Dangerous Disguise Read Online Free PDF Page B

back of her good hand. “Are you sure?”
    “I’m positive,” Maren told her with the kind of authority that would calm the worst of fears.
    They’d reached St. Luke’s Hospital in record time. After making a left onto the newly renovated compound, Maren pulled into the first available space she saw. The parking lot behind the E.R. entrance was small in comparison to the others, but for once it was relatively empty.
    Maren jumped out of the front seat, rounding the hood and hurrying to April’s side of the vehicle. The man she’d had misgivings about hiring beat her to it. He already had April’s door open and now picked April up as if she weighed nothing. It was cold out and he’d rolled up the sleeves on the shirt he was wearing. She saw his biceps bulge as he turned from the car with the girl in his arms.
    Maren led the way into the E.R. room. The electronic doors sprang open the second she stepped in front of them. The area was filled with personnel, none of whom seemed to notice them coming in. Looking around, Maren was just about to grab an older-looking nurse when Jared called, “I need some help here!”
    Redirected by the entreaty, the nurse Maren was about to buttonhole terminated her conversation with an orderly and focused on the situation.
    “What happened?” the matronly looking woman asked Jared.
    He rattled off the particulars of the incident quickly and crisply, ending by saying, “Her fingertip was packed in ice.”
    The dark-skinned woman whose badge proclaimed her to be Rowena O’Brien looked expectantly from him to Maren. “Where is it?”
    “Right there.” Jared nodded toward Maren. The latter quickly produced the plastic bag out of her purse.
    Pleased, the nurse nodded her approval. “Good work.” Scanning the area, she pointed toward the first empty bed that came into view. Long floor-to-ceiling curtains separated each bed from its brethren. “Put her right there,” the nurse instructed.
    Maren noticed that Jared placed the girl on the gurney as if he were handling something delicate and precious. His compassion impressed her more than the way he conducted himself in an emergency situation.
    April clutched at his arm as he began to withdraw. A fresh wave of panic had entered her eyes. “Are you going?”
    Jared paused to squeeze her good hand, communicating support and comfort as best he could. “We’ll be right outside,” he promised. “In the waiting room.”
    The nurse indicated outer doors that would take them there. It was only as he followed Maren through them that he realized he was still wearing his apron. He slipped the loop off his neck and took off the apron, bunching it up in his hand like an unwanted appendage. He dropped it in the first empty chair he came to.
    They had their choice of places to sit since the waiting room was largely empty.
    “I take it you’ve been here before.” Maren took the seat beside him.
    She looked restless, he thought, as if she didn’t want to be here. Two of his cousins hated hospitals. His uncle Mike had died in one, Aurora General. A bullet to the chest in the line of duty had taken him permanently away from them.
    He shrugged in response to her question. “One emergency room is pretty much like another.”
    A note of interest entered her eyes. “What was the matter?”
    He caught himself thinking that her eyes were beautiful. So blue if you stared at them for any length of time, they could make your soul ache. For a second, he lost the thread of the conversation. “What?”
    She wanted to distract herself. Papa Joe had been in a place like this. She was eighteen at the time, about to go off to college, to stand on the brink of new horizons, when he’d been in a car accident. She remembered how terrified she’d been, praying in the small chapel on the premise that he wouldn’t die and leave her alone. One moment he was this big, larger-than-life man, the next, she was facing the possibility of his being taken from her. The