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were in the neighborhood.”
    The older detective, long-jowled and smelling faintly of peppermints, nodded gravely. “Ma’am. What can you tell us about the incident?”
    “He said he wanted my money,” she answered, scrambling to put the kaleidoscopic memories of the last few minutes into some sort of order. “He had needle marks on his arms and his eyes…” She trailed off, realizing something for the first time.
    His eyes had been normal. Calculating. And murderous.
     
    HALF AN HOUR LATER, Nia fumbled to unlock her office door with shaking hands. She’d answered the detectives’ questions and arranged for them to meet with Talbot and Hart. She’d watched the pockmarked man wake up cursing, and had seen him stagger off between a pairof uniformed officers, still cursing. She’d assured the onlookers she was fine, and professed ignorance at what had become of the janitor.
    All in all, she thought she’d held it together well. But now she was in her office, alone. It was okay to fall apart.
    She closed the door behind her and didn’t turn on the lights as she slumped against the wall and felt the switch poke into her spine. She pressed the back of her hand to her lips and willed the tears to come.
    But there were no tears. In their place was a nagging sense of guilt that she’d realized something important in those last few moments, and it had been just as quickly forgotten. Overlapping that was an edgy energy that seemed to curl red and blue behind her closed eyelids.
    After a few moments the shakes subsided, and Nia realized that whatever stubborn streak had forced her to defy her father’s wishes and go off into the unknown…that part of her wouldn’t let the tears come now.
    “Damn it.” She pushed away from the door, slapped on the light and froze when she saw the man sitting in the chair behind her borrowed desk.
    “My sentiments exactly,” Rathe concurred. His eyes gleamed with an indefinable emotion that sent skitters of heat racing through her body. His cap lay on the desk. The dark blue coveralls were open several buttons at the throat and rolled up at the sleeve to expose the corded muscles beneath the tanned skin of his forearms. His shoulders were square and powerful, and with a start, Nia realized he could turn the uniform from adisguise to a fashion statement with a simple change in posture and expression.
    He stood, uncoiling slowly from the chair as though afraid she might bolt. But bolting was the last thing on her mind as she identified the heady, racing sensation that had pounded through her during the fight and set her hands to shaking afterward. Excitement. This was it. This was the adventure she craved, the thrill she’d been seeking.
    This was it.
    She wasn’t sure why it had been lacking in her previous assignments, or why she’d found it in an urban hospital rather than in the midst of a deep, dark forest, but there it was. The adrenaline poured through her body, throbbed at her nerve endings and clamored in her head. She wanted to run. She wanted to dance, to sing, to tip her head back and scream.
    Wanting to include him in her joy, she grinned at Rathe.
    His eyes narrowing, he advanced on her and leaned down so they were face-to-face. “This is not a joke, Nia. I expected better of you!” Stunned, she drew back, but he followed, crowding her against the closed door with his body and his anger. “Don’t you get it? You could’ve been killed out there.” He stabbed a finger towards the atrium, then placed his palm flat against the door beside her head, effectively trapping her.
    “Well, I wasn’t, thanks to you,” she fired back. “That’s why HFH doctors work in teams, remember? So we can watch each other’s backs.” She shoved at his chest with both hands, but he was like sun-warmed granite, hard and immovable. “Damn it, let me go!”
    She saw the change in his eyes, a flash of resignation and a wash of heat. Her body answered the call before she was even aware