Playing Doctor (Bandit Creek Books) Read Free

telling.”
    “Not…those.”
    She stopped moving, turned and looked at him.
    He watched her with quiet, serious eyes. “I haven’t told anyone about the crash. Have you?”
    She shook her head.
    “Maybe we should. Talk about it, I mean.”
    Abby was about to respond, but the door opened and a couple of her next patients walked in. “You got a place to stay?”
    “The mayor told me there was a B & B I could stay in.”
    “I’ve got a couch you can crash on.”
    “Cool, a sleepover party.”
    “One other thing, what did you do with my bag of dynamite?”
    “I gave it to a concerned citizen.”
    “The Sheriff.”
    “Yeah, by the way, where did you find that stuff? Those sticks are old.”
    “It’s a secret.”
    “Abby…”
    “What?”
    “What’s going on?”
    “Physicals, I told you that earlier.”
    He stared at her for a moment then shook his head and got up. “I’m going to go on a walk-about around town.”
    “You’re leaving me alone? Aren’t you afraid I’ll so something hazardous?”
    “I think it’s safe to let you work without me hovering over you. What time do you finish for the day?”
    “Five.”
    “See you then.” He strolled out the door.
    The rest of her morning and afternoon moved along without any snags and she found herself locking up dead on time. Smitty hadn’t appeared, so she walked across the street to the coffee shop.
    She put her hand on the knob of the door and noticed a penny on the ground. Maybe this was her lucky day? She bent over to pick it up.
    The glass in the window of the door exploded.

 
    Chapter Three
     
    P ain radiated across Abby’s right side, shooting from her head, across her shoulder and down her arm.
    She was also looking at the sky, when she should be looking at the inside of the shop.
    A worried face appeared abruptly in her line of sight. Smitty.
    “Abby, are you all right?”
    She frowned. Why wouldn’t she be all right?
    People poured out of the shop and onto the street babbling and gesturing wildly, while multiple sirens of police, fire and ambulance vehicles came closer.
    Smitty reached out to touch her head, his hand came away covered in blood. “There’s glass in your hair.”
    “What? What happened? Is there a fire somewhere?” She glanced down at herself. Glass was everywhere. Blood too. “Where did all this blood come from?”
    “Your head, Abby. Your head.”
    “Well…” She stared at him. His mouth was pulled down and his eyes had worry wrinkles around them. “That’s not good.”
    He smiled, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “No.”
    The smile disappeared as soon as she put her hands on the cement and attempted to push herself up.
    “No, no. You’d better stay down there until I can get you cleaned up. Any pain?”
    “Yeah, I feel like someone bashed me a good one.”
    “No, not bashed,” he glanced at the window. “Did you see anyone throw a rock?”
    “No. There wasn’t anyone around that I remember.”
    The world spun and her stomach lurched. “Smitty? I think I’m going to be sick.”
    He winced. “I’m not surprised.” He helped her to lie on her side and the nausea subsided a little.
    Several booted feet approached and surrounded her. The last time she’d seen boots like these was Afghanistan . For a moment her vocal cords seized up and she was back in the wreckage of a dead helicopter. She took a breath and realized she couldn’t smell smoke or dead bodies. It was enough to jerk her brain back across thousands of miles of desert and ocean to Montana . She cleared her throat. “Has Bandit Creek been invaded?”
    It took Smitty a second to respond. “No.” He said it so carefully she knew he wasn’t telling the truth.
    “The Army or Marines?”
    “Fire Department,” he replied in the same careful tone.
    “Something’s on fire?”
    “No.”
    She was going to throttle him if he didn’t start telling her the truth. “What happened?”
    A new voice answered. “Someone shot out the