Embattled Home

by J. M. Madden

  Her mother had taught her to be independent. And now, the thought of giving up that independence was abhorrent to her. But she would do it. For the sake of her child, she would do it.

  “Okay. We’ll accept your help. For now.”

  Chad nodded. He had known what her answer would be. “We’ll try to be as unobtrusive as possible, but if anything seems out of the ordinary we will make ourselves known, so you may want to say something to Mercedes. I don’t know what you’ve told her about your situation, but you may want to think about having a little talk with her. She’s going to ask questions anyway when she sees you.”

  “Mercy,” she murmured. “Not Mercedes.”

  Chad gave her a nod. “Mercy.”

  Lora sighed at the thought of explaining everything to her sharp-eyed little girl. She was already protective of her. Recently, Mercy had started to show signs of anxiety, not eating correctly and coming into her room at night. Lora knew she fed off of her own worries, which made her guilt all the heavier to bear. It was a vicious cycle.

  She dropped down the visor mirror in front of her, then flipped it right back up, disgusted. Nothing she could do to change it anyway. When she got to the house, she’d just have to try to smile her way around her daughter’s fears.

  All of that went out the window when they pulled into her driveway and there was an unfamiliar black Town Car parked there. Before she could get her seat belt off, the front door of her house opened and Derek’s mother walked out, carrying her crying daughter. The sitter scurried along behind, cell phone to her ear. She was obviously pleading with the older woman not to leave yet and talking to somebody else on the other line at the same time.

  Lora saw red. Before the car had even come to a stop she was out of the vehicle and running across her yard. All of her hurts were shoved to the side as she rushed to her daughter.

  Mrs. Malone saw her coming and pasted a smile to her glossy mouth. “Lora, what a nice surprise.”

  “Get your hands off my daughter.”

  The smile stayed on the older woman’s mouth, but her eyes chilled. “Well, dear, she’s my granddaughter too, you know. I was merely helping you out while you were indisposed.”

  Lora grabbed Mercy and pulled her into her arms. The little girl burrowed into her neck, sobbing.

  The sitter, Heather, rushed to them, crying. “She tried to say she had temporary custody, Lora. I was trying to call you, then I was going to call the police.”

  Mrs. Malone flashed the woman a scorching look. “I’m her grandmother, you twit. I am allowed to see the child whenever I want.”

  “No,” Lora snapped. “You’re not. Not unless I say, and I most definitely didn’t.”

  The older woman smoothed a hand down her black dress as if she hadn’t a care in the world. The arrogance on her face was enough that Lora almost laid into her. But then she’d be no better than Derek.

  “I want to see my granddaughter, Lora.”

  For a second, there was a flash of honesty in the woman’s face, and genuine pleading, but Lora didn’t let that sway her. “Mercy will never be allowed into your home, not as long as Derek is a part of your life. Do you see what he did to me?”

  She stepped into the other woman’s space, making sure Rosalind got a good view of the ten different shades of color around Lora’s swollen eye. Rosalind’s gaze flickered and she looked away. “I’m sure if you had spoken with him like he requested months ago it wouldn’t have come to that.”

  Lora snorted in disbelief. “It’s just so natural for you to come to his rescue. Leave, Rosalind.” Cradling her daughter, Lora backed away from the older woman.

  Rosalind lifted her hand to stroke down Mercy’s back, then folded it away against her stomach. “You need to realize, Lora, that I will be in my granddaughter’s life, and so will her father, whether you want us to be or not.”

  She lifted her chin and walked to the Town Car. The driver didn’t have time to get out to open her door before she was inside and waving at him to drive.

  Chad stood on the concrete watching the car pull away. He’d been a solid warmth behind her when she confronted Derek’s mother and she appreciated the fact that he had let her confront the woman on her own. It wasn’t until the black car was out of sight that she let herself sink to the ground.

  Mercy’s crying started to lessen, until she leaned back and saw her mother’s face. Then the sobs started again.

  Lora held her daughter as tight as she dared and whispered that she was okay into Mercy’s tiny little ear.

  Chad called Duncan as soon as the car disappeared and related what had happened.

  “So, she planned to sneak out with the girl while Lora was incapacitated. Isn’t she sweet?”

  Chad snorted. “If you had seen this piece of work, you would have known she wasn’t sweet. That woman could make the devil sweat, if you ask me. She was not happy to be thwarted, let me tell you.”

  Duncan sighed on the other end of the line. “Well, we’ll step up with the protection then. Did you clear it all with her?”

  “Kind of. She’s not happy about it but I think she’ll be more accepting of it now.” Chad shifted on his feet, feeling like he needed to reach out to the little girl. She was sobbing as if her little heart were broken. Lora rocked her back and forth on the cement sidewalk, talking to her softly. The sitter stood by, wringing her hands.

  Lora stood to adjust the little girl to her hip.

  “I need to go, Dunc. I’ll call you back in a while.”

  “Okay. Keep your eyes open.”

  “Always.”

  Little Mercy had calmed somewhat. She surveyed her mother’s injuries with fear in her eyes, though. “Did Derek do that?”

  Lora’s eyes darkened, but her chin tipped up. “Yes, he did, honey. But I’m okay now. Did your grandmother say where you were going?”

  Mercy’s little chin quivered as she shook her head back and forth. “No, but she said we were going on a trip. And she wouldn’t let me bring ‘ansom.”

  Chad frowned at the word. Ransom?

  “Well, I’m sure Handsome would have been very upset if you had gone on a trip without him.”

  Mercy nodded. “I told her that but she wouldn’t listen. She kept saying we need to go, we need to go. And she yelled at Heather.”

  Lora looked up at the sitter, who still looked upset. “What did she say to you?”

  Chad stepped up behind them. “Let’s go into the house to talk about this. Get out of the view of the neighbors.”

  Lora didn’t say a word, but she did wrap her girl into her arms and walk into the house. The sitter, Heather, looked at him with fear in her eyes. Chad held out his hand. “Chad Lowell. I’ll be watching over Lora and Miss Mercy for a while.”

  The emotion in the woman’s eyes eased but she didn’t reach out for his hand. She crossed her arms over her narrow chest and turned to follow Lora inside. Chad frowned at the look she tossed him over her shoulder, as if he were going to attack her from behind.

  A chill settled in his gut. He’d seen behavior like that before in his own family, from his sister. She’d married young and had children young, and been a battered wife by her early twenties. Lora and Heather both had that look in their eyes.

  Inside the house, the sitter had obviously tried to put the rooms to rights. The potting soil had been swept from the carpet and the blood was gone from the walls. The back patio glass slider was still a gaping, open wound though.

  “Do you have any plywood or anything big enough to cover the hole?”

  Lora shook her head, settling onto the couch. Mercy was still wrapped around her mother like a little monkey, but Chad got the impression that the little girl was doing it for her mother.

  Chad pulled his phone from his pocket, swiping the screen. He thumbed out a text message and sent it. Almost immediately the phone buzzed in his hand with a response from Roger. He would be here within an hour.

  Chad motioned for the sitter to have a seat. “
Can you tell me what happened, Heather?”

  The woman was actually older than Chad first thought. A little more experienced.

  “She knocked on the door, and when I answered she just walked in like she owned the place. She said she knew Lora had been hurt and that she had come to get Mercy until Lora was better.”

  The woman looked at Lora. “I’m truly very sorry. I didn’t know who had hurt you and her story sounded so believable. She just acted like she was supposed to be here. It wasn’t until Mercy started to put up a fuss that I became concerned.”

  Lora ran her hand over her daughter’s pale blond hair over and over again, obviously reassuring herself that she was fine. “It’s okay, Heather. That’s just how they are. They roll in as if they own the place and take over.”

  “I tried to call the hospital but you had already been released. When I couldn’t get your cell phone I started to call the police. That’s when you pulled in.”

  Chad felt bad for the woman. She was feeling a lot of guilt right now for being taken in. “I’m glad we got here when we did.”

  Lora glanced at him, then away without saying anything.

  Chad felt like she barely tolerated his presence. Actually, they both made him feel like a disgusting bug they wanted to crush under their shoes, but he couldn’t do anything about that. They needed protection. He would be cognizant of their issues to the extent he could. He would eventually give them the space they needed, but not until their safety was assured.

  “Heather, I think you can go home now. I appreciate everything you did for us and I’m sorry you had to deal with my crazy in-laws.”

  The other woman shook her head. “No worries. Believe it or not, I’ve dealt with worse.”

  She gathered up her bag and gave Lora a hug. “If you need anything, just give me a call. I’ll come over any time.”

  Lora nodded and walked Heather out, closing and latching the door behind the other woman. She held Mercy the entire time.

  When she turned she leaned against the heavy oak door, staring in dismay at the shattered slider.

  “I’ve got a buddy coming over with supplies to fix it.”

  She nodded, than sank back down into the couch. Mercy sagged into her, drifting off to sleep. Chad wanted to move close enough to run his hand down the little girl’s hair, but didn’t dare with prickly momma bear watching over her right now.

  He was becoming emotionally invested in the pair. Was it because he’d watched over them for so long he felt like he knew them? Or was it because he wanted to be a part of their little unit?

  His protective instincts definitely went into overdrive when he was around them. He flexed his jaw where the asshole ex had hit him. Then he looked at Lora’s swollen face. If he’d been there just a few seconds sooner, he could have saved her that.

  It was uncomfortable in the living room. They didn’t have a lot to talk about. At least, not that she was willing to talk about.

  “I’m sorry I didn’t get to you sooner.”

  She shrugged. “Not your fault. Even if you had been here he still would have come in. That’s just the way he is.”

  Chad hmm’d under his breath. “He would not have come through me.”

  She glanced at his gnarled hand, then away.

  He felt the look like a blow, though he should have been used to it by now. Words crowded into his throat in his defense, but he clamped his jaw shut.

  Lora had been through a lot. She didn’t have to cater to his sensibilities.

  Hell, she probably wouldn’t have faith in any man. No matter what shape he was in.

  Chad turned to the slider door. It looked like the ass had simply crashed through when she refused to open it for him. “Did you know he was here? Before he crashed through?”

  Lora still sat on the couch but could see him. Her eyelids had begun to sag. She shook her head. “I had a suspicion he would be here, but I didn’t see him before he broke in. He grabbed me from behind and we crashed into the wall. He knocked my head somewhere and things kind of went dim.”

  Chad looked around the room. Though Heather had tried to clean the blood from the walls, there was still a stain in the hallway. It would have to be painted over.

  “That was pretty ballsy of him to think he could take you like that.”

  She snorted. “That’s Derek, all right. Ballsy to the end. He’ll probably blame me for making him crash through the glass to come get me. He never recognized the divorce and only signed the papers because his mother forced him to. He’s got a contempt of court somewhere, and I hope that it will have a bearing on this.”

  Chad frowned. “I’ll let Duncan know that he has other charges pending.”

  Pulling his phone from his pocket, Chad typed off a quick text to Duncan and cc’d John. If anybody could find background dirt, it would be John.

  There was a knock on the front door. Chad peeked through the hole first, then unlocked the deadbolts. Roger grinned on the other side of the door, hands full of equipment to repair the mangled slider. Chad ushered him in and introduced him to Lora.

  He didn’t miss her glance to Roger’s prosthetic arm, or the way she tightened her grip around her daughter. She nodded to the other man and turned her bruised face away.

  Chad and Roger worked on the door for a solid hour, sweeping up glass and draping plastic to keep out the cool air, but it would need to be replaced. Lora had carried her daughter into the depths of the house and returned to stand nearby, arms crossed protectively over her stomach.

  Chad wanted to tell her they were done and it was as tight as Fort Knox, but she could see with her own eyes that it wasn’t.

  “It’s as good as we can get it for now. I know of a contractor that would be willing to come work on it, but it may have to be after his regular work hours.”

  Lora nodded. “That’s fine.”

  Chad called his buddy Rich and told him about the situation. He promised to be over early the next morning.

  Roger eventually left for work, leaving Chad alone in the house with Lora and the girl. The way she paced, he knew she didn’t want him there, but he tried to be as unobtrusive as possible. Several times he caught her dozing in the chair, but she refused to actually go to bed. When the exhaustion finally caught up with her, he found her curled up in her daughter’s bed. He peeked into the room and little Mercy held a finger to her lips to make sure he stayed quiet, then snuggled back into her mother’s arms.

  Grinning, Chad left the room, closing the door softly behind him. That little girl was really something.

  * * *

  Still nothing. He watched the street below and several blocks out, waiting to see the hunched figure come out of the alley.

  He’d been waiting for weeks.

  Duncan heard the phone ring, but didn’t think anything about it until Shannon stepped to the office doorway. Her eyes were wide with alarm. “You need to answer line one. Truman Medical Center Lakewood in Kansas City, Missouri.”

  Swiveling the chair away from the window, he reached for the phone. “Wilde.”

  “Hello. This is Dr. Alex Hartfield with Truman Medical Center. We have a patient in our facility we’re trying to identify. He had a business card with your name on it in his coat pocket. The male appears to be mid-thirties, brownish hair and beard, a bit over six feet tall. Ring any bells?”

  Duncan rocked back in the chair, staggered. “Yes, ma’am. I think it may be Aiden Willingham. He’s been missing for several weeks. Is he okay?”

  “He is. We didn’t get him directly. One of the local urgent care centers did. A trucker found him in the back of his truck, hypothermic and delirious. It’s pretty amazing that he recovered as well as he did, because he truly was on death’s door. His core body temp had gotten down to eighty-six by the time he came in here. He’s underweight, bordering on malnourished, but we’ve got him hooked up to IVs and we’re pumping good stuff into him. We had to sedate him because he became frantic when he roused. Do you know anything abou
t his medical history?”

  Duncan sighed. “I believe he’s former military, just from the interaction I’ve had with him. I filed a missing person’s report with the PD here in Denver and they were unable to find any kind of service record on him for any of the branches. From my experience though, he appears to be suffering from PTSD.”

  The doctor hummed on the other end of the line. “I agree. He is sedated right now because he knocked one of my nurses to the floor. I have a psych consult scheduled for this afternoon.”

  Duncan cringed at the thought of what the guy would have to go through. “Do you have a VA he can transfer to? They might be better equipped to deal with the PTSD.”

  “Well,” the woman murmured, “we do, but unless we can confirm his service record I can’t just drop him off on their doorstep.”

  He rocked back in the chair, shifting his hips to ease the ache. Thoughts chased through his head. No, he didn’t know Aiden very well, but if he could ease the vet’s suffering in any way he would.

  “Tell me where you are, Dr. Hartfield, and I’ll hop on a plane.”

  Duncan started planning even as he wrote directions from the doctor. John could take over while he ran to KC. Shannon knew most of what he had his fingers in anyway, so between the two of them the business would be fine. Hell, he didn’t even really need to tell anyone what he was doing.

  After he hung up from the doctor, he shoved a few things in his desk and got ready to leave. Shannon peeked in as he was getting ready to go.

  “Was that good news or bad?”

  Duncan grimaced. “Well, good overall but troubling. I have to go to Kansas City.”

  She nodded as if she already knew. “Want me to make you a flight?”

  He nodded and limped past her. “John in his office?”

  “Yep.”

  Palmer was hunched over his keyboard when Duncan walked in, but he glanced up. “Hey. I have a lead on why Malone is being such an asshole. I’m gonna dig a little deeper then I’ll send you a report.”