‘It was dark and I couldn’t see.’
‘Tell me about it.’
The harshness of his words crashed over her and still he kept staring. It was as if he could see not only her fear of the dark but so many other things that she kept hidden. His uncanny detective skills left her feeling vulnerable and exposed. She hated that and it harnessed her anger. ‘Will you stop staring at me?’
He flinched and turned forty-five degrees. ‘I apologise.’
The tension in his body was so taut she could have bounced a ball off it and his broad shoulders seemed to slice into the surrounding air. As ridiculous as it seemed, she got the impression she’d just insulted him. ‘I’m sorry, that was rude. It’s just I’m not used to meeting anyone down here at this time of the day and, as I said before, I got a fright.’
He didn’t look at her. ‘Please be assured I have no plans to rape, assault or hurt you in any way.’
The harsh edge of his voice did little to reassure her. She’d never met anyone who spoke so directly and without using the cover of social norms. ‘I guess I’ll take that in the spirit it’s intended, then.’
‘You do that.’ A silence expanded between them and was only broken by his long sigh. ‘The only reason I’m in this corridor is because it’s the mirror image of every other corridor in this wing of The Harbour. If you were on level one, what would be on your left?’
She shook her head as if that might change his question. ‘Is this some sort of test?’
‘Something like that.’
His muttered reply didn’t ease her confusion. ‘Um, we’re underneath the theatre suite.’
‘We’re standing directly under theatre one.’ He almost spat the words at her.
She’d had enough. ‘Look, Mr um …?’
‘Jordan.’
‘Okay, Jordan, I’ve been at The Harbour for a month, but you know this, right? You’re in on some crazy initiation joke at my expense.’
He turned back to face her, his cheeks suddenly sharper. ‘Believe me, none of this is a joke, Ms …?’
This was ridiculous. Everything about this encounter held an edge of craziness, including her reaction to him, which lurched from annoyance at his take-no-prisoners attitude to mini-zips of unwanted attraction. She closed the gap between them and extended her hand in her best professional manner. ‘Grey. Hayley Grey. Surgical registrar.’
Sea-green eyes—the electric colour of the clear waters that surrounded a coral cay—bored into her, making her heart hiccough, but his hand didn’t rise to meet hers. She dropped her gaze to his right hand and now she was closer she could see it gripped what looked like black sticks. With a jolt and a tiny but audible gasp, she realised it was an articulated cane.
Her cheeks burned hot. Oh, God, she’d just accused a blind man of staring at her.
Before she could speak, the doors to the car park opened and a young man wearing elastic-sided boots, faded jeans and a hoodie crossed the threshold and stood just inside the doors.
Jordan immediately turned toward the sound of cowboy heels on lino. ‘Jared?’
‘Yeah.’ The young man grinned and shot Hayley an appreciative look that started at her head and lingered on her breasts.
Jordan turned back and this time his blind stare hit her shoulder. ‘Now you have light, can I assume you’re able to find your way to the car park alone?’
His tone managed to combine a minute hint of concern with a dollop of superciliousness and it undid any good intentions she had of apologising for her massive faux pas. Her chin shot up. ‘I wouldn’t dream of holding you up.’
‘Goodbye, then, Hayley Grey.’ He flicked out his cane, clicked his tongue and started walking.
She watched his retreating back and slow and deliberate stride as the clicks echoed back to him, telling him where the walls were.
As he approached the door he said, ‘You’re late, Jared.’
The young man jangled the keys in his hand. ‘Sorry, Tom.’
Hayley froze. Tom? She’d thought his first name was Jordan.
Mr Jordan. Tom Jordan.
The conversation about the mysterious disappearance of The Harbour’s favourite neurosurgeon came back to her in a rush.
No way.
It had to be a coincidence. Both names were common. There’d have to be a thousand Thomas Jordans living and working in Sydney. But as much as she tried to dismiss the thought, the Tom Jordan she’d just met knew the hospital intimately. Still, perhaps one of those other thousand Tom Jordans worked at the hospital too. He could easily be an I.T guy.
We’re standing directly under theatre one.
She might not know the complete layout of The Harbour, but she knew the theatre suite. Theatre one was the neurosurgery theatre, but the man walking away from her was blind. It was like trying to connect mismatching bits of a puzzle.
The man’s gone to ground and doesn’t want to be found.
And just like that all her tangled thoughts smoothed out and Hayley swallowed hard. She’d just met the infamous missing neurosurgeon, Tom Jordan, and he had danger written all over him.
TOM worked hard not to say anything to Jared about his driving as the car dodged and wove through the increasing rush-hour traffic. Tom knew this route from the hospital to his apartment as intimately as he knew the inside of a brain. In the past he’d walked it, cycled it and driven it, but he’d never been chauffeured. Now that happened all the time.
Being a passenger in a car had never been easy for him, even before he’d lost his sight. Whenever he’d got into a car he’d had an overwhelming itch to drive. Perhaps it was connected with the fact he’d grown up using public transport because his mother couldn’t afford a car. Whatever the reason, he remembered the moment at sixteen, after a conversation with Mick and Carol, when he’d decided that one day he would own his own car. From his first wreck of a car at twenty, which he’d kept going with spare parts, to the Ferrari that Jared was driving now, he’d always been the one with his hands on the wheel, feeling the car’s grip on the road and loving the thrum of the engine as it purred through the gear changes.
Tom stared out the side window even though he couldn’t make out much more than shadows. ‘Give cyclists a good metre.’
‘Doing it. So, did you crash into anything this morning?’
Tom could imagine the cheeky grin on Jared’s face—the one he always heard in the young man’s voice whenever he’d given him unnecessary instructions. ‘No, I didn’t crash into any walls.’
‘What about that woman you were talking to?’
Hayley Grey. A woman whose smoky voice could change in a moment from the trembling vibrato of fear to the steel of ‘don’t mess with me’. ‘I didn’t crash into her.’
‘She looked pretty ticked off with you just as you left.’
‘Did she?’ He already knew she had been ticked off by his ill-mannered offer—an offer generated by the anger that had blazed through him the moment he’d heard her realisation that he was blind. He refused to allow anyone to pity him. Not even a woman whose voice reminded him of soul music.
Jared had just given him a perfect opportunity to find out more about her. Making the question sound