Cassidy and the Princess. Patricia Potter

family is with her. But yes. If the perp finds out where she is, or who she is, I think he might try again. We were able to keep it from the news, but…I just have a feeling about this.”

      “It will take a little time.”

      “I’ll go on over,” Cassidy replied.

      “You haven’t had any sleep in two days.”

      “I’ve gone longer. And this is the first lead we’ve had. I want him.”

      “We all want him. Get off the phone, Cassidy, and I’ll make the arrangements.”

      Cassidy put down the receiver. The gnawing didn’t go away. He grabbed his jacket and went outside. He took his own car; getting a police vehicle would take longer. He broke every speed limit.

      He looked at the car clock. Twelve now. Probably time for the shift change at the hospital. His foot pressed down on the gas pedal.

      The cell phone rang. He took it with one hand while keeping the other on the wheel. A nurse told him Miss Merrick had been attacked.

      Cassidy screeched to a stop in front of the hospital. He put an Official Business card on the dashboard, then rushed inside.

      He waited impatiently for the elevator to take him to the fourth floor, then hurried down the corridor. The door to her room was open and a nurse was beside her bed. A uniformed security guard looked uncertain but put a hand on his holstered revolver as Cassidy entered.

      Marise Merrick was pale as she sat in the bed. She gave him a wisp of a smile as he entered. “Thank you for coming,” she said.

      He felt an almost uncontrollable anger, mostly aimed at himself. He should have made sure she was protected before he left.

      How had anyone known she was here?

      Her attacker might know she needed medical help. And this would be the most likely place because of its proximity to the attack and because of its trauma department. But how would he obtain the number of her room? Her mother had asked that she be admitted under another name to avoid the press.

      Unless he was a cop. Or someone here at the hospital who heard rumors of a celebrity patient. He knew the grapevine at hospitals was fast. He filed all of those possibilities.

      “I’m sorry,” he said. “I thought someone would be here with you.”

      “I know,” she said. “You called and asked. But I wanted them to leave…”

      “I should have requested uniforms,” he interrupted. “Or stayed myself. We would have had…him.”

      “He wouldn’t have come in if he’d seen someone,” she said. Then her brows crinkled in a frown. “How did you get here so fast?”

      “I was already on the way. I had a feeling…”

      Their gazes met. Cassidy felt as if he had been hit by a sledgehammer.

      The security guard looked at him curiously.

      He realized he must be gaping. He pulled out his badge. “Detective MacKay with the Atlanta P.D.,” he said. “Has anything been touched or moved?”

      The nurse hovering nearby shook her head. “Nothing except the telephone. I used it to call Security. He…left a needle.” She motioned to the corner of the room where the needle lay. Cassidy could tell it was still filled with some substance. He looked around. The nurse handed him a glove before he could ask for it.

      “The…he had on gloves like those,” Marise Merrick said in an unsteady voice.

      Cassidy pulled on the glove and leaned down and gingerly picked up the needle. He could guess what was in it. Potassium, probably. The right dosage could stop the heart almost immediately. The assailant had taken a chance. A big one. He must be afraid that she knew far more than she did.

      “Did you see any more of him than you did before?”

      She shook her head. “The room was dark. He wore a surgeon’s mask.”

      “Perhaps some of the hospital staff did,” he said. But he wasn’t hopeful. The attacker obviously timed his attack during the change of shifts. Anyone could have slipped by the nurses’ station. Again, he blamed himself for not anticipating this.

      And then there was the nagging conviction that had firmed in his mind. The killer obviously thought Marise Merrick was a danger to him. That meant she would continue to be in great danger.

      “Would you like your fiancé here?” he asked, more to stop his own troubling feelings than because he wanted the man around.

      “He’s not my fiancé,” she said quietly.

      Cassidy felt the oddest sense of relief. “He said…”

      “He asked me. I didn’t give him an answer. That’s why I wandered outside last night. I needed some distance.”

      She was answering the question she hadn’t been able to answer before, not with Paul Richards in the room. Her blue eyes were late-evening blue, a rich dark color he’d never seen before. Her long hair had been plaited into a braid that fell across her shoulder.

      He was aware of an attraction so strong he could barely restrain himself from reaching out to her. More puzzling was the sense that he knew her. That they had met previously, though he knew they had not. The air between them was thick yet compelling, as if he was being pulled toward her by some invisible force.

      He struggled against it. “How…”

      “I fell on the floor. I’m used to falling,” she said with that quirky little smile that had accompanied her admission yesterday that she’d kicked her attacker in a vulnerable place.

      “Like you have strong legs,” he said.

      “Yes,” she said simply.

      “I want you to teach self-defense classes to some people I know,” he said. Then he realized he was suppositioning that she would be here in Atlanta longer than a day or so. And he could also see in his mind the implausibility of the princess teaching hookers how to disable a killer.

      “You’re smiling, Detective,” she said as if astounded at that possibility.

      Well, he was. He couldn’t remember smiling since his wife had left him two years ago.

      Snap out of it, Cassidy. She’s a victim, nothing more. And not only was she a victim, but she was one he’d failed to protect.

      “I’m just impressed with your abilities, Miss Merrick.”

      “Marise,” she corrected him.

      He’d seen the name written down. It sounded like poetry on her lips. But that was none of his affair. He tried, instead, to concentrate on the business at hand.

      “Was there anything, anything at all that struck you about the…attacker?”

      “His odor,” she said. “I woke and smelled it.”

      He remembered her mentioning that before. “You said it was almost sweet.”

      Her nose twitched slightly as if she was trying to remember.

      “Cologne?” he asked.

      “If it was, it was very bad cologne,” she said. “It was more like…medicinal.”

      “Cloying?”

      “Sharper than that.”

      He had been impressed by her before, and now that image was reenforced. She was reacting analytically, objectively weighing what must have been a terrifying experience.

      “Any other impressions?”

      “No,” she said. “The room was too dark.”

      He was already cataloging facts in his mind. Hospital gloves. Location. Until her attack, no one