Expired Cache

by Lisa Phillips

  And Dean never knew.

  He never saw even a crack in the doctor’s façade.

  His chest hitched.

  “She’ll be okay.”

  Dean wasn’t sure he agreed with Jessica. Maybe she was only trying to reassure herself. All he could think was that he just might’ve cost Ellie her life. When he’d been so determined to protect her. So interested in what he could get out of it. He hadn’t even considered what else might be going on.

  The trail spilled out into the parking lot. A police department truck was parked at a right angle to them. Dean pulled open the back door and climbed in just as his phone started ringing.

  The number was Stuart’s. “Hello?”

  Jessica frowned at him. She let his brother climb in the center seat next to him and then got in, shutting the door behind her while Conroy got in the front passenger seat.

  Mia hit the gas and pulled out. “Where am I going?”

  Stuart’s voice filtered through the haze of Dean’s thoughts. “Don’t… could…”

  “Stu. Talk to me, what’s going on?”

  Something was wrong. But was Stuart on his own thing—in danger—or was he having one of his traumatic episodes, or did this have to do with Ellie?

  Dean squeezed the bridge of his nose, holding his phone to his ear so hard he could probably crack the thing. “Talk to me, Stu.”

  He heard his friend breathe into the phone. It sounded like he was in pain.

  Beside him, Ted whispered, “I’ll trace the call.”

  Dean nodded. He waited while Stuart figured out what he was saying. After a minute that seemed like forever, his friend said, “I need help.” He groaned. “She…”

  Dean said, “Did you see Ellie? The doctor took her.”

  “Gone.”

  His heart sank. He couldn’t mean that Ellie was gone, as in dead. Right? Just that she was gone. Which he already knew. “Where are you?”

  The line was quiet.

  “Stuart. Where are you?” He wanted to throttle the guy but had to rein in his desperation when he knew it wouldn’t help and might make things worse. “I need to know where you are so I can help.”

  “Too late.” Stuart gasped.

  Dean moved the phone away from his mouth. “I think he’s hurt.” He also thought Stuart had seen Ellie. Or, he hoped she had.

  “West side of town.” Ted’s screen continued to move as it tracked the signal for Stuart’s phone. He’d wired in to the local cell towers, just in case. Now Dean was grateful his brother was entirely paranoid and had encouraged so many people in town to opt in, allowing a way for the police department to find them in an emergency. Including Dean. And Stuart.

  “I need your help, Stuart. You need to tell me what’s happening.”

  “I’m sorry.” His friend whimpered. “I’m sorry, Brad. I couldn’t stop it. I couldn’t save her.” Dean recognized the thought cycle Stuart was stuck in, going round and round in his past. His friend, Brad, was a regular topic in their therapy sessions. Stuart’s one regret.

  “Brad knew you loved him.” That was the history Stuart had to live with. But right now Dean needed him to concentrate on the present. “Is she hurt?” He wasn’t going to ask if “she” was dead.

  “She fell.”

  There had been no woman in Stuart’s last mission—the mission that had broken him so thoroughly. Could he have seen Ellie?”

  “Stuart,” Dean began, speaking carefully, “have you seen Doctor Gilane?”

  His friend hissed, a sound of disgust more than distress. “He was going to hurt her.”

  “Is he there?”

  “Drove away.”

  “Stuart, where is Ellie?”

  “She fell.”

  Dean fisted his free hand. He wanted out of the truck, or he was going to explode. There was no room to punch the window and neither was he going to jab his fist at the seat in front of him where the chief’s fiancé was driving.

  “I got it.” Ted wasted no time saying, “Dead Man’s Curve.”

  Dean let out a frustrated cry. He couldn’t hold it back. “Stuart said she fell.”

  Mia must’ve pressed the gas pedal to the floor because the truck sped up.

  Dean didn’t want to wait however long it would take them. Minutes felt like hours. Ellie could be gone or seriously injured.

  “Stuart, can you hear me?”

  “Yeah.” His friend sounded like he was fading.

  “Are you hurt?”

  “Blood.” Stuart whimpered. “I’m sorry, Brad.”

  “I know you are.” Dean gritted his teeth. “I forgive you.”

  He heard a sniff and realized Stuart was crying.

  “Everything is going to be okay now.” Dean said, “We’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”

  “Brad.”

  “There was nothing you could do. Some things just happen, and they’re out of our control.” Dean didn’t bring faith into his counseling if the person wasn’t receptive, but Stuart knew where he stood. He’d seen Dean live out what he believed. “What we have to do is trust that God has it in His hands. That’s what keeps us sane when things get dark. Knowing God is in control.”

  Dean needed the reminder as much as Stuart right now. Ellie is in Your hands. Please keep her safe until I can get there.

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t save her. I tried, but the doctor shot me.”

  Dean spoke to Conroy. “Stuart was shot.”

  “An ambulance is meeting us there.” Conroy said, “Two minutes.”

  Dean nodded and focused back on the call. “We’re almost there, Stuart. Where are you sitting?”

  “Trees.” The word was muffled. Dean heard a crackle, and then nothing.

  “Stuart.”

  Silence.

  “Stuart, can you hear me?”

  Mia hit the brake and pulled to the side of the road. Dean got out on the hill, opposite the side that dropped off. “Look for Stuart!”

  He rounded the back of the car and headed for the side of the road where the edge fell away. Dead Man’s Curve.

  A number of people had committed suicide here over the years. The metal barrier erected ten or so years ago kept cars from careening off the edge in an accident, but that only meant the last couple of deaths were those who’d intentionally jumped.

  It wasn’t a sheer cliff edge, but also not a gentle slope.

  Dean scanned the hillside below. Loose gravel. Trees. Anyone who fell would hit obstacles on the way down. He looked for a trail. Any sign someone had disturbed the earth as they’d fallen.

  “Are we sure she was here?”

  Jessica studied the drop-off the same way he did, looking for her sister. Conroy had his attention on the ground. “Someone peeled out of here in a hurry, heading back toward town.”

  “The doctor?”

  “Conroy!” That was Mia. “I found him!”

  Dean wanted to go to Stuart, but he also didn’t want to quit searching for Ellie. He moved along the edge, looking. Seeking. If he found her, he’d need a rope. Some way to rappel down the way he’d done so many times in the Navy.

  But this time, he would be doing it to bring back the woman he loved.

  “We need to find her.” Jessica whimpered.

  “Keep looking.”

  He wasn’t going to stop. No matter what, he would find her.

  Ted trotted over to him. “Stuart was shot in the shoulder. He’s unconscious.”

  An ambulance pulled up behind Mia’s vehicle. The EMTs got out, carrying a stretcher and duffel bag between them over to where Conroy waved. Stuart was up there, as he’d said over the phone. On the hill, where the trees were.

  Did that mean he was also right about where Ellie was?

  She fell.

  Dean went back to his scanning search for her of the hill below. They wouldn’t even know to look here if it wasn’t for Stuart. It could only be God that his friend had been in the right place at the right time. Had he really seen the doctor
and Ellie? Dean might be jumping to erroneous conclusions.

  Please.

  It was all the prayer he could pull together right now.

  “There!”

  At Jessica’s cry, Dean and Ted raced to where she stood, farther down the road’s edge. Dean reached her side and looked. “Where?”

  Jessica pointed down the hill. “There. That’s her jacket.”

  Dean saw the material. With the trees, he couldn’t even tell if it was Ellie. He pulled off his backpack. “Get me a rope.”

  Ted started. “Dean—”

  “Guys, I have to get down there. Get me a rope!”

  There was nothing in the world that would keep him from getting to her.

  Thirty-Six

  The door opened. Ellie had expected Dean. When Jess was the one who walked in, dressed in her uniform with her police gun on display, she tried not to be disappointed and said, “Hi.”

  Jess came over to the side of her hospital bed, not quite able to hide the wince.

  “I get it. I look awful.”

  Not only did Ellie have both hands bandaged, but she also had a bandage on her right leg from a nasty cut on the outside of her thigh. Her lip had a gash in it, and they’d taped down yet another bandage on her temple. She also had a broken big toe on her right foot.

  Ellie was a mess.

  But considering she’d thought for sure she was dead, she wasn’t about to complain. Not when the medicine she’d been given made her feel all warm and floaty.

  The only downside? She’d been awake hours now, and Dean still hadn’t come in.

  Jess said, “That’s not it.”

  “Not going to tell me you told me so?” Ellie made a face. “You thought I shouldn’t go up there. Just admit you were right.”

  Truth was, she wished she hadn’t gone up there. After what she’d seen, and what she had learned, she would go back and tell herself not to walk up that mountain if she could.

  Jess slumped into a chair beside the bed, on the side where she could see the door.

  “You’re here to protect me?”

  “Until we find Gilane, yes.”

  Ellie smoothed down the blanket with her fingers.

  “Stuart was shot. When he woke up, partway through the doctors stitching him up, he freaked out. Dean had to help them hold him down, otherwise they’d have had to give him a shot that would knock him out.”

  A shudder rolled through her, flooding her with memories of the doctor giving her one, causing her to pass out. When she’d come to, in the car, she hadn’t even been able to think. She felt a million times better now, and it was nothing she’d wish on anyone.

  “That’s why he hasn’t come to see you since you woke up.”

  Ellie shrugged one shoulder. Even she was nervous of the doctors right now, so she didn’t exactly blame Stuart for freaking out. If that was what’d happened. His PTSD probably didn’t help the situation.

  “You’re avoiding what’s going on here.”

  Her sister was officially the queen of conversations coming out of left field. “Jess—”

  “He would be here if he could.” Her sister gave her a hard stare. “He rappelled down the side of a mountain, found you, and carried you back up to the road. On his back.”

  “So now you’re on ‘Team Dean?’ Is that it?”

  “You have been a fan of his this whole time. Now that he’s proven he can take care of you, you want to jump ship? Just because he has more people than you do to help.” Jess shot her a look. “You’re gonna be one of those needy women who insist their partner has one priority—them—and no one else should matter.”

  “That’s not what this is.”

  “Then explain it. Because you found the answer, and he saved you. What’s the problem?”

  “This isn’t over.” She didn’t get why Jess thought it was. “The doctor…” Tears gathered, along with a lump in her throat.

  “Tell me what he said.”

  She studied her sister’s face. It wasn’t a compassionate invitation. More like an offer to listen so she could immediately refute anything Ellie said. Jess was frustrated, maybe even angry. Itching for an argument.

  Ellie shook her head.

  “What am I supposed to think? Gilane killed whoever that was in the cave. Pop knew about it, but for some reason never did anything. And the doctor tried to keep you from finding out. When you did, he tried to kill you.” Jess lifted her hands. “I need you to explain this, Ellie. Because I’m pretty confused. And I don’t want to wait for the tell-all exposé bestseller you’re gonna write.”

  Ellie rolled her eyes.

  “There you are.” As though getting a reaction from her was the whole point of having said all that. “Whatever it is, you can trust me. But I need to understand.”

  “As the investigating police officer taking my statement, or as my sister?”

  Jess said, “Do I have my notepad out?”

  “You could be wearing a wire.”

  “You think I’d lie to you like that? Or you just can’t risk anyone but me hearing this?”

  Ellie studied the blanket again.

  “Tell me what you know.”

  She relayed what the doctor told her about the weekend in Vietnam. It made her sick to think her grandfather had been there while a woman was being victimized, let alone that he might’ve participated.

  Jess’s lips thinned.

  “He had to have been her son. The child of one of the men in that picture, though likely the doctor’s. Or he’s the one who killed the man.”

  “The body in the cave is a raped woman’s child?”

  Ellie said, “The doctor took his passport. I don’t know his name, it was in Vietnamese, but his picture was young. Maybe eighteen, certainly no more than twenty-one. He traveled all this way, figuring out how to bring a gun along with him. They killed him.”

  “Detective Wilcox told me the deceased was a young man, and there’s an indication he was shot multiple times.”

  Ellie squeezed her eyes shut. “Gilane killed his son.”

  “I didn’t know you’d seen more than the hand.”

  “I found the passport right before Mark made me dig for the gun.” She shook her head, still trying to figure it all out. “I’m sorry I hid it, but I was so worried about Grandpa’s part in it. What I don’t get is that Mark knew about there being a gun buried with the body. But he wasn’t old enough to have been there when the crime took place.”

  “We’ll figure it all out.” Jess said, “We have a theory that Gilane is Mark’s father, or his stepfather maybe. That gives us a connection between them. The doctor probably told him.”

  “Why would he do that?”

  “People confess for all kinds of reasons.” Jess shrugged. “Maybe he’d been drunk one night and said more than he’d wanted to.”

  “Then he’d have killed Mark, too.”

  “Maybe he brought him in on the secret. The way Pop did with his will.”

  Some gift that had been. He had to have known she would be in danger trying to uncover the secret. And she didn’t believe he’d thought that covering her with Dean’s protection by giving him the land surrounding the cabin would be a good enough plan.

  Had he really not thought it would come to this?

  She would never know what he’d left among his belongings, and at the cabin. It was all destroyed. But she’d managed to find the boy.

  Maybe that was enough.

  “It doesn’t matter what the doctor says when you guys find him,” Elle said. “Not when he could just lie through his teeth like he already has. Maybe Pop wasn’t there for any of it, and he found out later. He might’ve been so distraught over it that he hadn’t known before he was on his deathbed that he wanted me to put it right.”

  “After what happened to you?”

  “I’m sorry I never told you.”

  Jess shook her head, so much gentleness on her face. “I’m not. I mean, I’m glad the question has been answered
. But I didn’t have any kind of right to know. It’s your life.” She frowned. “I’m just sorry that Pop thought it was a good idea to give you this.”

  Ellie shook her head. “I’m glad he did. I’m still grateful that he trusted me, even if I may wind up wishing I’d never found out. It’s for the best.”

  Jess didn’t look convinced.

  “And I’m not writing a book about this.”

  Jess’s lips twitched.

  “There’s none of it that I want to relive. Not my own experience, or the time I spent in that cave, thinking I was going to die. Then believing I was safe, only to have the doctor drug me and turn on me. No one, especially not someone with control over whether people live or die, should get to make decisions that go against what a person wishes.”

  “Don’t do that. Don’t make it abstract.”

  “What if—”

  “Don’t, El. It’s not someone else’s life. It’s yours.”

  “He was going to kill me.”

  Her sister got up. She moved in close and held Ellie’s hand. “Say it.”

  “I didn’t want him to hurt me.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I don’t like it when it hurts.”

  “We’re going to catch him.”

  “You don’t know that.” Ellie shook her head. “I can’t protect myself.”

  “From everything? None of us can. That’s why we stick together. That’s why we have friends and family and emergency services.” Her sister squeezed her hand. “But it won’t work if you don’t stick around.”

  “I’ll be safer back at home, where Gilane can’t find me.”

  “That’s a gamble. Here, we’ll know you’re safe.” Jess said, “You think Dean went to all that trouble to get you back only to watch you leave. Or let you swing again, unprotected?”

  She wanted to say she didn’t care what Dean thought. Or what he wanted.

  But that wasn’t true, was it?

  She’d been awake for hours, and she hadn’t even seen him yet. “I don’t care.”

  Jess nearly laughed.

  “I mean it. I don’t care.”

  “When are you going to figure out that you care more than everyone? That’s why you became a teacher. Because you get to care, but from a safe distance.”