What Doesn't Kill Her (Cape Charade #2)(11)

Recognition dawned.

“I expected better of you,” the nurse said. “You assured me you could watch her and kill her and make it look like an accident. You assured me you were the best.”

Roderick was aware his senses were rolling away on a tide of morphine, that he should be alarmed. But he wasn’t. “Don’t kill me.”

“You should have thought about that before you failed.”

“I never failed before.” Roderick slurred his words.

“Once was all it took.”

Roderick saw the nurse’s cold implacability. His hand moved in slow motion to push the call button.

The male nurse watched with coldly cynical encouragement. “Push it all you want. You’ve used up their goodwill. Not that they ever had any toward you.”

Roderick was dying. He knew he was dying. He thrashed. He tried to scream, but a huge weight rested on his chest. Morphine. Morphine depressed the respiratory system. He knew this. He’d killed with it before.

The nurse watched the life fade and blink out from Roderick’s eyes. “It would have been so much easier if you’d done your job. Now—it’s on to plan B.” He pulled up the mask and left.



6


Three weeks later, Kellen kicked at the boxing bag in the gym. One side kick, two side kicks, slow and easy. These movements were half balance and half making sure she warmed up the muscles in her hip and tore nothing loose in the healing tendons and veins. They were nothing like her usual rigorous workout and ferocious fighting attitude. She believed Dr. Brundage and her warnings; this healing would take time.

Next to her, Rae kicked at the bag, too, imitating Kellen’s reach and her speed, if not her strength.

Kellen grinned at the intensity of the child’s concentration. Rae so badly wanted to be Kellen. Flattering as hell—and worrisome. After Max’s lecture, Kellen was very, very worried.

The door opened.

Max stepped in. “Rae, your grandma’s looking for you. It’s time to get ready to go to day camp.”

Kellen stopped kicking and made conversation with the child. Her child. “What are you doing at camp today?”

“We practice our play. We have Bible study. We swim in the lake. The water’s cold. We have lunch in the tree house. We go down on the zip line. We get to buy one snack candy... I’m getting coffee brownie bites.”

“Coffee brownie bites?” Kellen was horrified.

“They make my lips vibrate.” Rae’s eyes got wide with awe. “What are you going to do now, Mommy?” Unlike Kellen, there was real interest behind her question.

“When I finish kicking the bag, I’m going to do a yoga routine. It’s good for stretching and balance, it includes meditation, and it will help me heal.”

“I like yoga! Can we do yoga now?”

Verona Di Luca stuck her head in. “Rae, come on. You’ll be late!”

“We can’t do yoga if you’re going to camp.” Kellen could not imagine Rae sitting still long enough to meditate.

“We can do it later!” Rae flung her arms around Kellen and kissed her.

Kellen patted her head.

Rae flung her arms around Max and kissed him.

He picked her up and smooched her neck, gave her a big hug and a pat on the behind as she ran from the room.

That was the problem in a nutshell. Kellen didn’t feel compelled to hug and love on Rae, and she didn’t meet Max’s gaze while he judged her. “Coffee brownie bites?” Kellen asked. “Does that kid need more energy?”

He could, and did, ignore her. “I’ve found you a job.”

She blinked. “You did?”

“You said you wanted one.”

So he had heard her sleepy murmur. “Great. Here at the winery?” Because as she’d learned when she worked at Yearning Sands Resort, a career in the Army had not prepared her to work well with the public.

“No. I called Uncle Leo and Aunt Annie—”

Kellen’s heart jumped. For her, in the months she had lived at Yearning Sands, the place had become her home. She had brought her military friends to be employed there, and rejoiced when they found their homes there, also. She had enjoyed supervising the huge resort, and more important, there was something about the wild rugged coast that appealed to her in a way that the tamed land of the Willamette Valley could not match.

But Max continued, “Aunt Annie said Brooks called. He was searching for you.”

“Nils Brooks?”

“He is the only Brooks we know, isn’t he?”

“Yes.”

“Good. One is more than enough.”

Awkward.

Nils Brooks was the top dog at the newly re-formed government agency Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives. In World War II, the MFAA had been formed to rescue and restore the art stolen by the Nazis. Art historians and experts had saved towering cathedrals, priceless paintings, irreplaceable books...but so much more had been lost when, in their retreat, the Nazis burned everything in their possession.

After the war, the MFAA had been disbanded, and only recently through Nils’s efforts been revived to halt the flow of contraband antiquities that were financing the world’s terrorists.

Nils Brooks was understaffed, underpaid and a sneaky lying bastard who the previous winter had almost got himself—and Kellen—killed tracking down the notorious serial killer and smuggler Mara Philippi, aka the Librarian. Kellen had saved Nils, Max had saved Kellen, and Max cordially hated Nils for dragging Kellen into her near encounter with death, and for leading Max to believe Kellen was romantically and passionately involved with Nils.