We All Sleep Alone

by Calle J. Brookes

  Allen forced his attention back to the road and back to what he’d read in the journal. The notes were an odd blending of professional notes and personal reflections in the mundane that Henedy’s days appeared to be. The man had adored his wife and son and nephew. He’d also adored women. That had been obvious in the first journal entry.

  Allen didn’t get why the women involved found Henedy all that attractive. Unless it had come from the money Henedy faithfully recorded spending on his lovers.

  Henedy had written of being more attractive because of his wealth. Henedy hadn’t had any illusions in that regard.

  Allen had been wealthy all of his life. It didn’t buy happiness. It had actually cost him his parents. He hadn’t forgotten that. Nor had it bought Logan, who had had far more than Allen, sanity.

  Jess’s quest for money had caused her to do the things she had done. Things that could have cost other people Allen cared about a great deal. When he had learned what she was using him for, everything he’d thought he had with Jess had been tainted. Forever.

  He wanted a woman who wanted to be with him. For who he was, not what he had.

  Money wasn’t exactly the root of evil—human nature was, in his opinion—but the quest for it had hurt a damned lot of people out there.

  Henedy’s attractiveness to women hadn’t been part of why he had nearly killed Izzie. There had to be something else.

  They finally pulled in at the campground. He lowered her seat and covered her more fully with the blanket. He wanted her as hidden as possible. Allen locked the doors and hurried inside to register them for their site. Hopefully, there would be one open on a walk-in basis. Otherwise, they’d keep driving.

  They got the last site, back by the laundry facility and a small restaurant that served breakfast and barbecue in Styrofoam containers. He registered them under Logan’s name, and then ordered them something to eat.

  He pulled the van into their site while he waited for their food order to be prepared. It took only a few moments to get the van set up and the slides out. Izzie never woke.

  It was only when he returned with the food that she stirred. “Morning, sunshine.”

  “What time is it? And…just where are we?”

  “Victoria. It’s a little after noon. You slept the entire way.” He’d suspected she would when she hadn’t balked at him when he’d suggested she take something for the obvious pain she was still feeling.

  She blinked at him. “How did we end up here? I thought we were going to San Antonio?”

  “I missed an exit and ended up heading this way instead. It’s less crowded here. I have lunch.”

  She sat up. “I’m starved.”

  Good. She needed to put on some weight to be back at an ideal BMI for her size.

  “How are you feeling? How’s the pain?”

  “About a four for broken bones, but a one if you’ve ever been shot three times. Relatively speaking, I’ll be fine.”

  “Good.”

  Stubborn woman wouldn’t tell him the truth, even if he demanded it. She seemed better than she had been earlier, but she would be hurting for a few more days.

  He would do his best to take care of her. He’d have to find a way to make certain she had no clue what he was doing in the meantime.

  Allen liked the idea of that—both the challenge, and because when it was all boiled down…

  He liked taking care of her.

  68

  She wasn’t overly talkative, and that surprised him. It could be because of the pain medications, but from what he remembered of her when he’d see her in the hospital halls and the cafeteria, she was usually the one talking. Izzie or Nikkie Jean. Annie was the quiet one of their little group.

  She seemed content to curl up in a lawn chair he’d picked up at the camp store for her and watch him as he tinkered with the engine on the van, scribbling in the notebook on her lap. She’d refused to tell him what she was writing.

  He wanted to know. He wouldn’t pry.

  “Do you know what you’re doing?” she asked finally. She’d stripped down to a tank-top with a familiar cartoon garlic on it that she’d found at the secondhand store. The cast was a garish accessory that gleamed white in the afternoon Texas sun. She’d completely refused to put the splint back on.

  He’d given up arguing and settled for wrapping her wrist himself in an elastic bandage. There was a dark bruise under her eye, but she’d found mirrored sunglasses that hid it, mostly.

  “I do. My father was an engineer. He designed engines for several car manufacturers in Texas. He worked for Barratt-Handley for most of Shelby’s childhood.”

  “Wow. Nice. So you’re good with bodies—and with engines. You are a very marketable catch, Dr. Jacobson.”

  “He enjoyed it. He made certain both Shelby and I knew how our engines work. I enjoyed it to some extent. We built a go-cart from scratch when I was eleven.”

  “Sounds fun.”

  “He didn’t have a lot of free time, but he made certain what he did went to Shelby and me. I couldn’t have asked for a better father.”

  Her face pinched, and he wondered what he’d said wrong now. He almost asked her, but…they all had memories they wanted to forget.

  Allen turned away, grabbed the wrench set he’d found in the rear of the van, and knelt down. He’d do a quick check to make certain everything was in good working order.

  He’d always believed in being prepared for any eventuality.

  Mechanical problems were not something they needed on this little trip.

  It gave him something to do with his hands—kept him from putting his hands on his little van-mate in all the wonderful ways he kept imagining.

  Allen had been lucky. Izzie thought about that as she kept developing the character in the latest book she was attempting to write.

  That character kept sounding more and more like Allen.

  When she had been ten, her mother had left her at home in the trailer for sixteen days while she went on vacation with her latest lover. Her mother hadn’t even known his last name.

  Izzie certainly hadn’t.

  Izzie had gone through each of those days avoiding the telephone bill collectors and hoping the box of cereal and three dollars’ worth of hot dogs she’d been able to buy would be enough food to last her through those sixteen days. She had had no clue how long her mother would be gone. She’d been gone one day and back sixteen days later.

  It hadn’t been the only time.

  Annie…Annie had saved her, then, too. Annie had stolen money from her own mother’s purse to buy Izzie a loaf of bread and a box of instant mashed potatoes when those hot dogs and cereal had run out.

  She still couldn’t eat mashed potatoes without wanting to vomit.

  Izzie had made it through, somehow.

  How different their childhoods had been was well illustrated.

  What would Mr. Perfect think if she opened up and told him the kind of world she came from? He’d probably take that first opportunity to head for the hills in an instant. Like she was tainted or broken or something.

  She wasn’t. Jake had made certain of that.

  She was lost in her own thoughts while he played around the engine. She shot him a look, wondering what the first-shift nurses who were so wild about him would think seeing him like this, all hot and sweaty and gorgeous.

  Her hormones stood at attention, full alert.

  He slid under the van, then cursed.

  When he pulled himself back out, she saw the blood.

  69

  The crime-scene-tech supervisor this time was a pretty blonde with big blue eyes and a sexy way of walking that Jake had noticed before. She’d interned at the TSP a while back before being injured in a shooting a few days after the storm. She was damned smart, sexy as hell, and thoroughly in love with the sheriff of Barratt County.

  From what he understood, the adoration was returned by that sheriff.

  There was a lot of love floating around him l
ately.

  It made Jake all the crankier.

  “Deputy Moore…or is it Addy, now?”

  “Addy as of three weeks ago.”

  “Congratulations. Hope he knows what he’s got.” Sheriff Addy was a connection of the Barratts, he thought. He’d met the man a time or two and thought he was a cousin of the mayor. More than that, he’d seemed like a good and honest cop.

  Jake respected that.

  “He does. I remind him frequently. We were called in,” Bailey said. She fastened the snaps on what Jake called the paper burritos. It was TSP policy for forensics to wear sterile coveralls on all scenes. “I’m going to dust for prints now.”

  “For a smash and grab?” That didn’t make a damned bit of sense to Jake. Then again, the assistant commander of major crimes shouldn’t have been called out for a simple smash and grab, either. No, this had bigger connections—or someone had called in a favor with either Elliot or Dan. Jake suspected he was that favor.

  “Chief Marshall wants you on this,” Bailey said. “Do you know whose condo this is?”

  Jake shook his head. Bailey tucked a lock of straight blond hair up into the hairnet.

  Had she not been so hung up on that husband of hers, he would’ve pursued it a bit more than he had when she’d interned at the Finley Creek TSP.

  They’d had two dates and a few seriously hot kisses between them long before shit had hit the fan for her and she’d been wounded in a massive case that had involved FBI from far away as St. Louis. She’d been shot again just after the storm. She and Izzie both.

  Bailey was a friend of his niece. She asked about Izzie as they walked toward the condo entrance. He reassured her that Izzie was recuperating with friends near the Gulf, and would be back in Finley Creek once the bruises faded. Bailey thought Izzie had been injured in a car accident—so apparently, the false reports were working.

  That was good. It would buy him more time—and more protection for his niece.

  “Never mind all that, how are you feeling? It’s good to see you back on the job. Though here in Finley Creek surprises me.”

  “Policy states that I can’t work directly with my husband.” A smile stretched her pretty face at the word husband. “Plus, this position was already in the works before the storm destroyed everything. Haldyn and Chief Marshall asked me specifically to take the supervisor’s position. Chuckie and I are partnering up today because we’re shorthanded. Elliot said that this was a personal case. For him and for you.”

  They fell into step together. Jake was careful to not bump and contaminate the paper burrito.

  “Why?”

  “The condo belongs to Allen Jacobson. The doctor who is good friends with Nikkie Jean.”

  “I know Jacobson.” It would be Jacobson’s place. That man was involved to his eyebrows in whatever hell was going on at FCGH. He just kept coming up in everything Jake looked into. He fought a curse as he approached the fancy digs. “So what the hell do we know so far?”

  “Neighbor called it in. The whole place has been trashed. It looks as if someone was searching for something. What, nobody really knows yet.”

  “And?” There was something. She might be forensics now, but Bailey was one hell of a TSP investigator. “Initial thoughts?”

  “No one can find Allen Jacobson. He’s not at the conference he’s been rumored to be at. He’s not answering his cell phone. No one knows where he is at all. With this…I hope nothing has happened to him. I’ve met him several times in the W4HAV building. I like him.”

  Jake’s stomach sank like lead. He knew about as well as anyone where the man was.

  With Izzie. All that stood between her and the threats. Jake didn’t trust Jacobson at all.

  This…this made that distrust so much worse.

  70

  “That’s not one of the shirts I bought you.” She had to say something. He had done some serious damage, but just stood there. Calmly. Izzie climbed to her feet, ignoring how every sore muscle in her body twinged.

  He shook his head. “No. It’s one of Logan’s he’d had at his parents’ place. I grabbed it out of his closet while you were asleep in my car.”

  “Let me look at it.”

  “The shirt?” He gave her a wicked grin, but she didn’t miss the pain. She almost rolled her eyes at him.

  He could be a real butt sometimes. “Don’t be a butt.”

  “If I be good will you take care of me, Nurse Izadora?”

  The shirt was too small, the shoulders too tight. Even though Dr. Lanning had been a good-sized man—he hadn’t held a candle to this one. Allen slipped it off and tossed it aside.

  Izzie stepped closer, eyes trained on the blood dripping down his shoulder and pec. “How did you even do this? It doesn’t seem possible.”

  Izzie had seen quite a few things in the ER that the normal person wouldn’t think was possible. Three days before Allen had absconded with her, she’d helped Cage extract a screwdriver out of a man’s armpit.

  “I think I’m a bit too big to fit under the van.”

  “No kidding. You’ll be lucky not to get tetanus and die, and leave me to drive this thing back to Finley Creek one handed. Alone.” She pulled in a breath. Time to get it together and get things taken care of. She could do this, even one-handed. “I take it you had a booster after Henedy got us both? I know I did. It’ll have to be cleaned.”

  She’d have to be the one to do it. There was no way he’d be able to reach the back of his shoulder.

  Izzie followed him up the small step into the van. Once inside, she turned on the sink to warm the water and washed her hand quickly. There was a first aid kit. That wasn’t something she would ever think Allen would be without. The man believed in being prepared for anything. That had become more than abundantly clear.

  Izzie definitely respected that.

  She worked in silence to prepare everything they’d need. “Let’s get it taken care of, then.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  She pulled in a breath. “Sit down.” She motioned to the dinette. He obeyed. The man absolutely dwarfed the van at times. This was one of them. “It’s pretty deep. It may need to be stitched.”

  “Is that something you are comfortable doing? If not, sterile strips will work.”

  No. They wouldn’t. He hadn’t been able to see the back of the wound as well as she could.

  “I’ve done some. In class. Never at the hospital. At least my dominant hand is free. You got lucky there.”

  “I’m not risking us being recognized by going to an ER. Not for this. Time for trial by fire, Izadora.”

  “Are you sure about this?”

  “Honey, I don’t think you’ll do anything permanent to damage me. There’s plenty of lidocaine there, thanks to Nikkie Jean. She prepared us for a total zombie apocalypse with her first aid supplies.”

  “That woman believes in being prepared for anything.” There it was. Lidocaine and a three pack of syringes, sterile needles, and different gauges of nylon thread, antibiotic creams, everything. This was something she’d done thousands of times too. It helped center her, at least. “I’m not sure of this.”

  Suturing wasn’t a part of her job description.

  “Slow and steady. You’ll do fine.”

  It took twenty minutes, him guiding her through the process, so calm and steady that her own nerves evened out, before they were both satisfied with her efforts.

  Izzie felt sick to her stomach when she finished. He looked pretty green around the gills himself.

  “You did fine. I told you that you would. Once you’re finished with your degree, you’ll be one hell of a CNP.”

  “If I finish, you mean.” It was surprisingly easy to tell him what she hadn’t told anyone else yet. Probably because her world had shrunk, narrowed only to him.

  Her dreams of becoming a nurse practitioner were done.

  “Why wouldn’t you?”

  “What Henedy did screwed with my entire life. It depleted my s
avings and made classes impossible right now, and I’ve only made the first payment on the hospital bills. I don’t know when I’ll be able to save up again. Especially after this latest adventure means I’m off even longer.” She shrugged. It hurt. She was starting to accept it a little more than she had. Izzie was used to pivoting when things in life went sideways.

  Her life had gone quite a bit sideways in recent months.

  “You should go back. Find a way. Hell, sue that bastard for every penny he has. You’re entitled to that much. I may sue him myself. I wasn’t able to work for three weeks until the arm fully healed. I’ll sue him, too. You can have the proceeds, use it as a scholarship.” His hands slipped around her waist.

  Before she could respond, she found herself sitting smack dab in the middle of the man’s lap, her hip pressed into the edge of the dinette table and her cheek pressed to his strong, hot chest. Oh boy.

  A handful of kisses hadn’t prepared her for this. “What exactly are you doing?”

  “You looked so green I thought you might need a hug.”

  Yeah, right. Allen wasn’t the type to go around hugging women. Even women he was stuck in an RV with. No, the man wanted something more.

  Izzie knew what he was ultimately after.

  The man was attracted to her, and he wanted her. It had been in the way his storm-gray eyes had looked at her throughout the day.

  She had to decide if she was going to let him…well…have her.

  In all the ways he wanted.

  For the first time in her life, she was seriously contemplating an affair with a man she worked with, a physician at that. Everything really had gone sideways. There was no denying that.

  “Do I?”

  “I vomited the first time I cut open a living being. It’s not something I’ll ever forget. Nikkie Jean still gets squeamish whenever she handles the stitching. Every single time. She thinks we don’t know, but it’s written on her face. I think you did fine. You still look a little queasy. I can’t hug Nikkie Jean—she jumps like a scalded cat every time anyone tries—but I can hug you.”