Authors: Lisa Nicholas
“You said as much on the phone.”
“No, I mean—” He sighed and faced her more directly. If only he could tell her the truth! That was out of the question, but he came as close as he could. “I’m undercover right now, that much you know. I have to play the part. Ana’s part of that.”
“Does she know?”
He wanted to just sit and watch her face under the starlight. The cautious way she looked around at the world was new—scars left from her time in captivity—but he could still see the inner strength that had drawn him to her in the first place.
“No,” he said, “but most first dates don’t turn into second ones, so there’s no need.”
“But you just said it wasn’t a date.”
He was making a hash of this. “I mean, it wasn’t—for me.”
Smooth, Wheeler, very smooth
. “I didn’t want you to think I was seeing anyone.”
Zoe opened her mouth, then closed it again. “Well, I’m not either.”
“No? Not Santiago?” He’d seen the way the man looked at her, and they’d been holding hands. Either she was lying, or the attraction was one-sided.
“Oh no. No. That’s just professional.” She wasn’t looking at him, so maybe not as professional as that. He fought to keep from gritting his teeth.
“Good—I mean, I know.” Some master of espionage he was.
“You know that’s really creepy, right?” She grinned at him, and he was helpless to do anything but grin back, his insides giving a lurch. “So you brought me out here just to tell me that you’re single?”
“No, that was an accident,” he said. They both laughed, then he went on. “Sorry. I actually wanted to tell you that I have a lead on who might have been behind the bombing. And I wanted to find out if you’d heard anything.”
“Me? Why me?”
“Your patients might be familiar with the organization.” He could see her about to protest, so he raised his hand to forestall it. “I’m not asking you to break confidentiality. I just need to know if you’ve heard anyone mention a group called Las Autodefensas de Colombia.”
Zoe’s brow furrowed. “Paramilitary?”
“Something like that.”
“No, I don’t think so.” She bit her lip in thought, and he couldn’t keep his eyes away from where her white, even teeth dimpled the pink skin of her lip.
“You’re sure?” He forced himself back to the pertinent issue. “What about Arcangel? Ever hear of anyone called that?”
She glanced up at him, head tilted. “Maybe? I’m sorry, that’s the best I’ve got.”
“Will you keep an ear out for me?” He wasn’t recruiting her, not really. He would never put her in that sort of danger. She met his eyes and they both got caught there. Without thinking about it too much, he picked up her hand from the bench. “Be careful, though. The most important thing is that you stay safe.”
***
The softness of his words threw her, as did the uncertain, almost pleading look in his eyes. There was nothing she could say to reassure him, but she wanted to. She should say something, should stop staring at him. The distance between them closed without her ever being certain who moved first. At the last second there was a breath of a pause, then their lips touched. It was a mistake. The moment they touched Zoe caught fire with want, and worse, wanted to melt with tenderness.
She couldn’t help a quiet groan when his mouth left hers to follow the line of her neck.
“I swear this wasn’t why I brought you here,” he murmured. “Zoe, I can’t stop thinking about you.” His lips were so hot against her skin, and the heat burned through her all the way down to her toes.
“I—” What could she tell him? That she’d been thinking of him for two years? “Lee, oh God.” She should make him stop, but his mouth was on her collarbone and one of his hands rested on her waist, fingertips nudged under her shirt.
“You left so early the other night. I had more to show you.”
She wanted to see it all. He could spread her out right here on the dirt path, or she could straddle him on the park bench. Just the thought had her tingling between her legs. She wanted his hand there, rubbing her through her pants.
When her head started to spin, she took a deep breath and squeezed her legs together. “Wait.”
“What is it?” Lee stopped kissing her chest and gave her a worried look.
“I had . . . a great time the other night.” She forced herself to breathe and to give him a smile.
“I hear a ‘but.’” He brushed a curl out of her eyes with a gentle motion.
“Yeah, I’m sorry.” Her heart sank as he took his hands away and let her go. “I can’t do this.” Her body was screaming at her to shut up, to start kissing him again.
“Zoe, I—I didn’t even ask, is there someone at home?”
“No, no it’s not that.” How could she tell him that she had much worse than a waiting boyfriend, she had too much at risk to fall in love with a man who lied for a living. And she would fall in love with him, given half a chance. Being in his bed had shown her that.
“You don’t owe me an explanation,” he said. “I should get you back.” He started walking to the Jeep, glancing back to see if she followed. On the way back to town, he hardly said anything. Zoe kept stealing glances at his profile, at the set of his jaw.
When they got back to her house, she slipped out of the Jeep before he could get out, murmured good night, and went
inside without looking back.
Chapter Seven
It was just after noon, and Zoe was on the phone with Christiane in Bogotá for her weekly update.
“We’re almost back to full capacity,” Christiane was saying. “Our temporary offices are up, and all of our logistics are back in place.”
“Thank God,” Zoe said.
Christiane laughed. “You managed just fine without us. Well done.”
“I think that was more luck than—”
A child’s voice floated in her open window from the street outside. “Doctora Zoe!”
“Let me call you back,” she said. “I think I’m being paged.”
Out in front of the clinic was Hugo, the boy who’d been injured in the market. He looked better—a little more filled out—but his face was pinched with distress. When he saw her, he ran over and grabbed her by the hand. “You must come. La Abuelita is hurt.”
“What happened?”
“In the garden. She fell. She can’t get up. Please come.” He tugged at her hand.
Zoe crouched to his eye level. “I will, I promise. Is anyone with her?”
“The others.” The other children. “Please hurry.”
“I need to get my bag,” she said. “And we may need help getting her back here.” He let her go, but followed her into the clinic where she told Jacira and Maria where she was going and why. Jacira made the two orderlies fetch a stretcher while Zoe got her med kit, and together the orderlies, Zoe, and Hugo set off through the streets.
La Abuelita didn’t live far from the clinic, in a sprawling stone building that might have been an abandoned storefront once, but now was a home-cum-unofficial-orphanage. Children were shouting from behind the building, and Zoe followed Hugo as he led her around back through a ramshackle gate.
Easily a dozen kids were milling around. Some of the older ones were trying to keep order, and one older girl was kneeling next to La Abuelita, who was gray-faced but conscious. The “garden” was really more like a small farm, lush with the last of the rainy season. Zoe’s patient was lying in one of the rows. The girl tending her looked almost faint with relief when Zoe came over and crouched beside them. “What happened?” Zoe asked.
La Abuelita scowled, despite the lines of pain on her face. “I just fell, like a clumsy child. I don’t know what I tripped over.”
“Did you hit your head? Where do you hurt?”
She gestured to her hip. “I didn’t hit my head. I just fell.”
Zoe had been ticking off possibilities in her head, and
spontaneous hip fracture
rose to the top of the list. No one knew
exactly how old she was, but Zoe would guess La Abuelita might be close to eighty, and while she wasn’t frail, she did show a hint of a widow’s hump. A quick exam didn’t turn up any other problems, so she nodded to the orderlies. “We need to get you to the clinic, okay? I think you may have broken your hip, but we’ll need to do an X-ray to be sure.”
“But my children—” La Abuelita started to say.
Zoe turned to the older girl. “What’s your name?”
“Maria.”
“We have a doctor at the clinic named Maria.” Zoe gave her a reassuring smile. “How old are you?”
“Fourteen.”
“Can you watch the others for about an hour, until we can get someone to come help?”
Maria nodded and smiled. “You go with the doctor,” she told La Abuelita. “We’ll be fine.”
La Abuelita grumbled, but let the orderlies put her on the stretcher. “Maria, don’t let Miguel pick all the berries. Lorena, you do what Maria tells you to do, you understand?” The children surrounded her, clamoring for attention. She gave instructions to this one and that one right up until Zoe looked at Maria, who clapped her hands like a schoolteacher.
“Come with me. We have to let her go with the doctor.” The children flocked to Maria instead, and Zoe smiled at her.
“I’ll have someone come soon,” Zoe said, then followed the orderlies out of the yard.
She called ahead on the way to the clinic, and the X-ray room was ready for them. It confirmed what she’d suspected: an intertrochanteric hip fracture. A small blessing: it was easier to repair, assuming they had the tools she needed to do the surgery. Zoe knew without looking that they had everything she needed but the repair implant itself. After making sure La Abuelita was settled and her pain under control, Zoe found Jacira and told her to place an order with Bogotá for what they needed.
Susan stopped her in the hallway. “You’re doing the surgery here?”
“I’ve done it before. It’s not that complex.”
“But the recovery—”
“I know, but we can make it work. She’ll be no worse off here than she would otherwise.”
“If you’re sure.”
“She’s got no other major health concerns. If her bone density checks out okay, then yeah.” A flash of doubt showed up on Susan’s face. “What?”
“Nothing,” Susan said. “You’re more of an expert here than I am.” She smiled. “You should know, Maria already headed over to take care of the kids.”
“Thanks. We might have to cover for her for a bit.” She wondered what younger Maria—who’d probably spent time on the street before La Abuelita, and might not have ever gone to school—would make of her older namesake, a doctor.
“We’ll manage that much,” Susan said. “It’s the rest I’m worried about.”
Zoe’s plan hit a snag when she checked in with Jacira.
“The office in Bogotá says they will have the supplies to us within a week,” Jacira said. “It’s the earliest they can get a flight out here.”
“Damn. No, that’s too late. We’ve got seventy-two hours, at best. After that the risk of complications gets too high.”
“I’m sorry, Doctor. I did push, but it was the best they could do. Should I call to see if I can get a referral to another hospital for her?”
“No. Not yet.” Her tone was sharper than she’d intended, and she tried to soften it with a smile. “Let me see what I can do.”
She found Susan outside with Ana, the two of them smoking and gossiping. “Fine habit for two medical professionals to take up,” she teased.
Ana gave a complacent shrug, and Susan just grinned. “I ran out of crossword puzzles. Did you need us?”
“I was looking for ideas. I’m trying to figure out how to get the metal plate and screws I need to fix La Abuelita’s hip.”
“We can’t get them from Bogotá?” asked Ana.
“Not in time.”
“We should refer her, then,” Susan said. “You tried, Zoe, but you know the sooner the repair gets done the better off she’ll be.”
“I’m not referring her.”
Susan and Ana exchanged a glance and Ana stubbed out her cigarette. “I need to get back. Good luck, Zoe.”
As soon as she was gone, Susan said, “What’s different here? First you’re signing us up for a long rehabilitation we’re not equipped for, and it turns out we can’t even do the surgery?”
“She’s one of ours.” That was true, but it was more than that. “I can’t just send her off to someone else for weeks. Who would look after the kids?” She thought about Hugo, Maria, all the other children. They’d never be able to visit her at another, faraway hospital.
“You were the one who told me we can’t fix everybody.” Susan leaned against the side of the building.
“Not everybody. Just her,” Zoe said, but some of the wind was out of her sails. Was Susan right?
“Zoe.” Susan sighed. “Don’t let this wait because you’re being stubborn.”
“I won’t, I swear. You know I wouldn’t let her go untreated. I just— Let me think of something.”
Her first thought was to see if she could find what she needed locally. She spent a good chunk of the afternoon calling around, trying the local hospital, one or two over in Venezuela. She was interrupted in her third attempt to get through to someone in Puerto Ayacucho by a knock on her door.
“Zoe?” Santiago nudged her partially-opened door wider and looked around it with a smile. He was in uniform, but his hat was in his hand. “I’m so sorry; I’m interrupting,” he said, seeing the phone in her hand.
“Not really.” Zoe hung up. “I’m not getting anywhere.” She stood and came around the desk to say hello, letting him kiss her on the cheek.
“Problems?”
“The usual. I have a patient who needs something I can’t get.” Zoe shrugged. She was tempted to ask him, but there was a difference between “supplies to save a village” and “supplies to perform surgery on one person,” especially since he already thought that person harbored thieves.
He beat her to it. “Can I help?”
Zoe opened her mouth, then closed it again. “I shouldn’t keep taking advantage of you like this.”
“I don’t mind.” His dark eyes twinkled. “Go ahead and take advantage.”
She laughed. He was flirting, and she couldn’t decide if that was a good thing or a bad thing. Gesturing for him to sit, she perched on the edge of her desk. “I don’t know if you can help, actually. I have a patient with a broken hip, and we don’t have the hardware to do the repair. I’d rather do the surgery myself if I can, but . . .”
“I’ll make you a deal,” he said. “Since I was coming to ask you to dinner anyway, say yes, and I’ll do what I can.”
“Really, I can’t ask that of you.” Plus, she wasn’t sure if she liked his help being contingent on another date. But if it would let her do the surgery . . .
“I offered.”
Yes, but with a price tag attached.
Zoe weighed the option of dinner with a man who had been, for the most part, helpful and charming, versus having to refer La Abuelita out for surgery. Referring her out meant a longer time away from home and her children, then traveling for physical therapy afterward—and all this with so many children at home . . . “You did. I accept. When did you have in mind?”