door. He opened his mouth to speak but seemed to change his mind. Instead, he looked at her, apparently waiting for her to acknowledge him, and she raised her head, meeting his gaze with steeliness, wiping the wetness from her cheeks.
“Close the door behind you,” she said flatly.
His face was pained as he gave a small nod. After the door clicked into place and she was alone with her thoughts, she picked up the small white card Cole had left on the bedside table. She rubbed her fingers over the gold embossed letters of his name, before taking the card gently between her thumb and forefinger and tearing it into teeny, tiny pieces.
* * *
Cole stood opposite Frank in the corridor with a cold and heavy sensation weighing on his chest. The iciness with which Deborah had looked at him was hard to bear. This woman who had once run through a thunderstorm to tell him how much she loved him now felt nothing but bitterness and regret. And who could blame her? He had broken all his promises. He had abandoned her without warning. But he sure wasn’t going to abandon her again, not when she so clearly needed somebody to protect her. This was the least he could do for her.
“I’d like to start work right away,” Cole said to Frank. “I’ll do a thorough check of all your current security arrangements and compile a list of changes I advise you to make.”
Frank shifted uncomfortably. “What kind of price are we talking about here?”
Cole raised his eyebrows. “What kind of price do you put on the safety of your patients and medical staff, Mr. Carlisle?”
“I would like to stress that these measures are just routine,” Frank said. “Despite the recent uptick in renal problems, we have no proof of drug tampering. It’s likely a coincidence.”
As if to mock the hollowness of his words, the hurried figure of Dr. Warren rounded a corner and pushed past them. “One of the kids has gone into acute renal failure. We need to get him on permanent dialysis before his organs totally shut down.”
“No,” Cole said under his breath, watching the staff rush into a room with a machine that they quickly connected to the body of a young boy, already yellow and jaundiced from the toxins in his blood.
Cole bowed his head and prayed for the life of this child, remembering the lives of many children he had already seen lost on the fateful Dark Skies mission in Afghanistan four years ago. He remembered the life of his own son, taken too soon to reside with his Heavenly Father. God had certainly never shielded Cole from the painful reality that children die, and He clearly wasn’t about to start now.
Cole silently acknowledged that something sinister had brought him back to Harborcreek and back to Deborah. Like the children in this unit, Deborah was in trouble, and whether she liked it or not, he would stick by her side and see her safely through. He couldn’t offer her all the things he had once promised, and she wouldn’t want them from him now anyway. But maybe if he could look after her for a little while, he would be able to somehow atone for the wrong he had done.
Deborah sat on the edge of the bed as Dr. Cortas gave her one final health check before allowing her to go home. She felt odd being in a sweat suit when she should have been in scrubs. She had stayed in the hospital overnight, being monitored for the potentially damaging aftereffects of her hypothermic state, and Diane had kindly gone to her home to pack an overnight bag.
Deborah’s night of sleep had been broken, full of nightmares of a shrouded man looming toward her. In her dreams she had managed to pull the shroud from the man, revealing his face as Cole’s, and she’d awoken with a start, dread invading her bones. Where was the true fear in her situation? Was it the man in the morgue, or was it Cole? Both men had strong power over her emotions.
She could scarcely believe Cole was here, looking as lean and handsome as the day he had promised to marry her. She knew they had been young at the time—only nineteen years old—but it had seemed so natural. They wrote constant emails to each other after he enlisted in the navy, but Cole’s correspondence gradually tailed off as he talked more and more about the new and exciting life he was leading. Shortly after his twentieth birthday, he had paid her one final visit, giving her the news that their relationship was over. That was the last time she had seen his face, although she continued to hear of his progress in the military through the grapevine in Harborcreek. He successfully made it all the way to the navy SEALs. And she also heard that he had gotten married. That particular piece of information had pierced her heart like a shard of shrapnel.
“You’re fortunate, Deborah,” said Dr. Cortas. “Any longer in that refrigeration unit and your hypothermia would have been severe,” He held her head in his hands to focus on her pupils. Dr. Cortas was a fairly new doctor to Haborcreek Hospital and revealed little of himself to others, but he was an exceptionally gifted physician, and Deborah felt reassured by his assessment. “You appear to have recovered well,” he continued, writing on her medical chart. “You can go home. Frank has put you on sick leave for the next three days.”
As if he had heard his name being mentioned, a soft knock echoed on the door and Frank’s head popped into view. “How do you feel, Deborah?” He opened the door wide and Cole’s large figure came into view. He was standing in the corridor wearing a snug-fitting black T-shirt and blue jeans.
“I’ve discharged Nurse Lewis,” Dr. Cortas said with a smile. “She’s doing fine.”
“Excellent news,” Frank said, stepping into the room. Cole followed. “I want you to take some time to recover, Deborah. Don’t even think about coming back to work until you’re ready.”
Deborah couldn’t stop her eyes from flicking down to Cole’s wedding band finger—it was bare. He noticed her glance and splayed his fingers out wide, telling her what she wanted to know. She was annoyed with herself for being so obvious. She didn’t want him to read too much into it.
“What did your internal investigation uncover?” she asked Frank. “Did you find the man who assaulted me?”
“Not exactly,” he said.
Cole narrowed his eyes at Frank. He clearly wasn’t happy with this response. “There was a camera positioned right over the morgue entrance,” he said. “What did you find on the footage?”
Frank looked sheepish. “The camera isn’t working, I’m afraid. It would seem like a good idea to extend our security upgrades to the whole hospital. Can you cope with that Mr. Strachan?”
“Absolutely. I’ll get my entire team on it,” Cole replied. “But we still need to find out who attacked Deborah. Did you uncover anything? And did you call the police?”
“I decided not to involve the police at this stage,” Frank said. “Dr. Kellerman concurs with me that this could be a childish prank gone wrong. The morgue staff have been known to try to scare each other by hiding under sheets.” He threw up his hands in the air. “Of course, none of them will admit to being the culprit.”
“No!” Deborah said firmly. “Pranks are meant to be funny. What happened to me was terrifying.”
Cole stepped back into the conversation. “And why would the prankster leave Deborah locked in a compartment? She could’ve died.”
Frank obviously had anticipated this question. “The compartments have an unlocking mechanism on the inside. It should be fairly simple to slide open the unit from inside by pushing on the door, but this particular one had faulty springs, so it was jammed.”
“That could be why the attacker chose this exact unit,” said Cole. “He knew she’d be trapped.”
Frank looked exasperated. “It’s highly likely that this is a prank gone terribly wrong. The hospital deeply regrets it, and it will never happen again. Trust me.”
Cole folded his arms. “That doesn’t satisfy me at all, I’m afraid. What