Kaleidoscope Summer (Samantha's Story) (2 page)

“A female down by the water.
” I p
ointed
toward
the path.
Without comment
,
t
hey
grab
bed
a stretcher
.
I drew a h
eavy breath
before following
. Finding bodies was an unusual occurrence in Serenity Cove.

***

Inquisitiveness
had me up
and out the door
early
to check on the woman
we’d
rescued the night before. I
t looked
to be an accident
,
but I couldn’t be sure until
I heard it from her.
The drive along
the coastal road was quiet,
th
e fog from the night before
beginning to burn off. I detoured through
McDonald’s fo
r a
caffeine fix
and gulped it down by the time I reached
the turn
off
.

The
Serenity
Cove General Hospital sign always struc
k me as a big name for a small, single
le
vel building. It
saved
lives
,
and we were lucky to have it—or blessed as my sister Maggie would say.

A familiar f
igure sat at the front desk. “Hey
, Thelma—w
here’s Doc?” Thelma Jacobson,
the hospital’s rece
ptionist
,
could often be found fluffing pillows and giving unsolicited advice. I’d gone to
school with Thelma’s kids—h
er son Mark and I graduated the same year. She was a petite woman
with the same
caring
smile and
oran
ge hair sh
e’d always sported
.

“Hi yourself, Logan. Doc i
s in with
Samantha, your rescue
. Doc say
s she’s deaf. First room on the
right.” She nod
ded toward the hospital hallway
.

I
tip
ped
my cap
and
headed down the corr
idor
.

“My—t
hat man is sure easy on the eyes.”

I recognized the voice of Evelyn Carter
, a
physician’s assi
s
tant
,
behind me. Odd,
I hadn’t noticed her at the desk.

“Why he’s
st
ill single is a mystery to me—w
hat’s wrong with the young women
around here?” Thelma raised her voice.

The
boost
to my male ego energized my steps
.
I lengthened my stride until
I paused
at the
opened do
orway
.
Doctor James Hollingswor
th
stood at t
he end of the patient’s bed
,
making
notations
on a
chart
.
I moved
in closer
.
“
How’s our patient?”

“Sustained a light concussion an
d bruised ribs, along with
lacerations
. She’ll need to take
it easy for several days
.
”

“Thelma mentioned she’
s
deaf?
”

Doc pushed his pe
n into his coat pocket. “That’s right. But she
lip-reads
amazingly well
.”
The patient whimpered. My inability to make sense of her mutterings left questions firing through my brain.

“Did she say
baby
?”

“Sounded like
baby
to me. We know she’s not pregnant from the precautionary tests we ran.
”
Doc scratc
hed his salt
-
and
-
pepper beard. “
Come to think
of it, she didn’t mention a child
when we spoke earlier
,
either
. Probably
still
not thinking too clearly.
”

“We
secured the area last night. D
idn’t
see anything to
sugges
t
she was traveling with a baby
. I’ll make a run back
to the cove
,
though
.”

Doc
slapped
the file
closed
. “Give me a heads-up on what
you find
.”

“No problem
.”
I gave the patie
nt a final glance before leaving to investigate the scene
.

I reached the cove and found t
hree cars
parked up top
on the berm
. Only one was unfamiliar
. It had been the
re the night
before—I
’d
told
Alec
to run the plates
.
I
hooked a
U
-turn
and parked in front of the
black SUV
,
and
c
alled the station
. W
hile
I waited
for Nicole
, the only fe
male officer with our department
,
to get back to me
, I scouted the area
.

My cell beeped with a text.
“
The vehicle is
register
ed to a Samantha E. Forrester. Also,
Alec
said
he contacted Arnold
to have it towed.”
Arnold would keep it in back of his auto repair shop, the closest thing the town had to an impound facility.

My reflection bounced
off the window of the SUV. I shaded my eyes and
peer
ed inside—no car
seat or paraphernalia
to suggest she’d been traveling with a child
.
A whimper caught my attention.
I
knelt to see
a
dog cowered underneath
,
near the
wheel
base.
Unable to reach the mass of
fur
,
I flattened an
d crawled
part
way under the vehicle
until I
could
urge him ou
t. The dog
was a
S
heltie
,
wearing
a vest with
Hearing Dog
written on it
. Rubbing the dog’s head, I
flipped
the tags over and read them.
Goldie—Samantha Forrester—with a
n
a
ddress in Stone Valley.
About a five
-
hour
drive
,
if she hadn’t mad
e too many stops.
“Come.”
I patted my leg. “L
et’s go see your person
.”

Goldie followed me to the truck.
I opened the drive
r’s door
and waited as
s
he climbed
in
,
leaving a trail of
dusty
paw prints across my seat
. She settled into
the passenger side
as though
securing her position of co-pilot
.
I amused myself
on the drive
,
thinking of Thelma’s response
when I showed up with a dog.
I swung
a
left into
the hospital
parking facility
and
slipped
in
to
the
assigned spot for the
SCPD
. I picked
Goldie up, hiding most of her vest
. “Let’s go annoy Thelma.”

We
pushed through the
glass
door
s
and came f
ace
to
face with her
. “Logan Edward
Delatorre
,
just
what do you think you’re doing?
This is a hospital.” T
helma stood to her full five-foo
t
stature, glared
over the rims
of her glasses and leveled a stare
at me
—the same one she had used when her son and I were teenagers. “And what’s with that smirk on your face?”

“Goldie—s
ay hello
.” I eased her paw out
toward Thelma. “She
belongs to the wo
man we brought in last night.”
With a chuckle
, I
pointed to the d
og’s vest.

Thelma let out an annoyed
huff as
I
scooted
down the hallway
.
I marched into the room with my arms full of dog.
The patient shifted her gaze from the window toward us, as though she had sensed
our arrival
.
Her eyes
dan
ced with excitement as she reached for the dog. “Come here, you.”

The animal
wiggled from my grasp
and
leap
ed ont
o the bed. Samantha
cuddled the Sheltie
,
rubb
ing her face against the dog’s fur
. “Baby, you’re here.”
Her voice held little of the deaf accent I had expected.

“T
he way her tail’
s thumping
, she seems
excited
to see you
,
too.”
I grinned
at
the
happy reunion
.

“
Evelyn said
you would find her
. T
hank you so much,” s
he
said, blinking
back tears. “I’m Samantha Forrester.” She extended her hand.

When our hands clasped
,
a bit of
static
crackle
d
through the room. “Logan Delatorre. My pleasur
e.
”
Her
eyes were as
blue
as the
sea roaring along our coast.
I too
k a quick step back
.
“
I’ll go see about
a snack
for
Goldie
.”
Thelma came in balancing a tray
with food and water
for the dog
,
before I could
make my
es
cape.

“On the floor
okay? O
r
maybe you’re
going to fix the dog up in t
he other bed.
” Thelma
direc
ted an ornery glance my way, as
she
blithely
ignore
d
my best turn-on-the-charm smile.

Samantha cast a questioning
glance
from me to Thelma.
“
Thank you
.
On the floor is fine
.
” She removed
the d
og’s vest and
nodded to
me
.
“Will you set her next to the
food
?”

We watched as t
he
dog lapped
up the entire bowl of water in less than a minute.
Thelma
smiled
at Samantha. “I’ll be back later
to
tak
e her for a walk.” She exited the room
, tossing
me an over-the-
shoulder
glance
.
I winked at her
,
knowing Goldie w
ould be well cared
for
.