“Three weeks? Maybe less. The police caught up with him out in the parking garage. I don’t know what made him think he’d get away, not with that injured foot.” Antonia groaned, tense, frustrated. And scared, Hank thought. More scared than she wanted to admit, possibly because she knew the guy outside. “He works at the hospital. He’s on the cleaning crew. Hank, I have the greatest respect for the people who clean—”

“That’s not what this is about, Antonia. It’s about some sick ideas he has about you, not any ideas you have about him.”

“I understand he’s very intelligent, but he can’t get along with people. I didn’t recognize him at first when I was treating him—I was focused on what I was doing. Then I played it cool. I wasn’t sure what was going on. I didn’t want to embarrass him or make his situation worse. It was an awkward moment, to say the least.”

“Think he has a crush on you?”

Color rose in her cheeks, which Hank took as a good sign. “It’s possible. I’m usually oblivious to that sort of thing.”

“Then not only did you betray him by turning him in to the police, you betrayed him by going out with me. And now if he can’t have you—”

She shuddered. “I know. That’s what I’ve been thinking. I just wish it didn’t have to involve you. You’re getting swept up in something that has nothing to do with you.”

“If it involves you, it has everything to do with me.”

She said nothing.

He grinned at her. “At a loss for words, Dr. Winter?”

“You amaze me,” she said. “I have a feeling you always will.”

Hank buttoned his shirt, feeling the throb in his upper arm where Prancer had nicked him. It could have been worse. He didn’t want to think about what would have happened if Prancer had managed to incapacitate him. If he’d done the sensible thing and shot him on the back steps. “It doesn’t help to try to figure this guy out at this point, does it? He’s operating according to his own logic. Did you save his life?”

“I cleaned his wound, which probably kept him from getting a nasty infection, but that’s unpredictable. Otherwise—no, I can’t say I saved his life.”

“He came in on his own?”

“He called for an ambulance himself.”

“He wanted you to treat him. It could have been a ploy for attention and sympathy.”