“You going to tell me how you ended up in prison?”
She slanted him a look, trying to gauge his sincerity. “You mean, how did a nice girl like me end up in Buena Vista serving a life sentence for second degree murder?” Abby had stopped trying to keep the bitterness out of her voice a long time ago. She’d never given up hope that the truth would prevail, that she would clear her name. But the more months that passed, the more impossible the task seemed. “It’s a long story, Cowboy. You wouldn’t be interested.”
“I wouldn’t be asking if I wasn’t interested.”
It had been a while since Abby had talked to anyone about what had happened. Her lawyer had abandoned her shortly after the trial. She hadn’t had the money for another one and most of the public defenders assigned to her put little energy into the appeal phase. They’d asked her all the topical questions, made all the expected legal maneuverings. But Abby had known by the looks in their eyes that they hadn’t cared that her life was on the line, or that she was slowly dying with each and every day she had to spend locked up like an animal. The sense of hopelessness had been almost too much to bear some days. She didn’t want to reawaken those feelings now by talking to Jake. Not when they were already pressing in on her with the same force as the storm outside.
“Do you mind if I ask why you want to know?” she asked.
“I’ve seen a lot of murderers in my time.” He shrugged. “You don’t fit the profile.”
The comment shouldn’t have meant anything to her. But it brought hot, stinging tears to her eyes nonetheless. Abby couldn’t remember the last time someone had said something nice to her. Or truly meant it.
“Don’t say things unless you mean them,” she whispered.
“I don’t ever say anything I don’t mean.”
She gazed into the fire, taking a moment to compose herself, and the memories swept over her. Before her arrest, she’d been young and carefree and full of hope for a future that was bright and promising. She wondered if she would ever feel that way again.
“I was a nurse at Mercy General in Denver,” she began. “I worked in the emergency room. Third shift.”
“What happened?”
“A year and a half ago, a patient…died during my shift. A patient I was responsible for.”
He contemplated her with those smoke-gray eyes, his face grim. “How did he die?”
“It never made sense to me. I mean, he was brought in for stitches. He’d fallen and received a nasty cut.” She paused, remembering, and took a deep, fortifying breath. “The next thing I knew he was in a coma. I didn’t find out until later that he’d been injected with a fatal dose of Valium.”
“You gave him the—”
“No.” She looked down at her hands. “I didn’t. I gave him a tetanus injection. That’s standard procedure with a serious cut or puncture wound.”
“But the police believe you did it?”
She nodded.
“Could you have made a mistake?”
“There’s no way I could have gotten the two confused. The Valium and tetanus are stored in different areas of the supply pharmacy.”
“If that’s the case, why were you arrested and convicted?”
She paused, knowing how it sounded, frustrated that she didn’t have any solid proof to back her up. “Someone falsified the chart to make it look like I gave him that injection.”
“Why would they do that?”
The logical side of her brain knew she was wasting her breath. This cynical lawman wasn’t going to believe her. Her theory was wild at best—downright crazy if she wanted to be truthful about it. The information she’d pieced together from the prison library was just as far-fetched. No one would ever believe her. Some days, she didn’t believe it herself.
“Someone framed me,” she said after a moment.
“Why?”
“Why was I framed?” She choked out a humorless laugh. “Because the real murderer needed a fall guy, that’s why.”
For the first time, he looked puzzled. Abby fought down a rise of desperation. She told herself it didn’t matter if he believed her. This man’s opinion didn’t count in the scope of things. It didn’t matter what he thought of her. And there was still time for her to get away if the opportunity arose….
“I didn’t think you would believe me,” she said.
“I’m looking for logic. You know, motive, means and opportunity.” He sipped some of his coffee. “Who would have something to gain by killing a patient?” he asked.
When she didn’t answer right away, he gave her a hard look. “You don’t have anything to lose by talking to me.”
The knowledge that he was right made her shiver. Scooting closer to the fire, she felt the memories drifting through her like clouds in the sky, gossamer and surreal and so intangible she wanted to cry out with the need to change what had happened. Lord, she’d been so naive.
“Tell me about the patient that died,” he said.
“A homeless man was brought in at about two in the morning one night,” she began. “He’d been drinking, fell down in the rail yard and cut himself on some sheet metal. He was in good physical condition and just needed a few stitches. Nothing major. It was a weeknight, so things were relatively quiet. His name was Jim.”
Her voice sounded like a stranger’s voice, recalling scenes from the latest medical thriller. She was keenly aware of Jake watching her, her heart pitching in her chest like a small boat in a turbulent sea. She looked down, saw that her hands were clenched into fists. “Jim was a little down on his luck, but he was a nice man. He was funny and…” The old guilt twisted in her stomach. “I put him on a gurney, and wheeled him into a treatment room. He kept cutting jokes while I took his vitals and put eight sutures in his right hand. He seemed fine when I left him.”
She closed her eyes, the memory pounding her. “About twenty minutes later I heard one of the other nurses call Code Ninety-nine—”
“Code Ninety-nine?”
“That’s the code we use when a patient’s heart stops.”
Jake nodded, his expression grim. “Jim?”
“By the time I finished with my other patient, he’d already been intubated and put on life support. But the doctor believed he’d suffered serious brain damage. He died a few hours later.”
To this day, no matter how hard she tried, Abby couldn’t get the sight of that man’s face out of her mind. The sound of his voice, his jokes, his laughter. She didn’t think she ever would, knew they would haunt her for the rest of her life.
“How did that turn into murder, Abby?”
“When Jim signed in to the emergency room, he wrote on the form that he was indigent and temporarily homeless and without family. Well, that wasn’t true. He had a family. They were estranged, but they evidently cared about him because a few hours after his death, two of his grown children showed up at the hospital, asking questions, demanding answers. It was a terrible, terrible scene….” Her voice broke, but she trudged on. “At first, his death was ruled the result of natural causes. But the man’s family had the body shipped home to Dallas and autopsied. The autopsy revealed he’d been injected with a lethal dose of Valium.”
Jake’s brows pulled together. “Why would someone inject him with Valium?”
Abby looked over at Jake. He looked interested. She wondered if he would believe her if she told him the truth. If she told him that it was, indeed, her own mistake that had cost her so dearly. Only it didn’t have anything to do with a dose of medication, and everything to do with trusting the wrong person.
Hope coiled in her chest. She closed her eyes against it, felt a wrench of despair nudge it aside. Right. Like Mr. By-the-Book was going to believe her. Crazy Abby. She wondered how he would react when he found out she’d lied to the police. When he found out about all the other things she couldn’t bring herself to tell him.
There was no way he was going to believe her. He was too strait-laced. Hell, after she’d told the last publ
ic defender the truth, he’d recommended a psychological evaluation and a mental health facility instead of prison.
The memory sent a chill through her.
“I don’t know,” she whispered. “All I know is that I didn’t kill him.”
“Who did?”
“Someone who was there that night. Someone who wanted me to take the fall. Someone who knew I would be easy to frame.”
“Why would they think you would be an easy frame?”
She swallowed a bubble of panic, looked over where her cuffed hand trembled against the chair back and concentrated on stilling it.
“Why would someone think you were an easy frame?” he repeated.
With some difficulty, she met his gaze. “Because of my past.”
“What past?”
When she didn’t answer, he scrubbed a hand over his face, glanced over at the fire. “Are you talking about your emotional problems?”
The words speared her like a saber. Because she was a convicted felon, her health records were no longer confidential, but fair game to just about any official who needed access. “So, you know about that.”
“The corrections officials put out a profile on you to local law enforcement. That was part of it.”
Shame and pain mingled and became a single, profound ache that spread into the deepest reaches of her heart. Abby knew most people equated emotional problems with insanity. She’d heard it a hundred times over the years. They’d called her Crazy Abby. First in high school. The name had surfaced again after her arrest. Crazy Abby. The high school senior who wigged out after her mama pulled the plug on her old man. The troubled teenager who didn’t speak for six months. The young woman who spent her seventeenth birthday locked in a mental institution.
Abby closed her eyes tightly, blocking out the pain.
“What past?” he pressed.
She wanted to answer, longed to get the truth out in the open. The anguish and betrayals lay like sour food in the pit of her stomach. But with the truth lay the revelations. Revelations she wasn’t ready to share.
Especially with such an honorable man as Jake Madigan.
* * *
Jake wasn’t sure what was going on with this woman. For a man who prided himself on his ability to read people, he was having one hell of a time figuring her out. One thing he did know for sure was that it was hard to sit there and watch her hurt.
He shouldn’t have let it bother him. He’d seen plenty of suffering in his time. Hell, he’d been on the receiving end a few too many times himself to let it get to him now. But the pain shimmering in her eyes was raw and soul-deep and touched him in places he’d just as soon keep off limits.
He did not want to deal with this. Abby Nichols was turning out to be bad luck piled on top of bad luck. He knew better than to let himself get sucked into the maelstrom that was her life. Damn it, he knew better.
But as the firelight reflected in her eyes, he felt himself drawn to her in the most fundamental ways. Ways that went against everything he’d ever believed possible about himself. Jake trusted his instincts. As a lawman, he relied heavily on those instincts to guide him through a complex world full of good and bad and a vast gray area in between. And while those very same instincts were telling him to beware, something deeper and not quite so black and white was telling him she wasn’t a cold-blooded killer.
Jeez, this was a mess.
“All I can tell you is that I didn’t kill that patient,” she said after a moment.
“The police thought differently. So did a jury.”
“That’s because they were presented with false evidence.”
“What false evidence?”
“A syringe with my fingerprints on it.”
“Why didn’t your lawyer get to the bottom of it?”
“Because she was fresh out of law school and didn’t have the experience for a case like mine.”
Jake thought about the syringe and frowned. “That syringe with your fingerprints on it is physical evidence. Physical evidence doesn’t lie, Abby.”
“When’s the last time you gave an injection without using latex treatment gloves?”
He knew where she was going with this. Virtually all medical professionals used latex treatment gloves these days. For a variety of reasons that protected not only the medical professional but the patient, hospital regulations notwithstanding. Her argument was sound. Unless, of course, she’d been too rushed to deal with gloves because she hadn’t wanted to get caught….
The scenario gave him a queasy feeling in the pit of his stomach.
But Jake wasn’t going to play the what-if game with a convict. It didn’t matter that her story was plausible. That she was hurting. That she didn’t seem like a murderer. Jake might trust his instincts when it came to his job, but he didn’t when it came to women. Especially this woman.
Jake’s job was to take Abby Nichols back. He was an officer of the law, for God’s sake. A man who saw clearly the dividing line between right and wrong, as well as that dangerous area in between. He didn’t cross lines. Just because she didn’t look like a murderer didn’t mean she wasn’t one. He knew all too well that looks could be deceiving. He refused to be taken in by another pretty woman with an unlikely story and the kind of body that could make a man believe in crazy possibilities.
“I’m going to turn in,” he said after a moment.
“Had enough truth for one night?”
“Let’s just say I’ve heard enough.” Rising, he walked over to the fire and set another log atop the embers. He didn’t want to identify the uncomfortable tug in his chest as conscience. Damn it, this woman’s guilt or innocence was not his concern. It didn’t matter than his instincts were telling him to listen to her. His instincts had been wrong before when it came to women, and he’d paid a terrible price.
“You should put some ice on that black eye.”
He’d forgotten about the shiner. Prodding it with his index finger, he winced. Oh, yeah, he had a shiner, all right—a big one judging from the level of tenderness. In another day or two the color was going to bloom like a spring flower. Man, when the rest of the team saw it, they weren’t ever going to let him live it down.
He looked over at her, felt a ripple of compassion go through him at the sight of the cuffs. The chair back was too high. When she lay down it would cut off the circulation to her hand. As cold as it was in the cabin, he didn’t want that to happen. He fingered the key compartment on his belt. His conscience nagged. The only other option was to cuff the other end to his own wrist, but he didn’t want to spend the night that close to her.
Hell.
“Snow would probably work,” she said. “Put some in a towel and use it as an ice compress. It might stop some of the bruising.”
“It’ll be fine.”
“Up to you.”
He hadn’t intended to approach her, but his legs seemed to move of their own volition. He knew better than to trust her. He didn’t, in fact. But that didn’t mean he could stand to see her cuffed to that damn chair all freaking night.
“I can’t take off the cuffs,” he said.
She looked up at him, wariness and uncertainty etched on her features. “I won’t run.”
“Yeah, and my name is Frosty the Snowman.” Pulling the key from the cuff pouch on his belt, he unlocked the cuff from the chair and snapped it over his own wrist.
Her eyes widened. “You’re not going to—”
“I just did.”
“But, you can’t—”
“Shut up and get some sleep.” He tested the cuffs, found them securely fastened to both his wrist and hers. Irritated as much with himself as he was with her, he slid his bedroll closer to hers and lay down, all too aware of her every movement as she settled into her sleeping bag next to him.
Tense minutes ticked by. Exhaustion tugged at his body, but sleep eluded him. He listened to the wind, the ping of snow against the windows on the north side of the cabin. He tried not to think ab
out the woman lying beside him, about all the things she’d told him, but his efforts were in vain. He wanted to look at her, wanted to see what her face looked like in the firelight as she slept, but Jake was far too smart—and far too cautious—to give in to the urge.
Sighing, feeling restless and unsettled, he laced his free hand behind his head and stared at the ceiling, resigned to a very long and very cold night.
* * *
Abby couldn’t believe he’d cuffed his wrist to hers. Of all the security measures he could have taken, that was the absolute worst. How on earth was she going to get to the key and unlock the cuffs with her wrist cuffed to his?
Minutes stretched into hours, second by excruciating second. Abby tried to sleep, but she was too cold and much too wired. The storm raged outside the windows, but she paid no heed to the shrill of the wind. Every sense she possessed was honed on the man lying next to her. She knew she was crazy for entertaining thoughts of escape. The storm was worse than dangerous. Of course, the term was relative when she knew this duty-bound lawman lying beside her was going to do everything in his power to make sure she spent the rest of her life in prison.
Abby figured this was another one of those times that called for desperate measures.
She wasn’t sure how much time passed. For hours Jake tossed and turned and grumbled. For a while she feared he wouldn’t sleep at all. But finally exhaustion won, and he stilled. His breathing became slow and regular. Only after he began to snore quietly did Abby risk moving. Easing up onto one elbow, she looked over at him. His eyes were closed, yet even in sleep he looked dangerous. Like a predator that lured its prey closer by feigning sleep, then devouring it when it ventured too close.
The thought made her shiver.
Keenly aware that she was about to cross the point of no return, she glanced down at his belt and spotted the pouch where he stored the cuffs. Cautiously, she leaned over him and reached for the pouch. She knew the odds of her pulling this off were slim to none. But she also knew this was her only chance, and she didn’t intend to waste it.
Her heart hammered wildly when her fingers came in contact with the pouch cover. Gritting her teeth against the tension twisting her muscles into knots, she tugged on the flap. The snap popped, sounding like a gunshot in the silence. Abby held her breath, certain the noise had wakened Jake. Painful seconds ticked by as she waited for his eyes to open. Terrified to move, her face inches from his, her heart pounding out a rapid tattoo, she squeezed her eyes closed and said a silent prayer.