by J. S. Scott
“Thanks,” Dante answered distractedly, watching from the door as the police collected evidence, keeping his arm around Sarah’s waist for support.
Joe moved up beside him, supervising as his employees did the job they were trained to do. After a few moments of silence, Joe told Dante solemnly, “I’m sorry about your partner, son. It’s never easy to lose a friend.”
Dante shrugged. “It’s a rough district. Lots of homicide, most of it gang or drug related.”
“I did two tours in Vietnam, watched my buddies die one after another, sometimes right in front of my eyes,” Joe replied. “Amesport doesn’t see a lot of homicide, but I know what it’s like to lose a friend in the line of duty.”
Dante looked at Joe, astounded. “How the hell did you live through that?”
“One day at a time,” Joe replied thoughtfully. “When I got back from my second tour, I met Ruby, and she changed my life. The love of a good woman can do a lot for a man. I never forgot the friends I lost, but I try to honor them by living a good life. Amesport has been good to me.”
“Are you originally from here?” Dante asked curiously.
“Born and raised. Found Ruby here and she was all grown up when I came back home from Vietnam,” Joe answered with a smile.
They continued to watch the team work silently for a few minutes before Joe looked at Sarah. “You have any idea who would do this, Doc? Considering the circumstances, I think we have to assume that it could have something to do with what happened to you in Chicago.”
Sarah shuddered. “It could have been anyone. Maybe it was drug related, or troubled kids.”
Joe knew all about her history because the case in Chicago was still open. She’d given him the basics about the situation when she’d moved to Amesport.
“Looks like there was plenty of stuff that could have been sold for drug money, but they broke it instead. Sarah, I know it’s a scary possibility, but we need to be prepared. I need to put the force on alert for this guy. After the evidence is gathered, you can see if anything’s missing. But we have to consider the possibility,” Joe told her in a stern but kindly voice.
“What the hell are you talking about?” Dante demanded. “What happened in Chicago?”
“That’s for Sarah to share with you, son. If she hasn’t, then she doesn’t want to.”
Sarah shuddered, and her blood seemed to turn to ice. She didn’t want to think about that possibility at all. Moving to Amesport had been her escape. She was supposed to be safe here. However, her rational brain kicked in, and she knew she had to face facts. “I guess it’s possible.”
“I’ll get in touch with the Chicago police. See if they have anything new and let them know what happened here,” Joe said, his voice emanating regret.
“Will I be able to get back into my house?” Sarah asked, knowing she would probably never sleep a wink after what had happened here.
“No. Not right now. And you shouldn’t be alone,” Joe answered firmly.
“She won’t be. She’ll be with me,” Dante answered forcefully, the tone of his voice unyielding.
“I don’t have anything. No clothing—”
“We’ll get whatever you need. You can’t go in there right now. I don’t know exactly why your house was targeted, or what happened in Chicago, but somebody obviously wants you dead. This looks like something they did in a rage because they didn’t find you here.” Dante looked at Sarah with a pissed-off scowl. “You’re going to fill me in on who wants you dead.”
“You okay with that, Doc?” Joe questioned, looking at Sarah for confirmation.
“For tonight,” Sarah agreed, knowing she couldn’t get back into her house until the team was done collecting evidence and the mess was cleaned up.
Dante shot her a look that guaranteed they would argue later, but Sarah would worry about that once the trauma of seeing her house destroyed had passed. Right now she was still shaken, and she wasn’t able to reason anything out. All she wanted was the comfort of knowing Dante was close.
“Are you carrying, Detective Sinclair?” Joe scanned Dante’s body with his sharp brown eyes.
Dante reached behind him and slowly pulled the gun from his waistband. “In Los Angeles, I’m always carrying. I didn’t think it was necessary here. But I had my Beretta in the truck.” He handed the gun to Joe. “From now on, I’ll always be carrying.”
“So you’re a Beretta man,” Joe said, examining the weapon before handing it back to Dante.
“I have a Glock at home, too. Just so you know,” Dante informed him.
“I have no problem with you carrying, especially now that you’re looking after Sarah. Just watch yourselves and call me if anything out of the ordinary happens,” Joe advised.
The two men exchanged phone numbers before Dante took Sarah’s hand and starting leading her to the truck.
“Coco!” Sarah exclaimed. “I have to take her with me.”
The moment her pup heard her name, she was at Sarah’s feet. Dante leaned down and scooped her up with one hand. “I’ve got her.”
Sarah took Coco from Dante after she clambered into the passenger seat of his truck. The dog cuddled against her and laid her small head on Sarah’s chest, as though the animal knew that Sarah was distressed. She tightened her hold on her pet, feeling like she needed every bit of comfort she could get.
CHAPTER 8
Dante’s rage just kept rising to the surface as he looked through the police records of Sarah’s case. Just a few phone calls had gotten the information delivered to his personal computer. He didn’t give a shit if it was questionable that he was reviewing records while he wasn’t on duty, studying a case that wasn’t anywhere close to his own jurisdiction. He was a goddamn cop twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, and this was personal.
Sarah had been silent on the drive home and had spoken to him only to ask for one of his T-shirts to sleep in. She’d showered and retreated to a guest room, barely saying a word. For the first time since he’d met her, she looked fragile and terrified. Dante didn’t like it. He wanted to see her smiling again right fucking now.
Bastard!
Dante’s fist slammed onto the desk in his den, right on top of the image of the suspect. It didn’t help. He needed to hear the satisfying crack of facial bones breaking as he pummeled the bastard to death. After what he’d done to Sarah, he deserved it.
Gut instinct was telling Dante that this was the perpetrator behind the destruction of Sarah’s house. It all fit: the rage behind the crime, the destruction of personal property, and the violent message left behind. The fucker who had nearly killed her still wanted her dead.
No wonder she avoids hospitals now.
She’d told him during one of her home visits that she was seeing outpatients only. He’d never really questioned why Sarah didn’t admit patients to the hospital here in Amesport, why she turned their care over to another physician if they needed to be hospitalized. She was relatively new to the area, and he’d thought that maybe she just hadn’t gotten her admitting privileges yet.
She doesn’t want to go back into a hospital.
“Dante?” Sarah’s hesitant voice sounded near the doorway of the den.
He looked up and saw Sarah standing there in just his white T-shirt. She looked exhausted, and her expression was troubled. He wanted to hold her on his lap and wrap himself around her until she felt safe again. Feral impulses made him clench his fists on the desk, and he had to suppress the need to reach for her immediately. She was approaching him, and he needed to let her talk. “I thought you were sleeping.”
She shook her head slowly. “I couldn’t. I think you need to know what happened. You’re helping me. I don’t want you to go into this blind. You need to know everything. I’m sorry. I guess I just didn’t want to consider that this could be connected to something that happened in Chicago. But that’s not rational. Chances are, it is connected. Things like this just don’t happen in Amesport.”
She
’s coming to me. She trusts me.
Even though she didn’t want to talk about what happened, she was telling him about it to keep him from getting hurt because he didn’t have all of the information. For Dante, that was so much more meaningful than him having to confront her and finagle the story from her. He wanted to hear it from her, but he hadn’t wanted to push her. “Talk to me.”
He watched as she came into the room and settled herself in the comfortable leather chair in front of his desk, tucking her feet beneath her body before she took a big breath. “I was just ending my first year of practice in Chicago when I got a new patient, a nineteen-year-old boy. He’d been involved in a car accident, hit head-on by a drunk driver while his mother was driving. His mom died immediately, but Trey lived through it. He broke both of his legs, and he had other injuries, but he was young, and he slowly improved. He was in his first year of college and wanted to go to medical school. I ended up spending a lot of time with him. We had an orthopedic specialist on the case, but I was his admitting physician. I started making a habit of seeing him last on my hospital rounds so I could help him stay caught up on college work and help him with some of his biology studies. We became very fond of each other.”
“He developed a monstrous crush on you,” Dante told her quietly.
Sarah shook her head. “No. It wasn’t like that.”
“Sweetheart, it might not have been that way for you. But believe me, I was a nineteen-year-old kid once, and I know what’s primarily on the mind of a nineteen-year-old male.” Dante paused for a minute before adding, “You’re beautiful and kind, and were only a few years older than he was.”
Sarah shrugged. “He never acted inappropriately. He mostly talked about his ambitions to be a doctor.”
Dante could guarantee her the kid had his fantasies, but he prompted Sarah. “What happened?”
“I was helping him with some of his classwork one night about three weeks after the accident. His father was there, too. Trey wasn’t close to his dad, and he said he had a bad temper. Trey was closer to his mom, and he was still coping with losing her. That night, while I was there helping him with his biology, Trey died.” Sarah’s voice started to quiver with raw emotion, but she continued. “We coded him for over an hour, but he was gone. The postmortem showed a very large pulmonary embolism, even though we took all precautions because he was such high risk. The case was reviewed and all of the physicians on the case were cleared of any wrongdoing. It just . . . happened.” Her voice began to crack.
Dante looked at her tortured expression, his heart aching for her. How devastating must that experience have been when she knew the young patient so well, and was still in her first year of practice? She’d been so damn young. “His father blamed you,” Dante stated flatly.
“I don’t think he had anyone else to blame. His wife was dead, and the child who he thought was going to live after the accident ended up dying, too. I was there when it happened. I ran the whole code while we tried to resuscitate Trey and failed. The father had to be taken out of the room because he completely snapped. Telling him later that evening that his son was dead was one of the hardest things I’ve ever had to do. He was angry.”
“Two days later, he tried to kill you. I saw the police reports, Sarah,” Dante confessed.
Sarah squirmed in her chair and nodded sharply, repositioning her body in the other direction. “Trey’s father knew I took the stairs to the ICU every single evening. He saw me coming in and out of the doorway to the stairs often enough. Two days later, he caught me in the stairwell, on the landing between the second and third floor. Everything else that happened is a blur. When he attacked me, he slammed my head against the stone wall in the stairwell. All I remember is him screaming that I killed all of his family and I needed to die. I tried to fight him off, but I didn’t have much of a chance. He already had me on the ground, and as soon as he started stabbing me, I got even weaker from blood loss. The note he put on the wall of the cottage is the one thing I can remember him screaming over and over. ‘Die, bitch.’”
“Twenty goddamn times. Holy fuck. It’s a miracle that you’re still alive,” Dante rasped, trying to control his own homicidal urges at that moment. Granted, the man had lost his wife and son, but he’d taken his grief out on an innocent woman who had only tried to help his child. And the bastard had almost succeeded in killing her.
“Had one of the nurses not come down the stairwell at just the right time, I would have died that evening. John fled down the stairs and outside as soon as he heard somebody coming down the stairs. He hit an artery in my arm, and I would have bled to death very quickly from the wounds had I not already been in a hospital. The emergency crew there saved my life.”
“The police never caught him.” Dante met Sarah’s gaze, seeing nothing but sadness in her dark blue eyes, tears trailing down her cheeks.
“No,” she verified, swiping at her tears. “When I recovered, I couldn’t bring myself to go back into the hospital. After Trey died, I was already nauseous just from walking in the door. And after all of the wounds healed from John’s assault, I couldn’t even make myself go into the hospital. I started having panic attacks.”
Unable to control his instincts any longer, Dante got up and took Sarah’s hand, pulling her up and wrapping her in his arms. “Who took care of you?” Dante asked in a low, comforting voice as he ran his hand up and down her back. Christ. He wished he had been there for her then.
“My mother. I had an apartment in Chicago close to the hospital, but I stayed with her for a while after the incident. I think it was hard for her, too, because she wanted her independent, successful doctor daughter back. But I couldn’t seem to stop the panic attacks every time I tried to go back into the hospital, and I knew I needed a change. I started looking at smaller cities around the country that needed doctors, and I ended up here. I’ve always wanted to be on the coast, and when I found out how few doctors this town had, I thought it was perfect. I still haven’t been able to go into the hospital here, but I’ve been happy in Amesport until tonight. It was like starting over for me. I never really thought he’d come after me. I thought he attacked me in a fit of posttraumatic rage and grief. If John did this, then he still wants me to die.”
“It was him,” Dante rumbled, holding her trembling body just a little bit tighter. Fuck! Who could try to hurt this woman? Every instinct Dante had was screaming at him to protect her. Sarah walked around in her own intellectual bubble, and that asshole had broken it in the most horrifying of ways. Now, instead of just feeling isolated and lonely, she felt alone and afraid when she’d never done anything but good for other people. He didn’t know much about comforting a woman, but keeping her safe he could do. She was his to protect now—had been since he’d held her soft, responsive body earlier as she went to pieces in his arms.
“I know it’s him,” she sighed. “I can feel it in my gut. Nobody around here is crazy enough or hates me enough to have done what was done to my house. I knew as soon as I saw the message on the wall. It was the same thing he was screaming the night he stabbed me.”
Dante tried like hell not to form that picture in his mind. If he conjured up an image of a crazy man stabbing away at Sarah, he was going to lose it. “You know I’m going to be your shadow until we catch him,” Dante warned her.
“I need to go to work, take care of responsibilities—”
“Fine. Then that’s where I’ll be. Consider me your personal bodyguard. He’s here somewhere, and he knows where you live. Obviously, he knows where you work. It’s not a big city.”
“Oh God, my office—”
“Your office is fine. I called Joe once you went to bed, and he’d already been by your office. Everything is fine there,” Dante informed her calmly.
“Dante, I don’t want to get you involved in this. You already have enough on your plate right now.”
He was healing, and he didn’t give a shit about the rest of his issues. He didn’t have a single t
hing happening in his life that was more important than making sure Sarah didn’t get hurt. “I’m already involved and I plan on staying that way until John Thompson is either in jail or dead,” Dante growled, pulling his head back to give Sarah an obstinate look. “You don’t do anything without me. You don’t go anywhere without me. If you’re stepping outside, I want to know. I’m not trying to make you paranoid, but we know he’s in the area, and it won’t take him long to find you. We need to nail this asshole, Sarah. You won’t have a damn life until we do. I’d rather have you alive and pissed off at me than the alternative.” Dante couldn’t even bring himself to think about anything happening to Sarah. If she got hurt or worse, he’d lose what was left of his mind.
“This puts you in danger, too, and you still aren’t healed. I don’t like it,” Sarah told him stubbornly as she pulled away from him and sat on the arm of the chair, her arms folded across her breasts.
“You don’t have to like it,” Dante agreed readily. “You just have to deal with it. You’re a woman who deals mostly in reality. What’s your alternative? You know you need protection, and you know we need to catch this bastard.”
“I can leave. Move again. Go somewhere else and start over,” Sarah cried desperately. “It has to be better than taking the risk of someone else getting hurt.”
Dante looked down at her, noticing that her entire body was tense, and she seemed so exhausted that she wasn’t thinking rationally—for a change. “For how long? Until he catches up to you again? Is that the way you want to live your life . . . running away? I can tell you for a fact that it doesn’t work. Leaving Los Angeles didn’t make things hurt less, and it didn’t stop my grief over losing Patrick. I’m glad I came, but the only one who can resolve those issues is me. Location doesn’t make a damn bit of difference.”
“I have to do something,” she told him desperately.
“Don’t even try it,” Dante told her irritably. Leaning down, he put a hand on each side of her hips, looking her straight in the eye. “Wherever you go, I’ll find you. Wherever you move, I’ll figure out where you are and follow you.”