“Now, will you two leave?” Donna asked, shifting the flowers to glance at her watch. “Believe it or not, we have more patients than we can handle and never have enough time to get everything done. I’m falling behind as we speak. Please, go.”

Gavin’s hand gripped Sarah’s upper arm in a gentle, but firm hold. “Of course,” he said. “We understand. Thanks for your help.”

Sarah started to object but caught his look and snapped her lips shut. He wasn’t shutting her down, he was up to something. “Well, anyway, enjoy the flowers,” she said.

“That was very kind of you. I appreciate the thought.” Somehow, the words didn’t hold the gratitude the first thank-you had.

Once they were in the elevator, the doors started to shut and Sarah whipped around to face him, wincing in the process of moving too fast. She pressed a hand to her side. “What was that all about?”

“I have contacts. Let’s do this the easy way—or at least easier way.”

“You mean your way.”

“Since that’s turning out to be the easy way, then yes, that’s probably what I mean.”

CHAPTER
TEN

“I didn’t dream her,” Sarah said.

He helped her into the passenger seat of his truck and shut the door. Once behind the wheel, he turned to her. “I don’t think you did.”

Gavin had already been working on an idea of how they could find Brianne—assuming Caden hadn’t already done so—and now after the weird response they’d gotten from Nurse Donna and Dr. Kilgore, he was even more determined to follow through with it.

“You really believe me?” she asked.

“Yeah, I really do.” Her narrowed eyes, pale cheeks, and lines around her mouth told him this little outing had been too much, too soon, but he also had a feeling she was perfectly aware of that. “Something’s off. They completely deny her existence when all they had to do was say, ‘She went home. Sorry I can’t tell you anything else.’”

“True,” she said, dragging the word out as she considered that. “If they’d said that, I probably wouldn’t have questioned it further.”

“I don’t know about that. Knowing you, you still would have wanted to see for yourself that she was okay, but it does make way more sense just to say she was discharged than to say she wasn’t even a patient there.”

He caught the flare of surprise in her eyes, followed by a flash of amusement at his offhand assessment of her personality.

“Caden already called to ask about her,” she said, “and they told him the woman was never there—maybe thinking that would be the end of it—but it wasn’t. We showed up. So, do you think they just had to stick to their story that Brianne was never there?”