The phone buzzed in her hand to announce another message from Hunter.
I’d start now.
Charlotte huffed and considered several reply text versions before punching in four letters and a period.
On it.
She wanted to keep it short. Hunter was much too cool. She didn’t want to be all, Sure, Hunter, whatever you say! I’m on the case! Smiley-face, smiley-face, thumbs up, unicorn, rainbow! and come off like a huge dork.
No sooner did she send it than she regretted it.
I should have said ‘Fine.’
That would have implied she didn’t appreciate having her assignments picked for her, too.
Ah, the nuances of text.
Charlotte waited a moment to see if any more texts came in, realized she was acting like a teenager waiting for her boyfriend to call back, and put the phone down.
Be cool.
She showered and dressed and checked the phone again. Nothing. Apparently Hunter had delivered her message and moved on with her life.
Like a cool person.
Charlotte sighed.
Maybe, someday, I’ll be cool.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Hunter picked through the pile of books sitting on the seat beside her, noting the name of the second-hand bookstore stamped on the inside covers. Jana DeLeon, Janet Evanovich, Kathi Daley, Julie Smith—apparently the owner of the vehicle liked mysteries. Too bad now she had to crack the case of why this woman didn’t have an extra set of scrubs in her car.
She’d thought for sure the older nurse she’d watch leave the vehicle would have a spare set of scrubs in the trunk somewhere. Didn’t nurses always carry a change of clothes? They never knew who might bleed or barf on them. And this woman had particular taste. The scrubs she’d been wearing had tiny wiener dogs wearing party hats scattered all over them. No way she’d be happy changing into a plain blue or green set provided by the hospital. Perish the thought.
But nope. No spare wiener dogs. Not even cats.
Hunter had thought she’d hit the lottery when the woman failed to lock her door. Someone whose clothes implied she had a penchant for carrying spare outfits, an unlocked door… How dare the universe align all the planets just to skip Pluto.
I guess Pluto is a bit of a red-headed stepchild these days.
Didn’t the space scientists declare it not a planet?
Ah well.
Nurse Pluto didn’t have a change of clothes. Just a pile of well-creased books from a second-hand bookstore.
From her new seat in Nurse Pluto’s car in the employee parking lot, Hunter watched another car enter and park. A man in scrubs exited an old Honda and headed for the hospital.
Hm. A man. Men were less likely to think ahead, but she’d give it a shot. With an older car she didn’t have to worry about alarms, so there was no reason not to try.
Hunter got out of the mystery reader’s car and moved to the man’s vehicle. He’d left the windows cracked far enough she was able to snake her arm inside, but she came up short of releasing the lock. She grunted and leaned farther inside. Something snapped and the window dropped another inch.
Whoops.
She opened the car and sat inside. Stretching back, she grabbed a backpack from the backseat and pulled it to her.
Voila. There, among the protein bars and running clothes, nestled a spare set of scrubs.
Hunter pulled them out and slipped into the top. The collar of her own tank plunged deep enough she didn’t even need to remove it. Stepping out of the car, she gave the area a visual sweep and dropped her shorts to the ground to don the scrub pants.
Not bad.
They fit pretty well, considering. She was tall and the owner of the car wasn’t, so the pant bottoms didn’t drag on the ground. Hunter stashed her shorts inside a flowering shrub sprouting from a planter-slash-retaining wall in front of the car. She took one step toward the hospital before stopping to stare at the collapsed window of the Honda.
Shoot.
Poor guy. A working nurse with such an old car. It was criminal what they paid nurses in Florida, and now here she was vandalizing the guy’s car.
Maybe it’s not really broken.
It was hard to tell how broken the window might be without turning on the car.
Hunter returned to her shorts and peeled three hundred dollar bills from her pocket. Thinking better of leaving her cash in a planter, she tucked the remaining wad into her shelf bra and stuffed the shorts back into the shrubbery. Slipping her hand through the fallen driver’s-side window, she dropped the bills onto the front seat of the car.
She took a few steps away, thought better of it, and returned. If she left hundred dollar bills sitting on the seat, the car might be even more ransacked by the time the guy clocked out. She tucked the money in the ashtray and tried once more to head for the hospital.
One point for good karma.
Hunter checked the directory in the lobby and headed for the pediatric unit. Even if the mother of the blind baby had brought the child into the emergency room, it would have been looked at by one of the pediatric doctors, more than likely.
She strolled by the desk where an administrative woman sat typing on a computer.
Hunter leaned against the desk. “Whew, what a night.”
The woman looked up and smiled. “Just getting off?”
Hunter nodded. “Pretty soon. Had to tie up some loose ends.”
The woman nodded and returned to her work.
“Hey, do you know where I can find the doctor who diagnosed that blind baby a while back?”
The woman looked up again.
“What’s that?”
“I, um, accidentally took home some paperwork on a
