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.How can her temperature not even be elevated?”Ben snorted.“I was hoping that as the brilliant veterinarian you are, you’d be able to explain that to me.”“I don’t have a frickin’ clue.” She glanced at the clock.“Has Dr.Shad called, by any chance?”“Nope.”“Damn it.He’s at least treated Others before.Maybe he’s seen something like this.”“From the quick look I did while you were out, I don’t think anyone has ever seen anything like this.”“Thanks, that’s comforting.”He shrugged.“Sorry.I think the question, though, is what are we going to do about it in the meantime? With numbers like those, we can’t just wait for Dr.Shad to decide he’s had enough trout for the weekend.If that really is an infection, like you said, she should already be dead.And I’m assuming we’re trying to prevent that.”Josie sighed.“All right.First I want to make up some smears to look at under the scope, so if you used everything from the last draw, you’ll need to take some more blood.Then as soon as we have samples—lots of samples—let’s switch her antibiotic to a penem and see if a broader-spectrum med will make a difference.”“You got it.”“Oh, Ben,” she called when he moved immediately away to follow her instructions.“Did you get time to look at her painkiller concentration levels?”“Yeah, that was the one test that came back normal.According to the literature I found, her dosage is right where it ought to be.Whatever is keeping her under, it’s not the meds.”“Thanks.” She watched him head for the kennels and groaned.“Just what I always wanted.A medical mystery in someone else’s field dumped in my lap with no consult in sight.Why did I want to be a vet again?”From the other side of the door near her stool came the comforting sound of Bruce’s familiar snoring.Josie closed her eyes and leaned over the desk, burying her face in her arms.“That’s really not a good enough reason.”Indulging in a brief moment of self-pity, Josie clenched her fists, released a small number of pithy but potent curses aimed at precisely no one, then lifted her head, blew out a deep breath, and got back to work.She might not have asked for this case, but it was hers now, and she’d be darned if she didn’t find a way to cure it.Exp.10-1017.03Log 03-00127Technicians out at this moment inoculating new test subjects.Have chosen dosing site near suspected subject population center in hope of tracing transmission from first-to second-generation subjects.New data monitoring equipment definitely becoming higher priority.CHAPTER FOURBy the time Eli was ready to call an end to his shift about twelve hours after leaving the veterinarian’s office, he estimated that he’d caught himself thinking about her approximately seven hundred times.Which was only about once a minute, he figured.Wasn’t that about as often as men supposedly thought about sex? He couldn’t remember, but he did have to admit that sex factored into more than a few of those seven hundred thoughts.Part of that, he recognized, had to do with how obviously the surprisingly attractive doctor had reacted to him.Whether or not she might also be thinking about sex, he didn’t know, but he’d bet that on some level she had developed a very physical awareness of him.What else could account for all those blushes he’d seen creep up her cheeks while they talked? It was October in the Northwest, so it couldn’t be the weather, and he knew for a fact that Josephine Barrett was way too young to be having hot flashes.She smelled nothing like a woman in menopause.She smelled warm and sweet and ripe and absolutely delicious.A sudden tightening in the fit of his uniform trousers made Eli shake his head and push away from his desk.There he went again, mind wandering back to the vet when it ought to be focusing on the job.At least now he would have the excuse of being off the clock when it happened again.And Eli had absolutely no doubts that it would.Locking his office door behind him, he shrugged into his jacket as he walked through the open area that housed the desk of the part-time secretary-dispatcher and the cubicles used by his two full-time and three part-time deputies.At the moment, one of the part-timers, Tim McGann, sat behind the gray fabric dividers filling out the never-ending paperwork that went with a job in law enforcement.If Eli had once thought there might be less of it in a town as small as Stone Creek than there had been in a city like Seattle, he’d been doomed to disappointment.“I’m heading out, Tim, but I’ve got my pager,” he called, lifting a hand when the deputy’s sandy-red head popped up from behind the cubicle wall
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