Chasing Adonis Read Online Free Page B

Heather’s gum snapped, crackled, and popped. A passing stranger coughed.
An ambulance wailed in the distance. No one rescued him.
    With a sigh of impatience, Heather slapped a palm on the
counter, dragging her chair closer. “Don’t you remember? Kathleen and I were
talking about going to Generations for their all-male dance revue, and you said
you’d be there, minus your holster.”
    A joke. Didn’t she recognize sarcasm?
    She waved him off before he could ask. “Never mind. So what
are you doing here this early in the morning anyway?”
    “The woman in the auto accident?” His eyes strayed to the
clock above her head. Two-forty-five. That gave him only fifteen minutes before
he’d have to call in—let his boss know where he was and what he was up to.
    “Wasn’t that boyfriend of hers scrumptious?” Eyes growing
dreamy, Heather sighed dramatically. “Like Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio, and
Johnny Depp all rolled into one great big hunky package.”
    Shane stiffened. “The guy was here?”
    “Sure,” Heather replied. “He rode here with her in the
ambulance.” She shook her head, eyes rolling, and an unspoken, “Duh” on her
frosted pink lips. “Figures he’s got a girlfriend. The really good-looking ones
are always taken, you know. Taken or gay.”
    The detective’s version of the Serenity Prayer echoed
between Shane’s ears. Grant me the patience to listen to rambling witnesses,
wisdom to separate fact from fiction, and the drive to find the answers…
    “So where is this hunky package now? Is he still here? Can I
talk to him?”
    She batted her lashes like some B-movie ingénue. “Ted left
shortly after the two of them came in. Dr. Velasquez gave him a cursory exam,
but I think that was just so she could get a good look at him with his shirt
off. I mean, the guy didn’t have a scratch on him. But the woman’s still here.
They wheeled her out of surgery about fifteen minutes ago, and they’re putting
her up on six. She was pretty banged up. Dr. Sanjit had to put in a chest tube
and everything.”
    Damn! He’d missed Pretty Boy already. Wait. What had she
just called him? “Ted? That’s his name?”
    “Yeah, Ted. Not short for Theodore, either. It’s short for
Tedior. Isn’t that weird? I even asked Dr. Velasquez if she had the spelling
right because she’s the one that wrote up the file, and her English ain’t so
hot.”
    As opposed to your stellar command of the language,
right, Heather?
    To keep from rolling his eyes, Shane focused on the framed
Patients’ Bill of Rights poster mounted above her head. Did people in the
emergency room actually take the time to read that list? Didn’t they have more
pressing priorities than digesting such terms as “full disclosure” and
“appeals” while waiting for a doctor’s help?
    “Anyways…” Heather’s high-pitched squeal commandeered his
attention. “There it was. ‘Tedior.’ Dr. Velasquez told me Ted’s from Cyprus. Do
you think Tedior is the Cyprusian way of saying Theodore? I mean, all the Teds
I can think of were really Theodores. Ted Kaczynski, Teddy Roosevelt, Ted
Bundy, Ted Kennedy—no, wait, he’s really an Edward, isn’t he? Okay, so maybe
they aren’t all Theodores, but most of them—”
    “I get it, Heather. I get it.” From past experience, he knew
if he didn’t stop her, she could go on forever. “Anything else? Have you got a
last name and address for ‘Tedior?’”
    She shook her head. “He had a real weird last name. Let me
think for a minute.”
    Oh, for God’s sake. He didn’t have time for this. Heather’s
gum snapped and clicked between her teeth. The clock’s second hand swept over
the twelve. Once…twice…three times. God, this was agony. Like a game show where
they play insipid music to ratchet up tension while the contestant tried to
come up with the correct answer.
    “I remember now!”
    Her bangled wrists flew, and her elbow knocked a clipboard
to the floor with a clatter. She slid off