by Dana R. Lynn
The oldest child, a boy, threw a wary glance at Gavin, then quietly asked her a question in Pennsylvania Dutch. She responded in a soft, reassuring voice, speaking in German. He’d forgotten that she said she spoke the language.
“Ma’am, you might want to reconsider—”
Gavin, Alexa and the children looked over at the paramedic talking to a woman, Eli’s wife, who was walking down the steps. She was walking with care, and her eyes were squinting, probably from the pain. But she didn’t slow down.
“Nee. I am not going on your ambulance. I should be with my children.”
“Waneta, can I do anything for you?” Alexa stepped forward.
The woman’s face creased in a small smile. “Ah, Alexa, denke. Nee, I am fine. My Eli is going to the hospital.”
Alexa’s face grew tense. “I know. I’m sorry, Waneta. Someone is following me. He’s going after some of my patients.”
The woman’s gaze sharpened. “This man, the police will get him.”
“Yes, ma’am, we will,” Gavin stated. He wouldn’t give up until they did.
“Gut.” She turned her brown eyes back to Alexa. “Gott will help us. He will help you.”
Alexa didn’t respond to that. She seemed to be getting the God talk everywhere they went. First Naomi. Then him. Now Waneta. He didn’t know how she had felt about his attempt at witnessing in the car. He might not have been the best witness. He wouldn’t second-guess that, though. God had put him there at that moment. He’d have to trust.
“Mrs. Schwartz, I know you said you didn’t want to go to the hospital for treatment, but can we get a driver to take you there to be with your husband?” Gavin asked.
She considered for a moment. “Jah. That would work. My kinder can go and stay with my sister.”
At least he could count that as one family out of harm’s way.
Eli, Marvin and Noah would all be kept under guard in the hospital. He sent a text to Chief Kennedy to update him.
Quinton’s picture had been released to the surrounding precincts. By morning, it would be in the papers, too. Letting the public and those in charge know to keep a lookout.
Noah Hostetler would be released from the hospital in the morning. He and his wife Naomi agreed to go stay with another family.
Marvin King’s sister Linda had not been found yet. They’d continue the search tomorrow.
After leaving the Schwartz place, Gavin drove Lexie to her residence. After searching for threats, he paced her living room while she packed for the safe house.
“What about Cinnamon?” she asked. “The police station is no place for a cat.”
She was worried about the cat. Part of him found that amusing, but at the same time, he wanted to roll his eyes. Still, it was endearing. “He’s okay. I had the chief grab Cinnamon and my cat, Whiskers. They’ve been at his house most of the day. His kids are overjoyed at the prospect of caring for the cats. The chief’s going to keep them at his house until this is done. Who knows how long it will be until we’ll be back in our homes to care for them.”
She bit her lip. The corners of her mouth still turned up. She was fighting a smile.
“What?”
She gave up and laughed. He smiled in reflex. “I can’t imagine you naming a cat Whiskers.”
He chuckled. “It was the first thing that came to mind. I mean, what do you name a cat?”
They headed out and grabbed something to eat at a drive-through. He placed the bag containing his sandwich on the back floorboard. He’d eat when they got to the house he was taking her to. He noticed that she was reluctant to open her salad with chicken. Even though her stomach was growling.
“Eat, honey. I can wait. But I don’t mind if you eat now. I know you’re hungry.”
Honey? Since when did he call a woman honey? It just slipped out. Gauging by her wide eyes, she’d noticed it, too. But the soft smile she sent his way made his pulse race.
He needed to find a way to stop this growing attraction between them. She deserved someone better than him. When he let his emotions take over, it was never good.
She opened her chopped salad and took a bite. He could tell that she wasn’t in the mood to eat. She swallowed a sip of water, then turned her attention to him. “Tell me about your uncle.”
Ah, she’d just handed him the means to warn her away from him. He sighed. It had to be done, but he wished with all his might that it didn’t. If only.
“Uncle Leo was a great guy. Funny. Loyal. A good, solid cop.” He took a sip of his Diet Coke. Here was the hard part. “As you know, he also had diabetes. Despite what his doctor had told him to do, he didn’t take care of himself. That was my job. And I failed at it.”
She paused, the fork halfway to her mouth. “Failed? How?”
“I had just gotten word from my mom that my brother and Lacey were getting married. She couldn’t understand why I wasn’t happy for them. Imagine that? Me being upset that my fiancée was going to marry my brother. According to my mom, he was the better fit for a girl like Lacey.” Sam was a better everything, he thought, the familiar bitterness rising inside. “I went to the gym to work off some of my anger. In my irritation, I purposely left my phone in my car. I didn’t want her calling me again. Well, she didn’t call me. But Leo did. Twice. His sugar levels had gotten very low and bottomed out. By the time I got to him, he’d gone into a diabetic coma. He never came out of it. If I’d gotten there sooner, I might have been able to help.” He paused. Better just say it.
“I’m not good with relationships, Lexie. I get stubborn, and I let people down. Lacey apparently knew that. My mom knew that. And Leo died because of it.”
TEN
Alexa had no idea what to say to him. She had thought about Gavin’s story all evening. She’d even tried to talk with him a time or two about it. To no avail. Gavin had decided to shut her out. Why? Because of his feeling that he’d let his uncle die.
When he’d left the safe house around eight, she was exhausted. She tried to listen as Claire Zerosky chattered to her, but in the end, begged off early, claiming she had a headache.
It wasn’t a lie. But her heart hurt as much, if not more, than her head. She had understood what Gavin was telling her in the car. He was letting her know that once the case was solved and her stalker was caught, he would be out of her life. Just like her father, who’d abandoned her so many years ago. Just like her mother or her brother. Even Brett, the man she’d thought she’d grow old with, was gone.
It didn’t matter. It was just one more sign that she was right. People left her. Maybe not by choice. Maybe there were extenuating circumstances, but it didn’t change the outcome. No one stayed for her.
Well, at least Gavin had let her know they had no future. Now all she needed to do was figure out how to keep herself from falling the rest of the way for a man who had no intention of sticking around.
At around five in the morning, she gave up trying to sleep and went downstairs. Gavin wasn’t there yet, but Claire was up. Alexa gave her a smile and went into the kitchen to fix breakfast.
“You want something, Claire?” she called out to the other woman.
“Nah. It’s too early to eat. I just made some coffee, though. Help yourself.”
Alexa loved the aroma of coffee, but hadn’t learned to like the bitter taste. And with her diabetes, she couldn’t add enough creamer to make it palatable without making her blood sugar go crazy. She stuck with water and tea.
She brought her omelet to the table to eat it. Her eyes fell on the Bible that Gavin had insisted she take. She hadn’t wanted to, but now, she had to admit to being curious. Slowly she began to leaf through it as she ate. Some of the passages were unclear. She decided that she really liked some of the books in the New Testament. Not that she was a believer yet. It would take more reading and study, but she was interested enough to do that. It
might need to wait until the current situation was resolved.
Gavin arrived at eight. He strolled in looking like he hadn’t had any more sleep than she had. His greeting, however, was casual. He wasn’t letting on that anything had bothered him.
“Hey, there, Zee, Alexa. What do ya know?”
Alexa. Not Lexie. She hadn’t realized how much she liked hearing the nickname in his deep voice.
“Hey, Jackson. You’re early.” Claire stood and stretched. “I wasn’t expecting you until ten.”
From where she sat, Alexa could see the tide of red sweeping up the back of his neck. Suddenly she wondered if he’d come to check on her. That might mean that she was getting to him, as well. He was just too stubborn to admit it. Which might not make a difference.
She reminded herself to be careful and not read anything into his actions. Sure, he was a great guy. Gavin was honorable, fun and made her pulse race. He was also, however, a man who had made it very clear that he was not in the market for a relationship. Any feelings that developed were going to be one sided, and she could not put her heart in that kind of risk again. It would destroy her.
“What’s going on?” she asked, more to hide her jumbled emotions than any other reason.
“What’s going on,” he replied, “is that we are going to start going to your Amish patients’ homes today and warn them about your stalker. The ones that Lieutenants Tucker and Willis couldn’t reach yesterday. There are only a few of them. It shouldn’t take us too long.”
Oh, great. A day in the car with the man who’d let her know in no uncertain terms that they had no future.
At first, it was awkward. Soon, however, their joint mission of warning her patients outweighed feelings of awkwardness. They were still on the search for a man who wanted her dead, a man who seemed to feel he had the right to kill anyone who got too close to her. Which also made Gavin a target.
“I’d already figured that out.” He shrugged when she mentioned it to him.
“I can’t understand why he’d do this, though.”
Gavin rubbed the back of his neck. “I don’t know what to tell you, Lexie.”
Ah, he’d slipped and called her Lexie again. She really liked it when he called her that in his deep voice. It was a small thing, but it made her happy to hear it.
He passed an Amish buggy on the street. Craning her neck, she peered at the family inside the buggy. A young couple, maybe about twenty. No one she knew. “Stalkers don’t usually make much sense. They are driven by extremes. Obsessed. To people around them, they might appear perfectly normal,” Gavin said and glanced her way briefly.
She watched the scenery flash by. “I get that. But, Gavin, he’s a doctor. He knows that the men I work with are only patients. That’s what I don’t get. Why would he get jealous of them?”
They pulled into the first house. The hustle and bustle of a family working paused temporarily as a police car drove up the lane. It wasn’t a usual occurrence to see cops at an Amish house. When Alexa stepped from the vehicle, several of the children came running, telling her about the news.
“Alexa! We have new sisters! Zwillingbopplin!”
“Twins,” she murmured to Gavin.
Levi, the father, stepped out on the porch. Levi was a popular Amish name in the district, she knew. The people in the area referred to him as Painter Levi, to differentiate him from some of the others. She’d always liked the pleasant man. He was a good provider for his family and devoted to his wife and children.
“Nurse,” he said, questioning her, “Lovina does not expect you today.”
“I know that, Levi. I have come for something else. Can we talk? It’s important.”
Frowning, the man stepped aside so they could enter his residence. The house was spotless. The eldest daughter was stirring a pot on the stove. When she put down the wooden spoon, her father asked her softly to go upstairs and check on her mother and new sisters.
Silently she left the room.
Once she’d gone, Gavin explained the reason for their presence at the house.
“I was never a patient of Nurse Grant,” Levi protested. “She came to see my wife.”
“That might be the case, sir, but someone has been watching Alexa, Nurse Grant. We have pictures. There’s one of you with her at the door.”
“You’d given me the cookies that Miriam, your daughter, had made for me as I was leaving,” Alexa interjected.
The man’s eyes brightened with memory. “Jah! Last month.”
His face darkened. “You think someone will try to hurt me, or my family?”
Alexa winced. “It’s a possibility. Can I show you a picture of the man who’s stalking me? That way you can keep an eye out.”
Levi agreed. Gavin fished his phone out of his pocket and searched through the pictures to find the one he was looking for. Alexa had seen it before, so she knew what Levi was looking at.
“We will watch for this man,” Levi stated.
They left the house, promising to let the family know when there were any new developments.
Had they done any good? Sure, the family knew who to look for, but how would they protect themselves if danger came for them? They wouldn’t use guns or violence against another person.
As Gavin drove along, Alexa felt herself tense. The family at the first house was safe. What would they find at the next house? Were they walking into a trap?
* * *
If Lexie got any tenser, she’d shatter.
Despite his resolution to keep his distance, Gavin reached over and caught her hand in his before he could second-guess himself.
“Lexie, it could have been worse.”
She huffed a loud sigh. He hid a smile. It wasn’t funny. He knew she was frustrated, but she was cute. He fought the urge to brush his fingers down her cheek. Why did he always want to touch her? It wasn’t like him. He had never been a demonstrative man.
“It’s not just that. I hate this situation. I feel like I can never quite catch a break.”
He frowned. “I know that your fiancé died. It was awful what happened to him. And the current situation is no picnic, but surely, once this is done, things will get better. Normal.”
She leaned her head back against her seat and closed her eyes. When she laughed, he cringed a bit. The laugh was a harsh sound. A sad one. Not the way a laugh should sound. He found himself wishing he had the power to make her laugh from joy. Not that sad, hopeless noise.
She stopped laughing. “I don’t know if I’d know what normal was. Gavin, my life has never been normal. Or happy. When I was a kid, my dad left. Just left. Got himself a brand-new family and forgot about his old one. My mom, she was an alcoholic. She had tried to straighten herself out, but after he left, she gave up. She drank herself to death. Neither my brother nor myself were enough of a reason to stop. After she died, I had nowhere to go. My brother is much older than me. He offered to let me come and stay with them. I knew he and his wife didn’t really want me around.”
Gavin felt a moment of guilt. At least he’d had Leo. And his parents loved him. They were just very uninvolved in his life.
“I know he died, but you had Brett.”
She was already shaking her head. “You know what? I think Brett and I got together because we both had no one. We were friends, and we sort of drifted into being a couple. I don’t know if we could have made it as a married couple. In the end, he died and left, just like everyone else.”
What was he supposed to say to that?
“Lexie—”
“I’m sorry. I know you want to help, but I really don’t want to discuss this anymore. Can we change the subject?”
He wanted to pursue it. For the first time, he wanted to be able to act on his emotions and tell a girl he had feelings for her. He’d never really been able to fully express himself, even with Lace
y. But he couldn’t. He didn’t have the right to tell her about the feelings he was developing for her. He knew that it would be harder for her when they went their separate ways. Her story had made him see it more clearly than ever. She needed someone who would stay and put her first. Not a man who might be called away at a moment’s notice. Certainly not a man who risked his life every day while performing his duties.
The next two houses they visited proved to be similar to the first. The Amish patients hadn’t been harmed. There was that, at least. One man did report that his dog had chased someone away the night before. When he’d heard what was going on, he’d agreed to watch out.
At least neither he nor his family had been harmed.
Yet.
The quicker they found Quinton, the better off everyone would be.
Gavin’s phone rang. He punched a button, putting it on speaker. “Jackson here. You’re on speaker.”
Hopefully, whoever was on the other end would be cool with Lexie hearing the conversation. Otherwise, he’d need to pull over and take the call. These roads were too slippery for him to drive and talk at the same time.
The person on the other end paused. “Hey, Jackson. It’s Dan.”
Lieutenant Dan Willis. “Yeah?”
“We have hit a snag with the investigation. We did some searching. We can’t find any connection with Dr. Quinton and Chicago. But that doesn’t seem to mean anything. Apparently, Dr. Quinton didn’t exist until a couple of years ago.”
“Didn’t exist? He has a driver’s license.”
“Yes. But all the info on it is falsified. He didn’t exist.”
Gavin let the news sink in for a moment. “Witness Protection?”
“Who knows. Nothing concrete yet. We might need to actually send someone out to Chicago. The chief’s waiting to hear back from the PD first.”
If they needed someone to go there, he might convince the chief to let him go with Lexie. It would get her out of the way, and it would help him to find the links in the case. He hated the gaps in the investigation. It was making him nuts.