Page 13 of Guarding the Doctor
“Sure I can,” I shrugged. “I do it every day. I usually have a protein bar around ten-thirty.”
She mumbled something that sounded like,“and she’s supposed to be a doctor”but didn’t say anything else. She just grabbed a piece of toast, spread a thin layer of peanut butter on it, then slid it in my direction. I was eating it before I realized what was happening.
Once I’d finished my slice of toast we headed into Seattle. We were nearly to the hospital when Darla’s phone rang. She was driving this morning, so she pressed the button to make it play through the radio.
“Hey boss, I’m in the car with Martha and my m--, uh, with Kathryn.”
“I’ve got bad news,” Lois’s voice boomed through the speakers. “Whoever’s behind this definitely thinks that Kathryn knows something about what’s going on in that lab.”
Darla shot me a quick look over her shoulder before returning her attention to the road.
“What happened?” she asked.
“There was an incident at Kathryn’s condo.”
“What kind of an incident?” I called from the back seat, suddenly wide awake.
There was a long pause before Lois answered. “Someone blew it up.”
Darla
The mate bond between me and Kathryn hadn’t formed yet – it wouldn’t until we officially mated and I bit her – but I didn’t need to have the bond in place to feel the shock and pain radiating from the back seat.
“They blew up my condo?” she repeated incredulously. “How can that be? Was anyone hurt?”
Lois continued in her no-nonsense voice.
“It was a remote detonation with several small explosives that went off around four a.m. It blew out the windows and anything close by with enough force to start several fast moving fires that took out everything else. It also damaged the neighboring unit, but I understand that condo is currently vacant. The sprinkler system engaged, so the two floors below you got wet and hadsome smoke damage, but there was no structural damage to their units. Fortunately, no one was injured in the blast.”
Kathryn would have been though, if she’d been home. “Thank God for that,” Kathryn said quietly.
“Your place is a total loss though,” Lois added.
“Yeah, I figured,” my mate said wryly.
“You know what this means?” I asked Kathryn. “They think you know something, or at least they don’t want to take a chance that you saw something when you were in the lab. You really should take a leave of absence from…”
“No! I’m not going to be scared away from the job I love,” she snapped.
I huffed in frustration. She’d lost her entire condo and would have been killed if she was home last night. Surely her life was more important than her job?
“I’m going to see if any of the bears are available as back-up,” Lois said. “If you insist on going to work, it’ll be good to have another set of eyes on that ER.”
“Boris and Elana are on a babymoon,” Martha said.
“What the fuck is a babymoon?” Lois bellowed.
“It’s a vacation a couple takes before their baby is born.”
“Christ on a cracker, that’s ridiculous. Fucking Millennials. Okay I’ll see if Alexei or Yuri can tap in,” Lois said. “It doesn’t take more than one of them to run the restaurant.”
The bears, as we called them, were three bear shifter brothers from Belarus. They’d worked in the Belarusian military on covert assignments before being recruited to work for the CIA here in the U.S. They’d retired in Seattle, opening a restaurant up the street from Angie’s mate Suzie’s bakery, but they still took contract work for various government agencies. We’d worked with them on several cases, including the undercover gig at an elementary school where my sister met her mate. The oldest brother, Boris, found his mate on that same job and now he and Elana were starting a family.
“Put them in maintenance or janitorial if you can,” I suggested. “That way they’ll have access to all the secured spaces in the hospital.”
“Thanks for telling me how to do my job, newbie,” Lois said impatiently. “Now do you have anything actually helpful to say or can I get back to work?”
“No ma’am,” I said contritely. As much as it irked my vamp to submit to a damned wolf, it was instinctive for us to do so. Lois was just that dominant.
