“Chey. Fine.” Karah Lee pulled up an office chair and sat down. “I go by Karah Lee. So this is what you do for entertainment around here? Keep tabs on car wrecks?”
Jill and Cheyenne glanced at each other sheepishly.
Blaze chuckled. “Serves you right for betting.”
Jill shrugged. “We’re not betting for money, we’re just competing for one of Bertie’s black walnut pies.”
“Oh, no, you don’t. I’ve got dibs on a goat cheese,” Cheyenne said. “Not black walnut.”
“Ah, that’s right,” Karah Lee said. “I heard you didn’t exactly have a sophisticated palate.”
The gently angular lines of Chey’s face filled with amusement. “Who told you that?”
Jill laughed. “Anybody in town could’ve told her that. Hey, I heard the dummy who caused the accident last night had a cat in the car. Does that count as a patient?”
“No way!” Cheyenne protested. “That’s cheating.”
Karah Lee forced a smile. Time to get this over with. “Since the dummy’s cat suffered fewer injuries than even the dummy herself, I don’t think you can count him as a patient. We might be checking out the dummy later. Depends on how the day goes.”
If she hadn’t been the victim of this unintentional joke, she would have laughed at the expressions of surprise on their faces. Blaze did laugh. Loudly.
She reached up and pushed back her bangs to expose the injury. “Deer ran out in front of me and I swerved and hit a tree. Actually, it was my car that hit the tree. I had sunglasses clipped to the visor, and my head made contact during impact. End of story. My cat’s okay and everything is fine. You got any coffee? I could use another dose of caffeine.”
Static jerked through the ambulance radio and drowned out Jill’s abject apology. A disembodied voice announced the pending arrival of a small child who had slipped and smacked his head against the rocks while chasing a squirrel.
As the radio voice gave specifics, Karah Lee turned to Blaze. “You’d better give me that tour while we’ve still got time.”
Chapter Six
Taylor led the way to the clinic in his truck, checking the rearview mirror to make sure the parents of the injured child were keeping up in their own car. The damage wasn’t bad, but Dr. Allison—who preferred to be called by her first name instead of her title—would probably want to do a suture or two.
The radio buzzed at him again, and he received an updated report about the woman hunt in Branson. For some reason, authorities believed the suspect was still in town. To Taylor, that was stupid. With all the roads that led out of Branson, no murderer was going to hang around to get nabbed by the police.
Taylor switched off the radio as he parked in front of the clinic. He had more important things to take care of right now. Branson could keep its murderers.
Blaze opened the door to the fourth and last exam room. “I’ll never make fun of my patients. If I ever have any.”
Karah Lee glanced at him curiously as she stepped into the room and inhaled the familiar scent of iodine and alcohol. “You’re going to be a doctor?”
“A vet. If I can make the grades. What were you saying about your cat?” Blaze followed her inside. “Did he get hurt in the wreck?”
“He seems fine this morning, but I’d like to have a vet take a look at him.”
“You staying over at Bert’s place?”
“Bert?”
“You know, Bertie Meyer. She and Edith run the Lakeside.”
“Oh, that’s right.” A small town, where everyone knew everyone, just like Karah Lee’s hometown. “Yes, that’s where I’m staying.”
“I can run over there this morning when I get a chance and take a look at him for you. What’s his name?”
“Monster. You already take patients?” She remembered Ranger Jackson telling her about him.
“Right now I’m all Hideaway’s got. My dad was a vet, and I worked with him.”
“So where’s he?”
There was a slight hesitation, then, “He died. My mom and I don’t get along. They were divorced. That’s why I live at the boys’ ranch now.”
“Oh.” There you go, Fletcher, putting your foot in it again. “When did he die?”
“Last year.”
“Oh, man. Sorry. I lost my dad when I was just a little older than you.”
“How’d he die?” Blaze asked.
“He didn’t die. He left.”
It was Blaze’s turned to grimace, and he did it with his whole face, his thick, dark eyebrows drawing close above beautifully expressive eyes. “I think that’d be worse than having him die.”
Karah Lee nodded. “But I don’t think he’d agree.”
Blaze’s grimace lifted.
“So when can you see my cat?”
“Lunch break.”
“Karah Lee?” came her new boss’s voice. “You want to come in here a minute? I need a big, strong, brave patient.”
Karah Lee frowned at Blaze. “Patient?”
He shrugged at her. “Better do what she says. She’s a dead-on shot with pepper spray.”
“I heard that!” Cheyenne called from the other room.
Blaze grinned and rolled his eyes. “I’ll explain later,” he whispered.
After giving a report at the clinic, Taylor left the little boy and his parents in Dr. Allison’s capable care and strolled back toward his truck, glancing along the sidewalk in both directions as he stepped from the curb. He’d seen no tall woman with red hair in the waiting room, and she was nowhere on the street. No way would he ask about her at the clinic. It was no longer his business.
It wasn’t as if he wanted to run into Karah Lee—she might suspect him of stalking her.
He climbed into the Jeep and glanced toward the front doors of the general store next to the clinic. No, he would not buy another pack of cigarettes.
He was driving west on Hideaway Road, when he saw a late-model white Toyota Camry sedan parked alongside the road beneath a heavy overhang of trees. One man crouched beside the right front tire while another man was bent over, apparently searching through the trunk for something that didn’t seem to be there.
Taylor parked and got out of the truck. “Lose your jack?”
Both men looked up at him. He noticed the motor was still running. “Engine problems?”
The man stooping at the right front tire straightened and hurried around the car toward him. He wore a sleeveless white T-shirt, which revealed a tattoo of an eye on his left shoulder. “I’ll say. Thing’s been dying on us all morning, and then this.” He gestured with disgust toward the front, just as a car came speeding around the curve.
Tires squealed on blacktop as the driver caught sight of them and swerved to avoid a collision.
“You say you’ve got a jack?” Tattoo asked. “The one in the trunk’s busted, and it’s a little dangerous here on the road. Trouble is, there’s no shoulder.”
Taylor could only pray a car with a less cautious driver didn’t come