Operation Mountain Recovery

by Justine Davis

  More likely he just doesn’t want “the suspect” out of his sight.

  “This is Crenshaw,” he said into the phone. There was a pause, then, “Yeah, I’m off, but I just copied the APB. I’m familiar with the suspect. What are the circs?”

  That’s what she was to him now, obviously. She wondered what they were telling him. Cutter gave a low, sympathetic-sounding whine. And Hayley Foxworth put an arm around her and spoke softly.

  “You’re not alone, Ashley. Whatever happens, you’re not alone. We’ll help. It’s what we do.”

  Who were these people? They were taking the good Samaritan bit a little far, weren’t they? But more importantly, how on earth had a simple accident ballooned into this? Did the deputies make some crazy assumptions because her mother had reported her missing and had a couple of cuts on her hands? Had they—

  He ended the call. Shifted his gaze to her face again as he slipped the phone into his shirt pocket. She saw his jaw was tight again as he walked back and resumed his seat on the table, directly in front of her. When he spoke, his tone was calm, businesslike, and she found that somehow steadying. Which she needed, in light of what he said.

  “Your mother reported the assault.”

  “She...reported I assaulted her? My mother?”

  He nodded. “Claims you came after her with a kitchen knife. That she tried to grab the knife, tried to fight you off, which resulted in her injuries.” He held up a hand when she started to speak. She fell silent, decided he was right, she should hear it all first. “They wanted to go with second degree, which is a class-B felony, but she insisted on third, a class C, saying...you weren’t in your right mind, and you didn’t mean to seriously injure her. Her proof of that was that you dropped the knife and ran when you realized you’d sliced open her arm.”

  She’d been wondering what the difference was between class B and C, and wondered how the human race had gotten to the point of needing such classifications when the last thing he’d said registered.

  “Sliced her arm? She only had a small cut on one finger from when we both reached for the knife at the same time.”

  “So you’re denying you attacked her?”

  “Of course I didn’t attack her!”

  “Easy,” he said. “I need you to stay calm and think. Is there any way she could interpret what happened as an attack?”

  Again she nearly blurted out a denial but reined it in and tried to do as he’d asked—stay calm and think. She ran it through in her mind at least three times before she spoke.

  “We both reached for the knife at the same time. I got to it first. I never expected her to try and grab it, like it mattered who put it in the dishwasher. So I kind of jumped, and that’s when her hand got nicked. So there’s no way I can see she should have thought that.”

  There was a moment’s silent pause before he said quietly, “Unless it was already in her mind for some reason.”

  She was feeling even more bewildered now. “But why would it be?”

  For the first time, he hesitated. He even shifted his gaze down to Cutter, making her realize just how tightly she was clinging to the dog, who had made no effort to move and made no sound of complaint. Still, she eased up a little. And the dog swiped the tip of his tongue over her hand. It was unexpectedly comforting, as everything about this dog was.

  “Why would it be?” she repeated, and he lifted his gaze back to her face.

  “Because, according to your mother...your father went the same way.”

  A brutal chill swept over her. The memory, that memory, of the discussion she’d not been meant to overhear. Her father’s—and now her—psychiatrist sadly advising her mother that his violent tendencies and fantasies were worsening, and that her father was having great trouble dealing with them. The very idea of her gentle, loving father having any kind of violent ideas had seemed insane to her, even at her young age.

  But he had been insane.

  And whatever mental or genetic glitch he had had, she had it, too.

  But... “I didn’t,” she whispered. “I didn’t cut her, not like that.”

  “She was taken to the clinic for multiple stitches.” He said it almost sadly.

  Nausea seized her, violent and sudden. “Bathroom,” she barely managed to get out. Instantly Hayley was on her feet and leading her out of the room. She barely made it, and the waves of upheaval continued to grip her long after her stomach was empty.

  * * *

  “She’s terrified,” Quinn said.

  “I know.” Brady also knew he would never in his life forget the memory of her face.

  Brady was still staring down the hallway where the two women—and the dog, glued to her even now—had gone. He tried to shake off the queasy feeling he himself had developed at her expression of pure horror. Whatever her illness was, she knew where it was going. And she was appalled by it. He couldn’t begin to imagine what it must feel like. Going deaf or blind would be awful, but there were ways to compensate. How did you compensate for losing reality?

  “What was wrong with her father?”

  Brady shrugged. “There, I’ll have to show my ignorance. One of those combinations of three different mental disorders, with names I can’t remember or pronounce, from manic this to dissociative that, from what I was able to find. Apparently his suicide wasn’t a surprise to anyone.”

  “Except maybe her,” Quinn said softly, also looking down the hall.

  “Eight years old,” Brady said, shaking his head. “And now thinking she’s going the same way...”

  “It’s amazing she’s functional at all, let alone so normal seeming.”

  He nodded. “I just can’t believe...” He stopped himself, knowing what he should have said was I don’t want to believe.

  “What do you want to do?” Quinn asked.

  “Go back to two weeks ago?” he suggested sourly.

  “If only,” Quinn said, but with humor.

  “I know what I’m bound to do,” he said reluctantly. Cuff her, take her in, turn her over to the system.

  “But that isn’t always what you should do,” Quinn said, in the tone of one who had had to make this kind of decision.

  Cutter appeared out of the hallway. He walked over to his master—Brady had the odd thought that a dog like this would have no master except by choice—and sat, looking up at him.

  “I know, boy,” Quinn said quietly.

  “That ‘fix it’ look you talk about?”

  “Yes.”

  “And just how are you, or any of us, supposed to fix this?”

  “That,” Quinn said with a long-suffering grimace, “is for us less clever humans to figure out.”

  Brady grimaced in turn. “Great.”

  Quinn turned to look at him. “You’re the only one of us who has seen her on a downswing. How bad was it?”

  “Bad,” he said grimly, describing the time he’d gone to her mother’s house, and then her crumbling at the coffee shop.

  “Could that have been the pain meds they put her on after the crash?”

  “I thought—” hoped “—it might be. But this, tonight...she was going to jump. I could feel it.”

  “I believe you. Cutter made it clear it was urgent we get there.” Brady looked down at the dog again. Cutter met and held his gaze as if Brady were some stubborn sheep. “Hayley agrees she meant to jump. Because she didn’t even bring her purse.”

  He looked back at Quinn. “Her purse? Seriously? I mean, I know they always carry them around. Never understood why.”

  Quinn’s mouth quirked. “I suggest you don’t question Hayley about that, unless you want a full lecture on the lack of pockets in much of women’s clothing.”

  Brady studied the other man for a moment. “You were a Ranger, Dunbar said.”

  “Yes.”

  “And your pa
rents were killed by a terrorist bombing.”

  “Yes.”

  “A couple of very large doses of reality.”

  Quinn smiled. “So why am I doing something so unreal as putting such faith in the instincts of a dog?”

  “Exactly that,” Brady said, looking back at Quinn. A pair of steady eyes looked back at him. “You’re saying he’s never been wrong?”

  “He’s never been wrong.”

  Chapter 14

  “We’re what?” Ashley looked at Brady blankly as she sat up on the couch in the large great room, where she’d fallen into an exhausted sleep. She didn’t know how long ago.

  “Staying here for a while.”

  She stared up at him. She’d expected him to take her into custody—had in fact thought of herself as in custody since he’d shown up. Expected him to drag her back to town at any moment, had even been grateful he’d allowed her to sleep for a while first.

  But he hadn’t done it.

  She knew he couldn’t possibly believe her, not when her mental state was so clearly deteriorating. And yet...her memories of last night, of what had happened with the knife, were so vivid, so clear. As clear as her mind had always been before the fog-inducing meds.

  She had never understood why people on those medications for mental conditions would stop taking them when they were the only thing keeping their illness at bay. How many times had her mother told her that if her father had started taking them sooner, he might have been saved? But she understood now. She’d do almost anything to stay out of that fog. Except without those meds, it seemed she conjured up innocent explanations for what she’d apparently done. Or severely distorted what had actually happened.

  To her own mother.

  What she didn’t understand was what this man was doing.

  “We’re...staying here?”

  “They won’t look for you here. There’s no connection to follow.”

  “But aren’t you...they?”

  One corner of his mouth quirked almost sourly, and he let out a compressed breath. “Yeah. And believe me, harboring a fugitive is something I never thought I’d be doing.”

  Then why are you? she wanted to ask. Almost did. But some combination of hoping he was doing it for very personal reasons and that it might not be the best idea to make him explain and then maybe question his own actions stopped her.

  Hayley stepped into the room and gave Ashley a sympathetic look. “I’m thinking you’d like a nice, long shower. And I’ve got some clean things you can put on. How does that sound?”

  “Heavenly,” Ashley admitted, getting up quickly. As she did the brightly patterned throw that had been tucked around her slid away. She wondered who had done that. For that matter, the last she remembered she’d been sitting upright. She felt an odd little leap of her pulse as she shot a glance at the man standing there, watching her. Had he done it? Raised her feet and tucked her in like the fragile person he no doubt thought her?

  Then she noticed another blanket and a pillow on the floor beside the couch. Her breath caught. Had he slept there? Right beside her? In the first instant her heart leaped, then thudded back down.

  Harboring a fugitive.

  That was what she really was to him. A fugitive. Whatever his reasons were for not dragging her in immediately, she was still wanted. The phrase made her think of Wanted posters in the post office, and she wondered crazily if everybody who ended up there felt as bewildered as she did. Which didn’t change the simple truth.

  He’d stayed here, with her, not out of any desire to be close, or protect. He’d done it to make sure she didn’t run. And that stiffened her spine.

  “Is it all right if I accept Hayley’s kind offer, Deputy Crenshaw?”

  He looked taken aback for a moment, whether by her words or her very formal tone, she didn’t know. And told herself she didn’t care. “Of course.” Then, rather wryly, he added, “But I think you’d better call me Brady, or it’s going to be a very long...however long this is.”

  “All right,” she said, still coolly. “Brady.” She got it out without betraying how good it felt to say by calling herself seven kinds of a fool for feeling that way.

  “Then let’s get you going,” Hayley said cheerfully. “And we’ll figure the rest out when you’re ready to tackle it.”

  Ashley wasn’t sure what there was to figure out, except how to accept the grim truth that was staring her in the face—that she could no longer trust her own mind, her memories, even her way of thinking. Because she was losing her grip on all of it. It was progressing. Getting steadily worse.

  Just as it had with her father.

  * * *

  Brady glanced up as Hayley came back from the bathroom. He was seated at the granite counter of the large kitchen island, working on his second cup of coffee of the morning. It hadn’t exactly been a restful night for him, and sleeping on the floor had little to do with it. No, it had been the sound of Ashley’s quiet breathing, the constant awakening to check that she was all right—hell, anyone in her situation would be prone to nightmares—and the frequent arrival of Cutter, as if the dog, too, wanted to check on her.

  He found himself smiling as he remembered the moment, sometime well after midnight, when the animal had quietly padded over to him, leaned up to sniff at Ashley as if to make sure she was sleeping peacefully, then plopped down beside him and rested his chin on Brady’s chest. He’d instinctively lifted a hand to stroke the dog’s head and immediately felt an odd sense of calm. This must be what she got from this, he’d thought, but almost immediately he had—finally—gone to sleep.

  He noticed that Hayley was carrying the shirt Ashley had been wearing. And his training and instincts suddenly snapped back to life. “That’ll need to be saved.”

  She nodded. “I assumed. I’ll bag it. Alex has a safe in his den—we’ll put it in there. It registers times of opening and closing, so there’s a record.”

  “Still shaky on the chain of custody,” he said wearily. “Good lawyer would get it tossed. And it’d be my fault.”

  “Let’s not worry about that just yet.”

  He took another long sip of the coffee. Quinn had made it, Hayley had told him, and the man obviously went for a more powerful brew, just as he himself did.

  “Where’s the dog?” he asked now.

  “Quinn’s outside with him,” Hayley said as she topped off his mug.

  “Heck of a way to celebrate your first anniversary,” Brady said, nodding his thanks.

  “We’re getting our celebrating in.” She grinned at him. She really was a beautiful woman. “But then, we don’t need an occasion, because every day is special.”

  Brady drew in a deep breath. “I envy you. Both of you. You’ve so obviously found it, that holy grail of relationships.”

  Her grin widened. “Oh, now that’s the way to put it.” Then she gave him a considering look. “So, haven’t found it for yourself yet?”

  “Yet. If only,” he muttered. Then, managing a smile, he said, “Not many women like you around.”

  Quinn and Cutter came in the back door in time to hear his words.

  “Amen to that,” the man said and walked over to plant a rather fierce kiss on his wife, who reached up to cup his cheek as she returned it.

  “Chilly out,” she said.

  Brady had felt the brush of cold air as Quinn had passed. When he bent to pat Cutter as he paused beside him, he could feel the chill on the dog’s thick fur. Then he watched as the animal proceeded down the hall and stopped outside the bathroom door. He cocked his head and his ears swiveled forward, as if he were listening intently. Brady stifled a smile. But then he thought of what the dog was likely hearing, which sent him into thinking about what was going on in there, and images of Ashley with water streaming over her naked body slammed into his mind again.

  His grip on his cof
fee mug tightened as he pondered just what he’d let himself in for. Not just violating his oath and his personal code by ignoring an APB, but staying under the same roof with the first woman who’d awakened certain body parts in a long time.

  Apparently assured that she was safe, Cutter quietly came back and sat in front of Hayley and Quinn. And then, rather comically, he tilted his head back, back, back until he was looking at Brady. Upside down. He couldn’t help chuckling, and the building pressure in his chest eased a little. The dog’s silly look didn’t do anything for the rest of him, however.

  “You have a decision to make,” Quinn said.

  Brady’s mouth quirked. “Thought I already did that. We’re still here.”

  “Yes. But once we have a detailed conversation with Ashley, and if she wants Foxworth to help, then you’ve got another one. Because our goal isn’t yours.”

  He blinked at that. He would have sworn Quinn, and Hayley, too, for that matter, would be the upright-citizen type. As if she’d read the thought, Hayley said quietly, “Your goal, your job, is to uphold the law and follow legitimate, valid orders. Our goal is to help Ashley. They may not always coincide.”

  “So you have to decide how involved you want to be.” Quinn lifted a brow at him. “There’s a lot to be said for plausible deniability.”

  Brady let out a sour laugh. “Sure. ‘Yeah, boss, I found her about to jump off a cliff, got the APB on her, then turned her over to these folks I met maybe ten days ago and walked away.’ Sounds a bit short on plausibility to me.”

  “Point taken,” Quinn admitted, but he was smiling.

  “Just how,” Brady asked, “do you think you can help her?”

  “We start with the assumption she’s not guilty.”

  He opened his mouth to say something pithy about the presumption of innocence in the justice system, but shut it again without saying it. But he couldn’t resist saying rather bitterly, “Why don’t you go all the way to assuming she’s not mentally ill, either?”