by Alison Bruce
I could see the anger drain away, pushed aside by concern.
“And you?” he asked.
“For now I’ll be here, safe and sound.”
CHAPTER 15
The next day I called Walter for a ride home.
“Where’s your boyfriend?” he asked, holding the door open for me as my nurse helped me out of the wheelchair.
I punched him in the arm.
“What?”
“Rick was boarding with me. That’s all. Anything else is a figment of your—and possibly his—imagination.”
My nurse managed to keep a straight face, for which I was thankful. Although I couldn’t remember his name, we got quite buddy-buddy during my hospital stay. He had a pretty good notion that Rick’s attentions were not entirely unwelcome. Can’t blame a girl for enjoying the attention.
Once we were underway, I brought Walter up to date.
“Rick moved out,” I announced. “After almost getting killed twice because someone wants him dead, I decided that it was time for him to go.”
“Who wants him dead?”
“Who knows?” I said with a shrug that didn’t hurt as much as I expected. I knew that wouldn’t be enough for Walter and was ready with the official story. “Before taking time off to finish his Master’s, he worked undercover. No doubt he pissed off a lot of people. They’re trying to narrow it down. Staying with me actually confused things for a while. The police thought the attempts were related to my case and I was the prime target. Now it’s clear that I was just in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
“Does this mean your case is closed?” Walter asked.
“I don’t suppose it will be fully closed until they catch the culprit, but it’s been pushed to the backburner again.”
A thoughtful silence fell. Well, I was thinking. Who knows about Walter. I’ve been told that men can actually think of nothing for more than a few seconds at a time. Amongst other things, I was thinking about a cup of tea and my own bed. The checkout procedure at the hospital had drained me of what little energy I had. But there was one more issue to cover.
“Walter, I don’t want to make a big fuss about this, but it would be really helpful if you could write down whatever you remember about the times you saw Rick at the house last year.”
“The police are suspicious?”
I shook my head. “I haven’t taken it to them yet. I want to reassure myself first. Maybe talk to Seth.”
Another silence fell. Eventually Walter made a conversational gambit. “I suppose your kids will be home soon.”
“Not until after Christmas,” I said, sounding every bit as pathetic as I felt. “Before we realized that Rick was the target, Seth and I arranged for them to stay at his family’s farm. I miss them, but they need some stability and I can’t give it to them right now.”
“What about their father?”
I suppressed a snort. Sarah was a good person, but she preferred quiet and order in her home. You didn’t get that with twin preteens.
“Seth and Sarah have done what they can.”
We were almost home.
“Do you need to pick up anything on the way home?” Walter asked.
I shook my head.
“My pharmacy will be delivering my prescription. I asked them to add some milk and eggs and deliver that too.”
“They’ll do that?”
I chuckled. “Not for everyone. Between Boone’s allergies and then my mishaps this past year, we’ve developed a good relationship.”
“I guess every cloud does have a silver lining.”
“Ain’t that the truth,” I said. Kallas was doing some grocery shopping for me later. Merrick was bringing in dinner. Seth was going to check up on me tomorrow. I was well taken care of.
Walter helped me to my door. I didn’t invite him in. Wasn’t up to it. I’d left my flowers at the hospital so I only had a couple of bags and my pack to contend with. I dropped them on the kitchen table and started the kettle to make tea. While I waited for the water to boil, I checked all the doors and windows to make sure they were secure. Chains and deadbolts were set. Soon, tea, my pack, and I were headed upstairs to bed. Tomorrow, maybe the next day, I’d be productive. Today I had done all I intended to do.
* * *
It took a few days for me to find my feet, as it were. However, on Monday I set out bright and early with my pack. As usual, Walter was up before me, cleaning our front yards of the night’s windfalls. It was too late for gardening, and there had been no snow to remove, but I could count on him to be out front, keeping an eye on the neighbourhood.
“Going out on a Monday?” His inflection making it clear that it was not a rhetorical question.
“As you see,” I replied. “I’m splurging and allowing myself an extra day out for coffee while the kids are away. To be honest, hanging around the house is kind of depressing.” I gave him a self-deprecating shrug. “I guess I got used to the chaos of a full house.”
With the sidewalks dry, I was able to set off at a brisk pace. Once I turned off our street, I attempted a slow run. It only lasted a block, but it was a start. Rick would be pleased. As he pointed out, sometimes you have to run.
Self-defence classes had been suspended for the foreseeable future. That left me with a gap in my fitness regimen. To fill it, I joined the gym at the mall. Since I didn’t have to get the kids off to school, I could make an early start and workout for an hour before settling down with my coffee and laptop at Starbucks.
Okay, the hour included getting changed and a visit to the whirlpool after my physiotherapist-approved exercises—the whirlpool was the selling point—but I could also power-walk to and from home. That had to count for something, right? The important thing was that I established a routine.
On Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays I was as predictable as Walter. On the other days, I took advantage of the fact that I didn’t have to arrange my life to fit my children’s schedules. I took Mom out for lunch one day, met Paula for dinner between school and rehearsals on another. Kallas and I did coffee and I met Merrick for lunch a few times a week, which was the best part of my regimen. Unfortunately, the one place I wanted to go, I couldn’t. I couldn’t risk visiting Hope and Boone, just in case.
“How are you holding up?” Merrick asked.
We were waiting for Bento boxes in a Japanese restaurant on the Danforth in Toronto.
“I’m hanging in there,” I said, not sounding at all convincing. “I miss my babies.”
He covered one of my hands with his. Our eyes met, and I think he was going to say something, but then our miso soup arrived.
“It’ll be over soon,” he promised, giving my hand a squeeze before letting it go. “Meanwhile, Hope and Boone are safe and happy—except for missing you.”
I nodded. I knew this. We exchanged emails every day and they phoned two or three times a week.
“I might have trouble getting them to come home,” I said, forcing myself to sound lighthearted. “They’re having a ball. Making new friends. I think Hope has a new crush.”
He gave me one of those almost smiles he used when he didn’t want to display too much emotion.
“They’ll go wherever you go.”
“Maybe I’m ready for a change too,” I said. “My house doesn’t feel much like a home anymore.”
I picked up my bowl of soup and hid behind it—not too successfully, I might add. After keeping up appearances for so long, I was having trouble managing my emotions.
“Hartley?”
I gave a tiny shake of my head and concentrated my attention on taking a careful sip of the hot soup. The salty-sweet warmth helped.
“Sorry. I’m just feeling sorry for myself. Not a productive emotion.” I forced a smile, and then finished off the small bowl, setting it down with deliberation. “I love my house, especially now that it’s so clean and well-ordered, it’s just . . .”
“It’s too clean and well-ordered?”
I chuckled and s
hook my head.
“Not that,” I assured him. “It’s just that without my family filling it up, it’s awfully empty. I think I liked it best in the fall when I had the kids, Nate and Rick all crowded in with me. At least then I was too busy to worry. It’s especially tough with Christmas approaching.”
The server took our bowls away and presented us with our Bento boxes. Merrick wisely turned the subject to discussing how good everything looked. Then he negotiated a trade—his sushi for my spring roll. Not a raw fish man.
After lunch, we lingered over cups of jasmine tea. We kept it light and discussed trivial topics like world politics and the price of gas. Finally, one of us noticed the time.
“You probably need to get back to work,” I said.
“You probably should try to beat rush-hour traffic.”
Neither of us moved.
“I have something for you,” Merrick said, digging into his suit pocket.
He produced a lumpy, handmade-paper envelope. Our bill arrived. Merrick pushed his credit card across the table toward the server and the envelope toward me.
“With all the wounds you’ve sustained, I thought this would be appropriate.”
The vanilla-coloured envelope was square, heavy-weight, and its flap tucked into a slit. I opened it to find a folded piece of gold tissue paper. When I pulled out the tissue, something else fell out. It was a heart-shaped, gem-cut amethyst pendant. It sat in a simple claw setting on a silver chain.
I held it up.
“It’s beautiful,” I said, feeling a bit awkward at being given an unprecedented gift. Then it hit me. “It’s a purple heart.”
A grin pulled at one side of Merrick’s mouth and one eyebrow lifted.
“As I said, appropriate—even if it is inspired by an American military award.”
He helped me with the clasp, then my coat and scarf. As soon as we were out of the confines of the narrow restaurant, I wrapped my arms around his neck, pulling myself up on tippy-toes to properly kiss his cheek. With only a moment’s hesitation, he returned my embrace. For a minute or so, he held me and I could feel the heat of a blush on his face. Pedestrians on Danforth flowed around us like a river past a weir.
“Thank you,” I whispered. “For this and everything.”
He set me down gently. His demeanour was as stoic as my Vulcan marine’s, but a faint blush still coloured his cheeks and his eyes were soft—contrary to the rest of his body.
He touched the pendant, lightly brushing my skin.
“That, and almost everything else,” he assured me, “has been a pleasure.”
CHAPTER 16
I was beginning to think nothing would happen. It reminded me of waiting to go into labour. The twins were late, of course. Seth made an inappropriate comment about whales having a ten-month gestation period and killer whales being pregnant even longer. It had been ten months now, and it was almost Christmas. I wanted my life back.
The only people I saw during my coffee-work sessions at Starbucks were the usual people—the baristas, clients, and friends who happened to be in the neighbourhood and stopped by my table. There were no exotic strangers, like the guy who wound up dead in my living room, or ersatz fans, like the woman who gave me a suspect business card—who had apparently disappeared off the face of the earth, by the way. That’s not suspicious, is it?
But I wasn’t looking for a stranger, was I? The stranger had tried to kill his way to the boss, maybe to extort more money or take over the operation. We’d never know. Whoever usually handed off the cards would be someone I saw but never really noticed.
My stay in hospital had given me time to think about the set-up. I couldn’t assume I was the only conduit used. There might be other unwitting carriers or possibly drop-sites. There might also be more than one courier who knew me, and where and when to find me. Not many more. I was a protected asset, one with a personal connection to the boss. It was the best explanation for the facts we had.
So, I was looking for a familiar face. And I couldn’t look as if I was looking.
A week after receiving my purple heart, I spotted him. He looked like an accountant who jogged in his spare time. I saw him about once a month. He always came in with a stack of paperwork, which occupied him through a couple of cups of coffee. Although he never approached me directly, a couple of times I saw him hovering around my table when I was coming back from the bathroom or picking up a second latte.
This wasn’t unusual. Lots of people were curious about what I was doing. I’ve found, next to pushing a baby carriage or walking a dog, an open laptop is a reliable attention-getter. For some, it acts like an invitation to stop and chat. At the very least, just as with babies, people feel compelled to look.
I was just as bad. I had snuck a look at his papers in the past. They looked like sales figures, so I deduced that he was a regional sales manager. That would explain the paperwork and the periodic but infrequent visits.
Maybe that was exactly what he was. Or maybe not.
Merrick warned me that I had to behave normally, no matter what. That was the only way to catch our culprit, and it was my best chance to stay safe. This meant I had to nab my favourite table and set up my laptop while I waited for my latte to be made. One hitch. Someone had already taken my favourite table.
Fortunately, the couple there had takeout cups and hadn’t really settled in. I expected them to leave as soon as the mall opened. Meanwhile, I lurked on a bar stool, nursing my latte and waiting for my chance to pounce. When I got restless, I looked at the holiday product line and compared the features on the espresso machines they were selling to the one I had at home.
They moved. A second later, my coat was on the back of one of the still warm chairs. I bussed the table, then brought my pack and latte over. When I started to unpack my laptop, my attention flicked over to the maybe sales manager. He was watching me, lips pressed together. Our eyes met and he winked.
I decided that he was amused by my manoeuvring. That was the safest explanation. I could already feel my anxiety level rising and it didn’t need any help from my imagination.
Since I wasn’t going to be able to concentrate on work right away, I decided to log on and check my email. That led to looking up extraneous background information that probably wouldn’t find its way into a story but would fill out my notes. It wasn’t an unproductive activity. By the time my Internet research had led me from designer genes to the many uses of psychoactive drugs, I was ready for my second cup and first washroom break.
I lined up to order a vanilla latte, then went to the washroom while it was being made. When I was done, I took the scenic route back to my table, via the adjacent bookstore. The man who was probably not a sales manager was leaving my table.
Bingo.
I picked up my coffee and went back to work. An innocuous message to Merrick informed him that the game might be afoot. Now I just had to wait for further instruction.
Anticipation of what would come next didn’t exactly make it easy to get down to work. After staring at my screen for a few minutes, I gave up. I opened one of my many story rejects. It was a quick read and well deserved rejection. I moved on to another. Midway through my third short story, I had mail. It was from the General Hospital.
“Your follow-up X-rays are scheduled for 11:45. Please report to Imaging.”
Eleven forty-five.
That was in less than fifteen minutes.
“Shit,” I muttered.
I gulped down the last of my latte and packed up. Naturally, my power cord got tangled and I almost knocked my cup off the table. I made a great save. One of the baristas was bussing the tables. He stepped in and took the cup from me before something else happened.
“Everything okay, Pru?”
He was one of a handful of staff that knew my name and my favourite drinks.
“Yeah, I’m just running late. Forgot an appointment.”
I flashed a quick smile and headed for the door. I had ten minutes to make
a fifteen-minute trip—twenty-minute trip if the lights went against me. Of course, maybe getting there on time wasn’t that important. I was pretty damned sure that the hospital hadn’t sent out the notification. Still.
It wasn’t until I was out the door that I remembered an important detail. I had walked to the mall. It would take me at least ten minutes to power-walk home. I’d have to run and it would be faster if I cut through the mall. I turned to open the door again when I heard a car horn toot.
A taxi pulled up and leaned across to speak to me through his open passenger side window.
“Ms. Hartley?”
“Yes?”
“You need a ride to the hospital?”
I crouched down and looked into the cab. Zeke grinned back at me. I hopped into the front seat.
“How? When?” I sputtered.
“Seatbelt first.”
I secured my seatbelt. The window beside me raised. Zeke rolled on.
“Explain,” I demanded. “Have you been lurking, waiting for a call?”
Zeke chuckled.
“I was just in the right place at the right time.”
“With a taxi,” I said.
“I guess you could say that the taxi has been lurking. Someone’s been on call nine to noon, Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays for the last few weeks. You must have known that.”
“Merrick said I’d have backup when I needed it,” I said, giving a half shrug. “I wasn’t expecting you. I thought you were busy with another case.”
“I was in the neighbourhood.”
I waited, letting my silence serve as a vacuum for him to fill.
“You know if I told you . . .”
“You’d have to kill me,” I finished for him.
The hospital appeared on our right. He turned into the entry for emergency and out-patient services. “There you go ma’am.”
“You’re not coming in with me?”
He shook his head. “I’ll see you soon.”