by K. J. Emrick
“You couldn’t just leave us alone, could you!” Alan yelled down at Darcy. “You could have walked away. You could have let us be! This is my wife! She belongs to me!”
“No, she’s not,” Darcy argued before she could think better of it. “You aren’t her husband. That isn’t your ring! That tradition of wearing the ring around your neck didn’t come from your family. It came from Jarred’s family. You’re trying to steal your way into her life! You aren’t Lindsay’s husband. You killed her husband!”
Darcy could just see enough over her shoulder to see the way Lindsay’s eyes widened even further, the way her mouth worked to form words she either couldn’t find or couldn’t get out past Alan’s horrible grip. Poor woman, Darcy thought with pity. She has no idea of what’s going on, or why she had become the object of this psychopath’s attention.
“I am Lindsay’s husband!” Alan bent down to scream that in Darcy’s face, racking her shoulder almost to the breaking point, and taking his prisoner off her feet so that Lindsay dangled from his constricting hold. “I know what’s best for her! I loved her the moment I met her and I love her now and it should have been me who came to Misty Hollow with her! That man was not her husband! He stole her from me. He took her away and pretended to marry her and made her tell me to leave her alone.”
His voice had gotten lower and quieter in a way that chilled Darcy’s blood through the pain he was inflicting on her. His green eyes burned with an inner fever, dark pools of burning emotion, and they were focused on something besides Darcy’s face. Something only he could see.
“Alan,” she said, sweat beading on her face from the sharp dagger of pain lancing through her shoulder. “Alan, listen to me. You need to stop this. You’re hurting Lindsay.”
And me, she might have added, but she knew it would be better to keep his attention on Lindsay. Obviously, he had fallen in love with her at some point, after she ran away from her mother’s home here in Misty Hollow. Lindsay hadn’t wanted his attention but in his warped mind, she belonged to him. He cared for her, even if it was a possessive love that was dark and ugly. If Darcy could get him to see how he was hurting her, then maybe she could get him to stop.
A quick thought for Rosie flashed through her mind. What had happened to her to keep her from being out here with her daughter? One more worry to add to the list. Right now, she had to help Lindsay.
“Look at her, Alan,” Darcy said, wincing and trying to twist her torso a little to ease the strain on her shoulder. “Look at her!”
He blinked, mouth hanging open, but did turn his head to look at his captive love. Lindsay’s bare feet kept slipping against the floor tiles and she hung from his arm like a marionette, trying to keep her windpipe from being crushed. Darcy saw the crack in her cast now, all the way around the elbow, and she wondered if Alan had broken her arm all over again.
Alan‘s face softened. A little focus came back into his eyes and he seemed to finally understand that he was hurting Lindsay. He gasped in shock and loosened his grip. He didn’t let Lindsay go, but he did put her back on her feet again.
He let go of Darcy to wrap his arms around Lindsay and hold her close. “I’m sorry,” he said to her. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. Shh. Shh, now. I’m sorry.” He began stroking her hair and backing away, still holding her tight, and Darcy had no idea where he thought he was going or even if he realized what he was doing anymore.
All she knew was that she was free.
Her left arm fell limp. She could feel the blood pounding in it, painful and sharp, so she figured that was a good sign. She just couldn’t move it. Pain shot up her shoulder and into her skull with each beat of her heart. Was it broken? Like Lindsay’s? She didn’t know. There wasn’t time to figure it out, either.
Lindsay’s face was turning purple. Alan had shifted his hold on her until his hands were around her neck as he stood behind her, her head at his chest. He tensed his fingers, squeezing the life out of her. “You can’t leave me,” he was saying, over and over. “You can’t…leave me.”
As he held her in death’s embrace her eyelids fluttered and her lips parted and her hand fell away. She couldn’t fight anymore.
Darcy tried to stand up. A shouted warning from the ICU entrance told her to stay where she was.
“Darcy, get down!”
She had just enough time to realize it was Jon’s voice that was calling out to her before the thunderclap echo of a gunshot drowned everything out.
Alan was rocked back hard as the bullet took him in the right shoulder. He stumbled until he fell into the wall, his upper body breaking sizable holes in the plaster. His arms pin wheeled. Blood made a crazy Rorschach pattern behind him.
His hands released their hold on Lindsay’s neck.
Down on the floor in the fetal position, Lindsay sucked in a hard breath and then she was breathing and crying and coughing all at the same time. Darcy heard Jon running up to them, and then he was there, oh thank you God he was there, his gun pointed in Alan’s face.
“Try something,” Jon warned him, “and you won’t live to see what I do to you.”
Darcy knelt next to Lindsay. She took Lindsay’s one good hand in her own, her left arm still dangling and useless, Lindsay’s arm limp in its cast, and together they crawled away to safety. Jon was taking out handcuffs. Alan was crying, sobbing and babbling that he had to help his wife. His wife needed him, his wife loved him, his wife wanted them to go away together.
Jon didn’t say anything as he forced Alan to turn around and put the cuffs around the man’s wrists. He just put Alan down to the floor and stepped on him to make sure he would stay put. Darcy noticed his foot came down on the shoulder where Alan had been shot. Somehow, it didn’t bother her at all.
When they had crawled far enough away that Darcy felt certain Alan couldn’t get to them before Jon could stop him, she sat them both down with their backs to the wall. She waited until Lindsay’s breathing evened out and her coughing fits had subsided before asking her, “Are you all right?”
Lindsay nodded and swallowed again. “You know,” she said, “I don’t think that man is really my husband.”
The two of them shared a sad laugh through their pain as officers from the Meadowood Police force in their dark blue uniforms poured into the ICU. It was over. A nightmare for Lindsay. A very, very long day for Darcy. Finally over.
No, not over. Darcy forced herself to get up again as she remembered.
Rosie.
***
The Meadowood officers had arrived at the scene before Jon could, he told her after they had taken custody of Alan. It took four of them to remove him from the ICU. He kicked and screamed and demanded not to be separated from his wife.
Darcy could hear his screaming even after they had dragged him out past the swinging doors.
Other officers escorted nurses and doctors as they tended to Lindsay, and then she was taken away too.
Jon held her then, held her tight and wanted to know over and over if she was all right.
“My arm,” she told him. “I can’t move my arm.”
“Come on, we’ll get you down to the Emergency Department.”
“Not now. I need to know if Rosie is all right first.”
A tall female police officer had already gone into room 2-C. Her radio mike hung from a shoulder strap on her blue uniform shirt, and she had her hand wrapped around it, talking to her dispatch, communicating what she had found. When Darcy saw her kneeling over Rosie’s limp form laying on the floor at the foot of the hospital bed, her heart jumped into her throat. She clung to the front of Jon’s shirt with her one working hand and tried to reach out with her senses to feel for her friend’s spirit. She couldn’t be dead. She just couldn’t.
The officer put two fingers to the hollow of Rosie’s throat and held them there for a few seconds that stretched into an eternity before she looked up at Jon and Darcy. “She’s alive. Just unconscious. I think she’ll be all right. Can you
wait here while I get a doctor for her?”
Darcy was about to say yes, she would stay right here until her friend was okay, but Jon shook his head. “Darcy needs to see a doctor, too. I’m taking her downstairs to the ER. I’ll tell the nurses you need help in here on my way through.”
The Meadowood officer frowned to be stuck here with so much going on, but she nodded.
Jon hadn’t stopped touching Darcy since he’d shown up, out of the blue, to save her life. His hand on her shoulder. A kiss on her cheek. His body comfortably pressed up against hers as they stood together. It was the same now as they walked through the second floor to get to the elevator amid a chaos of movement. Holding her hand—her right hand—like he would never let go, he found the first nurse they came to and told her about Rosie. Darcy still wanted to stay with her friend, but now that the adrenalin was wearing off she was starting to get worried for herself. The pain had gotten worse. Jon was right. She needed her arm tended to.
And then she needed a long soak in a hot tub with her man still holding her and touching her and kissing her. That would definitely be all right with her.
Chapter Ten
More chaos met them on the main floor. A group of nurses in different colored scrub tops and doctors with serious expressions crowded into the elevator after Darcy and Jon got out. People ran back and forth. Calls for assistance to the second floor were almost nonstop over the intercom. Meadowood officers stood guard over the entrance from the registration area to the ER.
“Guess we came at a bad time,” Darcy joked.
Jon stroked the tips of her fingers with his. “I’m glad you were here. Will gave me the basics when he called. I really think Alan would have gotten away with Lindsay if you hadn’t been here to figure it out. We were nowhere with the car rental. Hadn’t even been able to get in touch with Jarred’s family, or they could have told us who was who in this mess. Without you, Darcy, who knows what would have happened to Lindsay.”
She snuggled into him as they walked. “I’m glad you got here when you did.”
“Yeah, well, we took a gamble on that. I called ahead to the Meadowood PD and asked them to wait for me because I knew the players.”
“Cut it kind of close, didn’t you?”
His sudden kiss on her lips took her breath away, in the best way possible. “I will always be there for you, Darcy. I promise.”
The Emergency Department was packed now with patients and doctors and other hospital employees. The overwrought charge nurse looked at them when they came in, assessed her arm briefly, pursed her lips, and told them to go to curtain area two. Then she hurried off to something else.
There were two hospital beds just opposite the large square of the main work station where doctors typed at computers or looked over patient x-rays or took phone calls. The beds were sectioned off by white curtains hung from sliding hooks on the ceiling. One was already closed off, under a sign that read “Curtain One.” Curtain Area Two was open and Darcy gratefully sat down on the bed, cradling her left arm.
“Do you think it’s broken?” she asked Jon nervously.
“I’m not a doctor, sweet baby. I’m a police officer.”
From behind Curtain Area One, someone said, “That’s right, Jon. Don’t quit your day job.”
Darcy and Jon both looked at each other, then over at the heavy curtain that made a wall between the two areas. “Grace?” Darcy asked. “Is that you?”
“Yes,” she answered, sounding miserable about it. “Aaron here insisted on bringing me to the hospital even though I told him it was just false labor. It’s not time yet.”
“Your due date is only a few days away,” Darcy heard Aaron scolding her sister. “You can’t take chances on things like this.”
Jon looked up above them, at the ceiling, figuring out which way the curtain was hung before grabbing hold of it and sliding it aside.
Grace lay there in the hospital bed, draped by a sheet and already in a short-sleeved gown tied behind her back. She waved with her fingers. “Hey sis. I take it you two are responsible for all the ruckus around here?”
“You could say that,” Jon said, giving Darcy a look that wasn’t exactly accusing, just conspiratorial. “Your sister’s arm is hurt, Grace. We’re having it checked out.”
“Darcy, us cops are the ones who are supposed to get hurt serving and protecting. You know that, right?”
Darcy stuck her tongue out at Grace. “Whatever. Just take care of yourself and my new niece.”
Grace rolled her eyes. “I told you. It could be a boy—” She broke off in a wince of pain that had her sitting up straighter and grabbing at her belly. “Oh, that was a bad one.”
“I’m going to get a nurse,” Aaron told her.
“Don’t be stupid, Aaron,” Grace snapped. But Darcy could see the strain around her eyes. “It’s just…oh, oh, oh!”
Aaron looked trapped, not sure whether he should go for help or stick by his wife. The decision was made for him when a male nurse came rushing over, locking the side bars of the hospital bed in place and releasing the locks on the wheels. “Mrs. Wentworth, we’re moving you up to Maternity now. The doctor believes you’re in full labor. Hold on and we’ll get you right there.”
He said it with a smile, but suddenly there was a look of panic on Grace’s face. For his part, Aaron gave her his best I-told-you-so smirk.
“Now?” Grace said even as they were wheeling her away. “Darcy? Darcy!”
“Don’t worry, sis,” Darcy called after her, “I’ll be up as soon as I can!”
Darcy couldn’t help but laugh. Tough cop though she was, her big sister was terrified at what was coming. The birth of her first child. It still amazed Darcy to think she would be an aunt soon.
Jon took her good hand again and kissed her knuckles. Darcy felt so protected whenever he was around. It wouldn’t be long, she thought to herself, and they might have a few children of their own.
Now wasn’t that something to think about.
***
Temporary compression of the nerve due to hyperextension. That was the official diagnosis. All Darcy really understood from everything the doctor told them was that her arm was going to hurt just as bad as it did right now for a few days yet. More importantly, the doctor’s medical speak meant her arm would heal. She’d have full use of it again in two to three days and probably have partial use back tonight.
Rosie was moved into the curtain area that Grace had been in previously, right next to them. She was awake now, angry and scared but all right except for a minor skull fracture. As Rosie explained it, Alan Harlow had thrown her up against the wall when she’d tried to keep him from taking Lindsay away. Her head had smacked into some piece of equipment or something and she’d seen lots of pretty stars before passing out. The doctors were going to keep her overnight for observation just to be safe.
Lindsay was sore, and scared, and braver than most people in her situation probably had a right to be. Her arm hadn’t been broken again by Alan’s insane struggle to leave with her. It had been recast and this time strapped to her chest. She was supposed to be back in the ICU for observation, but she had insisted on sitting at her mother’s side and finally the doctors—who already had too much to do—relented. They checked on her frequently and wouldn’t let her do anything for herself, but they let her stay with Rosie.
She still didn’t remember anything about the accident, or about Jarred Perrigon, or about much of anything really. But she remembered her mother. She remembered a terrible fight that had made her leave home, and she remembered wanting to come back to Misty Hollow to make up for so much lost time.
It was enough to make Rosie cry when she heard it. Darcy was pretty sure she saw Jon wipe a tear away from the corner of his eye also, when he thought no one was looking.
Lindsay’s one regret, she said, was that she couldn’t remember her real husband, couldn’t tell her mother anything about him. Rosie patted her daughter’s hand and told her that woul
d come, with time.
Beside Lindsay, Darcy saw a figure shimmer into being. The shadow spirit of a tall man with a pudgy face and messy, dark brown hair. Jarred Perrigon’s ghost put his hands on Lindsay’s shoulders and then leaned down to kiss the top of her head. Lindsay, probably without realizing she was doing it, leaned back into him. Her eyes closed as she smiled.
The things that had been tying Jarred’s spirit to this realm were all taken care of. His killer had been brought to justice. His wife would be taken care of. Everything was as it should be.
He turned to Darcy and smiled at her. She smiled back. Then he grew fainter, and was gone.
***
Up on the third floor where the spacious maternity wing was on careful lockdown after the events from earlier in the evening, Jon and Darcy stood in front of a large plexiglass window, looking at two rows of newborn children, all in cute little beds with tall clear plastic sides. There were seven of them in all but Jon and Darcy were looking at one in particular all the way to the right in the front row. A squirming baby wrapped in a pink blanket and wearing a pink cap.
Darcy’s first niece. A beautiful baby girl.
Her little face scrunched up as she tried to sort out the world around her, but she didn’t cry. She turned her head this way and that, listening to everything, and tried to unravel the blanket she had been tucked into, and basically just looked too cute for words.
A name card had been taped to the front of the cart where her tiny bed lay. Her greeting to the world. “Hi. My name is Addison Darcy Wentworth.”
“Guess your sister wanted Addison to look up to you right from the start,” Jon said, holding Darcy around her waist, careful of her left arm in its sling.