Page 30 of Wilderness Search
Willa watched the woman leave, then asked, “Did you know Olivia, the girl everyone is looking for?”
“Uh-huh. But I don’t know what happened to her.” Juliet licked the lollipop. “The adults keep asking everyone over and over, but we don’t know anything.” The girl’s voice rose, and Willa looked nervously toward the office. She could see the counselor’s back from here. Could the woman hear how upset her charge was becoming? Willa was liable to be reprimanded for meddling in something that wasn’t her concern.
“I’m sorry about your friend,” she said, and applied the last of the wet plaster. “How does that feel?”
“Funny. Is it going to itch?”
“It shouldn’t itch too much. Is it too tight?”
“I don’t think so.” She met Willa’s gaze, her expression serious. “I don’t know Olivia that well,” she said. “But her best friend at camp, Stella, is really upset. I heard her crying in her bunk last night, and I think it was because of Olivia. Or maybe it’s because she sprained her ankle. But I don’t think that’s it. The ankle is all wrapped up and Stella told me it hardly hurts at all anymore. And she gets to skip all the hikes and stuff. But she also has to miss out on swimming, so maybe she’s just sad about that.” Juliet shrugged. “Some kids cry all the time, especially the little ones who get homesick, but Stella isn’t like that, so I figure she just misses Olivia.”
“I imagine she does.”
“How are we doing?” The counselor returned to the room. She frowned at Willa. Had she overheard part of the conversation?
“Would you like pink, orange, purple or green for the final layer?” Willa asked, and showed the box of colored wraps.
“Purple,” Juliet said.
Ten minutes later, the counselor and the girl left, the child showing off her purple cast.
The door opened and Aaron entered. Willa stiffened. “How can I help you, Deputy?”
“Would you be willing to go to lunch with me? Just to talk.”
This wasn’t the first time she had been asked out in front of a waiting room full of patients. She had even heard a rumor that there was a secret betting pool on how long it would be before the new nurse agreed to go out with someone. She was used to turning men down with a minimum of fuss, but Aaron’s invitation caught her off guard. What made him think she would even consider going out with him?
But she remembered those moments of connection the other night at his house. She had wanted to believe those feelings were all one-sided. Apparently not, and he had gotten the wrong message. “I don’t think that would be a good idea,” she said, keeping her voice low.
He nodded, showing no disappointment or surprise at her rejection. “Could you answer a medical question for me?”
Almost everyone in the waiting room was watching the two of them, not even pretending interest in anything else.
“Come back here,” she said, and led the way to an empty exam room. She closed the door behind them, then thought perhaps she shouldn’t have. The room was small, and suddenly intimate, with the two of them so close together. “What kind of medical question? Are you sick?” The idea alarmed her. He looked healthy. Better than healthy—he looked perfect. But you couldn’t always tell…
“I’m trying to figure out how you could give sleeping pills to someone against their will,” he said.
Not what she expected. “Do you have someone in mind?”
“It’s a hypothetical. It’s related to a case I’m working on.”
“All right. Well, there are lots of ways. You could crush them up and put them in food or a drink. How many pills are we talking about?”
“Two or three.”
“Depending on what you put them in, the person you’re giving them to might not even notice.”
“This person didn’t have any food in their stomach.”
“Then I’m not sure how you would do it.”
“Could you force the pills down their throat? The way you’d pill a dog or cat?”
“I suppose so. If they were restrained.”
“Could you do that with alcohol, too? Pour booze down their throat?”
“Not without choking them.” She knew better than to ask him for details. She had learned very early in their relationship that he took privacy concerns very seriously. As did she. She didn’t talk about her patients, and he didn’t talk about his cases. It hadn’t mattered, because they had so much else to talk about—books, music, news and life itself. She had been a little smug at times. One thing she and Aaron did well was communicate, and that was supposed to be the key to a good relationship, wasn’t it?
