Dance With Me - By Hayden Braeburn Page 0,42

He made a kissy-face. “You miss Caufield that much?”

“Fuck you,” came Jason's eloquent reply. “Cavindish is married to my sister.”

Shocked, Chris asked the first question that came to mind. “You have a sister?”

Jason attacked his lunch, ignoring Chris's question until his sandwich, chips and pickle were gone. “Genevieve is twelve years older, and I never see her.” He tossed the wrapping in the trashcan behind Chris's head. “Ya know what? We're not talking about this.”

Chris had never seen Jason this agitated in eight years of working together. “Whatever, man. All I said was Cavindish wasn't a bad cop. Davis, though, now that bastard is a piece of work.”

“That's an understatement,” he agreed before switching topics. He didn't need to dwell on Gen and her husband, or his shitty past. “So, if we're not doing much on this case, we'd better get back to Caufield's ex-wife's murder.”

“I knew all that grouchiness was just because you missed Caufield!” Chris exclaimed as they left the cafe.

Jason didn't bother answering. It wasn't like Delmonico was listening in the first place.

~*~

Mason wandered down the hallway of Aylesford Memorial Hospital. He wasn't exactly sure why he had come, but once he'd arrived he knew it was to see Caleb before going home to Kat. His brother was a doctor, surely he had some magic pill to make his anxiety go away or something. He needed Kat like he needed air, and right now he felt like he was drowning. He shook off that disturbing thought. He would not let Priscilla win.

Caleb had just come out of the ER when he saw his brother standing in front of his office with a bewildered expression on his face . “Looking for me?”

Startled from his thoughts by his brother's voice behind him, Mason turned. “I guess I am,” he answered as he walked through the door into the tiny office. “They can't afford to give you actual space?”

Caleb laughed. “At least I have a space. I'm a junior attending physician, Mase. They didn't have to give me an office at all.”

Mason shook his head. “You chose to go to school for twelve years, endure years of grueling residency, and now you have an office with barely room enough for a desk. Honestly, I don't understand you how do it.”

“I needed to.” He leaned against the wall of his office, allowing Mason to sit in the one chair he had. “You came to me, bro. How can I help?”

Mason sat back in the desk chair Caleb had allowed him to claim. “I need Kat.”

Caleb had an idea where his older brother was headed with this, but had to make him say it himself. He'd dealt with victims of violence during his residency, more often in the last few years as an attending in the ER, and each coped differently. “She loves you.”

Mason stood up. “I almost died, Cale. I almost died because a woman took me from my office. I almost died because I didn't do anything to stop her.”

Caleb stayed quiet a long moment. “You almost died because a crazy woman was fixated on you and shot you full of enough sedatives to make a bull compliant. You didn't have a choice, Mason. Not unless you wanted to let her kill you in your own office.”

He sat back down, the small room constricting and without room to pace. “I knew she was obsessed. I knew she was scaring off my dates. I knew it and I didn't do anything about it.”

“Last time I checked, putting visine or ipacac in someone's soda is exactly the same as kidnapping,” Caleb said drily.

“No, it's not, but I never thought she would do anything like this.” He raked a hand through his hair. “I kept Kat from all of you for more than a year because I knew Priscilla would try and scare her off.”

“She wouldn't have run,” Caleb assured. “She loves you, and she wouldn't have believed Priscilla even if she'd spun a tale. You're not God, no matter how hard you try in that pretty bank office of yours, and you can't predict what other people will do.”

“Really? The doctor who brings people back from the dead is gonna tell me I'm not God?”

Caleb snorted. “Nice redirect, there, Mase, but this isn't about me, is it?”

Mason hung his head. “No, it's not. It's about me. I...”

He stayed where he was against the wall, waiting for Mason to finish his thought. He couldn't imagine the torture his brother had been through, even