beneath her skin. “Coffeepot’s still warm downstairs.”
“Find anything?”
“Just this.” She tossed the paper on the desk in front of him.
He stared at it. She couldn’t read his expression.
“What about you?” she asked, shaking off the foreboding sense of fear coursing through her.
“Not a lot.” He lifted a torn sheet of notebook paper and handed it to her. “You recognize any names on there?”
“My name’s on here.”
“I know.”
There were roughly fifteen names on the sheet, over half of which were crossed out in red. Hers was circled at the bottom.
“What is this?” she asked quietly.
“I don’t know. But I think we need to start checking out the other names on that list, then find Janet Kelly and figure out what the hell’s going on.”
Chapter Fifteen
She did not want to be here.
Being shoved into a tiny tube while strapped to a table wasn’t Kate’s idea of fun. She ground her teeth and took calming breaths. She’d much rather be out making phone calls with Ryan than having the CT scan he’d insisted on this afternoon.
The test was taking entirely too long. Didn’t they realize she was claustrophobic?
The machine buzzed and whirred, and the table retracted from the tube.
Thank God.
Ryan was waiting for her in the reception area when she reemerged from the dressing room. His head was down, his fingers rubbing his temples. Tension surrounded him. She swallowed the lump in her throat as she walked across the room. He hadn’t looked that worried before she’d gone in.
“Ryan?”
When he glanced up, those worry lines faded from his handsome face. A forced smile curved his mouth, one that didn’t reach his eyes. “Done?”
“Yeah. Dr. Murphy said to come back in an hour.”
He rose. “Let’s get something to eat while we wait.” With a hand at the small of her back, he urged her toward the elevator.
Kate settled into the dimly lit booth in the pub a block from the hospital. After their orders were taken, she said, “What did you find out?”
He draped an arm over the back of the booth and tapped a straw against the wooden table. “Nothing.”
He was lying. She could feel it. “Come on, Ryan. Don’t hold out on me.”
“How do you feel about a vacation? We take the kids and go off somewhere for a while, use the time to let Reed and Julia get to know each other. Beach or mountains, your pick.”
“Mitch told me you never take vacations, Mr. Harrison. You’re starting to worry me. What’s going on?”
As he glanced around the bar as if to see who was listening, her gaze followed. A bartender worked the long, mahogany bar. Two patrons sat on barstools at its sleek surface. A few tables throughout the space were occupied by tourists.
She looked back at him. “Ryan, what aren’t you telling me?”
He finally fished out the torn slip of paper from his pocket they’d taken from Janet Kelly’s house earlier that morning and passed it to her. “Each of the people crossed out are dead.”
“What?”
He looked pained when he pointed at the names on the list. “Heart attack, car accident, drowning. One even died of a drug overdose just a few days ago. No indication of foul play in any of the incidents.”
Four names were still uncrossed, including hers. “What about the others?”
“The top two I couldn’t find, or there was no answer. The last one before yours, Kari Adams—it’s a common enough name. I didn’t have time to go through the phonebook for her.”
Kate’s brow creased. Why was that name so familiar?
Their food was served, and she set the paper on the table next to her beer, though the last thing she felt like doing was eating.
Ryan squeezed her hand. The casual connection sent a tingle of awareness over her skin. But when she looked up, she saw the worry in his eyes. “It doesn’t mean anything,” he said gently. “It could just be a coincidence.”
“You don’t believe that. I can see it on your face. You think those people may have been at the nursing home too, don’t you?”
He sat back, trying to look shocked, not doing a very good job of it. “Where’d you get that idea?”
“I’m not a moron. I know pharmaceuticals are a billion-dollar industry. Do you think Jake was doing his own research? Testing it himself? Hoping to push it through for FDA approval?”
“It’s a theory.”
She glanced down at the paper again. “And you think these people were test subjects. That Janet Kelly knew about them, knew about what was happening.”