It stopped. The sensation stopped all at once. She lifted her head, opened her eyes, lowered her hands.
The woman was gone.
Dawn sank onto the bed, blinking her wide eyes and trying to keep her heart from pounding a hole through her chest. “I don’t want this,” she whispered. “God, I don’t want this. If I refuse it, it has to go away, doesn’t it? It has to stop. If I just refuse to help them they’ll stop coming. So I won’t.” She lifted her head, looked around the room at the emptiness. “I won’t help you, do you hear me? I won’t. I won’t!”
CHAPTER 16
Jax pulled the Mercedes into the driveway beside her own car, and even remembered to hit the lock button on the key ring when she got out and hurried around the luxury vehicle. She slowed her pace as she reached her Taurus, leaning over and peering through the driver’s side window.
River was there, slumped over the steering wheel. Hell. The feeling of fear that hit her like a tidal wave almost put her on her knees. And maybe that was when she knew that all her talk about casual sex, and him not meaning a thing to her, was bullshit.
She opened the door and gripped him by the nape. “Hey. Come on, wake up. Talk to me, River.”
His eyes fluttered, but didn’t stay open. He was still alive. Thank God.
“Come on.” She smacked his cheek. “Come on, you’ve got to shove over, at least. Lemme in the damn car.”
Again his eyes opened, and he lifted his head this time. She knew he understood her, because he braced his good leg on the floor and pushed himself over the console and into the passenger side. His entire face contorted with pain. Jax leaned in, tried to help him move. He got everything over except his legs. She saw that the belt he’d used as a tourniquet had loosened, and fresh blood gleamed from his jeans, which were already soaked in it.
She helped him ease his good leg over, and then lifted the wounded one and slid herself into the seat. Then she lowered the injured leg onto her lap. “Just leave it,” she said, twisting the key, pulling the door closed. “Keeping it elevated is a good idea, don’t you think?”
“Mmm.” He leaned back on the door. She hit the lock button so he wouldn’t fall out. “No hospital,” he muttered, eyes closed, lips barely parting enough to let vowels escape between consonants.
“Just one,” she said. “But don’t worry. You’ll be the only human patient in the place.”
He frowned, but then his brows relaxed. “You’re taking me to the vet.”
She felt the car move when something hit it in the side, and she jumped, but it was only Rex standing with his paws on her window. “How did he get out?”
“He was throwing such a fit when he heard me pull in,” River said.
She looked at him, realized the house key was on the ring with her car key. “If you got that far, River, why on earth didn’t you just wait for me inside?”
He took a breath, as if talking was a real effort. “Didn’t want to get blood all over the house.”
He hadn’t been being neat, but careful. She got out, mindful of River’s leg, and opened the back door. Rex leaped inside and sat up on the back seat as if he were a well-raised child. Jax closed the door and returned to her former spot, then backed the car out and headed toward the Blackberry-Pinedale Animal Hospital.
As she drove, she picked up her cell phone and punched in her dad’s number. When he answered, she said, “Hi, Dad. Listen, I’m on my way to the clinic. Can you meet me there? It’s an emergency.”
“Oh, no,” her father said. “Is it Rex or—?”
“No, it’s the other stray. Wound to the leg,” she said, cutting him off. She didn’t think anyone was monitoring her calls, but it paid to be careful. “He’s lost a lot of blood. I’ll be there in ten minutes, Dad.”
“I’ll be ready and waiting, hon. Try not to worry. You putting pressure on the wound?”
“Yeah, and I have it elevated.”
“Put the heat on in the car. Keep him warm. I’ll see you in ten minutes.”
She nodded and hit the cutoff button, then cranked up the heat. “Hang in there, River. You’re going to be okay.”
He didn’t answer, and when she looked at him, she realized he’d lost consciousness. Damn. Rex leaned over the seat and licked River’s face, whining a little. Jax pressed down harder on the accelerator.
When she pulled up to the door of the clinic and got out, her father came hurrying toward the car. “I’ll help you get him in,” he said.
“That’s good, ’cause I’m gonna need it.”
Her father opened the back door and Rex jumped out and bunted him in the thigh, demanding a pat on the head. “I thought you said it wasn’t Rex.”
She nodded toward River, who lay slumped in the car.
Her father swore. Her father never swore.
“He’s been shot, Dad. I can’t take him to a hospital, or he’ll end up in custody, and if that happens he’ll be dead.”
Her father looked her in the eye. “If I’m caught treating a human being, honey, I—”
“I know, Dad. I know it’s asking a lot. But his life depends on it. If not I wouldn’t even ask.”
He leaned into the car, looked at the blood-soaked jeans, then backed out and nodded. “Let’s get him inside.”
* * *
When River opened his eyes, there was a dog licking his face. He blinked the room into focus. Orange walls, textured paint, white cabinets. He was lying on a table with a sheet over him, and he didn’t think he had any pants on.
He felt weak as he lifted the sheet and his head at the same time. No, he definitely didn’t have any pants on. Shorts. A T-shirt, and a thick bandage around his thigh.
“Easy, River. You’re going to be all right. Dad got the bullet out.”
He lifted his brows, turned to see Jax standing on one side of his makeshift bed, her father on the other. “Thank you, Ben. I don’t imagine this was without risk for you, was it?”
Ben smiled, shrugged. “Only if I get caught. If anyone asks, it was Rex here who had the surgery. He came home from the woods with a bullet in his leg. Probably a hunter with a lousy aim. Who knows? I fixed him up, and set him up with some prophylactic antibiotics.” He picked up a fat brown bottle and shook it. “Stop the others. These are stronger. One every eight hours for ten days. Rex.”
River nodded slowly. “I don’t know how I’m ever going to manage payback for this one, Doc.”
“Your dog’s shots are all up-to-date now, too,” Dr. Jackson said. “I figured as long as he was here.” He looked at the dog, then at his daughter. “Get him licensed, for heaven’s sake.”
“Rex or River?”
River groaned at the bad joke.
Ben only sighed. “Stay off the leg for a while. I don’t have any crutches here, naturally.”
“Naturally,” River said.
“But you can pick up a pair at any drugstore. You’ll need them or at least a cane, just for a few days.”
“I’ll try.”
“Thanks, Dad,” Jax said.
Ben nodded, hugged his daughter, then said, “Let’s get you home, River.”
“I’m all for that.” He started to get up, but both Jax and her father hurried to either side of him, each pulling one of his arms around their shoulders. They barely let him support an ounce of his own weight as they helped him to the back door, and through it to where the car waited.
He got into the back seat, leg extended. The dog got to ride in the front, sitting up on the passenger seat, looking as if he thought he’d just been promoted to human.
Cassandra’s father hurried back inside. Lights went off one by one as the car rolled away, leaving the clinic.
* * *
Later that night, Jax had River installed on the sofa, a cup of tea on the coffee table beside him, a lamp glowing nearby. He was propped up on pillows, with his leg elevated, and his best friend’s appointment book open in front of him, and as he perused the entries, he began to see a pattern.
Cassandra walked in with a steaming bowl of soup. The woman seemed to think soup was good for just about everything. Not that he minded. Soup was good. Especially hers. She tended to dress it up with sprinkles of grated cheese, extra seasonings and croutons.
“Look at this,” he said, as she set the soup on the table. “Most of these are dates when Stephanie had her appointments with Ethan. Some I knew about, some I didn’t. This one was on my birthday.”
“Does it note the time of day for any of them?” Jax took the book from him, looked at the dates.
“Two. It was always two. That’s how I remember. Tuesdays and Thursdays at two was her schedule for her therapy. But that’s not what it says in Ethan’s date book. Look at his notations for those same dates—that same time.”
“Harrington, 2:00 p.m.,” she read. Then she flipped pages, and found the next date. “Same thing here…and here.” She looked up from the date book. “What or who is Harrington?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well, we can start in the phone book. Check that name in all the local towns, see if we find any clues.”
He nodded. “Good idea. You have phone books?”
“Are you kidding? My mother thinks of everything.” She continued flipping through the date book, stopping at the back cover, pulling out a small card that had been tucked into the flap there. “But we don’t need them.” She handed him the card.
He read it. “Harrington Inn: Vermont’s Most Romantic Hideaway.”
It hit him like a sledgehammer. He thought he sucked in a sharp breath, and then he had to try to suck in another, because for a moment he wasn’t getting any air.
“We don’t know anything for sure,” Cassandra said. “Not yet.”
But he did. He felt it right down in his gut. Ethan didn’t have any file, any medical records on Stephanie, even though he did on every other patient. Which meant she had never been a patient. All her appointment dates had been spent at that inn. With him.
River closed his eyes against the rush of pain.
And then Jax touched him and he breathed again.
* * *
Jax made herself a bowl of soup, sat beside River to eat it while they watched a little late-night TV, which she’d turned on to distract him from the thoughts that must be torturing him. It was looking more and more as if his wife had betrayed him with his best friend. God, he must be in hell.
“So it’s decided then,” Jax said. They’d finished eating, and she’d carried the bowls into the kitchen and rinsed them. When she came back, he’d turned the television off. He needed to sleep. “We visit the Harrington in the morning.”
“We?” he asked. “You don’t have to go into the station in the morning?”
“It’s Saturday. Frankie told me to take weekends off.” She smiled, remembering. “As I recall, her exact words were, ‘Best take the weekends off for now, girl. You accept this job, they’ll probably be the last ones you ever have to yourself.’”
Jax looked at River, still smiling, but he wasn’t. His eyes had turned serious. “If they find out you’ve been helping me, accepting the job might not even be an option anymore.”
“Then it was never meant to be,” she said, but she kept her eyes averted. She was growing fond of this stupid little town. And that dumb-ass little police department.
“I know you want the job, Cassandra,” River said softly. “You don’t have to pretend you don’t care.”
“It’s not important. Not in the scheme of things. I can get a job anywhere.” She met his eyes, but she wasn’t fooling him. They both knew it was a lie. “You’ve only got one life, River, and we can’t blow our shot at saving it just to pad my chances at landing a job.”
“Even if it is your dream job?”
She sent him a look. “Stop it.”
“I’m really sorry, you know. I never meant to drag you into any of this.”
“You didn’t drag me anywhere. Except out of a frozen pond.”
He sighed and shifted position on the sofa. “I wish I could undo it.”
“What? Pulling me out of the pond?” She set a throw pillow on the coffee table. Then she crouched on the floor and slid her hands around his calf, lifted his leg and rested it on the pillow.
“Getting you involved in my mess. It’s dangerous, Cassandra, and if anything happens to you—”
“Nothing’s going to happen to me.”
“I’d leave if I thought it would help.”
“I wouldn’t let you.”
“You wouldn’t stop me.” He held her eyes. His were so intense they almost made her squirm. She didn’t like that kind of intensity in a man’s eyes—not when they were looking at her. It wasn’t good. She told herself that. But herself wasn’t listening. She felt warm all over when he looked at her that way. And she wanted him. Every time she got close to this man, she wanted him.
“But at this point,” he added, “I think it’s too late. I think whoever burned that storage unit and broke in here the other night knows you’re helping me. And that puts you at risk.”
She shrugged. “So you’re not gonna leave because you want to stick around and play the hero? Look out for me?”
He made a face. “Yeah, I know. You’re more likely to do that for me than I am for you, but a guy has to have his delusions.”
She nodded. “How’s the leg?”
“Hurts like hell. But I’ll be all right.”
“You’re going to have to sleep down here tonight. No way are you going to be able to make the stairs.”
He eyed her. “I can handle them.”
She shook her head.
“Try me,” he said.
“Don’t tempt me or I might.” It was meant as a joke, a little flirtatious teasing to lighten the mood. But the fire that leaped into his eyes set a matching one in her belly. Damn, she couldn’t seem to help herself. Or stop herself from pushing it a little further. “And then my father’s going to want to know how those nice stitches he put into your thigh got torn out.”
His eyes were intense and deep, and his fingers brushed over her jaw. “You trying to distract me or comfort me? Whichever it is, it’s working.”
She averted her eyes, not comfortable with the softness in his tone, or the depth to which his eyes tried to dig into her soul, because it stirred up softness and depth inside her—and she just wasn’t ready for that. “I was only kidding, River. I’m not so hard up I have to attack a wounded man…unless he felt completely up to it and was utterly willing.”
“You wouldn’t be the one doing the attacking—how’s that for willing?”
She smiled and decided she was overthinking this thing almost as badly as he was. “Just about perfect.”
“It’s just…it’s not my wounded leg I’m worried about.”
“No?”
“No. You know what I’m worried about.”
She rolled her eyes and thought, Here we go again. “Yeah. I know what you’re worried about. You’ve got a giant pain-in-the-ass Wolfman complex.”
“Wolfman?” He looked utterly perplexed.
“Wolfman,” she said. “Didn’t you see it? The Universal classic? Lon Chaney Jr.? The Gypsy woman tells him he’s destined to kill what he loves. That’s the real curse he bears, not that he turns into a wolf by the full moon, but that he can’t love anyone without putting their lives in danger.”
River lowered his eyes, and she saw the pain in his face.
Jax put her palms to his cheeks and made him look at her. “His curse. But it’s not yours, River. Because you didn’t kill Stephanie.”
“We still can’t be sure of that. What if I did? God knows every clue we find just adds more motive. More reasons I might have lost it and…” He shook his head slowly. “What if it is my curse? What then?”
She shrugged. “Okay, I’ll play along. Suppose it is your curse? It still wouldn’t apply here.”
“Why the hell not?”
“Because you don’t love me. And you’r
e not going to. I don’t want you to.” Just saying it drove the truth home to her. That it was a lie. An outright lie. God, what was happening to her?
He nodded, but didn’t meet her eyes.
“Good. So we’re clear on that?”
“Clear as a bell.” He didn’t sound any too happy about it, though. It made her wonder if he was feeling the same things she was. And that scared her even more.
“Great. I’ll get us some blankets, then. And don’t worry, River. I’ll be gentle.”
CHAPTER 17
“So who was she?”
Ethan turned sharply at the familiar sound of Victoria’s voice coming to him from their bedroom. He’d finally finished explaining himself to the police and escorting them around the property as they conducted a thorough search.
“God, Vicki, you scared me half to death.” He tipped his head to one side, studying her face. Beautiful, clear of any hint of makeup and starting to show the touch of time. She sat up in the bed, legs under the covers, a book open on her lap. “I didn’t even know you were home. Why didn’t you say something?”
She blinked. “You brought a woman here, Ethan. I didn’t know what to think.”
“Oh, honey.” He tugged his tie from his shirt as he moved toward the bed, then sat down beside her, stroking a hand over her cheek, searching her eyes. “Baby, you didn’t think—” He shook his head and started over. “That woman is a cop. She’s working with Frankie Parker over in Blackberry.”
She blinked then, some of the worry easing from her eyes. “She’s trying to find River?”
“I don’t know. To tell you the truth, I have a feeling she knows more about him than she’s letting on. Might even be helping him.”
He’d gone so far as to break into her house, to find out just how much she did know—and found men’s clothes in the bedroom, and River’s police file. It didn’t prove anything. But he didn’t like what he was thinking.
“I don’t understand,” Victoria said, her voice very soft.
“The lady cop, Jax is her name—she’s been staying at River’s house. You know the town owns it now.”
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