Safe Haven

by Hannah Alexander

  She stood staring at the square for several moments. Could she even do this? Was she crazy?

  Fawn Morrison, P.I.

  Stupid. She’d probably get caught crossing the street. But Bruce had said people were in danger. She had decided that she’d never turn out to be like her mother. She didn’t want to be the kind of person who saw somebody in trouble and was afraid to do anything about it. She’d rather be dead. After this, she might be dead, but at least she’d die trying to help.

  She thought about her brothers and her sister back home. Who was taking care of them now? Not Mom, for sure. And not their drunk dad.

  But at least he was their father, not their stepfather. Maybe that meant he’d treat them better. After all, what kind of guy would rape his own flesh and blood?

  Maybe the same kind of guy who would rape his stepdaughter?

  For a moment, Fawn’s nausea returned. But she couldn’t do anything about her brothers and sister right now. She had to focus on what she could do.

  Karah Lee was scrubbing at the sink in the minor-meds treatment room when Cheyenne knocked at the doorway and stepped inside.

  “Done for the day?” Chey asked.

  “Just finished with my last patient. Now I’ve got charts to complete.” Karah Lee ripped off a couple of squares of paper towel and blotted her hands and arms.

  Chey folded her arms over her chest and leaned against the counter. “I’ve noticed those stacking up today. Anything I can do to help?”

  “Not that I can think of. I’ve just found myself getting a little overwhelmed.”

  “It was an overwhelming day. The workers’ comp visits didn’t help.”

  “I can’t believe we got those four accident cases all at once,” Karah Lee said. “I mean, what’s going on out there?” These hadn’t been the first cases they’d encountered. Today’s injuries had been minor things—a sprained ankle, a bruised shoulder when a stack of two-by-four boards fell on one of the workers, a hammer misplaced onto a thumb. “I’m just surprised we’re caught up.” She was still trying to figure out how Cheyenne had handled the cases so quickly, with such confidence.

  Confidence was one thing Karah Lee had lacked lately. She tried to blame it on the newness of the job, but she knew it was more than that. Several times today she’d sought Cheyenne’s opinion on cases she would have breezed through a month ago. In spite of the praises Cheyenne had heaped on her for her performance last week, she continued to have doubts.

  Yesterday she’d told Shona she would call Dad, but first she needed to think through a few key issues—such as how to forgive him for totally undermining her self-assurance.

  “Karah Lee,” Chey said, “is everything okay with you?”

  Karah Lee looked down and discovered she’d been shredding the wet paper towels. And then she realized Chey was unusually quiet, almost apprehensive. “I’m fine, just trying to deal with the little matter of my interfering father. I haven’t second-guessed myself so much in years.”

  Cheyenne nodded absently. “Looks like today is the day for family problems. Karah Lee, I need a favor. A big one, and I’m sorry to do this to you right now, when you’re already struggling.”

  “Hey, don’t worry about that, I’ll work through it. What’s going on?”

  Chey closed her eyes and swallowed hard. “I just received a call from my father a few minutes ago. My mother had a heart attack this afternoon.”

  “Oh, Chey, no.”

  Cheyenne raised a trembling hand to her face and rubbed her temple. “I really need to fly to Florida and be with her. She’s in emergency surgery now. I could be gone a few days, and that’ll leave you to take care of things here by yourself, when we’re already short on staff. I’m sorry about—”

  “Make your flight arrangements and get to Florida. Your mother needs you. I’ll put my personal problems on hold until you get back, okay? I’ll be fine here.”

  Cheyenne pulled a tissue from the box on the counter and dabbed at her eyes. “Something you should keep in mind while I’m gone.”

  “Not to abuse the staff?”

  “That, too,” she said with a shaky smile. “But especially remember that even if your father pulled strings to get you into med school, his influence didn’t earn your grades—you did.”

  Karah Lee wasn’t so sure about that. She’d seen far too much political maneuvering in the medical field, but now wasn’t the time to argue. “Thanks, Chey. Go to your parents, and don’t worry about things here. We’ll be fine.”

  Fawn studied the traffic circling the square and decided to wait a few minutes. Some blond-haired man eased a bale of hay and a bag of seed into the back of a pickup truck from a loading dock at the feed store, which was next door to the general store, which was next door to the clinic. If he’d just leave that loading dock open when he finished, she might get in that way, sneak out the back and slip through the back entrance to the clinic.

  If only she could time this right.

  All day, as she’d waited in the hot barn, she’d watched through the door of the loft as construction workers crawled all over the skeleton of that condominium down by the lake, dodging the crane as it carried building material through the air without knocking into anything, and without killing anybody.

  Bruce had said people could die because of that building. But why?

  Maybe someday she’d have her own condominium, and she’d have a couple of apartments where she’d let girls in trouble come if they needed help. Or maybe she’d have a whole building where kids like her could stay, so they wouldn’t have to beg on the streets or steal from tourists or sell tricks to strangers.

  Right now, though, she just needed to make sure she didn’t get caught breaking into the back door of the clinic.

  The truck at the loading dock drove off. The driver waved at the blond man, and the blond man waved back, then glanced up and down the street, dusted off his hands, disappeared through a side door.

  Fawn braced herself and checked the street, then stepped from the alley and walked casually toward the square, trying to think like a gray-haired fisherwoman.

  When she reached the loading dock, she casually looked around, peered through the plate-glass window of the general store, then climbed the steel-bar ladder to the dock. She entered the shadowed, hay-scented feed-storage area, rushed to the back door and found it unlocked. She hurried through the door to the back, ran two doors down and tested this door. It, too, was unlocked, but here she paused.

  This door opened directly into the central hallway of the clinic. If she stepped inside, there could be someone in the hall.

  But if she stayed out here, someone could come out any minute and catch her lurking, or they could lock up on her, and she knew it was a dead bolt. She couldn’t break in.

  She pressed her ear to the door and listened. All she could hear was her own nervous breathing. She placed her hand around the knob and turned slowly, then pulled the door open in time to hear someone from the front of the clinic call good-night to someone else.

  Good. It was quitting time. The hallway was empty, and Fawn slipped in, ducked into the bathroom on her left and opened the cabinet door below the sink. No way she could fit in there.

  Next she opened the door to the hot-water heater. There might be enough room to squeeze against the tank and hide there if she didn’t have to wait too long for the others to leave.

  Please, please, please don’t come back here, anybody!

  If she didn’t get caught, she was going to sleep here tonight, in the treatment room where she’d gotten the IV Friday. That bed was a lot more comfortable than the bales of hay in the barn, and there weren’t any snakes in the clinic.

  As soon as the stranger stepped up to the clinic reception window, Karah Lee knew he wasn’t a patient. He didn’t look sick. He wasn’t limping. There wasn’t a speck of dust on his suit, and something about his expression gave him an aura of authority. Maybe it was the hard set of his long jaw, or the lack of humor in h
is hooded eyes.

  Karah Lee was sitting at the other end of the desk, drinking a soda, while Jill manned the phones.

  The man reached into his back pocket and pulled out a thin billfold. He flipped it open and shut in a quick second. “Hello, ma’am, I’m Detective Withnell with the Federal Bureau of Independent Investigators out of Springfield assigned to a missing persons lead in an ongoing investigation. We have reason to believe a suspect for a federal case has been seen in this area, and I need to ask you some questions.”

  Jill didn’t hesitate or break a smile. “I’m sorry, Detective, but according to federal regulations, we aren’t allowed to share information about our patients.”

  “I understand that,” he said smoothly. “But I’m not asking for patient information, I’m simply eliminating possibilities. I’m sure you can understand the difference.”

  Jill’s chin jutted out a little farther than usual. She slid a glance at Karah Lee, then looked back at the man. “Sure. Shoot me your possibilities, and I’ll eliminate them for you.”

  He opened a folder with several eight-by-ten color photographs of an attractive young woman with blond hair and a formfitting blue dress. At first, Karah Lee didn’t recognize her.

  “Sorry, but nobody looking like that has been in here when I was on duty,” Jill said.

  “Okay, how about this one?” He flipped to the next sheet, which appeared to be a computer-composite head shot of the same woman, with short hair. “Our sources tell us she might have been posing as a young male on a busload of elderly tourists. The bus developed a leak in its exhaust system. Several passengers became ill. Some of them remember a young male, dressed in typical teenager garb, with a cap and glasses.”

  Jill continued to shake her head. Her expression didn’t change. Karah Lee saw her hand tighten around the ink pen she held, and hoped the visitor didn’t notice.

  The man glanced at Karah Lee’s name badge. “Are you the doctor in charge?”

  “I was on duty the day that bus came in,” Karah Lee said. “I saw that picture in the paper last week. You sure those two pictures are of the same person?”

  “We’re just following up some leads. Are there any other staff—”

  “What was it you say this woman did?” Jill interrupted. “You say you’re a federal investigator? That’d mean murder or drug trafficking, wouldn’t it?”

  “Say! That’s right,” Karah Lee said. “This woman supposedly killed her boyfriend and another man at their hotel up in Branson, didn’t she?”

  The man’s eyes narrowed. His gaze made her uncomfortable. “Someone said the kid called himself Casey. They said he collapsed and had to be taken to an exam room in the clinic.” He studied her for another uncomfortable fraction of a second. “You say you can’t remember a patient like that?”

  “Oh, I remember those patients, all right. Sure I remember Casey.” She scrunched up her face in an expression of disbelief as she stood and stepped to the reception window. “You’re telling me they thought that pimple-faced, scrawny, smart-mouthed punk was a woman?” She hoped she’d placed enough outraged emphasis on the word. “Come on, Detective, I know some of those folks were mighty sick, but they’d have had to be falling down blind to imagine anything feminine about that boy.”

  “So can you tell me what condition he was in when he arrived?”

  “Nope.”

  No change in expression. “I can get a subpoena.”

  She spread her hands. “Sorry, but you’re wasting your time, Detective…what did you say your name was again?”

  “Withnell.”

  “Sorry, Detective Withnell, but you aren’t going to get any information about that kid even if you do subpoena us. You can’t expect us to make a complete set of medical records on every patient we treated with oxygen that day. There’s no information to be had. We didn’t have the manpower to get it done. It was an emergency situation, and we were overwhelmed.”

  His eyes narrowed further. He leaned forward, as if intimidation might refresh her memory. It only served to refresh her suspicion. This man was not from the federal bureau, the state bureau, or any bureau she’d ever had any dealings with. Not that she’d had that many.

  Karah Lee stood beside Jill as the “detective” replaced his photographs in his folder, promised to be in touch, and left the office.

  “Karah Lee Fletcher, you should be an actress,” Jill murmured when the door shut.

  “Want to be my costar?”

  “He’ll probably be back, or send someone else.”

  “I don’t have anything else to say.”

  “Neither do I, and for tonight, you’re on your own.” Jill closed her appointment book and placed it in the desk, picked up her purse, stood up and waved good-night.

  Karah Lee watched the nurse leave, grateful to be working with someone who took patient confidentiality as seriously as it should be taken—not that she’d get any gold stars from the investigators on that murder case.

  Still, it didn’t matter. Casey was obviously long gone.

  Karah Lee sipped her soda and studied the stack of files she had yet to complete. Someday she would learn to keep up with her charting as she saw patients, but since today had been another busy one, she’d fallen behind halfway through the afternoon. Cheyenne had left thirty minutes ago. That woman was disgustingly organized. Karah Lee planned to emulate her someday. When she had time.

  As she worked, deciphering her own scribbled shorthand to type into the computer, she couldn’t help wondering, once again, about the young, frightened woman who had collapsed here last Friday. Was she okay? Had she found shelter far from here?

  Blaze finished cleaning an exam room, ran the vacuum and straightened magazines and books in the waiting room, all the while humming a tune under his breath that was just enough off-key, and familiar, to distract Karah Lee.

  After trying and failing for the third time to pull up a patient file, she swiveled in her chair and glared at him through the reception window. “What happened to our canned music?”

  “I turned it off.”

  “Well, either turn it back on or hold off on the church music until I can get this stuff entered and get out of here.”

  “Having trouble with the program again?”

  “What do you mean, again?”

  He leaned through the window and peered at the computer screen. “Whose file you looking for?”

  “I can’t find the Wyzenstein file, and I know she’s an established patient.”

  “Her maiden name’s Corona, and it hasn’t been changed yet.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because we still don’t have a secretary, and Jill won’t let me near the files or stay overtime herself to catch up.”

  “Fine, if you’ll show me how to do it, I’ll stay and—”

  “Aren’t you on call tonight?”

  “That’s right. And the next few nights, until Cheyenne comes back.”

  “Then shouldn’t you get some rest while you have a chance?”

  “I’m not going to go home and sleep right now, Blaze.” She might not sleep at all tonight, as keyed up as she felt at the moment.

  “Okay, fine, then let me help you with it.”

  “I thought you couldn’t file.”

  “No, but I can sure type.”

  Karah Lee scooted over and pulled up another chair. “I’ve got all evening.”

  Fawn stood squeezed next to the noisy hot-water heater with sweat streaming from every pore. She felt really sick again, almost ready to pass out, but she couldn’t move because she still heard voices in the front of the clinic.

  How much longer would they be here? She didn’t know if she could take much more of this. It was way past quitting time, wasn’t it?

  She needed a drink, bad. If she could just sneak over to the sink and take a few swigs—but if they heard her, it would be all over.

  It was okay. She could take it a little longer. Maybe.

  Chapter Nineteen
>
  Karah Lee squinted at the notes in front of her, trying to decipher her own writing as she transcribed it into the computer.

  “I heard you had a date with Taylor yesterday,” Blaze called to her from the far corner of the waiting room, where he was stacking magazines and books.

  “That was no date, it was a rescue operation.”

  He snorted. “Like I said.”

  “Hey, watch it, pal. For your information, I clean up good for a date. I don’t need rescuing.” She glared through the reception window at him.

  “How do you have time to date when you’re in med school or working in a residency program?” he asked.

  “I didn’t say I’d been out recently.”

  “That’s the problem with a medical career,” Blaze said. “Cheyenne worked for years in an E.R., had never been married. It wasn’t until she met me that her love life started picking up.”

  Karah Lee completed the transcription of a page and flipped to the next. “What are you, a matchmaker or something?”

  “Maybe something like that. I guess it just comes naturally.”

  “Right. I’m sure Cheyenne and Dane had nothing to do with it.” She frowned at the monitor screen, still not understanding the program. “Did you write down what you did on this thing so I’ll know how to do it next time?”

  “It’s already written somewhere. I’ll dig it out for you in a minute.”

  “Do I need a password to log on in the morning?”

  “Yes, and if you don’t do it right the first time, you’ve got two more tries before it shuts down on you.” He leaned against the reception counter. “When that happens, you practically need a computer programmer to set it up for you again, so don’t even try unless you’re sure you have it.” He watched her enter more notes. “So, you want me to dust off my matchmaking skills and see what I can do for you?”

  “I don’t think I’m interested in a love life. Divorce seems to be a dominant gene in my family.”

  “That can change. My parents divorced, too, but someday I’m going to be married and have lots of kids. It all depends on a guy’s priorities. Like Bertie says, a guy’s got to put God first, his wife and family next, and not let anything get in the way of that.”