Wyatt shook his head. “No, nothing like that.”

“So…?”

“So, I want to know what exactly happened to my head,” Wyatt growled.

“You had one hell of a concussion. I wouldn’t have been surprised if you’d gone into a coma.”

Wyatt started to relax. Maybe this would explain what he thought he’d heard. Maybe his head was still lost in some sort of fugue.

“But you didn’t,” Steading added. “After surgery, you pretty much sailed through recovery. There’s a lot to be said for a young, healthy body.”

“Damn,” Wyatt muttered beneath his breath. One theory shot to hell.

This time, both of Steading’s eyebrows arched. “You’re disappointed?”

Wyatt shrugged. “It would have explained a lot.”

“Like what?” Steading persisted.

The last thing he intended to admit, especially to a doctor, was that he was hearing voices. They’d lock him up in a New York minute. He changed the subject.

“I understand that I was given transfusions.”

“Transfusion,” Steading corrected. “And damned lucky to have that one. Whole blood made the difference. I’m good, but I don’t think I could have pulled you through surgery without it, and that’s the gospel truth.”

“I’d like to thank the person who cared enough to come out in such a storm. If it wouldn’t be against hospital policy, could you give me a name?”

Amos Steading’s face fell. He rocked backward in his chair, and gazed at a corner of the ceiling, trying to find the right way to say the words.

“If that’s a problem,” Wyatt said, “I’ll understand. It’s just that I’m trying to make sense of some things in my life, and I thought that retracing my steps through that night might help.”

“It isn’t that,” Steading finally said. “It’s just that you’re about a day too late.”

Wyatt straightened. An inner warning was going off that told him he wasn’t going to like this.

“That young woman…the one who gave you blood…she, along with her family, died sometime last night. I heard about it when I came in to work this morning.”

Oh, God! Oh, no! Was that what I heard…the sound of someone crying out for help?

Wyatt’s voice broke, and he had to clear his throat to get out the words. “How did it happen? Was it a car accident?”

“No, a fire at the home.”

Wyatt shuddered, trying not to think of the horror of burning alive.

“Yes, and a real shame, too, what with her and her brother so young and all. That night when the EMT dragged her into the room where I was working on you, I remember thinking she was just a kid. Wasn’t any bigger than a minute, and all that white blond hair and those big blue eyes, it’s no wonder I misjudged her age.”

It was the description that caught Wyatt’s attention. He’d seen a woman who looked like that. A woman with hair like angel’s wings, whom he’d mistaken for a girl until an errant wind had moved her coat, revealing a womanly figure.

He blanched, and covered his face in his hands. There was something else about that woman that had been unique, and only Wyatt was privy to the fact.

Somehow, when his guard had been down and his defenses weak, she’d insinuated herself within his thoughts. He didn’t know how it had happened, but after what he’d just heard, he was firmly convinced that she’d done it again last night, presumably at the point of her death.

“My God,” he muttered. Leaning forward, he rested his elbows upon his knees and stared at a pattern on the carpet until the colors all ran together.

“Sorry to be the bearer of such bad news,” Steading said. “Are you all right?”

Wyatt shrugged. “I didn’t really know her. It was her kindness that I wanted to acknowledge. It’s a damn shame I came too late.” And then he had a thought. “I’d like to see. Where she lived, I mean. Do you know?”

“Nope, I can’t say that I do. But you could ask at the police department. Anders Conway could tell you.”

Wyatt stood. “I’ve taken up enough of your time, Dr. Steading. Thanks for your help.”

Steading shrugged.

Wyatt was at the door, when he paused and then turned. “Doctor?”

“Yes?”

“What was her name?”

“Dixon. Glory Dixon.”

A twist of pain spiked, and then centered in the region of Wyatt’s heart. “Glory,” he repeated, more to himself than to the doctor, then closed the door behind him.

“Damn,” Amos muttered. “In fact…damn it all to hell.”

Wyatt navigated the winding road with absentminded skill. He’d gone over the side of one Kentucky mountain. It was enough. Remembering the directions he’d been given, he kept a sharp watch for a twisted pine, aware that he was to turn left just beyond it. As he rounded a bend, the last rays of the setting sun suddenly spiked through a cloud and the waning light hit the top of a tree. Wyatt eased off the gas. It was the pine. He began looking for the road, and sure enough, a few yards beyond, a narrow, one-laned dirt road took a sharp turn to the left. Wyatt followed it to its destination.