The insistent sound shattered the moment into tiny little bits.

She heard Cole mutter an oath under his breath, draw away from her and yank the offending communication device out of his pocket. The second he put it to his ear, her cell began to ring, demanding her attention.

Nika's heart sank as a premonition told her it wasn't a coincidence. Still, she fervently hoped it was as she took her cell out of her purse.

Even as she did so, her eyes never left Cole's face, taking in every nuance. She almost felt his expression as it hardened. Whatever it was, it wasn't good.

Nika barely remembered mumbling, "h.e.l.lo?" into her phone.

"Dr. Pulaski?" a husky, breathless voice asked. "It's Gerald."

An image of the imposing orderly flashed through her mind's eye. The man who'd helped Cole get her out of the elevator shaft. Why was Gerald calling her? And who had given him her number? "This is Dr. Pulaski. What's wrong, Gerald?"

"This wasn't my idea, Doctor," his voice was apologetic. "Sh.e.l.ley, the evening nurse, asked me to call you. It's Mr. Peters."

Her breath backed up in her chest. She stopped look ing at Cole and turned away, creating a semblance of privacy for herself. The bad feeling she had turned to a worse one.

"What about him?" she asked, her voice deadly still as she hoped against hope that she wasn't going to hear what she was afraid of hearing.

The solemn voice on the other end said, "He died. His heart just gave out."

It didn't seem possible. There was no record of the man even having a heart condition, and nothing had shown up on any tests. Kidney stones were responsible for bringing him to the E.R. and those had successfully been broken up. He had the heart of a forty-year-old.

"But he was supposed to be leaving today," Nika protested, as if that could somehow change the outcome. "He was all right when I saw him. I signed him out."

She pressed her lips together, banking down the sudden wave of sadness that threatened to overwhelm her. She'd promised to stop by before leaving for the day to discuss her idea about finding him a housemate, but one of her other patients had suddenly had a seizure and had needed all of her attention. By the time he'd been stabilized, it was time for her to meet Cole.

Would she have been able to save the old man if she'd kept her promise to drop by his room before she left?

"Not anymore," Gerald told her quietly. "I wouldn't have bothered you, Doctor, but Nurse Sh.e.l.ley thought you'd want to know."

Yes, she wanted to know. "She was right, Gerald," Nika said numbly. "Thanks for calling."

Feeling as if she was drugged and sleepwalking, she pressed the b.u.t.ton that ended the call and dropped her cell into her purse without looking.

"There's been another one," Cole told her grimly, closing his cell phone.

"I know." She struggled to bank down the lost feeling wafting through her.

What was going on? Was there someone deliberately killing old people? She'd been the one to call attention to this, but even so, it seemed so horribly improbable. Joshua Peters wouldn't have hurt a fly-why do away with him? "I just got a call from the hospital. Joshua Peters died."

He had another possible homicide on his hands. And in all likelihood, a serial killer. So why did he have this overwhelming urge to shut all that out and just get back to kissing her?

Cole forced himself to focus.

"I've got to go," he told her. It was not without regret. But he was a cop, and death came before life in this case.

She pulled her door closed and locked it. "I'm coming with you."

He wasn't about to bring her to what was now a crime scene. Even though she was no stranger to death, this was his territory, not hers. "Veronika, I can't-"

There was no way she was going to stay behind. "Mr. Peters was my patient," she insisted. "He was fine this afternoon when I saw him. Not happy about being released, but fine."

Her words stopped him in his tracks. "Why wasn't he happy about being released?" He had no idea if this meant anything or not, but at this point, he needed all the input he could gather together. Somewhere in all the unsorted information he'd collected about the late patients was the reason this was happening. He just had to make sense of it.

"Take me with you and I'll tell you," Nika bargained. She saw the hesitation in his eyes. She had him on the ropes and he was wavering, she thought. "If you don't take me, I'm still going to get there. It'll just take me longer by bus."

He knew she wasn't bluffing. She was as good as gone. "You are one stubborn woman."

"Never claimed not to be," she replied. She wasn't about to celebrate a victory yet. "That's one of my outstanding features. Stubbornness is in the genes," she told him.

He could believe it. Cole led the way back to the elevator. He repeated his question as they walked. "All right, tell me why Joshua Peters wasn't happy about being released?"

Oh no, it wasn't going to be that easy. "I'll tell you when I'm in your car and you're driving back toward the hospital."

He pressed for the elevator and then glared at her incredulously. "Don't trust me?"

"Ordinarily, I'd say yes, because that's just the way I am. Trusting." And, at times, that was a liability. She'd gotten hurt that way and definitely taken advantage of. But she refused to surrender her faith, her optimism. The day she did, the other side won. "But in this case," she told him, "no. You'd leave me and tell me it's for my own good. Meanwhile, you'd be hoping that I wouldn't make good on my promise of taking the bus."

The elevator arrived and Cole ushered her in before him, then pressed for the first floor and hoped they could get there without having to pick up any additional pa.s.sengers.

"I know better," he answered. "There's no point in trying to abandon you. You'd walk if you had to, but you'd get there."

She smiled as they rode down. "You are beginning to get to know me, aren't you?"

"Yes," he answered. "I am."

And heaven only knew if that was a good thing or a bad one, he added silently. He had the uneasy feeling that this little bit of a woman could very well be his undoing, taking him to places he had vehemently vowed never to frequent again.

"Okay, now tell me," Cole all but ordered as he drove out of the parking structure and onto the street again. Twilight was darkening the streets, ushering in a velvety night. His headlights illuminated the path before them a few feet at a time. It wasn't foggy, but it definitely was unclear.

"He hated living in the nursing home, said his kids sold his house out from under him and took some of the money to set him up at the nursing home. He complained to me more than once that he hated living with old people because they were all obsessed with issuing periodic proclamations about their bodily functions. That and, according to him, they smelled of death."

Not exactly a selling feature, he thought. "Peters said that?"

"More or less," Nika answered. When he looked at her, waiting, she added, "I dressed it up a little, but I'm not exaggerating the way he felt about living in that nursing home. I told him that I would try to help him get his own place and share expenses with a housemate. I know several people who lived with elderly citizens, helping them out in exchange for a break in the rent. I also have had contact with some people who really want to get out of living in nursing homes, but they can't afford their own place. I was sure that one of them would be open to this arrangement," she said with a sad smile. "I wanted to help him regain his sense of freedom and dignity."

Frustrated, angry, Nika blew out a breath and stared through the window at the world that was now en-shrouded in darkness.

"And now he's gone." She snapped her fingers. "Just like that."

Cole listened to her as his mind pulled in connections, searching for any kind of red flag, any kind of clue to send him off in a new direction.

"Who called you just now?" he asked as he eased his car around a corner.

"Gerald." She glanced at Cole. "I think his last name is Mayfield. He's an orderly on the floor tonight. Oh," she recalled again, "he's the one who helped you get me out of the elevator shaft."

"He has your phone number?" Cole questioned. Was she friendly with the orderly? Or was there something more? And why did that seem to matter to him beyond just applying it to the case? If she was involved with the orderly, then she was lying about not being sure of the man's last name, and Cole's gut told him she didn't lie. Even so, he pressed, "Isn't that a little unusual?"

"It would be if he had my number, but he doesn't. At least, I never gave it to him. That's not to say it's not available through the hospital intranet." She mentally pushed the sadness she felt to one side and tried to think. "Gerald said that one of the nurses, Sh.e.l.ley Wallace," she said, guessing his next question, "asked him to call me. Most likely, she got my cell number for him. I think they all know how attached I get to the patients in the unit." She pressed her lips together, talking more to herself than to him. "I shouldn't, but I do."

Cole's voice was stony. "Attachments are how people get hurt."

His tone had her looking at him. She wanted to ask the detective if he was speaking from personal experience, but something warned her away from the subject. Right now, there were a lot of emotions dancing between them and not all of them had to do with the man they were going to the hospital to view one last time.

"Maybe I should move my grandmother," he said, breaking the painful silence that was pulsating and growing between them.

"Move her?" Nika echoed in surprise. "Move her to where?"

"To another hospital." He didn't want to get so involved in this case that he overlooked the very obvious: that quite possibly his grandmother was in danger. "There's obviously something going on at Patience Memorial and-"

She didn't let him finish. "Don't do anything rash," Nika begged. "Dr. Goodfellow is an excellent surgeon and so's Dr. Chase, the surgeon who's scheduled to do her breast biopsy once her blood pressure is within the acceptable parameters."

"That won't do her any good if something happens to her before she can have the procedures done," Cole pointed out.

Nika shifted in her seat. "Listen to me. Going to a good hospital and lining up the best surgeons is more important than a lot of people realize. Not every surgeon is worth the t.i.tle and, as for the hospital, you want one that polices its own staff to make sure that mistakes are kept at a minimum. This hospital has an incredible track record for excellence. That's not as easy to come by as it sounds."

Still, he had his doubts. "Doesn't do much good when there's some kind of maniac running loose, eliminating old people at will."

"Maybe it's not at will," Nika countered, reviewing the list she'd given him in her mind. "Maybe whoever's doing this isn't doing it just w.i.l.l.y-nilly or for the money. Maybe-"

"w.i.l.l.y-nilly," he repeated, sparing her a look that bordered on amus.e.m.e.nt. "Who says 'w.i.l.l.y-nilly' these days?"

She frowned. Phraseology was not the point here. "Sorry, I've been too busy going to medical school to update my vocabulary," she replied. "The point is I don't think you should move your grandmother. I can talk to my uncle to see if he can somehow subtly up the security detail in the hospital. He knows the head of security here, and Uncle Josef can make sure that there's someone watching out for your grandmother at all times," she said.

She saw Cole's hands tighten ever so slightly on the wheel. "I can watch out for my own grandmother."

She knew all about pride. She'd lived with it most of her life. Her mother reeked of it. But there was a time when pride had to take a backseat to logic.

"Cole, you're working a case. Solving that case will keep your grandmother safe. But meanwhile, you can't work the case and be with your grandmother at the same time-unless you have some kind of secret ability you haven't told me about."

He had lots of secrets he hadn't told her about, Cole thought. She hadn't a clue how dark his soul really was. But the ability to be two places at once was not among his secrets.

When he made no comment about her argument, Nika pushed a little harder. "Cole, you have to let other people help if they can. n.o.body's an island."

He was, he thought. But at the same moment, he thought of how he would feel if something happened to his grandmother. He was vulnerable when it came to the old woman's well-being. That didn't make him much of an island.

And then there was the matter of the woman in the pa.s.senger seat. Another possible breach in his walls. He'd almost made a grave mistake earlier. The call from the patrolman who'd been summoned to the hospital had wound up inadvertently saving him. He was going to have to get a tighter rein on himself. A tighter rein on emotions that threatened to break free.

"If you say so," he muttered.

"I say so," Nika responded with feeling.

Her heart ached for him and she couldn't even put into words why.

Arriving at the hospital, Nika lost no time hurrying to the Geriatrics Unit. Her heart pounded all the way there.

Mr. Peters was still in his room. When she walked in, at first glance, the old man looked as if he was just sleeping. But Death had a way of removing a victim's personality, of making their features sink in just enough to announce that he had been by, and had taken their soul.

Moved, Nika took the old man's cold hand in hers, lacing her fingers through digits that were growing stiff. Rigor was setting in, she noted, which meant that he hadn't been dead all that long.

Could she have prevented it? If she'd come by, instead of making a note to get back to him when she could, would he be alive this moment?

"Oh, Mr. Peters, I am so very sorry," she whispered to the man who could no longer hear. "Sorry I didn't get you out of here when I talked to you today."

Her mind continued to torture her. Had he died in that window of time when she should have been here, but was in the operating room instead? Right now, she didn't know. All she knew was that she ached and felt horribly guilty.

As if reading her thoughts, Cole stepped closer to her until he was all but her shadow. "It's not your fault," he told her firmly.

"If I'd stayed, if I'd been in the room with him, whoever it was who did this wouldn't have been able to get to him."

"Maybe," he agreed. "And maybe whoever's doing this would have waited for you to leave and then come in to end Mr. Peters's life." An idea came to him. "Was he suffering?"

"Mr. Peters? Outside of regular aches and pains, I'd say that he was suffering emotionally more than physically."

She'd piqued his interest. "How so?"

"He didn't want to go back to the nursing home," she repeated. "It made him feel as if he was useless, that he'd been thrown away by his family and society in general." Maybe she'd call her mother tonight, Nika thought. Just to touch base and let the woman know that she was loved.

Nika looked around the man's bed to double-check. There were no IV drips. There never had been in his case. So death had to have been delivered to him via another method.

Very gently, as if he could still feel her fingers, she spread the lids of one of his eyes apart just enough to examine the white region. There was no redness, no sign of broken blood vessels, which would have indicated that he'd been smothered or deprived of oxygen in some other fashion.

"What are you doing?" Cole asked as she straightened up again and began to perform a quick examination of the victim's skin.

"Looking for marks."

She didn't have to look long. There was a small, almost imperceptible hole in the old man's right inner thigh. It was located directly at the site of a major artery.

It was, she concluded, that exact site that Death had entered and found Joshua Peters.

Chapter 11.

"What's all the commotion out there?" Ericka Baker asked the moment Nika and Cole walked into her room.

Since she was here, Nika had decided to look in on the woman right after she'd signed off on Joshua Peters. She was afraid that Cole's grandmother might have heard about the latest death and grown apprehensive. Stress wasn't going to help lower the woman's blood pressure.

Ericka's question made it obvious that no one had told the elderly woman anything.

"Just someone checking out of the hospital," Nika replied evasively. Her eyes met Cole's. She saw the all but imperceptible nod. He approved of her vague answer.