California Moon

Shannon looked at him closely. The cuts on his face were healing well and there was a remarkable change almost overnight as the swelling had gone down. The edges of his bruises had altered from black and blue to a muddy yellow.

She passed her hand over his cheek. No response, not even the flutter of an eyelash. “Looks like you could use a shave, my friend.”

Shannon smoothed a clump of hair from his forehead and gazed at him. She was seeing an almost normal-looking man. She looked at him, but not as a nurse looking for signs of health.

“Like Sleeping Beauty,” she whispered.

Impulsively, she leaned toward him, her lips pursed.

“Do you believe in magic, that a kiss will awaken you?”

She stopped herself midmotion, straightened up and blinked.

My God, what was I thinking. I’ve never done anything like that. Never. Professionalism is my middle name.

“That is the last time I pull three shifts in a row!” she exclaimed, and walked out of the room.

“This fast-paced book is the perfect choice for readers who crave romances liberally laced with adventure.”

—Library Journal on The Legend Makers

Also available from MIRA Books and CATHERINE LANIGAN

DANGEROUS LOVE

ELUSIVE LOVE

TENDER MALICE

IN LOVE’S SHADOW

THE LEGEND MAKERS

ACKNOWLEDGMENT

The brightest star in the heavens is the MIRA star. I have been blessed with the brightest angels to guide me through so many books. California Moon shines through the expertise of my brilliant editor Martha Keenan, whom I call friend as well as co-creator. My deepest thanks to Dianne Moggy, Katherine Orr and Stacy Widdrington of MIRA for believing in me and being there for me. To Jennifer Robinson of PMA Literary and Film Management, who aided in the birth of this book, to Charlotte Breeze, founder and owner of CDB Literary Company, who contributed her intellect and love for this story, and to Peter Miller, my agent, whose hope kept it alive.

Dearest Reader,

I hope you enjoyed California Moon as much as I loved bringing it to you. This was an intense story to write because so much of the work was done by me while still living in Quito, Ecuador. During that time the communications systems to the United States were far from stellar, to say the least. I am amazed I ever got it assembled, considering that my copiers, printers and fax machines conked out on me constantly. However, after years in the making, as they say in the movies, it finally comes to you.

For those of you who collect my recipes, I have a follow-up to the “Quick and Easy Tortilla Soup” I offered years ago. This one requires a bit more work, but the result is outstanding.

If you’d like a copy and a California Moon bookmark, please send a self-addressed, stamped (legal size is best for the bookmarks) envelope to me at: 5644 Westheimer Road, PMB #110, Houston, Texas 77056.

I would love to hear your comments!

God bless you all,

Catherine

Contents

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Epilogue

1

He couldn’t be drowning.

He was in too much pain to be dying. No, he was very much alive. At least for the present.

His ribs felt as if they’d been cracked in half. His right arm was numb and flopped against his side. His shoulder was white-hot as if branded. He heard accents, maybe Hispanic, difficult to understand. He had no idea what they wanted from him. He didn’t even know where he was or how he’d gotten there. He was shocked to find himself struggling for his own name.

His head throbbed with pain but he tried to stand anyway. Then they grabbed him roughly under the arms and dragged him from the back seat of the car.

Not my car…a rental from the Shreveport airport.

They frisked him and one of the men took his wallet.

“You want money?” he managed to ask.

“Idiot!” one of the men growled as he clumsily shoved the wallet in a jacket pocket. “No identification. No traces,” he explained in thickly accented English.

Anger exploded inside him as the realization hit that he might not come out of this alive—whatever this was. That was the hell of it. He didn’t know these men. In his bewilderment he reasoned that his wallet was vital to staying alive. He lunged toward the man. “Gimme that!”

A fist slammed into his jaw, stunning him, and his assailant continued frisking him.

“Where eezit?”

“What? I don’t have a gun,” he tried to tell them, but his cut, bruised mouth barely moved.

Hands moved down his jeans and back again. He shivered, the fleece lining of his Houston Rockets windbreaker doing nothing to cut the biting wind. He shivered.

One of the men laughed.

What do they want?

Suddenly, his arms were pulled behind his back. A fist sank into his jaw again. Pain screamed through his body as another blow hit his midsection and another. His face was pummeled.

He fell to the ground and struck his head on a rock.

He saw stars, tiny swirling lights, but then they faded.

And he remembered. He wasn’t alone. He’d been with Adam, his best friend.

He could hear the sound of Adam’s frantic pleadings as the assailants turned their attention to him.

“That’s only my wallet. I don’t have it, I tell you.” Adam groaned.

He heard scuffling of feet on gravel and dirt, the sound of fists pounding on muscles. Then he heard a chilling human wail.

“Please don’t kill me. No!”

What are they doing to him? And why? Adam, do what they want.

Adam screamed. The sound was frighteningly high-pitched, as if he couldn’t take any more.

This is insane! Adam, what have you gotten us into?

He tried desperately to focus his eyes. A dense gray mist swirled around everything. Glancing sidelong toward the long, dark structure to his left, he realized they’d brought him to a bridge.

But where? And why?

He was barely able to make out a sign—the Sabine River. He’d been brought out to Highway 79, south of the city. Down the embankment the murky river flowed deep and wide this time of year.

His arms felt as if they’d been pulled from their sockets. He could barely move his numb fingers as he reached under his jacket for warmth. Behind the Rockets’ heavily embroidered emblem he felt the computer disk. It was safe.

He remembered back to his dinner earlier that night with Adam at the Catfish King. “They’ll kill me if they get their hands on this,” Adam had said, passing the disk across the wooden table. “Thanks for flying in to meet me and not asking why I arranged for your rented car using a phony name. I don’t want anyone tracing you back to me. You’re anonymous in this thing. I swear, I’ll protect you,” Adam had said. “Just do this for me.”

He knew Adam was in trouble then, but still hadn’t fully understood the ramifications at the time. He should have paid more attention. He thought he was helping Adam, but at what price?

His head felt as if it was about to explode. His fingers wrapped around the disk.

Hide it.

His hand moved as if by its own will.

He knew now they were both going to die.

Palming the disk, he slipped it under the bloody rock where he’d hit his head.

No! No good. Think man, think. Your life is at stake!

He moved his hand away from the rock. Pain washed over him. He could barely see them, fuzzy figures looming over him. A booted foot kicked his ribs and shoved hard. He heard the man grunt, then walk away, leaves, twigs and pinecones crunching under his feet.

Adam’s screams rent the still night one last time, shocking him alert. He heard the sound of a muffled gunshot.

A silencer! God…Adam….

Suddenly, he was hauled to an upright position.

“Where de fuck eezit?”

“I don’t…”

Suddenly his vision was keen and clear. A man with pockmarked olive skin and brittle eyes gritted his teeth and pulled back his fist. The blow to his midsection knocked the wind out of him. He couldn’t speak.

They pounded his jaw, neck, shoulders. He folded and sank to the icy mud.

“Give it to me or I’ll keel you.”

Bastards! I’m dead either way.

The blow to his kidneys sent a searing pain throughout his body. His lungs burned as he gasped for air. The pain was unbearable.

He wanted to feel angry, feel the need for revenge, but that took more energy than he had. Still, if he could survive, he would find them and return the favor.

If I could stall them…get to the car…

Hope was a virtue he’d seldom utilized but right now it was all he had.

“Adam…where’s Adam?” he managed to groan.

“Dead. Jes like you will be.”

The other man laughed. “No, let’s have some fun. We think maybe you keel your friend. Ha!”

They laughed menacingly together.

Even though he knew it was true, the words shocked him. He felt terrible guilt, crucifying guilt. He should have saved Adam. He should have fought back.

His eyes were swelling shut. He flailed his fists at the air halfheartedly.

They just laughed at him. One of them had a quirky, high-resonating titter. Hatred sprouted mighty and fast inside him.

He would never forget that laugh. Never.

They dragged him to the car and shoved him inside, propping him behind the steering wheel. He heard the car door slam, then another door open and close. Scuffling sounds attenuated.

Unconsciousness descended quick and heavy like a steel door. As the world faded to black, he thought, It’ll be good to die.

2

Shreveport, Louisiana

Shannon Riley had pulled the worst float assignment of her career at St. Christopher’s Charity Hospital—the ER during a full moon, half the staff down with the flu and a green intern on duty.

“But I’m just a ward nurse,” she said to Helen Mayer, the senior administrator who was standing in the doorway to the staff lounge. “Besides, I just finished my shift. I want to go home.” She rubbed her bleary eyes.

“You? Home?”

“I miss my cat.”

“She’ll survive.”

“Aw, c’mon, Helen. I’m tired. I really do have a life.”

“Yeah? What’s his name?”

“I didn’t mean a guy.” Shannon dropped her face to her hand, cupping her mouth. “Does it always have to be a guy?”

“It couldn’t be anyone else. You don’t have any family.”

“I know this,” Shannon looked away and stared at the wall.

“Sorry.”

Shannon was silent for a long beat. “It’s okay.”

“No, it’s not. You’re more than just an employee here. You’re a friend. And that was unkind of me,” Helen said. “Please help me, Shannon. I’ve always counted on you, my ace.”

A slow smile warmed Shannon’s face. “You’ll note this sacrifice on my record?”

“Sure,” Helen agreed. “Come with me. You may be young but you’ve got more experience than I do.” She wagged her finger at Shannon. “You never heard me say that.”

Shannon liked Helen. She’d been the one who’d hired her when Shannon came to St. Christopher’s six years ago.

“This place has been pandemonium,” Helen continued. “Thirteen babies were born before midnight and both the labor and delivery rooms are full. I don’t know where we’re going to put them all. Maternity is on double shift as it is. On Four an elderly cardiac ICU patient died with no apparent seizure even though his latest prognosis was that he’d be going home in forty-eight hours. On Two, a stroke case, paralyzed on his left side, reacted to his meds and ripped out his IV, got out of bed and tried to walk out the door. It took five staff to get him into restraints and in the process they broke his arm.

“ER has been plagued with that three car pileup on I-20 that was just on the news. God! I can’t tell you how I despise minicams! We actually ran out of cast plaster. But the worst part is this flu epidemic. Staff is dropping like flies. The doctors—”

“I’ve heard all your good news. Now give me the bad news.”

“Dr. Scanlon.”

“No way.”

“Sorry,” Helen said.

Rising from her chair, Shannon said, “I like it when you need me.”

“Take that grin off your face and promise me you’ll do me another favor.”

“I haven’t actually agreed to the first one yet.”

“We’ve got a coma and a gunshot to the head coming in from Sabine Pass. The ambulance just left Highway 79. They’ll be here in ten. I don’t have anyone but you. For the record, I’ll state that Chelsea Sikeston is taking this shift. That way, if anything goes wrong…”

“Or right, then she gets the credit.” Shannon didn’t mind the shell game all the administrators played when the situation called for it, but it galled her to no end that twenty-five-year-old Chelsea, fresh out of college with only a year on staff under her belt, out-ranked her because Shannon was only a practical nurse and not an RN. If it was the last thing she did, she would get her degree someday.

The fact that Chelsea used her affair with the wealthy and very married head of administration, Dr. Thornton, to gain special privileges for herself, incensed Shannon, though she pretended indifference.

Helen’s voice brought Shannon back from her musings. “Do I have to say please?”

“Yeah. It would help.” Shannon walked past Helen to the hall and headed toward the ER.

Dr. Bradley Scanlon was not only a new resident to St. Christopher’s, he was new period. After two weeks on staff he’d lost two patients, both in the past six hours. He was exhausted and wanted only to climb onto a cot in the lounge and sleep for two days straight.

“How could I be so unlucky as to pull another shift?” he complained to Shannon as they changed into fresh greens.

“Triple shift is nothing,” she said flatly, cramming her auburn hair into a paper surgical cap. Double wrapping the ties of the smock around her, she heard the ambulance siren at the emergency doors. Two paramedics rushed alongside a gurney bearing the male auto-accident victim the state troopers had dug out from the bottom of the river.

“Is this our John Doe?” Dr. Scanlon asked the paramedic as he quickly checked the chart he was handed. Shoving the clipboard into Shannon’s hands, he began inspecting the patient for internal injuries.

“One and the same, Doc,” the younger paramedic replied. “Collapsed lung. BP is 190 over 130 and coming down. Possible concussion. He’s been out since we found him.”

“Chest tube and intubate him. Seven point zero ET 2. Give him Manatol IV and hyperventilate him,” Dr. Scanlon ordered Shannon who instantly began assembling the proper dosages for the IV. “CAT scan and X rays,” Dr. Scanlon said as he passed his hands along the man’s rib cage. “Feels as if they’re all broken.”

After injecting the proper meds into the IV, Shannon prepared to intubate.

“What’s over here?” Dr. Scanlon asked as he turned toward the second gurney coming into the room.

“Again, unidentified. Richard Doe has been shot, Doc. BP is 80 over 60.”

“I want an EKG and echocardiogram,” he said as he swabbed the blood from the gunshot wound to the man’s stomach. Without glancing at the paramedic, he asked, “Any idea what all these burn marks are?”

The young man shrugged his shoulders. “The police were there nearly at the same time as we were. They think he was tortured. I heard one of ’em say it coulda been a cigar.”

Dr. Scanlon continued groping into Richard Doe’s gunshot wound without further comment. “I can’t see dick. It’s buried pretty deep. Nurse, suction.”

“Yes, Doctor.”

“What else did the police tell you?” Dr. Scanlon asked the paramedic.

“That the front end of the car hit the riverbed, squishing it like an accordian. The steering wheel rammed into that one’s chest,” he said, nodding toward the other patient. “It shoulda killed him. He must be tough. We had to cut the steering wheel away in order to lift him out of the car. Only thing is, I couldn’t figure where he got the blow to his head.”

“From the same person who shot this man would be my guess,” Shannon said.

“Retractor.” Dr. Scanlon glared back at Shannon as he held out his hand to her. She properly placed the instrument handle side toward his thumb and fore-finger. Using a clamp to clear his view into the interior, Dr. Scanlon dug for the bullet. “He’s lost a lot of blood. I’ll need a cross-match.”

“Yes, Doctor,” Shannon replied. But as she cast a sidelong glance at his patient’s chalky color and at the readout on the monitors, she mumbled to herself, “Richard Doe won’t last that long.”

“He needs Methahexol, morphine and valium intravenously, if he doesn’t defib,” she said.

Just then the heart monitor went off.

“Flat line!” the paramedic shouted anxiously.

“Damn!” Dr. Scanlon blanched.

Shannon grabbed the epinephrine, filled the syringe and handed the hypodermic to the doctor while she automatically spun around and jelled the paddles.

Quickly injecting the epinephrine into the patient’s heart, the doctor took the paddles from Shannon and placed them on either side of Richard Doe’s chest.

“Clear!”

Shannon held her breath as she watched the patient’s lifeless body jerk on the gurney. “Nothing!”

“Clear!” Dr. Scanlon zapped him again.

Shannon didn’t wait for results. There was still a chance to save the other patient. “John Doe is still alive and needs to be intubated.”

With the chilling sound of the monotone heart monitor behind her, Shannon turned to the bloody, dark-haired man on the first gurney. She looked at his face. Glass from the windshield had shattered throughout his dark hair, cutting his scalp and forehead. Though his clothes were spattered with blood from hundreds of cuts, she noticed numerous hematomas.

“He’s been beaten.”

She lifted his arm, moving it forward and back while resting her hand on the man’s clavicle. Depressing her fingers into his rib cage, she rolled the pads of her fingers back and forth, pressing them into the flesh until they nearly disappeared. She counted seven broken ribs. Then she lifted his side and looked at his back.

“Kick marks. Especially around the kidneys.”

Gently pressing her fingers to his kidney area, she felt for lumps or signs of detachment. There were none.

“I’ve lost him!” Dr. Scanlon said, handing the paddles to the paramedic.

Shannon glanced at the young doctor’s ashen face, and realized there was no way he could handle another death tonight.

He stepped next to Shannon. Eyes vacant, he looked at her patient. “Good job, Riley.”

“I’ll take him up to X ray myself,” she said, glancing at the paramedic behind her as he pulled a sheet over the dead man’s face.

Police and state troopers scurried in the hallway as Shannon and the paramedics wheeled their patient out of ER.

Brushing past a holstered gun, she shivered. How ironic. Guns and lifesaving equipment in the same room.

Police officers jammed the doorway, forming a blockade against the approaching local news-station reporters who couldn’t wait to film gruesome live shots of bloody bodies for their early-morning newscasts.

Minicam lights blasted Shannon in the face. She froze. “What the—” Shielding her eyes with her hand, half covering her face, she turned away and quickly pushed the gurney toward the elevator. Accidentally, she bumped into one of the reporters.

“Hey, watch it,” he growled.

Her mouth went dry. “Sorry,” she said tensely. She avoided eye contact with the man by keeping her head down.

“Hey, is that one of them?” He turned on his camera.

Shannon felt the blood drain from her face. Though her hands were shaking and her knees quivered, she pulled the sheet over her patient’s head. “Please don’t,” she said meekly.

“I was only doing my job,” the heavyset young man said defensively.

“Me, too,” she mumbled, hurrying past him.

Grumbling, the cameraman turned away.

Shannon made it to the elevator in a flash and impatiently depressed the button twice. She could hear the barrage of questions and the distinct voice of the chief of police, Jimmy Joe Bremen, talking to Dr. Scanlon as they emerged from the ER.

“Did he say anything before he died?” Jimmy Joe asked, pushing aside his underlings.

“No.”

“Did you remove the bullet?”

“Yes,” Dr. Scanlon said wearily.

“Forensics will want it. The body as well.”

“I understand.”

Jimmy Joe’s large belly heaved up and down when he spoke and his lungs rattled, reminding Shannon of the pneumonia he’d had last winter when he’d been admitted to the ER with a high fever. He was the most demanding and stubborn patient she’d ever attended.

She hit the elevator button again.

She realized now that Chief Bremen had lied to Dr. Timmons when he said he hadn’t touched a cigar for over a year. What bothered her most at the time was that he lied so effortlessly and convincingly. She didn’t trust him and it gave her the jitters to be anywhere near him.

Jimmy Joe pressed past the reporters into the hall and Dr. Scanlon followed.

The reporters swarmed.

“What about the other John Doe? Did he say anything? Did you find anything on him we might have overlooked?”

“No, nothing. Should I have?”

Jimmy Joe scratched his head. “Hell, I don’t know. These two fellas were in a bunch o’ trouble, but without any identification and no witnesses, we’re at a loss.”

A brash young female reporter stuck a small microphone in Dr. Scanlon’s face. “What have you got, Doctor?”

“Other than the fact that I place the gunshot wound at around midnight since he hadn’t yet bled to death, the only other medical specifics I can give you at this time is that one man is dead and the other barely alive.”

Jimmy Joe pressed his index finger in Dr. Scanlon’s bony chest. “When the other one comes around, I want to know about it.”

Dr. Scanlon frowned, rubbing the sore spot. “Of course, but it won’t be any time soon. He’s comatose.”

Jimmy Joe slapped his gray hat against his trousers as he walked toward the elevators. “I’ll check on him in the morning.”

“It is morning, Chief,” Dr. Scanlon said wearily.

Jimmy Joe smiled wanly. “Then I’ll call you later,” he said and ordered his men back to the station.