Table Of Content

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 about 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