Johnston - Heartbeat (3 page)

Maggie was way out of her depth. She hadn’t the foggiest notion what to advise Lisa under the circumstances. “Are you sure something’s going on? Could you be imagining it?”

Lisa’s fingers knotted in her lap. “I couldn’t find Roman anywhere on Monday. I called the hospital, I called the house, I even called the day care center thinking he might have gone to pick up Amy. When I called the hospital a second time, one of the nurses said if I could find Isabel Rojas, I’d find the doctor because they’d left the hospital together.”

“That doesn’t mean they’re having a sexual affair,” Maggie protested. “You know how things often aren’t what they seem.”

“Isabel Rojas is Roman’s surgical nurse. He knew her long before he even met me. He told me before we married that he’d had an affair with her once but that it was over. What if it wasn’t over? What if these past four years we’ve been married he’s been carrying on with her behind my back?”

Maggie snorted. “That’s ridiculous! I’ve seen how Roman looks at you. He loves you.”

It was clear Lisa wanted to believe her. But she said, “He doesn’t say he loves me. Not in words. And he hasn’t been near me . . .” Lisa clenched her teeth, but it did little to still her quivering chin.

Maggie put her arms around Lisa and pulled the other woman close. “What you need now is a good night’s sleep.”

“I can’t go home, Maggie.”

“I think you should, Lisa. Roman must be very worried right now. He’s a reasonable man. When you talk all this over in a calm, rational—”

Lisa pulled away. “My mind is made up. There’s nothing to discuss. I’m not quitting, and that’s final!”

Maggie squeezed Lisa’s hand reassuringly. “All right. Nobody says you have to quit. I’m sure you and Roman can work something out. Maybe he can cut back on his hours, or you can cut back on yours.”

Lisa leaned back and said, “I don’t want to disappoint you, Maggie. Not after all the help you’ve given me.”

“The only thing that would disappoint me is if you and Roman weren’t able to resolve your differences and live happily ever after.”

“Life isn’t a fairy tale,” Lisa said soberly.

“How well I know that,” Maggie murmured. Cinderella and Prince Charming hadn’t made it.

“I guess I’d better leave,” Lisa said, rising on obviously shaky legs.

“You shouldn’t be driving in your condition. I’ll give you a ride home and pick you up tomorrow morning.”

“I couldn’t impose like that!” Lisa said.

“Call Roman and tell him you’re on your way home while I put on some clothes.” Maggie disappeared into the bedroom where she threw on some Levi’s, a T-shirt, and boots and pulled her hair up into a ponytail. When she returned to the living room, Lisa was talking to Roman on the phone. Maggie didn’t intentionally eavesdrop, but she heard enough to realize the Hollanders were already well on the way to reconciling their differences.

“I’m sorry, too,” Lisa said. “Maggie is bringing me home, so you don’t have to worry about me driving. I . . . I feel the same way. I’ll see you soon.”

When Lisa hung up the phone, Maggie cleared her throat. “I couldn’t help overhearing.”

The beatific smile on Lisa’s face made Maggie’s throat clog with emotion. How wonderful to be in love—even with all the heartaches and pain that inevitably came along with such powerful feelings.

You had love once and squandered it. You had everything and threw it away.

Maggie swallowed painfully and said, “Let’s get you home. We’ve got a long day ahead of us tomorrow.”

“Thanks for everything, Maggie. You’re a true friend.”

Maggie treasured the compliment. Friendship paled when compared to the love between a man and a woman, or a mother and her child, but considering Maggie’s past, it was likely to be all she would ever have. “Thanks, Lisa,” Maggie said. “That means a lot to me.”

Until she could find a way to break free of the hold Porter Cobb had on her life, she was suspended in a waking nightmare. Appearances, she had learned, could hide a great deal. No one else suspected her of keeping secrets. No one else knew the truth about her.

The sad thing was, Maggie still believed in fairy tales. She still dreamed of happily ever after. Unfortunately, her Prince Charming had come and gone . . . and taken her heart along with him.

Chapter 2

In his opinion, she didn’t look like a lawyer. Especially not one who negotiated life-and-death disputes. Nothing about her was the least bit staid-looking or reserved or serious.

The female standing at home plate, baseball bat in hand, wore butt-baring cut-off Levi’s, a pink T-shirt ripped out at the neck that hit her about midriff, and battered Nikes with droopy white workout socks. One look at her long, slender legs, flat stomach, and small but completely-adequate-for-him bosom, and Jack Kittrick realized it might be easier than he’d thought to forget his troubles for an afternoon.

Of course, none of the Wainwright & Cobb lawyers had worn suits
to
the firm’s spring picnic at Brackenridge Park, in the heart of San Antonio. A few were dressed like him, in Western hats and shirts, Levi’s, and cowboy boots, but most of them looked like the conservative top five percent of a top ten law-school graduates they were.

Jack ignored the trickle of sweat crawling down his back. No shade protected the ball-field, but the view was too intriguing to abandon. He lifted his hat and shoved back a handful of dark, damp hair before resettling the new Resistol he’d bought to replace his Stetson low on his forehead, noting absently that his hair had grown too long to meet regulations. Again.

Because he had found himself thinking too much about things he couldn’t change, Jack had come to Brackenridge Park this afternoon to seek distraction at the zoo and the Japanese Sunken Gardens. In the parking lot, he’d overheard someone say the Wainwright & Cobb picnic was being held near the ballfield. Since the primary suspect in the case he’d just agreed to work on was married to a Wainwright & Cobb attorney, he hadn’t been able to resist meandering in that direction.

Without seeming to observe, Jack let his gaze roam. He could track a wood tick on solid rock. It should be easy to find a murderer at a picnic. Even though he only intended to observe the suspect, he felt the rush of adrenaline, the brace of tension across his shoulders, and the knot of anxiety in his stomach that came with every new investigation.

He saw a lot of men in khaki shorts, golf shirts, and loafers without socks, or in the case of those playing baseball, brand-new canvas tennis shoes without socks. The women, wives and lawyers alike, had merely substituted sandals for loafers. Which made the lady in the batter’s box stick out like a sore pink thumb.

Jack had been curious enough to ask about her and was disappointed with what he learned. Not only was Ms. Margaret Wainwright one of the firm’s top attorneys, she was also the widowed daughter-in-law of the late San Antonio blueblood and Texas tycoon Richard Woodson Wainwright. That put her way out of his league.

Still, Jack had trouble squaring the renegade in pink with the philanthropic efforts, charitable causes, and sophisticated society parties usually associated with the Wainwright name. He imagined the rest of the afternoon alone with her in a cool, dark room with a big, soft bed and liked what he saw.

Ms. Wainwright—everyone called her Maggie—wore her wheat-blond hair in a ponytail, which flipped from side to side as she wiggled her fanny and lifted the baseball bat higher, waiting for the next pitch. Her chin was tipped up, her mouth was curved in an unselfconscious grin, and her wide-set blue eyes sparkled.

Jack knew he ought to leave the ballfield, since his discreet inquiries had also revealed that the man he had come to find was probably on the golf course. He waited another moment to see whether Maggie hit like a girl. He hoped she didn’t.

The pitch was high, and she hit it foul. It was moving so fast when it reached the spot where he was standing along the third base line that if he hadn’t put up a hand to snare it, the ball would have smashed his nose flat. The crowd in the stands gasped in alarm, then shouted and clapped in amazed relief as the ball smacked the flesh of his palm.

That answered his question. The lady could hit like a major leaguer. He shook his hand to ease the sting in his palm, then held up the ball and waved it at her. She shrugged an apology and shot him that open, friendly smile of hers. Jack came real close to smiling back. He met her gaze, felt the instant, sparking connection, and quickly broke it.

He wasn’t there to meet some high-class legal eagle who probably wouldn’t share the time of day with him if she knew what he did for a living. He squared his jaw and threw the ball to the pitcher, then watched as Maggie crouched down, wiggled her fanny, and settled in for the next throw.

He should have left right then, but there was something mesmerizing about Maggie Wainwright—the smile and the wiggle and the glance—that kept him where he was. Jack knew better than to let himself get distracted when he was working, but technically, he wasn’t on the job yet. And where was the harm in a little baseball on a pleasant Saturday afternoon? Besides, now that he knew Maggie could hit, he wanted to see if she could run.

Jack heard what sounded like a gunshot, and a kid’s sharp cry of fear, and felt his blood run cold. He pivoted, eyes narrowed and intently focused, to locate the child in the stands. He saw the remnants of a red balloon in the grass and watched as a tearful little boy holding the empty string was lifted into his father’s arms.

Jack let out the breath he’d been holding. His heart was racing and his hands were trembling. It was too damned soon to be working again, he thought, as he rubbed his sweaty palms on the thighs of his jeans. He just wasn’t ready. He’d told the captain he needed more time off, but Harley had said, “Best thing to do when you get bucked off, son, is get right back on.”

Jack wasn’t so sure. Not when popped balloons sounded like gunshots. A second later, he felt a sharp blow on the back of his head—like a mule’s kick—before his knees crumpled, and he felt himself toppling face-first into the third-base-line powder.

“The ball hit him right in the head!” “Somebody call 911!”

“Go find Dr. Hollander!”

Through the haze, Jack wished he’d been knocked cold. It was far worse to be semiconscious and know what a ruckus he was causing. He’d survived a lot of hard wear in his youth, from getting stomped by a bull in a college rodeo to having buckshot picked out of his hide back home in Hondo, when he’d misjudged old lady Stewart’s determination to stop “that thievin’ varmint stealin’ my watermelons!”

At thirty-eight, Jack was older and wiser. He didn’t ride bulls, and he didn’t steal watermelons. And these days, if somebody shot at him, he pulled a Colt .45 from his holster—because the SIG-Sauer he’d been issued was usually in the glove box of his pickup-and shot right back.

It was going to be a dowmight humbling experience explaining to his boss, Captain Harley Buckelew, that he couldn’t start investigating that serial killer on Monday because he’d been clobbered by a female with a baseball bat, especially when she hadn’t gotten within twenty yards of him.

Jack wondered exactly how bad the damage was. At the moment, he didn’t feel any pain.
Must be in shock,
he concluded. The headache, and Jack was guessing it’d be a doozy, couldn’t be far off.

The crowd from the stands swarmed his inert body like maggots on a carcass of stolen beef. Somebody turned him over just as someone else warned, “Don’t move him!” Jack curled his toes in his cowboy boots to reassure himself he wasn’t paralyzed. He wasn’t.

He scowled as somebody kicked his Resistol out of the way so they could kneel beside him.
Sonofabitch! That’s
my
best hat. Pick it up!
Jack thought he’d spoken aloud, but realized when nobody reacted that he must not have gotten the words out.

“Who is he? Anybody recognize him?”

“Does he work for the firm?”

“Does anybody know this man?”

Jack heard a lot of “uh-uhs” and “napes.” Naturally they didn’t recognize him. He wasn’t a Wainwright & Cobb attorney. He sure as hell hadn’t planned to get caught snooping. Working undercover meant being unobtrusive. Jack was pretty sure that getting knocked flat on a baseball diamond wasn’t what Captain Buckelew had meant when he’d said, “Keep a low profile.”

Jack had figured he’d take a quick look at the doctor who was supposedly killing his own patients—kids who’d suffered accidents or injury and gone to Dr. Roman Hollander to get better—and get the hell out of there. If he’d headed for the golf course to find Hollander ten minutes ago, like he should have, he wouldn’t be in this fix.

Jack squinted up at the blur of concerned faces hovered over him. So much for being unobtrusive.

“I’m okay,” he said. It came out “Mmmk.”

“What’d he say?”

“Couldn’t tell. Hey, cowboy, how many fingers?”

Jack saw a bunch. He figured he was seeing double and guessed, “Two.”

“Concussion,” a voice said flatly.

Wrong guess,
Jack thought.

“What’s your name?” the fellow with the fingers asked, beginning a search through Jack’s pockets for identification.

Jack clamped a death grip on the fellow’s wrist.

“Hey! What’s your problem?”

The problem was, if this Good Samaritan kept looking long enough, he was going to find the five-pointed star that Texas Rangers had carried ever since they were formed as a unit in the days when Texas was a Republic. If that happened, Captain Buckelew was going to have Jack’s guts for garters.

“Jack Kittrick,” Jack forced out.

“He says he’s Jack Kittrick,” the fellow announced to the gathered crowd. “Anybody recognize the name?”

Jack heard a surprised female voice say, “I do.”

“Who is he, Maggie?”

“He’s the new insurance investigator for San Antonio General,” she said in a husky Texas drawl.

“What’s he doing here?” the Samaritan asked.

“I don’t know,” Maggie said, kneeling beside him.