loans...” He held a hand to his throat and pretended to be strangling. “Gotta get a position in a hospital. Plan is to leave for a few years to get the best salary possible. I hope to come back someday.”
That didn’t mesh with a man making oodles of money from the Russian mob unless he knew that his tribal police force had made connections between the missing girls and his clinic. Then crying poverty was smart. His little brother was on the force. Had Officer Jake Redhorse given Kee some insider info?
“Medical school is expensive,” she said, hoping she sounded sympathetic. Her computer-hacking had exposed he was in up to his eyeballs in debt and had a really good motive for wanting to make a boatload of fast cash.
“I’ve had some assistance from the tribe. Dr. Hauser helped me qualify for a grant that covered some of it.”
She made a mental note to check on that.
“Sounds like a great guy.” Or a dangerous criminal, she thought.
“Yeah. He is. Hector is the one who encouraged me to practice medicine. I had a leg-length discrepancy as a kid.” He shrugged. “He took an interest.”
She thought of the photo she’d seen in his room in the FEMA trailer. He’d been younger, with a single crutch under one thin arm.
“I had lots of surgeries down in Phoenix.” He held his arms wide. “Now I’m the shortest male in my family.”
He wasn’t short, by any means. She marked him at nearly six feet.
“Why is that?” she asked.
“Well, they can’t add to the shorter leg. You know, make you taller. So they make corrections by reducing the size of the longer limb.”
She flinched as she imagined someone sawing through her lower leg bone.
“Yeah, exactly. Lost three inches. But they even up within an eighth of an inch.” He bent slightly at the waist and presented his straight legs for her examination. They were fine muscular legs. She could see that even through the denim of his jeans. “Hector arranged for all that and the therapy. Pulled strings and it was all taken care of.”
So Hector was a string puller and Kee was forever in his debt. How far would Kee go to pay him back?
“It was a hard time. My dad was...gone.”
In prison, she thought.
“We didn’t have much money.”
“Your head physician sounds like a wonderful man.” Her smile felt tight and unnatural. Kee didn’t seem to notice.
“He used to operate out of a room at tribal headquarters when I was a kid. Gave me all my shots there. But you should see the facility now. We have an urgent care center, triage, three exam rooms, reception, radiology and a woman’s health center with three birthing rooms, plus additional ob-gyn exam rooms.”
“That’s impressive. Paid through gaming?” she asked. It wasn’t, she knew, because she’d seen their budget, via her sister’s login on the tribe’s website. Some areas of the tribe’s website were public while others were password-protected to ensure only tribal members could access them. The page holding the minutes from tribal government meetings was one of these pages.
Kee shrugged. “Our administrator handles all that.”
Betty Mills, Ava knew. Recently divorced. Mother of three grown boys and driving an Audi leased by the clinic.
Woody tore the bottle in two and Ava threw the ball so she could retrieve the jagged pieces.
“I better check on my sister and the girls.” Sara was probably still in bed and likely hungover. The girls were being raised by a game console, as far as Ava could tell. She could at least get them all out of bed and feed them a healthy breakfast.
Anything to keep them all afloat until Louisa and the other missing children could be found.
“Oh,” he looked disappointed. “Of course. Umm, Ava? Will you be here a few days?”
“I plan to be. Yes.”
“Would you like to have a drink sometime this week?” His face was red when he finished, which she was chagrined to find she found absolutely adorable. Her heart was not behaving, hammered as if this was something other than a stakeout. Her department had another word for it...entrapment.
She didn’t care. All rules were off when you messed with hers.
So, here it was, the opportunity she had been hoping for. But that was before she realized she would be attracted to the good doctor. She hesitated, biting her bottom lip as she tapped the two sides of the ruined plastic bottle together before her in a nervous tattoo.
Dating Kee would give her access to him, to Hauser and to the clinic and she needed to know what was going on in there.
“Ava?” His dark brow lifted. “Are you seeing someone?”
She shook her head. “Oh, no. Not currently.” It was unfortunate that not one of the men in her past made her silly heart pitter-patter like this one, here. “I just need to work around the kids’ schedules and my sister. And I don’t really drink.”
Because it meant a possible loss of control and Ava did not go there.
“Oh. Coincidence,” he said. “Neither do I. And I understand about your family. You’re here for them. Family first, my dad always said.”
How reassuring. An adage from a con.
As far as she could tell Kee and Jake were the only ones that visited dear old dad and not often. But at least they had a dad.
“My sister gets home from work at five fifteen. I’ve been getting the kids dinner and I’m free after that.”
“Oh, great.”
“When?” she asked.
“How about Tuesday? Dinner at the casino?”
Ava was known here as Sara’s sister and a member of the Saguaro Flats tribe. But like many detectives, she kept her profession secret mainly so as not to make people uncomfortable but also to allow her to more easily do her job. Anyone who would have asked was told that she worked in her tribe’s adult education program, her usual cover.
“That sounds fun.” Ava held her smile.
“I’ll pick you up around six?”
“Seven.”
“Sure,” Kee agreed.
She drew a pen from her back pocket. “Give me your hand.”
He did. His palm slid across hers, warm and dry. The tingle of awareness began at her fingers and rippled up her arm. Whatever attraction was between them was as strong as it was unwanted. She stared up at him, meeting his welcoming brown eyes. Then she used her teeth to remove the cap to the pen and she wrote her cell phone number on the back of his hand. Her task done, she was both anxious and reluctant to let him go. She did and stepped back, sitting on the step of her sister’s trailer.
“Now, don’t scrub up before you copy that,” she teased lightly.
He studied the back of his hand and grinned. “I won’t.”
His smile made her insides tumble as if she were spinning. She had no trouble returning his grin and that worried her.
“See you Tuesday, Dr. Redhorse.”
“Kee, please.”
“I’ll try to remember that.”
Ava smiled against the chill that swept through her. If he was behind this, she’d see he never got within sight of another girl for as long as he lived.