It was Ericka, not Cole, who answered her. "You mean other than the fact that I could die on the table? No," Ericka retorted. "Nothing's wrong."

Nika looked at the woman, giving her a kindly smile. "You're not going to die on the table, or anywhere else, Mrs. Baker."

Unconvinced-and desperately wanting to be- Ericka snorted. "You're going to make me all better, right?"

"Right," Nika a.s.sured her cheerfully. "I am. Along with Dr. Chase and eventually, Dr. Goodfellow. We're all going to work to make you good as new." Leaning over, she patted the woman's hand. "Maybe even better than new."

Ericka's sharp blue eyes regarded her for a long moment. And then she declared, "Whatever you're smoking or drinking, I want them to use it for my anesthesia."

The woman was something else, all right. Nika exchanged glances with Cole before she told her patient, "I doubt very much if they're going to put orange juice into your veins, Mrs. Baker, because that's what I'm drinking. And I don't smoke." She heard the rest of the support team entering behind her. "Okay, time for your magic carpet ride to begin." She stepped back as the orderly and nurse approached the hospital bed. "Gerald and Jenna are going to take you down to the O.R.," she told the woman.

Ericka grabbed her wrist. A flicker of fear flashed in her eyes. "I thought you were coming with me."

Nika gave Ericka's hand a squeeze, gently separating the woman's fingers from her wrist.

"I'll be there," Nika promised. "They're going to prep you first."

Ericka looked at the orderly, who responded with an encouraging smile. Ericka didn't smile back. "As long as he doesn't get fresh."

"I'll be the one getting you ready, Mrs. Baker," Jenna spoke up as she positioned herself at the foot of the hospital bed. One hand on the footboard, ready to guide it out, she nodded at the orderly. The burly man kicked away the brakes on all four wheels and began to push. The bed glided out of the room and into the hallway.

"What's wrong?" Nika asked Cole the moment everyone had left the room.

He wasn't aware that his expression had given anything away. "Maybe nothing."

Was that a faint hint of aftershave he'd just smelled? Or was that a woman's cologne? He was letting his imagination run away with him-not a normal occurrence. Cole struggled to rein it in.

He hadn't said "nothing," he'd said "maybe nothing." Nika wanted to hear what the "maybe" was all about.

"But...?" she pressed.

For a moment Cole thought of keeping this to himself, then decided that maybe he could use her input. "G thinks I was in her room last night."

Was that all? Had he forgotten? "You were. We both were, remember?"

He shook his head. "No, she means afterwards. She claims she woke up to find me hovering over her, fiddling around with her IV."

Nika knew that wasn't possible. He'd spent the night with her. Concerned, Nika tried to think how they could find out if the woman had dreamed the whole thing, or if there'd actually been someone in her room. Someone who at least vaguely resembled Cole.

"Did you check the surveillance tapes from the hall for last night?"

"No, but I intend to as soon as possible." Cole schooled himself not to make too much of it, just in case. "She might just be imagining it. Her mind does wander off at times," he said. Using the euphemism "wander" was his way of dealing with the possibility of Alzheimer's.

One possible crisis at a time.

"She also said she thought it was me," he reminded Nika. "And we both know that I wasn't anywhere near her late last night." He watched her pointedly, replaying some of the moments they'd shared in his head. "I was with you."

"Very much so," Nika agreed, smiling broadly at him. Their lovemaking just seemed to get better and better, even though at the outset, she couldn't see how that was possible. She reined in her thoughts and focused on his grandmother. "Seems like too much of a coincidence to think she just dreamed the whole thing."

"There's something else," he said. "G told me she smelled my cologne and that it was too strong. I don't wear cologne. The logical conclusion would be that she dreamed this."

Nika reconsidered his theory. "It's a possibility," she allowed. "Dreams do come in all sorts of sizes and shapes. I've had some incredibly vivid dreams." The most recent one had been about him, but she wasn't ready to admit that to him yet. "I can't see why smells and even taste can't be part of that vivid experience." She needed to start scrubbing in, but she hated the idea of leaving him alone to wait for his grandmother's surgery to be over. "Are you going to hang around while she's in the O.R.?" she asked, then subtly tried to get him to go back to work. In the long run, that would be better for him than just waiting here. "When she comes out, your grandmother won't be conscious. She won't know if you're not here."

"No, she won't," he agreed. "But I will."

Nika walked out of the room, making her way to the elevator. He fell into step beside her. "Tell you what- I'll text you the second she's out of surgery."

They turned a corner. He allowed himself a small smile. "Trying to get rid of me?"

Her mission was loftier than that. "Trying to get you to relax and breathe regularly. Really, you don't need to hang around here." Reaching the elevator, she pressed the down b.u.t.ton, then turned to face him. "Keeping busy is the best way to make time pa.s.s," she said. "Go, be super-detective. Find out who's behind all this," she requested earnestly. "Please. Before we lose someone else."

In the face of everything, it was not an unreasonable request. And Veronika was right, he thought. He was better off keeping busy.

The elevator arrived. The car was empty as she stepped into it. He suddenly remembered what he wanted to tell her. "Oh, don't text me," he told her, stopping the doors with his hand before they closed and the elevator whisked her away. The doors instantly sprang back.

This time Nika placed her hand in the way as she looked at him, curious. "You don't want to know?"

Cole shook his head. "It's not that. Call me instead."

He didn't elaborate. He didn't have to. Nika put two and two together and grinned. The man had made no secret of his dislike of all things technological. "You don't have to know how to send a text in order to be able to read one."

Cole had never liked owning up to any shortcomings and, in this day and age, not being able to communicate on all levels was considered a basic shortcoming. But if he didn't say something, he had a feeling that Nika would go on and on about it.

"I don't know how to access a text message."

She opened her mouth both to instruct him and to laugh at the look on Cole's face. But then she decided to do neither. This wasn't the time to tease him. So instead, she merely nodded.

"Then I'll call you with any news," she promised. She took away her hand from the spasmodically shrugging elevator doors. The doors dived toward each other. "Now go, make the world safe," she ordered a second before the doors finally shut.

She was only half teasing.

The ma.s.s in Ericka Baker's breast turned out to be deeper than the MRI had led them to believe. Conse quently, the procedure lasted longer than had initially been estimated. And rather than just performing a needle biopsy, Dr. Chase opted then and there to remove the entire ma.s.s. A small section of the tissue was immediately sent off to the pathology lab.

Nika mentally crossed her fingers and offered up a quick, silent prayer that the results would be benign. She'd grown to like the feisty little octogenarian a great deal since she'd first met Ericka Baker.

When the procedure was over, Nika had walked beside the gurney, accompanying the unconscious woman to the Recovery Room. She checked Ericka's vital signs even before the on-duty nurse arrived to take them. Anxious to set his mind at ease as much as possible, Nika wanted to be able to give Cole all the information she could. So far, it was all good.

She fervently hoped it would remain that way.

Leaving her patient with the recovery room nurse, who, not counting Mrs. Baker, had six other patients to watch over in the small, antiseptic and darkened room, Nika stepped out into the hall.

She blinked a couple of times to get her eyes accustomed to the brighter lighting. Once the halos receded from around certain fixtures, Nika went in search of a landline. Her cell phone was still in her locker where she'd left after changing into her blue O.R. scrubs.

She found one next to the ladies' room opposite Outpatient Admitting.

She didn't bother to change now beyond removing her mask and surgical cap, which somehow always felt too small every time she put it on-Alyx claimed it was because she had such an incredibly big head. Nika dialed Cole's cell number.

It took her two tries to get through. The first time his cell phone aborted midway, losing the signal. But her second attempt reached him. She listened to the phone ring and began counting in her head.

Cole's crisp baritone rang in her ear as he answered his phone on the third ring. "Baker."

She wondered if her stomach would ever stop tightening at the sound of his voice. "Cole, it's Nika-"

She could almost feel him gripping the phone tightly as he asked her in a stony voice, obviously braced for the worst, "How is she?"

Nika talked quickly, not wanting to prolong his anxiety one second longer than she had to. "Your grandmother came through the procedure with flying colors."

It was only then that he let out the breath he'd been holding for the last hour and ten minutes.

"Why did it take so long?" he asked.

He'd been acutely aware of the time and that Nika hadn't gotten in contact with him as she'd promised. Aware as well that the surgery had gone over the time parameters she'd given him.

She gave him the whole story, hoping it would make him feel more comfortable about the operation. "The doctor decided to take out the whole ma.s.s instead of just aspirating it. A section of it was sent to the pathology lab for a workup." Nika antic.i.p.ated his next question. "We should know one way or another in about forty-eight hours, if not sooner." She heard Cole sigh and she could just guess what was going on in his head. In his place, she'd feel the same way. "I know, I know, more waiting, but just think of it as no news being good news."

He made a dismissive noise. "Sorry, I never went to the Pollyanna School of Optimism. No news is almost always bad news waiting to happen."

How could he stand to live that way, she wondered. It was so bleak.

"Cole, your grandmother is going to be all right. You have to believe that. For her sake if not for your own," she emphasized. She took the silence on the other end of the line to be skepticism and continued. "She's a sharp little old lady. If you're standing there, looking at her as if you've already paid for the funeral casket and the service, I guarantee she'll pick up on it. Cole, she needs all the positive energy she can get. She needs you to be positive for her. Positive that she's going to be all right."

There was more silence on the other end, and for a second she thought that he'd either lost the signal again or he'd hung up on her.

"Cole?"

When he spoke, his tone was only a shade less serious than it had been a moment ago. "So now you're a motivational speaker, too?"

Nika couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic, or this was his poor attempt at humor. In either case, her answer was the same. "I'm whatever I have to be in order to help my patients."

"Yeah, I know," he conceded. "So when can I see my grandmother?"

"I just brought her into the Recovery Room. She's going to be there for another hour and then, if everything's okay-and it has been up to this point," she added in case he was already a.s.suming that it wasn't, "they'll take her back up to her room. So, to answer your question, if you can get back to the hospital, you can see her in about an hour."

"I don't have to 'get back,'" he told her. "I never left the Geriatrics Unit."

Chapter 14.

Nika shifted the phone to her other ear and turned away from the general flow of foot traffic in order to focus better on the sound of his voice. If he was on the premises, but not down here, there was only one reason for that.

"I take it you're talking to the staff up there."

Because he was so straightforward, Nika didn't know if his talking to the staff without her present was such a good thing. She at least could smooth the feathers that Cole might inadvertently be ruffling with his no-nonsense approach to questioning. Right now, they needed all the cooperation from the people in the unit they could get. She didn't want him alienating anyone. Geriatrics couldn't afford to lose anyone, and this included the nurses and the orderlies.

"Seems like the logical thing to do," Cole told her. There was no emotion in his voice.

"I know, but I really can't picture any of them doing away with our patients for any reason," Nika emphasized.

"You know them that well?" he questioned.

She could hear the skepticism in his voice and knew without asking what he was thinking: How well did anyone ever know anyone else? While he might have a point, she liked to believe that she was a fairly decent judge of character.

"Actually, in terms of longevity, I'm practically the last one hired on the floor." She wanted to discuss this further with him and she didn't want to do it over the phone. "Look, stay where you are, I'm coming up."

"Aren't you needed in the Recovery Room?" he asked.

It wasn't the Recovery Room he was thinking about, Nika thought. It was his grandmother. Not that she could fault him. When her mother went in for gall bladder surgery two years ago, she'd been the same way. Worried, concerned, keeping vigil at the woman's bedside even though her mother was asleep for most of the twenty-four hours that followed the surgery. Even so, rather than leave, she remained. It made her feel better just watching her mother breathe. Besides, her sisters were depending on her to give them periodic updates since all three of them were unable to get to the hospital until the next day.

Rather than tiptoeing around his concern and allowing him to keep his stoic facade, Nika told him, "Your grandmother's resting comfortably and there's really nothing for me to do except take her vitals every fifteen minutes. The on-duty nurse is going to think I'm after her job if I do it again. Stay put," she instructed a second time. "I'll be right there." With that, she ended the call.

The bank of elevators was less than ten feet away, but filled with nervous energy that she couldn't quite shake and her recent period of captivity in the elevator car still very fresh in her mind, Nika opted to take the stairs.

She all but ran up the three flights of metal stairs, the heels of her shoes beating a rhythmic sound as she hurried to the fourth floor.

She was a little breathless and her cheeks were flushed as she pushed opened the stairwell door. She'd emerged on the far end of the floor where some of the supplies were kept. There was no one around. Nika a.s.sumed that Cole was at the nurses' station, which served as an oasis for charts, computers and the all-important coffeemaker that kept them all fully functional. The nurses' station was located in the center of each floor.

But Cole wasn't at the nurses' station.

Still unaccountably antsy, Nika began a cursory search for the detective, making her way to the opposite end of the floor. She glanced into every room she pa.s.sed. More than half were occupied, but Cole wasn't in any of them.

She finally found him standing before the bank of regular elevators. She should have realized he'd be here, she silently upbraided herself.

Coming up behind Cole, she told him, "I took the stairs."

Cole instantly swung around. There was a tension in his face she'd never seen before. Was he that worried about his grandmother, or was something else going on?

"Never sneak up on a cop with a gun," Cole warned her.

"I wasn't sneaking," Nika protested. Was there something wrong? "Next time, I'll remember to bring some pots and pans with me and drop them before I say anything."

"Sarcasm," he p.r.o.nounced, his eyes flat, unfathomable as they delved into her. And then he nodded. "I like it."

Nika shook her head, the corners of her mouth curving softly. "You are a strange, strange man, Detective Cole Baker."

"Nice of you to notice," he quipped.

There was even a hint of a smile on his lips. Maybe she'd been mistaken about the tension, she thought. Being intimate with him didn't automatically mean that she was privy to his thoughts or to his soul. She could only wish that she was.

"So how many of the staff did you get to talk to?" she asked casually. On the plus side, she hadn't seen a ma.s.s exodus underway. Maybe he'd learned tact in the last two weeks.

"All of them."