His open door.

“Payne? Mr. Sterling?” I stepped inside and walked to Pansy’s adjoining office. Geez. Pansy. Some name. Shaking my head, I knocked, opened the door after no reply and ran my gaze around the room.

Empty.

There is a God.

I withdrew from the room and shut the door as quietly as I could and walked toward Payne’s desk. If I got caught, I had already decided I’d say that since Lilla wasn’t there I was trying to find the employee forms she’d given me this morning, because I thought I’d put down the wrong phone number.

Maybe I was getting better at this lying stuff.

Quickly I looked over his desk. Payne was not the neatest guy in the world, but he wasn’t a Fabio either. I reached into the pocket of my scrubs and took out a pair of gloves.

Jagger had taught me well.

They’d become a staple in my wardrobe now, much like a tissue and clean underwear (a la Stella Sokol).

I pushed the desk chair back and tried to open the top drawer. No such luck. The others opened without any problem, so I helped myself to the documents that were inside.

Daily run sheets. The ones Jagger had been talking about. Each EMT or Paramedic had to fill them out. I glanced through them with my nursing eye, weeding out any unnecessary information.

Old Payne was pretty organized when it came to his files, which made my job easier.

Several had oxygen listed. Two had charges for ALS, which I knew stood for advanced life support and was more expensive. I sat down and read through the entire pile, glancing at the clock every once in a while.

Suddenly I heard footsteps outside the door. Gulp. I started to stick the files back, remembering the exact order they’d been in. That, I was very good at-I had an almost photographic memory.

The hallway quieted. I swallowed and decided there was no need to rush off. I had to find his billing information to cross-check it against the run forms.

Behind his desk, and below the Mona Lisa, who suddenly gave me the creeps the way she seemed to be watching me, was another file cabinet.

Locked.

Hmm.

Piqued my interest. So, I dug around the cabinet, the one behind Mona, until I found a set of keys. Two didn’t work. “Bingo!” I whispered as the lock clicked open on the third key.

Copies of bills for the last three years. Could life get any better? I found the matching bills to the files, and indeed, TLC had charged the patients for oxygen when it wasn’t even used (not to mention the fact that the law didn’t allow for individual charges like that), and the ALS was really a BLS-basic life support, which was a much cheaper ride.

An eighty-year-old guy had fallen while mowing his lawn. His wife called 911, but since he’d fallen in the grass, there wasn’t a scratch on him, nor was he in any distress to the point where he’d needed oxygen, according to the paramedic’s run sheet-of one ER Dano.

If nothing else, I just knew in my gut that Dano was a fantastic, crackerjack paramedic.

I leaned back after checking out several more bills.

“So, you are bilking the insurance company out of millions, Mr. Sterling. Aren’t you?”

“Yes. For a new employee, Ms. Sokol, you are perceptive.”

I dropped the files and swung around to see Payne Sterling with a knife aimed at me.

A knife!

I had this real phobia of knives and always said I’d rather be shot than stabbed.

However, right now, I was hoping for neither.

Five

Payne Sterling eased closer to me, the knife blade mocking me with its sparkle.

“Oh, hey, Payne. I mean, Mr. S. Somehow I got lost and was looking for the forms Lilla gave me this morning.” I mumbled and rambled so that suddenly Payne looked confused. This after he’d heard me accuse him of insurance fraud-and he’d admitted it.

So, I took that opportunity to cut and run (forgive the pun again!). I kicked at his groin, stayed around only seconds to hear him groan, then grabbed the stack of files from the desk and threw them in his face, buying me only nanoseconds.

By the time I got to the door, his hand was on mine. I started to scream like a girl-hey, we’re talking life and death here-but he had his hand on my mouth faster than I could take a breath.

“Shut up or you’ll end up needing 911 called for you.” Wow. His voice had grown eerily threatening in a few hours.

Gone was the “Laugh-In” guy. Replaced by a threatening maniac who had a knife at my throat.

Payne knew his anatomy. I’d give him that as he pressed the blade into the area of my carotid artery.

Big-time bleeder when cut, that ol’ artery was. I was talking pumping out the entire ten pints of blood that the average human being has in their circulatory system in a very short time.

“Payne,” I mumbled. “Please. Let me go, and we can make a deal.”

He’d slowly eased his hold so I could talk. Or make that money could talk. When he let go and started to ask what I meant, I kneed him again, used a few self-defense moves Jagger had taught me, and before I knew it, I was running like hell down the corridor, through the empty reception area and out the door.

In my haste, I wasn’t sure, but it didn’t sound as if Payne was fast on my heels, and I wasn’t stupid enough to turn to look.

I pushed at the front door so hard, it swung out with a thud-and I banged smack-dab into Jagger and Lilla.

I screamed.

Jagger shook his head.

Lilla pulled back as if she was afraid of me, and I started to chatter on and on.

Jagger grabbed my shoulders. “Calm down, Pauline. What the hell are you talking about?” He’d grown serious and with the use of my name, yanked me out of my hysteria long enough to tell him what I found out and how Payne tried to kill me.

Jagger pushed me to the side so hard, that I stumbled into Lilla, knocking her down.

“Chéri!” she shouted.

“Sorry!” I yelled as I pulled her up, and we ran after Jagger-although my first instinct was to run in the other direction. I couldn’t let him face a knife-wielding Payne all by himself. I know Jagger would smirk at that, but still, I meant well.

We got to the office door and found Jagger standing there.

Standing there?

I figured Payne had hightailed it out the back door-until I got side by side with Jagger.

Lilla screamed and slithered in a faint, very sexy-like, down to the floor with one hand running along the wall.

I grabbed Jagger’s arm and my first words were, “Damn, there goes our suspect.”

The two of us stood staring down at Payne Sterling with the aforementioned knife sticking out of his chest. Heart level.

And we both knew calling 911 was out of the question-because ambulances didn’t carry dead bodies.

Ambulances didn’t carry dead bodies, I thought over and over to take my mind off the scene in front of me.

Lieutenant Shatley, Hope Valley homicide and close friend of Jagger’s-although I had no idea how they knew each other-gave orders to the police staff while I stood behind the yellow-taped area-trying to think of anything else but…a dead body.

Pansy had been notified, or make that heard the commotion, and hurried over. To this very minute, she was still wailing in grief.

I wondered if losing an identical twin hurt more than a regular sibling and then told myself that was crazy. However, I do think it was different, as they were way too close. And now that I thought about it, her wailing was eerie and strange and-I was ashamed to even think it-almost…fake.

I looked at her. She stood with one of the other secretaries holding her by the shoulders and glaring down at the body of her brother.

I realized I couldn’t do that if it were a sibling of mine. I couldn’t just stand there looking. Hmm. Maybe it was me, and I shouldn’t let my personal feelings get in the way.