Shelter from the Storm

Chapter 2

Watching Dr. Lauren Maxwell in action was more fascinating to him than the Final Four, the World Series and the Super Bowl combined. As long as she wasn’t working on him and he didn’t have to endure having her hands on him, Daniel wouldn’t mind watching her all day.

As he stepped back to let the ambulance pull past him, with its lights flashing through the drizzle of snow, he could see Lauren through the back windows as she talked to the paramedics in what he imagined was that brisk, efficient voice she used when directing patient care.

In trauma situations, Lauren always seemed completely in control. He never would have guessed back in the day that she would make such a wonderful physician.

He still found it amazing that the prim little girl on the school bus with her pink backpacks and her fake-fur-trimmed coats and her perfectly curled blond ringlets seemed to have no problem wading through blood and guts and could handle herself with such quiet but confident expertise, no matter the situation.

She loved her work. It was obvious every time Daniel had the chance to see her in action. Medicine wasn’t a job with Lauren Renee Maxwell, it was more like a sacred calling.

In the five years since she’d come back to Moose Springs and opened her clinic, he had watched her carefully. Like many others, at first he had expected her to fail. She was the spoiled, pampered daughter of the man who had been the town’s wealthiest citizen. How could she possibly have the stamina to cope with all the gritty realities of small-town doctoring?

Like almost everyone else, he had quickly figured out that there was more to Lauren than anybody might have guessed. Over the years, her clinic had become a strong, vital thread in the community fabric.

They were all lucky to have her—and so was that young girl in the back of the ambulance.

“What am I supposed to do now?” Dale Richins asked, his wide, grizzled features concerned.

“We’re going to need a statement from you. The address of your sister’s house in Park City, any place you might have stopped between there and here. That kind of thing.”

“I can tell you where LouAnn lives. She’s on the edge of town, the only part the old-timers can afford anymore, with all the developers trying to buy everybody out. But I can tell you right now, I didn’t stop a single place after I left her house. Headed straight home. I don’t know if I even would have known that girl was back there if I hadn’t stopped to fix the flat. She would have likely froze to death.”

“You did the right thing, trying to help her.”

“What else was I supposed to do? Little thing like that.” He shook his head. “Just makes me sick, someone could hurt her and leave her to find her own way in the cold. Especially if she’s pregnant like the doc said. It’s got to be only eight or nine degrees out here. I can’t imagine how cold it was in the back of that drafty old camper shell while I was going sixty-five miles an hour on the interstate. It’s a wonder that little girl didn’t freeze solid before I found her.”

“Yeah, it was lucky you found her when you did.”

“Who do you figure might have done this to her?”

“I couldn’t guess right now until I have a chance to talk to her. I imagine she was probably looking for some way to escape when she stumbled onto your truck and camper shell. The lock’s broken, I see.”

“That old thing’s been busted since before you quit your fancy job in the city and came home. But yeah, that makes sense that she was looking for a way out.”

“So either she was injured somewhere near your sister’s house or she stumbled on your truck sometime after the beating. I’ll know better after I can interview her.”

Dale cleared his throat. “You let me know if she needs anything, won’t you? I can’t afford much, but I could help some with her doctor bills and whatnot.”

He couldn’t help being touched at the crusty old rancher’s obvious concern for his stowaway. Most of the time, Dale was hard-edged and irascible, cranky to everyone. Maybe Rosa reminded him of his three granddaughters or something.

“Thanks,” he answered. “That’s real decent of you.”

“Least I can do.”

“There’s Deputy Hendricks,” Daniel said as another department SUV approached. “She’ll take a statement from you with the particulars of your sister’s address and all, and then she can drive you home when you’re finished.”

“What the hell for? I can drive myself home.”

“I’m sorry, Dale, but we’re going to have to take your truck to the garage down at the station to see if we can find any evidence in the back. It’s standard procedure in cases like this.”

The rancher didn’t look too thrilled with that piece of information. “Don’t I have any kind of choice here?”

“You want us to do everything we can to find out who hurt that girl, don’t you?”

“I suppose…”

“You’ll have it back by morning, I promise.”

That didn’t seem to ease Dale’s sour look, but the rancher seemed to accept the inevitable.

“You heading to the hospital now?” he asked.

At Daniel’s nod, he pointed a gnarled finger at him. “You make sure R.J.’s daughter treats that girl right.”

Though he knew it was a foolish reflex, Daniel couldn’t help but stiffen at the renewed animosity in the rancher’s voice. How did Lauren deal with it, day after day? he wondered. Dale wasn’t the only old-timer around here who carried a grudge as wide and strong as the Weber River. She must face this kind of thing on a daily basis.

It pissed him off and made him want to shake the other man. Instead, he pasted on a calm smile. “Dale, if you weren’t so stubborn, you would admit Lauren is a fine doctor. She’ll take care of the girl. You can bet your ranch on it.”

The other man made a harrumphing kind of sound but didn’t comment as Teresa Hendricks approached. Daniel turned his attention from defending Lauren—something she would probably neither appreciate nor understand—and focused on the business at hand.

“Thanks for coming in on your first night off in a week,” he said to his deputy. “Sorry to do this to you.”

“Not a problem. Sounds like you had some excitement.”

He spent five minutes briefing her on the case, then suggested she drive the rancher home and take his statement there, where they both could be warm and dry.

“I’m going to follow the ambulance to the hospital and try to interview the vic,” he said. “If anything breaks here, you know how to reach me.”

The snow seemed to fall heavier and faster as he drove through Parley’s Canyon to the Salt Lake Valley. It was more crowded than he would have expected at eleven at night, until he remembered the film festival. This whole part of the state was insane when all the celebs were in town.

By the time he reached the University of Utah Medical Center, his shoulders ached with tension and he was definitely in need of a beer.

At the hospital, he went immediately to the emergency room and was directed down a hallway, where he quickly spotted Lauren talking to a man Daniel assumed was another doctor, at least judging by the stethoscope around his neck.

The guy was leaning down, and appeared to be hanging on every word Lauren said. He was blond and lean and as chiseled as those movie stars in their two-thousand-dollar ski jackets up the canyon, trying to see and be seen around town.

Daniel immediately hated him.

He took a step down the hallway and knew immediately when Lauren caught sight of him. She straightened abruptly and something flashed in her blue eyes, something murky and confusing. She quickly veiled her expression and it became a mask of stiff politeness.

Just once, he would love the chance to talk to her without the prickly shell she always seemed to whip out from somewhere and put on whenever he was near.

“Sheriff Galvez,” she greeted him, her delicate features solemn. “Have you met Kendall Fox? He’s the E.R. attending tonight. Kendall, this is Daniel Galvez.”

The doctor stuck out his hand and Daniel shook it, though he couldn’t escape the impression they were both circling around each other, sizing up the enemy like a couple of hound dogs sniffing after the same bone.

He didn’t miss the dismissal in the doctor’s eyes and for the second time that night, he had to fight the urge to kick somebody’s ass. He wouldn’t waste his energy, he thought. Lauren was too smart to go for the type of smooth player who couldn’t remember the name of the woman he was with unless she had it tattooed somewhere on a conveniently accessible portion of her anatomy.

“How’s our victim?” he asked.

“She’s gone to Radiology for some X-rays,” Lauren spoke up. “The tech should be bringing her back in a moment. Kendall…Dr. Fox…and I were just discussing the best course of action. We think—”

Dr. Jerk cut her off. “She has a little frostbite on a couple of her toes, an apparent broken wrist and some cracked ribs.”

“How’s the baby?” Daniel pointedly directed his question back to Lauren, ignoring the other man.

She frowned, looking worried. “She’s started having some mild contractions right now. We’ve given her medication to stop them, but she’s definitely going to need to be closely observed for the next few days.”

“She give any indication who put her here?”

Lauren shook her head. She had discarded her parka somewhere, he observed with his keen detective eye, and had put surgical scrubs on over the pale blue turtleneck she had worn when she treated his shoulder. Her hair was slipping from its braid and he had to fight a ridiculous urge to tuck it back.

“She clams up every time we ask.”

“I was afraid of that. She’s got to be frightened. It would sure make my job easier if she could just give me the name, age and last-known address of the son of a bitch who put her here. Of course we have to do this the hard way. Can I talk to her?”

“You cops. Can’t you even wait until the girl gets out of X-ray?” Fox asked.

Daniel slid his fists into his pockets and pasted on that same damn calm smile that sometimes felt about as genuine as fool’s gold.

He really hated being made to feel like a big, dumb Mexican.

“I didn’t mean this instant,” he murmured. “But I would like to talk to her as soon as possible, while the details are still fresh in her mind.”

The doctor looked like he wanted to get in a pissing match right there in the hallway, but before he could unzip, a nurse in pink scrubs stuck her head out of one of the examination rooms.

She didn’t look pleased to find the E.R. doctor still standing close to Lauren, a sentiment with which Daniel heartily concurred. Her reaction made him wonder if the good doctor was the sort who left a swath of broken hearts through the staff.

“Dr. Fox, can you come in here for a minute?” the nurse asked. “I’ve got a question on your orders.”

The doctor’s handsome features twisted with annoyance but he hid it well. “Be right there.”

After he walked down the hall, a tight, awkward silence stretched between Daniel and Lauren. He found it both sad and frustrating, and wondered how he could ever bridge the chasm between them.

He wasn’t exactly sure how much Lauren knew about the events that led up to her father’s exposure and subsequent fall from grace. If she knew all of it, she must blame him for what happened next.

He sure as hell blamed himself.

“How’s your arm?” she asked.

The blasted thing throbbed like the devil, but he wasn’t about to admit that to her.

“Fine,” he assured her. “Sorry I wasted your time on that. If I’d known I would have to make a trip down here to the city, I could have just had them fix me up here while I was waiting to interview our beating victim. But then, I doubt anybody on staff here can claim such nice handiwork.”

She blinked at the compliment and he watched a light sprinkle of color wash over her cheekbones. “I…thank you,” she murmured.

“You’re welcome.”

They lapsed into silence again.

“How’s Anna these days?” Lauren asked after an awkward moment. “I heard she was in the Northwest now.”

Grateful for the conversation starter, he smiled at the thought of his baby sister. “She loves Oregon. She runs a little gift shop and gallery in Cannon Beach that seems to be doing well. I took a few days and drove up there last year and she seems happy.”

“She’s not married?”

Some of the tension between them seemed to ease as they talked and he wanted to prolong the moment indefinitely. “No. Marc’s the only one of us to bite the bullet so far. He and his wife live in Cache Valley. They have twin boys we all spoil like crazy.”

“And Ren is still in Central America?”

“Right. We can’t get him away from his sea turtles.”

She opened her mouth to answer, but cut off the words as a hospital worker pushed a gurney around the corner.

“Here’s Rosa,” she said.

The beating victim looked even younger here in the harsh glare of the hospital lights and her bruises showed up in stark relief against the white linens. Daniel studied her features, trying hard to find any hint of familiarity, but he was certain he didn’t know her.

He helped push the gurney through the door into the examination room, earning a censorious look from Lauren for the mild exertion. He returned it with a bland smile, though he had to fight down a spurt of warmth. He liked her worrying about him far too much.

“How did it go, Riley?” she asked the kid, who looked young for an X-ray technician, as his hospital ID identified him.

“Good. She fell asleep while I was waiting for the films and I didn’t have the heart to wake her. Poor thing.”

“She’s been through a terrible ordeal. She must be exhausted.”

Lauren took the films from him and slid the first of several into the light box hanging on the wall. She studied it, then exchanged it for another and finally a third, a frown of concentration on her lovely features.

“Just as we suspected,” she said after a moment. “She’s got three broken ribs, a fractured ulna and a broken nose.”

“Somebody did a real number on her.” He was angry all over again at the viciousness behind the attack. “How’s the baby?”

Lauren studied tape spitting out from a machine that was attached to a belt around Rosa’s abdomen. “The contractions have stopped. That’s a good sign. We did an ultrasound earlier and the fetus seemed healthy. It’s a miracle. She’s a dozen different shades of black and blue on her abdomen. My guess is somebody kicked her hard at least two or three times in an effort to induce abortion.”

Daniel had a feeling this was one of those cases that would grab on to him with rottweiler jaws and not let go until he solved it. “Can I talk to her?” he asked.

Lauren pursed her lips. “My instincts say to let her sleep for a while, but I understand your urgency. You likely have to return to Moose Springs as soon as possible.”

“I do. I’m sorry. We’re shorthanded tonight.” He paused and met Lauren’s gaze. “It’s not just that, though. I want her to tell me what happened. The quicker she identifies whoever did this to her, the quicker I can lock the bastard up.”

Though he spoke with a hard determination that didn’t bode well for the perpetrator, Lauren didn’t feel so much as a twinge of sympathy for whoever had done this. They deserved to feel the full wrath of Daniel Galvez, a terrible thing indeed.

“I’m right there with you on that sentiment,” she told him. “In fact, if you gave me half a chance, I’d like to be the one twisting the key in the lock.”

“I’ve got to catch him first and I can’t do that until I talk to Rosa.”

Lauren sighed. “All right. Why don’t you wait in the hall while I wake her, though. She might panic if you’re the first thing she sees when she opens her eyes.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Am I really that scary?”

She felt her face heat and regretted her fair coloring that showed every emotion to the world like a big neon billboard. “I meant your uniform,” she answered stiffly, though she had to admit, she found the man absolutely terrifying.

Could he tell? she wondered, hoping it wasn’t as obvious as her blush. She wasn’t afraid he would physically hurt her, though he was big and powerful and all large men tended to make her uncomfortable on some instinctive level.

With Daniel, though, she was more wary of her own reaction to him and all the feelings he sparked in her, emotions she would rather not be experiencing for someone with whom she had such a tangled, complicated relationship.

To her relief, he let the matter drop. “Yell when it’s safe for me to come in, then,” he murmured, slipping out of the room with far more grace than a man his size should possess.

The room immediately felt about three times bigger without his overwhelming presence filling it. Lauren let out the breath she always seemed to hold around him and moved to her patient’s bedside.

“Rosa? Niña, I need you to wake up.”

When she didn’t respond immediately, Lauren gently shook her shoulder. “Rosa?”

The girl’s eyes blinked open and she looked around in wild confusion, panic blooming in her dark eyes. Her gaze shifted to Lauren and a light of recognition sparked there. “Doctora.” She covered her abdomen with her hands. “El bebé. Está bien?”

“Sí. Sí. Está bien.” She smiled, wishing she had a little better command of Spanish. If things weren’t so tensely uncomfortable with Daniel, she might ask for private lessons. But of course, that was impossible, so for now she would have to muddle through.

“Rosa, the sheriff is here to talk to you about who hurt you.”

The panic returned to her features. “No. No policía.”

Lauren sighed. The physician in her wanted to urge her patient to rest, to promise her she could have this difficult interview later when her body had a chance to begin the healing process.

She couldn’t, though. Daniel had a job to do—a job she very much wanted to see him conclude with an arrest. She just had to trust that he would handle a frightened girl with both tact and compassion.

“I’m sorry, Rosa,” she answered in Spanish. “But you must tell him what happened.”

The girl shook her head, her hands clasped protectively around her abdomen as if she feared Daniel would snatch the child from her womb. Lauren gave her a reassuring pat. “It will all be all right. You’ll see. Sheriff Galvez only wants to help you.”

Rosa said something in Spanish too rapid for Lauren to pick up on. She had a feeling she was better off not knowing.

She went to the door and opened it for Daniel. “She’s upset and doesn’t want to talk to you,” she said in an undertone. “I honestly don’t know how much she’ll tell you. I’m sorry. I can give you a few moments but if I think you’re upsetting her too much, I’ll have to kick you out.”

“All right.”

When he entered the room, Rosa shrank against the bed linens, her fine-boned features tight with tension. Daniel pulled out one of the guest chairs and sat on the edge of it. He moved slowly, like someone trying to coax a meadowlark to eat birdseed from his hand.

He spoke Spanish in a low, calm voice. She couldn’t understand him well, both because he pitched his voice low and because he spoke too quickly for her limited comprehension skills.

After a moment, Rosa answered him quickly, reluctance in every line of her body.

Lauren found it a surreal experience trying to follow their conversation when she only understood about one word in five. Even without a perfect command of the language, she could hear the compassion ringing through his voice.

He genuinely cared about Rosa, Lauren thought. The girl might be just a stowaway he had never seen until an hour ago, but he wanted to get to the bottom of things. She suddenly knew Daniel would go to any lengths to protect the girl. Fate had dropped her into Moose Springs, and she had become one of his charges.

She had a feeling his sincerity wasn’t translating for Rosa. She shook her head vehemently several times, and Lauren could at least understand the most frequent word the girl employed. “No” sounded the same in English and in Spanish.

After several moments of this, Rosa turned her head against the wall, a clear message that she was done talking to him. Daniel said something, his voice low and intense, but Rosa didn’t turn around.

At last Daniel stood with a sigh, his big handsome features tight with frustration. He tucked a business card in Rosa’s hand. The girl closed her fingers around it, but didn’t even look at either the card or at Daniel. With another sigh, Daniel nodded to Lauren and left the room.

She followed him. “She won’t talk?” she asked when the door closed behind them.

“She claims she doesn’t remember what happened to her.”

Lauren frowned. “She has no head injury that might account for a loss of memory. I suppose it might be some self-protective psychological reaction to the trauma…”