. Where he’d come across Maddy in the middle of her asthma attack.

      Who would have guessed that days later she’d be the target of a crazed ex-husband?

      Shake it off, Kaleb.

      He made the call to Dr. Porter’s office while he was in the room with his patient and marked down his own findings on his tablet, including the room number for billing purposes. Then he excused himself after handing them his business card and reminding them to call him if they had any other problems.

      He checked with the front desk to make sure there were no other calls right now and headed back across the street to the hospital. A police car out front made his muscles tense for a second, but the officer inside the vehicle didn’t seem worried. It was another of the precautions the city had taken—upping the police presence in the area.

      As he made his way inside, a little girl with a doll clutched under her arm rushed past him, followed by a slender woman with long blond hair. “Chloe, slow down. You need to wait for me.”

      Chloe?

      He looked a little harder, and, sure enough, the girl had red hair and pink cheeks as she turned and grinned at the woman following her. High heels made it hard for the blonde to keep up with the child, but it didn’t look

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