The Next Widow: A gripping crime thriller with unputdownable suspense (Jericho and Wright Thrillers Book 1) Read online

  The Next Widow

  A gripping crime thriller with unputdownable suspense

  CJ Lyons

  Books by CJ Lyons

  Jericho and Wright Thrillers series

  The Next Widow

  Fatal Insomnia Medical Thrillers

  Farewell to Dreams

  A Raging Dawn

  The Sleepless Stars

  Lucy Guardino Thrillers

  Snake Skin

  Blood Stained

  Kill Zone

  After Shock

  Hard Fall

  Last Light

  Devil Smoke

  Open Grave

  Gone Dark

  Bitter Truth

  Angels of Mercy Medical Suspense

  Lifelines

  Catalyst

  Trauma

  Isolation

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  Chapter 49

  Chapter 50

  Chapter 51

  Hear More from CJ

  Books by CJ Lyons

  A Letter from CJ

  Dedicated to Debra and Toni, two of the smartest, kindest, and most courageous women I’ve had the privilege of calling my friends. Couldn’t have done it without you both!

  “Deep vengeance is the daughter of deep silence.”

  Vittorio Alfieri

  One

  Dr. Leah Wright cradled the boy’s heart in her hand.

  She glanced at his unconscious face. So young, so peaceful. Some might have said that he was dead already, but Leah wasn’t one to give up so easily. What the hell had he been doing out on the street, getting stabbed in the heart, on Valentine’s of all nights?

  “Give it up, doc,” the cop told her. He’d transported the teen to Cambria City’s Good Samaritan Medical Center’s ER in his squad car. Despite his racing from the scene, the kid had no vital signs when they’d arrived at Good Sam. “Just heard from my partner.” He shook his head as he peeled bloody nitrile gloves from his hands. “Some people aren’t even worth trying to save.”

  The anesthesia resident had one hand on the boy’s carotid pulse, the other forcing oxygen into his lungs. His frown mirrored Leah’s own fears—the kid’s heart had stopped for too long; there might be nothing left to revive. “Still no pulse.”

  “Hang on. Wait. There. Found it.” Leah used her gloved finger to plug the hole in the boy’s right ventricle. Hidden by the mask she wore, her mouth twisted in determination. She ignored the sounds around her: monitor alarms, people talking, the huff and puff of the bag-valve-mask the anesthesiologist squeezed, and focused on listening through her fingertips, stretching every sense to find the life left in the boy’s damaged heart. “Foley catheter. Get ready to push the O-neg as soon as I have the balloon inflated.”

  She guided the thin catheter through the puncture wound by touch alone. It was a strange sensation, her hands inside the chest cavity, working blind. An out of body experience—really tough traumas were all like that in a way. Time slowed, senses expanded, the entire world collapsed into a surreal tunnel vision of absolute focus.

  “Now. Inflate the balloon. Slowly.” She gently tugged the catheter against the heart muscle, the balloon plugging the wound from inside the ventricle. “Push the O-neg.” This was the hard part: waiting for the damaged organ to start to beat. Everyone in the trauma bay hushed.

  C’mon, she urged the motionless organ. Leah wasn’t superstitious or particularly religious, but she felt something cold pass through her own body—someone walking on her grave, her great aunt Nellie would have said.

  “Internal paddles,” she ordered, ready to shock the heart back to life. As the nurse offered them to her, Leah felt a contraction ripple beneath her fingers. First one, then another. She held her breath, hoping, praying. “Wait. I’ve got something.”

  All eyes turned to the monitor. A bleep of activity. Then a flurry of more. Slow and irregular but definitely there. Was it enough?

  “Anything?” she asked the anesthesia resident.

  At first, he shook his head, but then jerked his chin up, meeting her gaze. “Got a pulse!”

  The trauma team arrived. Leah brought the surgical resident up to date on everything they’d done to revive the kid—she still didn’t know the boy’s name.

  “We’ll take it from here,” the resident said as he left. “Hope he still has some brain left after being down so long.”

  It wasn’t Leah’s fault that he’d arrived without vitals. Her team’s hit-the-door to return-of-circulation time was near record-breaking.

  “Good work,” she told them as they filed out, leaving her alone in the suddenly silent room.

  As she scrubbed clean the blood that had seeped over the rims of her gloves, she glanced at the overhead clock. Almost eight, she could still make it. Phoning home before Emily went to bed was a ritual she tried never to miss. Leah grinned. Tonight, if Emily asked her if she’d saved any lives, she could honestly say yes.

  The door slammed open.

  “When you gonna learn playing God isn’t your job?” came the rough bark of a Bronx accent mixed with a Haitian lilt. Andre Toussaint, the chief of trauma and emergency services and Leah’s boss’s boss, was a short man, not much taller than Leah, with wiry gray hair. Even when he was in a good mood, he was brusque and domineering—and with thirty-seven years on the job and his position at the apex of the hospital professional hierarchy cemented, he could get away with it.

  She frowned at him. “Did the kid crash on the way to the OR?”

  “This isn’t about one kid. It’s about you treating every patient as if you’re personally arm wrestling with God. It’s about a flagrant disregard for the needs of the hospital and all of our patients, not to mention the community we serve. Because of your would-be rapist, we’re now closed to trauma. He’ll deplete our blood bank, take up nursing hours, OR staff time, and—because my team is just that good, he’ll make it out of the OR to tie up our last ICU bed, probably for days. All for nothing. Because you know as well as I do, he was down too damn long.”

  Leah barely heard the last half of his harangue; she was caught on one word. “Rapist?” Rapist? The police officer had said something during the trauma ab
out letting the kid die, but Leah had been too focused on saving his life to listen. “I thought he was the victim—”

  “Surprised you had time to think, so busy raising Lazarus. Cops tell you how he got stabbed? Attacking a girl in a parking lot—had the knife on her but a good Samaritan came along, jumped him.”

  “I—I didn’t know.” Leah still couldn’t wrap her mind around the fact that the kid was a rapist. He was so damn young. She remembered when they’d cut off his clothes, he’d had rolls of baby fat, his pale skin marred by acne. God, what a waste. The elation of triumphing over death was replaced by a sinking feeling deep in her gut. She swallowed hard then faced Toussaint, chin up, refusing to be cowed. She’d done the right thing. “Doesn’t matter who he was or what he was doing when he got injured. My job is to care for each patient the best I—”

  “Your problem?” He steamrolled over her words. “Is that you think small. Don’t see the bigger picture. You should’ve thought about what bringing him back from the dead would cost everyone. Should’ve declared him, then maybe we could have saved some lives with his organs. Least then the kid’s life would’ve been worth something.” Toussaint came from an older generation of surgeons and seemed to think that his own hardscrabble climb out of the South Bronx gave him the right to preside as judge and jury over his patients—along with the other medical professionals who treated them.

  Leah’s posture grew rigid at his challenge. “You’d just let him die? Because of what he’s accused of doing?”

  “No. Not because of his crimes.” He shook his head. “Because I have to think of everyone’s best interests. Including that kid and his family—the quality of life he’ll have. Or not have. You know as well as I do. Kid has zero chance of recovery. We don’t have the resources to waste.”

  “I’m not a bean counter—”

  “Little comfort to the next poor slob we have to turn away because we’re too busy keeping your miracle-boy alive.” His phone rang. “Yeah, I’m on my way.” He hung up. “Got to get to the OR, finish what you started. I’ll see you at next week’s Morbidity and Mortality conference where you’ll be justifying your actions.” He pulled the door open. “You really should think about taking that job at the Crisis Intervention Center. Plenty of lost causes to fight without endangering innocent lives.” Satisfied that he’d had the last word, he flapped his white coat around him as he whirled, strutting away like a bantam rooster.

  Leah stared after him. The weekly Morbidity and Mortality conference gathered the medical staff to discuss cases where things went wrong in the hopes of preventing similar incidents. It was meant to be a peer-teaching event but occasionally deteriorated into a public shaming.

  She left the trauma room, not making eye contact with anyone, certain her cheeks were blazing red after Toussaint’s accusations. She reached the nurses’ station, where she eyed the triage queue. Not bad for Valentine’s Day—whoever created a mandatory date night holiday in the middle of February had never spent a winter in the mountains of central Pennsylvania. Luckily the weather was clear tonight, no snow in the forecast for another day or two. She glanced at the clock: seven past eight. “Nancy, I’m taking five.”

  “Tell Emily I say hi,” the charge nurse replied. The ER staff always tried to free Leah for her good-night call to Emily—her own prescription for self-care to get her through a twelve-hour shift. “What did Ian get you for V-day?”

  “No idea. He said it’d be a surprise.”

  Nancy and Jamil, the ward clerk, exchanged glances. “Oil change. Same as last year.”

  “I hope so,” Leah said. “I hate having to deal with that stuff, especially in winter.”

  She headed toward the ER’s back hallway and used her ID badge to key herself into the office she shared with three other attendings. She quickly dialed Ian’s cell. “Is she still awake?”

  “It’s me, Mommy,” Emily shouted so loud, Leah pulled the receiver away from her ear. “Fooled you. Daddy let me answer.”

  “You got me. How was your day?”

  “I got Valentimes from every single person in class. Plus a special one from Daddy. And I made one for you. It’s hanging on the fridge.”

  “Well, here’s a special Valentine’s kiss from me.” Leah blew a loud smacking kiss into the phone. “Did you catch it?”

  “Yep. Oh, Daddy helped me make a new game—musical chairs. You stack them real high but sometimes you can only use two or one legs and you have to get them just right and you have to watch the ones at the bottom because they shift as the Earth spins, but if you’re real good you can make it all the way to the moon!”

  “You know it was nice out today—you could have played outside instead of on your computer.” Leah reminded herself to reinforce that notion with Ian—his idea of “playing” often translated into teaching Emily new computer skills instead of doing what normal six-year-olds called fun. The two of them could happily escape for hours, heads bowed together over a screen, speaking their own language—unintelligible to Leah—creating their own virtual worlds, leaving Leah behind, stranded in reality.

  “When will you be home?” Emily asked.

  “Not until after you’re fast asleep. Which PJs are you wearing?”

  “Purple polka dots! But what time?”

  “Work ends at midnight. So, after that, I’m not sure. Why?”

  Leah could practically hear Emily’s pout over the phone. “Midnight means tomorrow. So you’ll miss Valentime’s.”

  “Tell you what. You be a good girl and go to bed without more than two stories—”

  “One for me and one for Huggybear?”

  “Exactly. And I’ll get up early, make you a special super-duper Valentine’s Day after breakfast, okay?”

  “Yeah! Okay, here’s Dad. Night.”

  There was a rattle as she handed the phone to Ian. “Good day?” he asked.

  “Patient-wise, fine. Toussaint is on the warpath, though. Wants me to reconsider that job with the Crisis Center.” She took a breath, trying to cleanse her thoughts of Toussaint; last thing she wanted was to ruin her few minutes of family time with talk of her idiot boss.

  “It’d mean less night shifts,” Ian reminded her. He taught cyber security at the college and had assumed the brunt of caring for Emily. Including mastering an assortment of skills that Leah could never dream of achieving: coiffing Emily’s hair, playing princess dress up, baking allergen-free cupcakes for school birthdays. Not a day went by without Leah wondering what she’d ever done to deserve him—or their beautiful, brilliant daughter.

  “Yeah, but less money.” Despite her student loan debt, money wasn’t the real problem. The Crisis Intervention Center was the part of the ER that dealt with victims, performing forensic evaluations—sexual assault exams, specialized interviews for the police—and then presenting that evidence in court. Right now, all the ER physicians took turns overseeing the Sexual Assault Nurse Examiners and the social workers at the CIC, but Toussaint wanted one person to take over as medical director. Leah was the newest ER attending—she’d only been at Good Sam four years—and had all the requisite qualifications, which some of the older ER physicians hadn’t gotten during their training, so the pressure was on her to take the job. No one wanted it. There was no saving lives in the CIC.

  “Wait up for me?” she asked Ian.

  “Of course. I want to see your face when you see my surprise.” He hesitated. “Then we need to talk.”

  “What’s wrong? Did the furnace break down again?” Their budget was already strained after the last time. Leah glanced up as Nancy rapped on the office door. “Gotta go. Can we talk later? Not tonight, though—you still need to open my present to you,” she said in a seductive tone, glad she’d found the time to order from Victoria’s Secret.

  “Right. Yeah.” His tone was flat, distracted.

  “What is it? Everything okay?” He was silent for a long moment. Leah rubbed her palm along her thigh, the smooth cotton of her scrubs soothing. She a
nd Ian had been together for eight years, but sometimes—always for no good reason—a sudden wave of anxiety would ambush her, leaving her as nervous as she’d been on their first date. Fearful that with one small slip she could ruin everything, lose him forever. “Are we okay?”

  “What? Of course. It’s just work stuff.” His tone brightened. “And you’re right—tonight is for us, you and me. We’ll deal with the rest of the world after. Love you.”

  He hung up. Leah stared at the phone, taking a few deep breaths. She had no reason to doubt Ian—he was her rock, her touchstone, easing her past the myriad of stupid, imaginary fears and insecurities that had haunted her since she was a child. She couldn’t help it; her upbringing had hardwired her to always leap to the worst possible conclusion.

  “Control freak,” she chided herself as she returned to the ER. Her pessimistic nature made her a better ER doctor, never taking anything for granted, but she knew it also made her at times not the best wife or mother. Instead of imagining every dire catastrophe Ian might have been alluding to, she forced herself to concentrate on the smile he’d greet her with when she got home.