by Julie Miller
A soft knock on the door interrupted the mush fest. Kim, one of Lucy’s coworkers, opened the door to the private room and stuck her nose inside. “Hey, Lucy, your two o’clock is here.”
Lucy turned with a frown. “I didn’t know I had a two o’clock. Did Mrs. Weaver reschedule again?”
“Nope. It’s a guy. I didn’t recognize him. If he’s a client, he’s new.”
“New?” Lucy instinctively hugged Tommy closer, thinking of dark-haired men wielding knives and warning her to stop caring about finding Diana. “Is he wearing a leather jacket? Does he have black hair?”
Her friend with the short straight hair and freckles laughed. “Um, no. Try tall and blond. And he looks like he could bench press my car.”
“Oh, no.” Lucy felt the blood drain from her head down to her toes. She didn’t have to see the man to identify him. Too many phone calls begging for forgiveness these past few days practically confirmed it. Her dread was quickly replaced by a flood of anger. “Here. I need you to watch Tommy. Keep him in here, out of sight.”
She handed Tommy over to the other woman and apologized when his eyes opened and he stirred into wakefulness again.
“Is something wrong?” Kim asked, adjusting her grip to hold Tommy more securely. “I didn’t mean to upset you. Do you know this guy?”
“Unfortunately.”
“Sorry. I already told him I’d come get you, so he knows you’re here.” Kim juggled to keep hold of both the baby and the blanket Lucy had covered him with. “Otherwise I would have made up an excuse. I thought he was cute. You know, in a bad boy kind of way. Thought maybe he was a cop with news about Diana and that you’d want to see him.”
Lucy caught the blanket and tossed it over the edge of the bassinet she’d set up in the small room. A smidgen of hope tried to take hold that Kim could be right, but Lucy pushed it aside. The description was too accurate to be anyone but Roger. “Never be taken in by a pretty face, Kim.”
“Huh?”
Ignoring the question in her friend’s tone, Lucy smoothed her skirt over the tights she wore and tilted her chin above the collar of her turtleneck before closing the door and marching down the hallway. She didn’t need this visit. Not today. Not ever. But maybe Roger Campbell could put some unanswered questions to rest, and she could weed out a few of the facts regarding recent troubling events that might not have anything to do with Diana.
A fist of recognition robbed her of breath for a moment when she saw the familiar face that had once haunted her nightmares. Roger Campbell stood from the chair where he sat beside her desk and pulled off the ball cap he wore. “Luce. It’s good to see you.”
The feeling wasn’t mutual. His hair was ridiculously short, his face a little more careworn than she remembered from that last day in court and a new tattoo on his forearm marked his time in prison. A black-and-blue circle beneath one eye made her think he’d had a recent run-in with someone’s fist. But the playful wink from the uninjured eye reminded her he thought he was still big, bad, I-own-this-town Roger Campbell.
“Say your apology and get out here.” She picked up a pen from the calendar on her desk. “Do I need to sign off on something for your parole officer? That you apologized to your victim?”
He chuckled and sat without any invitation to do so. “Luce, this isn’t about my parole. This is important to me, personally. I learned a lot about earning forgiveness in prison. I’ve taken more anger-management courses than you can imagine. I know I hurt you. But I’ve made peace with what I’ve done, and I’ll never let it happen again. I’m a different man.”
Lucy tossed the pen onto her desk and propped her hands at her waist. “Yeah, well, I’m the same woman. Damaged beyond repair because of you. I didn’t want anything to do with you then, and I don’t want anything to do with you now.”
“Look, I know I made it so you can’t have babies. I remember you testifying about that in court, so I know that’s important to you. But I’m gonna make up for that.”
“Make up...” The nerve. The ego. She shook her head in disbelief. “You can’t.”
“This is for you as much as me. You have to forgive me.”
“No, I don’t.” When she realized the sharpness in her voice was drawing the attention of others at the sea of workstations across the room, Lucy pulled out her chair and sat. She lowered her volume if not the frostiness of her tone. “I mean, maybe I already have—there’s no sense letting you have that kind of power over me. But I’ll never forget. I’ll never trust you. Plus, I’ve moved on. Falls City isn’t part of my life anymore. My mother isn’t. You aren’t. I’ve made a life for myself here in Kansas City. A pretty decent one. And I don’t want you to be any part of it. I don’t wish you any harm, Roger. I just want you to go away.”
“Stubborn as ever, aren’t you, sweet thing. Is there someone else?”
“Why? Are you jealous?” She turned her chair toward him, growing a little more wary when he didn’t answer. “Come on, Roger. You don’t really have feelings for me. I don’t even think you did back when we were dating. Those were teenage hormones running amok, your sense of entitlement and ungodly pressure from your father that made you—”
“A bastard?” He studied the ball cap he twirled between his fingers as he worked through that admission. Then his nostrils flared with a deep breath, and he nodded to the bandage on her forehead. “Does he treat you right? This guy you’re with now?”
“How he treats me is none of your business. Nothing about me is any of your business.” Although the relationship she was defending didn’t exist, there was a tall, dark-haired ME in her heart that no one from her past would ever be allowed to malign. Lucy got up and headed toward the building’s front exit. “I’ll show you to the door.”
She heard the chair creaking behind her as he got up to follow. “Luce, if he’s hurt you, I can—”
The fact that he would dare to touch her incensed her fight-or-flight response. Lucy smacked his hand away.
She waved aside the security guard who stood at the front desk. She could deal with this. Lucy McKane could deal with anything, right? She had to. Pushing open the glass front door, she stepped outside onto the concrete stoop. The brisk wind whipped her hair across her face and cut right through her clothes to make her shiver. Maybe Roger had developed a conscience while serving his sentence, but alleviating any regrets he might have or assisting with the atonement he wanted to make wasn’t her responsibility. “You can do nothing for me. Except leave.” She crossed her arms against the chilly breeze and moved to the top of the steps leading down to the parking lot. “I want to see you get into your car and drive away.”
“Look, I know guys in prison who are so obsessed with their girlfriend—or kid or wife or whatever—that they killed the very person they loved. I don’t want to see that happen to you.”
“You’re the only man who ever beat me up and left me for dead, Roger. Goodbye.”
“Look, Luce, I’m only trying to make amends.” He actually thought there was something he could do to make up for robbing her of her ability to bear children? “I saw a guy lurking around your building the other night. Had words with him. I could tell he didn’t belong there. I just want to know it’s not him who did that to you.”
Lucy’s eyes widened. “You know where I live?”
“I knew where you worked, and I followed you home one day last week. I’ve been keeping an eye on you ever since.”
And he was worried about some other guy stalking her? “Never do that again or I’ll call the police.”
“If it is him who hurt you, that ain’t right. Look, I learned some skills in prison I’m not proud of, but if you need me to have another conversation with this guy, I can make him stop.”
“Another...” Lucy grabbed the cold steel railing and leaned against it. “My life is none of your busine
ss.”
He shrugged his big shoulders, apparently impervious to the wind and her outrage. “I sat outside for a few hours, hoping to catch you coming or going. I fell asleep in my car. Woke up to see you running after that guy from the other night. Thought maybe you two had had a fight. I tried to have a conversation with him. He wasn’t interested in listening.” Roger tapped his cheek. “That’s how I got this. By the time I was back on my feet, I saw you with that guy with the glasses and figured...”
“Wait. Go back.” Lucy put up her hand to stop his rambling. “You saw him?”
“Yeah. Tall guy with glasses and no shoes. He was bookin’ it across the yard.”
“No. The driver of the silver car. The man I was chasing. Can you describe him?”
“Black hair. Eyes so dark they looked black, too. Cussed at me in some language I didn’t understand. He’s not from around here.”
Wind wasn’t what chilled her blood now. “Did you see a dark-haired woman with him? Younger than me?”
“No.”
“Was the man injured? Did you see any blood on him?”
He shook his head. Lucy needed a better witness than Roger Campbell. Had he seen the man who’d attacked her or not?
“Can you tell me what kind of car he drove?”
This time Roger nodded, his frown suggesting that she was missing the point. “Look, he was nosing around your car before he went into the building. When he came back out, I stood up for you. At least until he pulled a knife on me. Hell, I even followed him out to Independence, until I lost him somewhere along Truman Road. You gotta give me credit for that. I’ll make him go away if that’s what you want.”
“So you hit a guy. He hit you back. I don’t need that kind of protection, Roger. I need answers. If you can’t tell me anything else, tell me about the car.”
He shrugged. “Silver Chevy Camaro 2LS. Recent model. Two door.”
“Did you see the license plate? Do you remember it?”
“Didn’t think to look. I was busy trying to get out of his way before he ran me over.” Lucy was already pulling her cell phone from the pocket of her skirt when Roger reached over to squeeze her shoulder. “What kind of trouble are you in?”
She shrugged off his touch. “Nothing I need your help with. Apology accepted. Please don’t try to do me any favors anymore.” Maybe that silver car hadn’t been racing toward her. Maybe the driver had been speeding to get away from Roger. But she’d seen that car before, and the driver must want something from her. “Go back to Falls City, Roger. Don’t contact me again or I’ll call the police. Just get in your car and drive away.”
He considered her request for a moment, then put his black ball cap back on his nearly shaved head and trudged on down the steps. “Whatever you say. I’m just sayin’ I know trouble when I see it—”
“Goodbye, Roger.”
Lucy stood there to verify that one, Roger was indeed leaving, and two, that it wasn’t in any silver car. Learning that Roger knew where she and Tommy were living, and that someone else, perhaps even more sinister than the bully Roger Campbell had been, also knew her home address, shook the ground under her feet. There were too many threats hiding in the fringes of her life, and thus far, she hadn’t been able to pinpoint one of them. Roger hadn’t given her much of a lead, but it was something.
She pulled up the numbers on her phone and called Niall.
He picked up after one ring. “Lucy?”
A single word in that deep, resonant tone shouldn’t be enough to soothe her troubled heart. But it did. “Did I wake you?”
“What’s wrong? Are you all right? Is Tommy?” She heard movement in the background. Was he searching for his glasses on the nightstand? Unlocking his gun from the metal box in his closet or doing whatever the man did when he thought there was an emergency?
Her mouth curved with a wry grin as she headed back into the building. “Why do you assume that something is wrong? Am I that much of a train wreck?” When he didn’t answer, Lucy paused in the lobby, the embarrassing truth heating her cheeks. She started talking, needing to fill the silence. “Okay, fine. I just had a visit from Roger Campbell.”
The noises in the background stopped. “The man who put you in the hospital? The man harassing you on your answering machine at work?”
So her brainy savior had pieced all that together, too. “Yes. That’s him. He wanted to apologize for hurting me.”
“Do you need me there to get rid of him? A guy on parole doesn’t want to see a man with a badge.”
“No. I managed that myself. But thanks for asking.” She hurried through the maze of desks toward the back hallway and the room where Kim was watching Tommy for her. “Besides, you’re supposed to be sleeping.”
“I was going over a DNA report from the lab on my laptop.”
“DNA?”
“Tommy’s blood sample matched the DNA we got off the screwdriver used to break into your apartment. Diana Kozlow’s. She’s his mother.”
Lucy pushed open the door to find Kim singing a country song to Tommy. She smiled as the baby batted at her friend’s moving lips, fascinated by the movement and sound. Diana loved music like that, too. Well, maybe a different genre. She was just as curious about the world around her. At least, she had been when she’d lived with Lucy. She couldn’t imagine loving that little squirt any more than she already did. But her heart swelled at Niall’s words. “You’re not telling me anything I didn’t already know.”
“Yeah, well, now I know it, too. I said I’d be there at five to pick you up when you got off work. If Campbell’s not a problem, why did you call me?”
To hear his voice. To let his coolly rational strength remind her that she wasn’t the victim of her mother’s machinations or the evils of Falls City anymore. To remind herself that she wasn’t alone in her quest to find the truth—that she had an ally she could depend on without question—albeit a temporary one. But she couldn’t tell him any of that. The big galoot probably wouldn’t understand.
Lucy winked at Kim and quietly closed the door to finish the conversation. “I have a lead on finding Diana. Or at least on identifying the man who attacked me at the hospital.”
“From Roger Campbell?”
“Yes. He... I think he was one of the men fighting outside the laundry room this past weekend. He said he’s keeping me safe, making up for what he did to me.” Was there any other humiliating, sordid, painful element from her past that she hadn’t confessed to this good man? “Niall, I don’t want his protection.”
“I’m on my way.”
* * *
NIALL DIDN’T LET Lucy out of his sight for the next five hours. The research he’d done on Roger Campbell led him to the conclusion that he didn’t want the man anywhere near her, even if he could provide missing information on their investigation. Not only had the teenage Campbell kicked and beaten Lucy severely enough to break ribs and cause enough internal hemorrhaging to destroy her ovaries and necessitate the removal of her spleen—the crime for which he’d been sentenced—but he’d been involved with more aggravated assaults in prison, extending his time. Niall couldn’t believe that Roger Campbell’s motives now were altruistic. Too much violence, too many people who didn’t value her for the unique treasure she was, had touched Lucy’s life already. He couldn’t allow it to touch her again. Not for Lucy’s sake. Not for Tommy’s. Not for his own.
Now, cocooned inside his apartment by the starry night outside, Niall watched her giving Tommy a bath in a small inclined tub in the kitchen sink. He was considering calling in sick and letting someone else take his shift at the lab because it made him crazy to think of her and Tommy alone here, having to face the threat of Roger Campbell’s unwanted surveillance along with the possibility of the man who’d struck her hard enough to require stitches coming back to take his intimidation t
actics to a deadlier level.
He no longer had doubts that Diana Kozlow was in serious danger. Whatever mess the young woman had gotten herself into had now touched her baby’s life and Lucy’s. He had no answers yet, either. And for Niall, that was equally unacceptable.
He glanced over at the clock on the stove, knowing he had to head to work in just a few minutes. But leaving behind a giggling baby with suds on his tummy and a woman with a matching dollop of bubbles on her left cheek didn’t feel right. The autopsy lab was hardly the place to invite a woman and child to spend the night. And though there was a cot in his office to catch a nap during extra-long shifts, he couldn’t confine them there as if they were under house arrest, either.
Keir was working on tracking down the silver car Lucy had described in detail. Duff was following up on the shooting at the church, running a long-shot check on the spent casings the CSI team had recovered in the organ loft. Maybe he could find the shop where they’d been purchased and track down the identity, or at least an image from a security camera, of the shooter. His father and Millie were busy reorganizing the house to accommodate Seamus and his wheelchair, as well as the arrival of the nurse they’d hired, Jane Boyle, and all her equipment, when the two of them moved in the following week.
Although a carpenter from the building’s maintenance crew had worked on rebuilding the door frame leading into Lucy’s apartment this afternoon, Niall wasn’t prepared to let her move back across the hall with Tommy until the job had been completed. He wasn’t ready to let her and Tommy leave, period, not when he knew she was impulsive enough to follow a lead on her own if Diana Kozlow should call. Lucy didn’t seem to believe that he considered them to be a team, and that that meant they should pursue any leads together. She didn’t seem to understand his need for her to stop chasing bad guys who wanted to run her down with cars or bash in her head. He didn’t know how to make her understand how it upset the balance of his life when he heard things like her meeting up with the man who had once assaulted her.