He flicked on the torch he had in his other hand. The darkness hadn’t bothered him at all. He’d had the flashlight but just hadn’t flicked the switch. He’d been too busy focusing on the entrance to the caves that was about to disappear from his line of sight.

  The cave around them was illuminated in the light from the torch. There was a tear rolling down her cheek. His hand lifted to her visor. Too many layers, too many things in the way. All he wanted to do right now was wipe away her tear with his finger.

  ‘You were stabbed in the attack?’

  She nodded. He wanted to hold her. He wanted to wrap his arms around her and pull her close to his chest. The feelings were overwhelming. He’d known from the second he’d seen the angry scar that there must be a story behind it. He just hadn’t banked on his reaction to that story.

  He bent his knees so he was face to face with her. ‘What were you doing in a dark parking lot at night, Grace? And why didn’t you just give them your bag? It was only a bag. Things can be replaced. You can’t.’

  As he said the words he almost felt a hand around his heart, squeezing tightly. He hated the thought of someone doing that to her. He couldn’t stand the fact she’d been attacked, let alone what outcome there could have been.

  Her voice was shaky. ‘I was working, Donovan. It was my last shift at Atlanta Park Hospital. I stayed a bit later to make sure my charts were up to date and by the time I got outside the lights were out in the parking lot.’ She shook her head. ‘I didn’t fight him. I’m not that stupid. But he didn’t care. He made a grab for my bag and just stabbed me anyway.’

  He could see her whole body trembling inside the thick suit. ‘That’s why I don’t like the dark. I get nervous. I have trouble dating now. I hate being alone with a man. It brings back a whole lot of memories I can’t deal with. It doesn’t matter that it’s irrational. I know that. They’re just still there.’

  The dating stuff started circling around his brain. Grace was nervous around men? Why hadn’t he noticed? He’d kissed her, for goodness’ sake!

  But it was the other words that struck a chord. The irrational fears. They resounded around his head. ‘I can relate to that, Grace.’

  She looked confused. ‘But you’re Donovan. You’re not scared of anything. You managed to tackle a guy with a gun.’

  He took a deep breath. He’d never revealed this part of himself to anyone. He hadn’t wanted to. He didn’t want gossip circulating about him that could affect his position at the DPA. He’d never been prepared to take that risk.

  But this was Grace. Someone he felt a connection to. And she’d just put herself on the line for him. He had to be honest with her. He had to let her know that she wasn’t alone. He could ask her about the dating stuff later.

  ‘Irrational fears are a funny thing. You’re right. Apart from a few jittery nerves, I wasn’t that scared of the guy with the gun. I knew if the timing was right, I could overpower him.’

  ‘Then I don’t get it. What are you scared of?’

  He pointed to the light streaming in from the entry point. Even saying the words made the little hairs stand up on his body. ‘I need to know I can get out of places. I had a bad experience as a kid. I was trapped in an elevator for hours. As long as I can see the way out, I’m fine. And in most circumstances I can. Take the exit route out of my line of sight and a whole host of things start churning around in my head.’

  She looked horrified. ‘That must have been awful. What age were you?’

  ‘Six.’

  ‘And how long were you in the elevator?’

  He gave a big sigh. Talking about it brought it all back to him. The feeling of abandonment. The silver walls all around him. Needing to pee so badly it hurt. Crying so hard it made his chest sore. Wondering if he would ever see his mother again.

  ‘Six hours.’

  ‘Six hours? For a six-year-old?’ The pitch of her voice rose in obvious shock. This was why he didn’t tell people. He didn’t want sympathy. He didn’t want to relive the horror. He just wanted to put this all in a box and forget about it. Too bad his subconscious wouldn’t let him.

  ‘So how do you expect to collect samples at the back of a cave, hundreds of feet away from the exit?’ It was the obvious question.

  ‘The same way you expect to collect samples in a cave with no lighting,’ he countered.

  They looked at each other. For the first time it seemed okay to admit to a fear. They were on an equal footing. One fear overlapped the other.

  The temperature in his suit was rising—and it wasn’t just down to the suffocating Florida heat. It wasn’t quite so stifling in the caves. The air was damper, more humid, but those were probably contributing factors to the spread of the virus.

  No. The temperature was rising in his suit purely because of the way Grace was looking at him and the inappropriate thoughts that were clouding his brain. This was what he’d feared. Romantic entanglements with a colleague meant your mind wasn’t on the job. And right now his certainly wasn’t.

  He wanted to run his hands through the tangled waves of her hair. He wanted to feel her skin beneath the palms of his hand. He wanted to feel the warm curves of her body pressed against his.

  The hazmat suits made them look like spacemen on an Apollo mission. Nothing sexy. Nothing revealing. And yellow probably wasn’t his colour. But Grace? She made anything look good.

  She was still staring at him. There were the tiniest beads of sweat along her brow. It just made him want to touch her all the more. Last time she’d had water on her brow had been in the sea, in that orange bikini.

  And then she did it. She ran her tongue along her dry lips. It was almost the end of him. He let out a moan that resembled a little growl. Thank goodness there was no one near them. He shook his head inside the hood. ‘Grace, don’t.’

  She lifted her hand, palm open, and held it up facing him. She ran her tongue along her lips again. ‘Why, what am I doing?’

  She knew. She knew how ridiculous this was. But the buzz of electricity was giving them both the distraction that they needed. Who knew hazmat suits and bat caves could be sexy?

  She moved her hand again. ‘Okay, Mr Team Leader. We can do this. Together.’

  He took a deep breath, willing his body to stop reacting to her every move. For a few seconds at least his childhood fears had been forgotten. He lifted his gloved hand to press against hers. ‘Together.’ He smiled. ‘Wanna hold hands?’

  She leaned forward, lowering her voice. ‘That’s not really what I want to hold. But let’s just get this over and done with, okay?’

  No. His body was definitely not playing fair. Thank goodness for padded body suits.

  He pulled his shoulders back. He had a job to do. Irrational and unreasonable fears be damned.

  As for the sexy distracting chat—they could talk about that later. Alone. Naked. Undisturbed. And Grace could hold any part of his body she wanted.

  He took long strides towards the back of the cave, turning and following the path far away from the entrance. He didn’t think about it. He had a clear way out behind him. He had a torch in his hand to show him the way.

  He sensed a little movement at his back. The light pressure of a hand resting on his suit. Grace was matching him step for step. She was just holding on for the ride.

  A flicker in front of him showed him where the ranger had stopped. He pointed his torch in the direction of the bats roosting on the curved roof. The ranger’s brow was furrowed. ‘What kept you? Did you two get lost?’

  Donovan didn’t answer. He swung round and held a hand out to Grace. ‘I’ll collect some samples from the cave floor. You swab the sides of the cave.’

  The ranger swung his torch to one corner, lighting up the corpse of a dead bat lying on the cave floor. ‘What about that? Do you want to take a specimen?’

  Donovan nodded. ‘I’ll bag it and seal it.’ It didn’t really matter what had caused the death of the fruit bat. David would still be able to test it and see if it carried the virus. He turned and handed his torch to Grace, waving his arm towards the ranger. ‘Can you light up the area for her while she collects samples?’

  She shot him a grateful glance. He didn’t mind fumbling around in the dark. It only took a few minutes to collect the samples of bat droppings he required for the lab and to bag and seal the dead bat. Who said this job wasn’t glamorous?

  ‘All right, Grace?’

  Her hood, lit up by the torch next to it, was casting an impressive range of shadows around the cave. Her outline looked like a monster from a kid’s book. The stalagmites and stalactites were all over the deep part of the cave here. In any other circumstances it would be a perfect setting for a horror movie.

  She glanced at him. ‘What is it?’ Her voice wasn’t trembling any more. She didn’t seem so rattled.

  He smiled. He was trying not to think about how he couldn’t see the way out from here. It was much easier just to look into Grace’s eyes and think about a whole host of other things.

  ‘I was just imagining you in one of those kids’ storybooks. You know, the monster in the caves kind of thing?’

  ‘You’re just all charm, aren’t you?’ she shot back. She gave him a little wink. ‘I’ll make you pay for that later.’ His distraction techniques were working.

  He stood up and pushed the double-bagged bat into the sample case. ‘Are we done?’

  She breathed an obvious sigh of relief and nodded. ‘Let’s get out of here.’

  He turned back towards the way they’d entered and gave a little start. Darkness. Nothing in front of him. No obvious way out. Sealed in a million tonnes of rock along with some deadly bats.

  He squeezed his eyes shut for a second. He was Donovan Reid. He couldn’t do this. In any other lifetime this would be described as a wobble. He couldn’t let that happen.

  Then he felt Grace lay her hand on his arm. She held out the torch in front of her. He could see she was taking some long, slow breaths. She glanced sideways at him, aware that the ranger was watching them both. ‘Let’s go.’

  She walked first, letting the thin torch beam ahead of her be the beacon lighting the way out. She moved briskly, without talking, until they reached the bend in the cave that revealed the entrance ahead.

  He felt all the pent-up air rush out of his lungs. He hadn’t even realised he had been holding it. As they neared the entrance his phone beeped loudly. It was inside his suit, it would have to wait.

  It took a few minutes to reach the outside of the caves. The decontamination unit was set up outside and they all stripped off their gear and headed for the showers. This time there was no sharing of cubicles. No untoward views of a naked Grace. It was almost disappointing.

  He towelled off his hair and picked up the phone. The screen was steamed up and he wiped it clean and stepped outside.

  No.

  ‘What is it?’ Grace appeared beside him, towel-drying her hair too.

  He held up the phone. ‘Just what we don’t want to hear. Two adult fatalities in the last hour. One at our hospital, another, a late diagnosis, at a hospital in Mexico. He visited the caves last Thursday. John found him during the visitor follow-ups. We need to step up a gear.’

  ‘But what else can we do?’

  His eyes skimmed over her body. She was wearing simple clothes. A T-shirt and a pair of fitted trousers. All he could think about was what lay beneath.

  It couldn’t happen. He couldn’t do this.

  This was exactly what he’d feared. People depended on him to stop this outbreak. He couldn’t do that while his head was full of Grace.

  She was watching him with her green eyes. Trusting him because of what they’d just shared.

  He kept his tone sharp as he walked away from her. ‘Get those samples to David at the labs. I’m going to speak to whoever is in charge of the park. I’m going to get the whole area cordoned off.’

  He couldn’t turn round. He wouldn’t turn round.

  Because he didn’t want to see the expression on her face.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  WHAT WAS WRONG with him?

  He’d barely spoken to her in the last few days. She was getting more conversation out of Mara from the kitchen than she was from Donovan.

  Oh, he mentioned patients and gave instructions. The caves had been confirmed as the site of the virus. The Jamaican fruit bats had been rounded up and taken away while some scientist worked out how the virus had travelled between African and Jamaican bats.

  She’d waited the last two nights to see if he would knock on her door. She’d even hesitated outside his door the other night, not even knowing if he had actually been there or not. Then she’d sat in her room, pulled the doors back and stared out at the beach to see if she could spot him running.

  It was ridiculous.

  Callum Ferguson, in the meantime, was charm himself. He spoke to her for an hour at every handover, praising her work, answering any questions and giving her a few hints about things she was unsure of. She was finally starting to shake off the bad feelings that Frank Parker had initiated. Was finally starting to feel like a valuable member of the team.

  But Donovan was doing nothing to help that.

  He was sitting at one of the nurses’ stations, working on a computer. She wasn’t going to avoid him. She hadn’t done anything wrong. So she flopped into the seat next to him and picked up the phone.

  ‘Hi, it’s Dr Grace Barclay from the DPA team in Florida. I’m just phoning to check on the condition of the kids we sent to you a few days ago.’

  She listened carefully, taking a few notes. They had five kids now in other ICUs. Two still very serious and three who seemed to making small improvements.

  She replaced the receiver with a sigh. She didn’t even care what kind of mood Donovan was in right now. ‘Tyler Bates, the five-year-old we resuscitated? He’s still not doing great. They’ve transfused him three times and are giving him extra clotting factors. He’s still haemorrhaging.’

  Donovan turned his head slightly. ‘And the other kids?’

  ‘Obi, Sarah and Mario have made slight improvements. Jenny is still serious.’

  He nodded and turned back to his screen.

  ‘Aren’t you going to say anything else?’ The stats for the Marburg virus were circulating around her head. Anything between a twenty-three and a ninety per cent death rate. They had treated more than thirty kids so far. She couldn’t bear the thought of having to deal with a child death. She’d never had to do that before. She was getting angry with Donovan’s deafening silence. She stood up, sending the wheeled chair skidding behind her. Her voice rose. ‘Do you know that his mom’s pregnant? They’ve forbidden her to enter the isolation room. The risk to the baby is too great. She can’t even hold her little boy’s hand.’

  ‘Sit down, Grace.’ His words were quiet and they just infuriated her all the more.

  ‘No, I won’t sit down. I don’t want to sit down. I want you to talk to me.’

  He raised his eyebrow. ‘I am talking to you.’

  ‘No, you’re not. Not really.’

  One of the nurses hurried past, her eyes flicking from one to the other. She picked up a prescription chart and disappeared into another room.

  Donovan took his hands from the keyboard and leaned back in his chair. ‘Grace, it’s late. We have to hand over to Callum in an hour. I’ve got another three suspected cases in sites around the world. I’m trying to organise a way to get their samples checked in labs that have no idea what Marburg virus looks like. What do you want me to do? Ignore the work I’m supposed to be doing, to deal with your temper tantrum?’

  She stopped dead. ‘My what?’

  ‘Your temper tantrum.’ He waved his arm at her in exasperation. ‘That’s clearly what’s going on here.’

  She was holding back sobs. She walked to the other side of the desk. It was safer. She couldn’t punch him from there.

  She leaned over towards him, ‘What I’m doing, Donovan, is offloading to my team leader. I’m juggling more than twenty paediatric patients right now—an area I don’t specialise in. We only have one paediatrician and he’s on the other team. I’ve got another two kids that should ideally be transferred to another ICU, but there are no available beds at Panama Health Care, and if I send them to another facility I’ll have to authorise another DPA team to attend.’ She drummed her fingers on the desk.

  ‘My brain won’t stop reminding me of the death rate for Marburg.’ She waved her arm down the corridor. ‘We’ve lost five adult patients now. How long will it be before we lose a child? And will I be left to deal with that too? Because, quite frankly, Donovan, I don’t know if I can.’ She ground her heels into the floor. ‘So, no, Dr Reid, this isn’t a temper tantrum. This is a frustrated colleague wondering if she’s cut out to be on a fieldwork team. Believe me, if I was having a temper tantrum, you would know it.’

  There was a fire in her eyes he’d only glimpsed on occasion before. A fire that made her seem more beautiful than ever. Even after five days here, staying in a backwater motel, her dark hair was glossy and her skin glowing. Grace looked as if she should be on the cover of a magazine.

  All of a sudden he couldn’t stand it. He couldn’t stand it a second longer. His brain seemed to have lost its don’t-say-that clause. The kind that made you adjust what you really wanted to say to the words that formed on your lips. ‘Grace, what’s going on here?’

  She pulled back. She seemed surprised by his forthright question.

  Her brow wrinkled. ‘What do you mean?’

  He waved his hand. ‘This. Us. What is this?’ He was confused. It was strange for him, because clarity of thought was one of his great strengths. He just couldn’t make sense of this any more.

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16