“I can call the police department for you and have a couple of detectives come by to interview you. Once Ralph is stable, of course.”
“If they figure out what was done to him, the doctors will be able to reverse it. Right?”
“It’s usually not that straightforward. But everyone will do everything they can to make sure Ralph is stabilized and that he pulls through.” She touched Destiny’s shoulder. “Don’t worry.”
Most of the time, it was pointless to tell someone not to worry. But people still needed to hear it. They needed to rest in the fact that the professionals were taking care of the situation and that their loved one was in good hands.
“Do you want me to make a call to the police?”
Destiny wavered. “Let’s wait until Ralph wakes up. Then he can decide what to do.”
Kira had never heard Destiny defer to her husband in this way before, but it made sense in this situation. Acting rashly and declaring this to have been attempted murder might not be the best way for Ralph to recover without stress in his life.
“You just let me know.” At the end of the hall, a familiar figure stepped into view. Luca Saxon, wearing dark blue khakis and a polo shirt with a white embroidered logo she couldn’t make out. He carried a clipboard and pen and had his phone clipped to his belt. A security badge hung from his left pocket.
She squeezed Destiny’s shoulder and strode over to Luca. “May I ask what you’re doing in my department?”
She shouldn’t like the way his hair looked, pulled back like that and secured behind his head in a bun. When she’d first met him, his hair had been short and more of a military style. Since then, he had grown it out long enough he could tie it back, and now she could honestly say she preferred it long—and wanted to see what it looked like down.
She shouldn’t like anything about him.
“Yes, you may.” Humor lit his gaze. As if she had been trying to be funny. “But if you think about it, you already know.”
And here she’d assumed that he’d come to spy on her or something. “Right, the Marshals job.”
“I’m doing an inventory of the hospital security system and all measures in place, and then we need to find the best spot where the patient can be protected.”
She nodded. “I took a look at the procedure. It’s cutting-edge but has a lot of promise. The doctor who’s going to treat him is one of the best in his field, and he’s a local. Although, he’s very aloof and not many people know much about him.”
“That sounds about right for a clandestine operation like this.” He looked around at the nurses’ station, then the bays that lined the hallway.
She didn’t glance back to see if Destiny was watching them. She had probably gone back into the room with her husband.
“You like it here?”
Kira wasn’t sure he needed a rundown of every issue she had or all the ways she thought this was a great place to work. “In a sense, one emergency department is like any other. There are differences, but medicine is medicine. People get hurt or sick, and we treat them to the best of our ability.”
Okay, so the end of that sounded a little defensive. But why wouldn’t she feel the need to do that? He stood four inches taller than her and was currently looking down his nose with a slight frown between his brows.
“So Renegade is what brought you here?”
“It seemed like as good a place as any to start over.”
The skin around his eyes contracted. Yeah, because she’d just told him there was a reason she felt the need to start over.
“And it just happened to be where I live?”
She folded her arms. “You didn’t live here when I moved here.” This was Hammer’s hometown, not Luca’s. “So the real question is, why did you move to a city that just happened to be where I live?”
“We may be at an impasse on that one.”
“I don’t have any ulterior motives. I live here, and I’m good at my job. I’m not sure why you’d have a problem with any of that.” Or why it seemed like he thought she might’ve moved here because of him.
It just happened to be a place she had come across when looking into his team’s backgrounds. She could just as easily have wound up in Baltimore, where Luca actually grew up. Or in Last Chance County, where Kane was from. So she had chosen this spot. So what?
“Did I say I had a problem with that?”
She rolled her eyes. “I should go check on some of my patients.”