Page 109 of Protecting What's Mine

She got up and ran a dish towel under hot water then placed it over the abscess. “We’ll give it a minute for the numbing to work. Do you want some water?”

“Okay,” he said. “Thank you.”

She filled two glasses, setting one in front of him.

“Alright. Let’s see what we’ve got, Mr. Kersh.”

“It’s Abner,” he said softly.

It was a big ol’ pocket of nasty, and Mack was glad the man had chosen today to threaten her. She drained the pus carefully, then flushed the wound thoroughly with saline. “That’s got to feel ten times better already,” she guessed.

“Seems to,” he said grudgingly.

She gave it another flushing, then coated the wound with antibacterial cream before snugly bandaging it up.

She was just affixing the last piece of tape when a knock on her screen door startled them both.

“Benevolence PD, open up!”

Kersh tensed, and Sunshine made a mad, barking dash for the new arrival.

“Door’s open,” Mack called out. “Don’t worry,” she told her patient quietly.

“Dr. O’Neil?”

“Back in the kitchen.”

The deputy, dark eyebrows knit together in a frown, entered. Her black hair was pulled sleek and tight in a stub of a ponytail. “Dr. O’Neil. I’m Deputy Tahir. I observed a suspicious vehicle in front of your residence.”

Mack watched the deputy take in the stash of bloody gauze, the scalpel. Her kitchen did resemble a bit of a crime scene.

“Nothing suspicious, deputy,” she said brightly. “Just having a look at my patient’s arm.”

The deputy’s radio squawked something that Mack couldn’t make out. When the woman turned around to respond to the call, Mack pulled out a small bottle from her bag. “Mr. Kersh, this is doxycycline, an antibiotic. It’ll get you started, and I’ll send in a prescription to the pharmacy for the full course. Which you will take exactly as prescribed.”

He looked warily back and forth between her and the deputy.

“Okay?” Mack said.

Kersh looked down at his neatly bandaged arm. “Can I work?”

“Of course. Just mind the wound for a couple of days. Don’t dump motor oil in it. Let me print out some wound care instructions for you. The main thing is to keep it clean.”

The deputy finished her radio conversation and followed Mack into the living room.

“Dr. O’Neil, I need to ask you a few questions.”

“Uh-huh,” Mack said, opening her laptop and downloading the clinic’s wound care flyer. She hit print and the tiny printer she’d stuffed onto a shelf in the built-in between a ceramic frog and a framed lace doily spit out the papers.

“Do you feel unsafe?” the deputy asked.

“I feel perfectly safe. I wouldn’t have invited him inside otherwise.”

“The sheriff isn’t happy.”

Her radio squawked again, and Deputy Tahir’s lips quirked. According to dispatch, Chief Reed isn’t happy either.

Shit.