But first...
She walked through the door and pulled her cell phone from the pocket of her lab coat. First, she was going to call the CDC in Washington one more time and give whoever answered a piece of her mind.
* * *
The canopy of the paraglider caught the wind and swept Rafael Valentino’s legs out from under him as it lifted him skyward. Still attached to the towline behind the boat, the wind whistled past his face, plastering his hair to his head. A familiar sense of weightlessness took over, allowing his problems to drop to the warm sands of the beach below, where they would stay until he touched down. A few more seconds, and he could relax into his harness. But not yet.
Rafe had flown more in the past month than he had in years. Not since those early terrible days after his father’s death, when the adrenaline rush had been one of the few things that had allowed him to blot out the reality of what had happened.
At a signal from the speedboat driver, he pulled the cord that would release the towline and set him free to glide for as long as the winds would sustain his flight. He sat, his harness cradling his butt and his thighs as he worked on changing his angle, catching the winds much as a sailboat did. Only there was something about being in the air, suspended far above the earth. It was heaven. There was nothing else like it.
Except for maybe those last frantic seconds of being suspended in a different kind of heaven. Like the one a month ago?
His jaw tightened. Thoughts like that were why he was out here today. He had to work in a few hours, but he’d needed something to erase those memories. Bonnie had been different in some indefinable way.
And the last thing he wanted to do was try to define anything about that night.
A sudden gust of air caused the nylon that covered the baffle cells to flutter, and he bobbed a time or two before his flight settled back out. The change in the wind conditions did the trick. Everything was wiped from his brain except for controlling his craft.
It was a perfect day for flying, and there were dots of color all up and down the beach as others had the same idea. Powerboats far below carved out white wakes in the ocean as some of the commercial parasail ventures towed thrill seekers up and down the coastline. He would have to descend with care when the time came, but he already had his landing site mapped out.
For now, he would just immerse himself in the moment and not let anything else clutter his skull. He adjusted the speed bar at his feet and shifted his weight to change direction.
Nothing could bother him here.
A sudden buzzing at his hip stopped that thought in its tracks. Damn.
Really? His phone? He should have turned it off. Glancing down and trying to read the caller ID while it was upside down, he swore softly when he was able to make it out.
Perfect. It was work. His boss wouldn’t call him on his day off unless it was urgent.
Fun time was over almost before it began. Scouring the beach for a place to land that was relatively free of sun worshippers, he shifted his weight once again and began his descent.
* * *
An hour later, Rafe was striding down the hallway of Seaside Hospital. He’d been hopping from facility to facility in the last several weeks, trying to keep up with the number of worried doctors and patients who were raising the alarm. It was the same in a lot of other cities—especially those in the South. The warmer the temperatures, the more likely a rogue virus was to dig in and spread. His home country of Heliconia was under a red alert, pregnant travelers being warned to stay away, just as they were in Brazil and most parts of Central and South America.
Zika had been around for decades, but for some reason it was now spreading quickly, crossing continents and the placental barrier alike, and wreaking havoc wherever it went. And the growing stack of evidence said that the virus could infiltrate host cells and cause insidious health problems for whoever was infected, long after the illness itself was gone.
Zika was the new Lyme disease.
Worse, new studies were showing it could be sexually transmitted from a man to his partner.
The hope was that a vaccine would be developed quickly, but until then, all Rafe could do was put out fires. Like the one he’d tried to drown a month ago at Mad Ron’s. He’d ended up having to put out a completely different fire that night.
His hand went to his pocket, fingers fiddling with the circle of elastic he’d been carrying around ever since then. He had no idea why he’d picked it up off the dresser, or why he hadn’t thrown it away in the weeks that followed.
A trophy?
No. He’d never brought anything home from his other encounters. But Bonnie had been different somehow. There’d been a frenzied desperation to her lovemaking that had matched his own.
Killing old demons?
It didn’t matter. He removed his hand from his pocket and forced his mind back to his obligations. He was here to meet the head neonatologist at the hospital, along with the head maternity nurse and the hospital administrator. He called up a file on his phone to retrieve their names. He only recognized one of them.
Bonnie Maxwell.
That’s why he’d shoved the tie in his pocket, although it was doubtful it was the same woman. And he’d never learned what her last name was.
And if she was the same Bonnie from the bar? Was he going to hand over the elastic and say, “Here you go. Sorry it went missing.”
He snorted, turning a corner and following the signs on the wall. Not hardly. He was not going to admit to picking it up from the dresser, although the thread of guilt for abandoning her the morning after their encounter was still there as strong as ever. A peculiar longing had fermented in his stomach and sent a sour broth splashing up his throat as he’d stared down at her. He’d taken things too far by not getting drunk enough before taking her back to the hotel. He’d started drinking coffee far too soon.
Cynthia Porter, Administrator. This was the place. He knocked, feet braced wide in preparation for what he might find inside.
“Come in.”
Rafe pushed through the door to find three women seated in the office.
The sight of sun-kissed locks tied into a familiar scrunchy mass made his stomach contract all over again, although she was facing away from him.
It was the same woman. It had to be.
Damn. Mistake number two: not making sure his date for the night was in a profession other than medicine.
The woman behind the desk stood. “Dr. Valentino?”
“Yes, and you must be Ms. Porter.”
He watched the blonde, who still hadn’t turned her head. There was no indication that his last name was familiar. Maybe because they’d never exchanged surnames. Or maybe she was much cooler than she’d seemed four weeks ago. Was the ring still off?
The third woman had already looked over at him with a smile, the tossing of red curls giving her a mischievous air.
“Thank you for coming, although it was Dr. Larrobee who discovered the connection between some of our newborns. Let me introduce you.”
Both women stood. And when Bonnie finally turned around to face him she gasped, every bit of color leaching from her face.
The administrator either ignored the sound or hadn’t heard it, because she continued with the introductions. “This is Bonnie Maxwell and Dr. Cassandra Larrobee. Cassie is the one who notified your office about the cases.”
His gaze remained glued to the blonde’s, his hand diving back into his pocket and finding the hair tie. “Bonnie and I have already made each other’s