B00CCYP714 EBOK by R. E. Bradshaw Page A

a long-term contract and I think you owe me a few more years—fifty will do.”
    A nurse entered the room. Rainey recognized him from the trauma team earlier. He nodded and proceeded to check monitors, tubes, and drips. Rainey felt Mackie’s hand against her side and refocused on him.
    With some difficulty, he tried to speak again, “Rainey, I saw some—”
    His eyes fluttered shut. Rainey looked over at the nurse with concern.
    “It’s the meds,” he answered her unspoken question. “He’ll go in and out. He’s fine. They should be moving him to the cardiac unit soon. They’ll monitor him there until he’s ready for the bypass. Your friend is lucky. He was a walking dead man. Dr. Herndon is one of the best in the field. Mr. McKinney here will be back on his feet shortly.”
    Rainey looked down at Mackie, who was now breathing slowly, in a deep sleep.
    “He’s your stepfather, right?”
    The question startled her. Her head snapped around to face the nurse. “Excuse me?”
    “Dr. Herndon. The word at the front desk is he’s your stepfather.”
    That was not common knowledge. Rainey went to great pains to protect her extended family members from the attention she attracted, for both privacy and security reasons.
    The nurse kept talking. “We knew there had to be a family member or somebody important involved for Dr. Herndon to personally oversee treatment in the ER. He just doesn’t do that. One of his residents maybe, but not Dr. Herndon.”
    Rainey avoided a direct answer. “Mr. McKinney and Dr. Herndon are acquainted.”
    The nurse tilted his head, a questioning expression on his face. “You are the one they call Agent Sexy, right?”
    Rainey bristled. “What did you just say?”
    The nurse threw his hands up in surrender. “Hey look, I’m just warning you. Someone just posted a picture on a blog of you hugging Dr. Herndon in the waiting area. The caption said he was your stepfather and called you Agent Sexy. One of the clerks at the desk was showing everyone. I’m just giving you a heads up.”
    “I’ll give you a heads up,” Rainey said. “Don’t call me Agent anything.”
    The waiting room was full of people. Anyone of them could be the person stalking her family. She leaned down to kiss Mackie on the forehead, whispering, “I love you, big man,” and then started for the door. Rainey wanted to get a picture of everyone in the waiting room, look at security tapes, whatever it took. This was her first break in the hunt for the Triangle Lesbian Blogger.
    The nurse called after her, “Hey, Cookie Kutter is out there now. If you decide to plant that microphone up her ass, please wait until my shift ends in an hour.”
    Rainey emerged from Mackie’s room fully intent on taking out her frustrations on a bleached-blond reporter with boundary issues. Junior was waiting for her, both arms out, like the defensive end he used to be, attempting to contain a running quarterback.
    “Rainey, just walk away. No good can come of you talking to that woman again.”
    Rainey ignored his pleas and kept moving forward, while issuing requests that sounded a lot like orders. “Find security. I want copies of the camera feeds in the waiting area since we’ve been here, and get the emergency room entrance too.”
    “We’re not law enforcement. They’re not going to hand that over to me,” Junior said, still trying to slow Rainey’s progress toward the waiting room.
    Rainey took out her cellphone, noted the time was midnight, and dialed the number anyway.
    “Rainey, are you okay? Is Mackie all right?” Molly asked, as soon as she answered.
    “I guess you saw the news.”
    Rainey imagined most people had, as the “Breaking News” casts flooded the airwaves. She could tell by the looks she was receiving from some of the people in the hospital that they had watched the scene unfold in vivid color.
    “I’m fine. Mackie is recovering from the gunshot to the vest, but he has to have a quadruple bypass as