June, however, was frowning, trying to make sense of my conversation. With the suit on, she couldn’t see my ink. Too bad. I bet she would’ve loved that story to tell her husband when she got home.

I asked to speak to Bitsy again. “Listen, Bits,” I said. “Tim and I are going to need some clothes. They took ours. They’re probably going to burn them or something. Can you get to the house and bring something over for us? Underwear and all.”

Bitsy has a key to our house. I lost mine at one point and couldn’t get in touch with Tim for hours because he was on some sort of police stakeout thing, so I knew I needed a backup. Bitsy was one of the most responsible people I knew. She also had the code to our security alarm.

“No problem. When Joel’s done with your client, he’s got an hour or so. I’ll get over to your house then.”

“Thanks a lot, Bitsy. I really appreciate it.”

Bitsy signed off, and I handed the phone back to June. She pointed out the door and down the hall. “Dr. Bixby is in there.”

As I left the office, a frosted glass door slid open for me. Dr. Bixby was talking to Tim in a curtained area kitty-corner to where I was. Tim was on the bed, and a nurse was taking his blood.

I averted my eyes as I approached. Sure, I drew blood every day myself when I gave someone a tattoo, but seeing large amounts of it in vials didn’t do much for me.

Dr. Bixby met me just beyond Tim’s curtain. Tim smiled at me, and I smiled back, then met Dr. Bixby’s eyes.

“We need a urine sample,” he said, handing me a little cup with a screw-on lid.

How romantic.

He led me to the bathroom, and I felt like an overachiever. It had been a long time since I’d been to the bathroom.

A nurse was hovering outside the door when I emerged with my cup, and she took it, handing me a johnny coat. “Can you put this on?”

I was more than happy to shed the white suit, but the johnny coat had an open back. There were a few snaps, and I did what I could to fasten them. When I emerged for the second time from the bathroom, Dr. Bixby was at my side again.

“We want to keep you here for the day,” he said, “just in case you start exhibiting symptoms.”

Great. But then he flashed me that George Clooney smile again and suddenly I didn’t mind quite so much. It was obviously very one-sided, but it kept my mind off what had happened this morning.

Until those sliding doors opened, and Frank DeBurra walked in.

Chapter 24

DeBurra was sans white suit, and he wore the same frayed sport jacket he’d been wearing at Chez Tango and the other two times I’d seen him. Maybe he owned only one. I thought again about Shawna. This guy was the polar opposite of Tim.

But then, that was probably the point.

DeBurra pointed at me. “I need to talk to you,” he said.

Dr. Bixby shifted around and stood between us. “We need to get her a bed first. Then you can talk to her. I need to monitor her vitals.”

I was ready to have him monitor my vitals all right.

Bixby’s hand was under my elbow, and he was leading me toward the curtained area next to Tim, who was watching the whole thing like it was the Super Bowl on TV. Bixby pulled the curtain around the bed and motioned that I should get in.

“Thanks,” I said. “He’s been stalking me for two days.” Again, however, I remembered that he hadn’t been following me this morning. Why not? Maybe I had some questions for him. Suddenly it seemed really important to find out why he’d abandoned his mission to irritate me.

Bixby slapped a blood pressure cuff on my arm.

“Don’t nurses usually do that?” I asked.

He gave me a long look, one I couldn’t read. “Yes.”

“Did you ever get in touch with Kyle about Trevor?” I asked.

He pumped up the cuff so much, I thought I’d lose circulation. Slowly he let it out, his stethoscope against the inside of my elbow. It was cold.

He noted my blood pressure on a piece of paper in a file, then cracked the folder shut. “We’ve been in touch, yes,” he said. His tone was curt and professional.

“Did he come get Trevor’s stuff?” I had nothing better to do than badger the good doctor.

But instead of looking annoyed, he let a smile tug at the corner of his mouth. He turned his head to try to hide it from me.

“Not yet.”

“Are you done yet in there?” came a voice from beyond the curtain. Frank DeBurra. Bane of my existence.

“No,” Bixby barked back.

I was liking this guy more and more.

“So do you hike?” I asked.

Bixby cocked his head to one side and studied me for a second before grinning and nodding. “Yes. What is this, twenty questions?”

“How long have you worked here?”

He chuckled. “Okay, I’ll play. I’ve been here about five years.”

“Where did you come from?”

His left eyebrow rose higher than the right one. I had no idea anyone could really do that. “Where most people come from,” he said.

I snorted. “No, I know that. But where? What part of the country?”

“I grew up right here. In Vegas.”

“Ha. No one actually grows up here.”

“I did.”

I started to get worried that he really did still live with his mother.

“Where did you go to medical school?” Figured I should stay on safer ground.

“Johns Hopkins.”

Not too shabby.

“Did you always want to work in emergency medicine?”

“Did you always want to own a tattoo shop?”

I nodded. “Okay, turning things around, I see. No. I wanted to have an easel by the Seine in Paris and sell my paintings and live in a garret, a poor, starving artist.”

“You studied art?”

“University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Concentrated in painting, yes.”

“How did you get into the art of tattoo?” He seemed really interested. Go figure.

I held out my arm and turned it around so he could see the heart on the inside of my left wrist. “Gave myself that tattoo when I was sixteen. I liked the way it felt.”

He didn’t laugh. Instead he asked, “The way it felt when you drew it?”

I nodded. “Yeah. And then I went to a shop. The Ink Spot. My friend Mickey, he owns the place. He took me in as a trainee. Then I moved here a few years later.” My life in a nutshell. Somehow it seemed like I should’ve done more in my thirty-two years, but I was happy, so I guess that was all that mattered.

“Do you have any ink?” I asked, turning the tables on him now.

He turned his head, wrote something down. “Chicken, I guess. I don’t like needles.” Then he put a tourniquet around my upper arm, told me to make a fist, and slid a needle into my vein.

“For you, not other people,” I said, turning my head so I couldn’t see the blood filling the vial.

He noticed.

“Does blood make you queasy?” he teased.

“Only in large quantities,” I said.

I felt the needle slide out of the crook of my arm, then a pressure. When I looked, Bixby was holding a small piece of gauze to the spot where he’d stuck me.

“Are you doing anything tonight?” he asked.

“I might be contaminated,” I said.

He peered into my face. I noticed his eyes were a clear green with a tint of brown. His hair was spiky, like it was yesterday. All he needed was an eyebrow piercing and he’d be totally punk.

The thought of it made me all hot and bothered.

“You’re okay,” he said after a few seconds.

“How can you be sure?”

“You’re not exhibiting any signs. And if you got that close, you would be having difficulty breathing now.”

I could argue that I was having difficulty breathing, but it was only because his face was just inches from mine and I was having impure thoughts.

“What about my brother?” I managed to ask.

It was as if I’d popped a balloon. He stepped away and turned his back to me as he put the vial into a holder on a tray.