Body Search Read online

  Fire! Dale thought in a quick moment of sleep-dulled panic

  Tansy. The half-formed thought dissolved in a fit of coughing as Dale lunged for the floor, instincts taking over. Tansy was down the hall. In danger. He yelled over the serpent’s hiss of smoke and the lion’s roar of fire beneath.

  “Tansy, get back from the door, I’m coming in!” Dale shouted, hoping she could hear him. Hoping he wasn’t too late. There was no response over the rush of dry, burning wood and the voice of the fire. He ducked below the waist-high smoke and gulped in a breath before testing the knob. Blazing air surrounded him, and he yanked open the door and bolted inside.

  Through watering eyes and the eerie red radiance that bathed the entire house, he saw that the bed was empty, and his heart stuttered. Then he saw Tansy….

  She was lying on the floor. Out cold…

  Dear Harlequin Intrigue Reader,

  It’s the most wonderful time of the year! And we have six breathtaking books this month that will make the season even brighter….

  THE LANDRY BROTHERS are back! We can’t think of a better way to kick off our December lineup than with this long-anticipated new installment in Kelsey Roberts’s popular series about seven rascally brothers, born and bred in Montana. In Bedside Manner, chaos rips through the town of Jasper when Dr. Chance Landry finds himself framed for murder…and targeted for love! Check back this April for the next title, Chasing Secrets. Also this month, watch for Protector S.O.S. by Susan Kearney. This HEROES INC. story spotlights an elite operative and his ex-lover who maneuver stormy waters—and a smoldering attraction—as they race to neutralize a dangerous hostage situation.

  The adrenaline keeps on pumping with Agent-in-Charge by Leigh Riker, a fast-paced mystery. You’ll be bewitched by this month’s ECLIPSE selection—Eden’s Shadow by veteran author Jenna Ryan. This tantalizing gothic unravels a shadowy mystery and casts a magical spell over an enamored duo. And the excitement doesn’t stop there! Jessica Andersen returns to the lineup with her riveting new medical thriller, Body Search, about two hot-blooded doctors who are stranded together in a windswept coastal town and work around the clock to combat a deadly outbreak.

  Finally this month, watch for Secret Defender by Debbi Rawlins—a provocative woman-in-jeopardy tale featuring an iron-willed hero who will stop at nothing to protect a headstrong heiress…even kidnap her for her own good.

  Best wishes for a joyous holiday season from all of us at Harlequin Intrigue.

  Sincerely,

  Denise O’Sullivan

  Senior Editor, Harlequin Intrigue

  BODY SEARCH

  JESSICA ANDERSEN

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Though she’s tried out professions ranging from cleaning sea lion cages to cloning glaucoma genes, from patent law to training horses, Jessica is happiest when she’s combining all these interests with her first love: writing romances. These days she’s delighted to be writing full-time on a farm in rural Connecticut that she shares with a small menagerie and a hero named Brian. She hopes you’ll visit her at www.JessicaAndersen.com for info on upcoming books, contests and to say “hi”!

  Books by Jessica Andersen

  HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE

  734—DR. BODYGUARD

  762—SECRET WITNESS

  793—INTENSIVE CARE

  817—BODY SEARCH

  CAST OF CHARACTERS

  Dr. Tansy Whitmore— After this latest assignment, she plans to request a transfer away from the pain of working side by side with her ex-lover. If she lives that long.

  Dr. Dale Metcalf— The outbreak specialist is a brooding loner. Will an assignment on the island of his birth break through his carefully tended walls before a deadly past catches up with him…and threatens the one woman he cares about?

  Walter Churchill— Dale’s father figure helped him escape the poor island and become a doctor after Dale’s parents died at sea. He made Dale promise never to return. What will happen when that promise is broken?

  Dr. Hazel Bronte— The island’s dedicated doctor is overwhelmed by the deadly outbreak, which isn’t playing by the rules.

  Mickey Lowe— Dale’s distant cousin and boyhood friend is the only one with the power to call him back to the island.

  Nathaniel Roberts— The real-estate developer says he wants to help the islanders, but he may have a more deadly agenda.

  Trask Metcalf— Dale’s uncle drove him away fifteen years earlier. Is he looking to get rid of Dale again, this time permanently?

  To Marley Gibson, for seeing this book through from beginning to end. Thanks, friend.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter One

  People were dying on Lobster Island. Again.

  Dale Metcalf read the brief message for the hundredth time and told himself he should walk away. Let the islanders save themselves—they certainly hadn’t saved him fifteen years ago. They hadn’t saved his parents. His aunt.

  “Can I get you something else?” The heavily made-up waitress leaned over Dale, giving him a look down her shirt and a whiff of cheap perfume. She brushed her breast against his arm when she stood, leaving no doubt as to what something else could entail. Though the strippers were off duty, the Slippery Pole still reeked of sex and anonymity.

  He lifted the nearly empty bottle. “Another beer, please.”

  Her pink-caked lips pursed and her tired eyes flashed, stuck-up doctor thinks he’s too good for the likes of me. Bastard. She flounced off with a twitch of her too-generous hips, and Dale leaned back in his chair and closed his eyes. He folded the paper and tucked it into his pocket without looking, but the words pounded in his brain. Lobster Island. Death.

  “Dr. Metcalf.”

  Dale jolted at the voice, then cursed when his boss, Zachary Cage, slid into the dark booth. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Ripley said you were looking for me.”

  Hospitals were incestuously small by nature. Boston General had become even more so when Cage married Dr. Ripley Davis, who was best friends with Dale’s ex. Awkward didn’t even begin to cover it.

  Dale frowned. He’d wanted to have this conversation at the hospital, wanted it official. “Yeah, I need to talk to you. But I didn’t expect you to track me down in an off-hours titty bar.”

  “And I didn’t expect to find you in one, knocking back cheap beer,” Cage countered. “So what’s the problem?”

  Dale tilted the bottle to buy a moment. He wasn’t much of a drinker, but the memories crowding his head deserved to be toasted with beer. The cheaper the better. He set the bottle down. “I need time off.”

  “No problem.” Cage waved at the waitress and ordered an import. “Between Boston General and HFH, you’ve done the work of two average doctors. You deserve a vacation. Maybe it’ll help you clear your head of…things.”

  Dale was tempted to let his boss think he needed distance from the breakup. But Cage was the local administrator for HFH— Hospitals for Humanity— a group that sent doctors into unstable situations. War. Natural disasters. Outbreaks. He needed to know where Dale was going, and why.

  At least some of the why. Nobody at Boston General needed to know all of it.

  “I’ll need HFH field equipment.” Dale touched his pocket, where Mickey’s message rested near his heart. Distant cousins, the boys had grown up together. Mick was the only one Dale had kept in touch with. The only one
who had the power to call him back to that godforsaken place. “There’s an outbreak of shellfish poisoning on a chunk of rock called Lobster Island. The Maine fisheries people shut the area down, but I’d like to investigate.”

  Cage’s eyebrows lifted. “Why HFH?”

  The subtext read, why bother? The group focused on major disasters and massive outbreaks. Not a few people sick with paralytic shellfish poisoning— PSP—and not when the locals already had the necessary quarantines in place.

  But this was different. Resisting the urge to tug at his imported cotton shirt, Dale muttered, “I was born on the island.”

  Oddly enough, he wasn’t struck by lightning. He glanced at his beer. It was his third. Maybe fourth. And it was the only way he’d been able to make himself say the words.

  Cage raised his eyebrows. “Well, hell. I always thought—”

  “Yeah, I know,” Dale interrupted. That’s what everyone at Boston General thought, because that’s what he’d wanted them to think. “I need a week, some field kits and lab support back at BoGen.” He paused. “Please.”

  Cage studied him a moment, then nodded. “You can have all the equipment you need. But I don’t let my team members go Lone Ranger, even on a quick island hop. You’re bringing a partner.”

  Dale hid the wince, knowing Cage was bound by HFH policy. Nobody went into the field alone. Period. But he didn’t want anyone else at Boston General to know about his past. Not even his usual HFH partner, though he trusted her as much as he trusted anyone.

  Unfortunately, Dr. Tansy Whitmore wasn’t an option. Not anymore. He scowled as the cheap beer soured in his stomach. That was the only reason he felt a twinge of pain that they’d gone from “let’s just be friends,” straight to “I hope you choke on your stethoscope and die, you miserable—”

  “Slimy toad!”

  Yeah, that was it. Dale looked up. The knot in his stomach grew tighter and he felt the familiar sizzle when he saw her striding through the disreputable bar without a sideways glance. Grown out from the short crop she’d given it during their last tropical assignment, her golden hair was caught mid-curl. It stuck out around her head like a nimbus of flame, matching the fire in her blue eyes. Her unpainted lips drew a tense line across her face, and energy crackled around her as she beat a path to Dale’s table.

  As always, the sight of Tansy was like a punch to his chest. But now, that first thrust of sexual awareness was tangled with other things. Anger. Disappointment.

  Regret, though she’d never know it.

  “Oh, hell,” he muttered, rising to his feet more from self-preservation than manners.

  Cage stood, as well. “Dr. Whitmore.”

  Hospital hierarchy didn’t save Cage from Tansy’s anger. She snapped, “Don’t you ‘Dr. Whitmore’ me, Zachary Cage. You said you didn’t know where he was.” Without waiting for an answer, she turned on Dale and shook a piece of paper at him. “And you! What the hell is this?”

  Her scent touched his nostrils, earthy and sensual like the woman herself. The dirty overhead light glinted off diamonds and gold at her wrist, neck and ears. Dale thought of the dull rock in his pocket, the only thing he’d kept from the island he’d once called home, and knew he’d been right to push her away before things got complicated between them. Like diamonds and ugly rocks, he and Tansy were too different to complement each other. Too different for a future, if he’d been looking for such a thing.

  He glanced at the paper and forced detachment, though her anger raised an answering flare in his chest. She’d once called him cold, unemotional. Well, let her think that. Then maybe she’d go away and leave him to his beer. “It looks like my resignation,” he observed, lifting one eyebrow. “I thought I left it on my desk, not yours.”

  “It’s bull, that’s what it is,” she fired back. “You’re the best outbreak specialist in HFH. How dare you quit?” The temper in her voice was familiar, but the glint of tears unsettled him. Voice lower, she continued, “If it’s because you don’t want to work with me anymore, I’ll ask to be reassigned.”

  “Tansy—” he began, then stalled. He’d never known how to handle her emotions.

  “Sit down, both of you,” Cage ordered, waving them both to their seats. “Nobody’s quitting or being reassigned. I’ve had enough of this.”

  Dale sat cautiously. Damn. He’d been writing his resignation when the message from Mickey arrived. In the flurry of memory that had driven him to the bar, he’d forgotten to hide the draft. Now there was no reason for Cage to loan him equipment or an assistant. Double damn.

  Tansy passed the letter to Cage. “He’s leaving. This was on his desk.”

  And what the hell was Tansy doing in his office, anyway? Since their breakup, he’d barely seen her.

  Well, that wasn’t entirely true. He’d watched her with her patients at Boston General, and he’d slipped into the back of her lectures and cursed himself for needing to see her. His only salvation was that she’d never noticed him.

  Cage passed the paper to Dale and frowned. “Dr. Whitmore, I’m surprised at you. This is an invasion of Dr. Metcalf’s privacy.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said without a hint of remorse, “but I’m not going to sit by and let him do something as stupid as this. HFH needs him, and—”

  “And it’s none of your business,” Dale growled. “You have no right to try to get inside my head anymore.”

  She sucked in a breath. The quick hurt in her eyes made him feel like slime, though they’d had this conversation before. A hundred times, it seemed. Naturally open and giving, she’d wanted to know his every thought, his every feeling. But he had things he wanted to keep private. His emotions. His fears.

  His past.

  She rallied quickly. “We may not be in a relationship, but as far as HFH is concerned, we’re still partners. That gives me some say.”

  “We’re not partners anymore. I quit.” Damn, he hadn’t wanted it to come to this. But he couldn’t keep Tansy in a relationship based on a lie, and he’d been surprised to discover that he didn’t want to stay at Boston General without her.

  “No, you’re not quitting. I won’t have it.” She turned to Cage. “Reassign me to another HFH hospital and a different partner.” Her voice was steady, but Dale saw through to the hurt beneath, and his chest ached.

  “Shut up, both of you,” Cage snapped, banging his half-empty bottle on the table. He waited until they subsided. “Okay. Here’s the deal. I’m not accepting Metcalf’s resignation or Tansy’s request. But I am fed up with two of my best people ghosting around Bos ton General because they’re letting personal problems interfere with their work.” When they protested, he cut them off. “Just listen. Dale is leaving tomorrow to investigate a PSP outbreak off Maine. Tansy, you’re going with him. Take the small plane, you can leave in the morning.”

  Tansy’s startled, “But—” was drowned out by Dale’s bellow of, “No way in hell!”

  It was panic, pure and simple, that cranked his volume. He didn’t want her anywhere near Lobster Island. He didn’t want her to see where he’d come from. Who he was.

  Diamonds and purple rocks didn’t mix.

  “You’re going to the island together,” Cage said in a steely, unforgiving tone, “or I’ll fire both of you with prejudice.”

  Tansy gasped at the threat and Dale scowled. He was resigned to leaving HFH, but he couldn’t get Tansy fired. The patients needed her. The group couldn’t lose her. Damn.

  Cage’s expression softened. “Go to Lobster Island. Remember how to work together. You’re the best team I’ve got, and it’d be a shame to let that go to waste.”

  “And if I still want to be reassigned after it’s over?” she asked quietly, not looking at Dale.

  “Then I’ll reassign you.” Cage sighed and stood. “But I hope it won’t come to that. HFH needs you both. Together. Do we have a deal?”

  His exit left a hollow gap in the conversation.

  “Fine,” Tansy said after a mom
ent. She stared at one of the empty strippers’ cages rather than at Dale. “E-mail me a list of equipment you want loaded on the plane. I’ll meet you at the hangar tomorrow afternoon.”

  They’d had the same conversation a hundred times before, in a dozen different countries, but there was no sense of impending adventure now. There was only a sense of impending doom.

  Tansy on Lobster Island. It was the last thing Dale wanted, but if he didn’t agree, she could lose her job. And really, what did it matter if she found out about his past?

  She already hated him.

  On that thought, he drained the last of his beer and felt none of the alcohol’s punch. “I don’t want you with me.”

  She jerked her chin down. “Yeah, you’ve made that clear. Don’t worry, the feeling is mutual. Too bad we don’t get a vote.”

  She slipped from the booth and marched out on Cage’s heels, leaving an aching hole in Dale’s gut. “Damn.” He pressed the empty beer bottle to the center of his forehead, wishing he’d chartered a plane and gone on his own. He hadn’t been back to the island in fifteen years, since his parents were lost at sea and he’d run away from his Uncle Trask’s brutal grief. He didn’t want to go back now. And he certainly didn’t want to bring Tansy with him.

  Scowling, he reread Mickey’s message. Six peo ple were sick. Three had already died from respiratory failure, though the disease shouldn’t be fatal. And although she was one of the best investigators in the business, Dale wished he could leave Tansy safe on the mainland.

  Because people were dying on Lobster Island. Again.

  HEADPHONES CLAMPED OVER her ears, Tansy slapped the throttle open and braced herself as the little prop plane surged down the runway, eager to be on its way. She’d gotten her pilot’s license when she first joined HFH, nearly three years earlier. God, she loved to fly.