Rachel Lee - Killer's Prey

Her hair, once among her best features, didn’t look very good, either. He supposed that would come back as she recovered, but looking at her right now was enough to make him ache, thinking of the hell she had been through and the hell she still had to deal with.

Thinking about that left him with little to say. He didn’t want to talk about anything that distressed her, and right now that seemed to be about the only thing worth discussing.

“Daisy likes you,” he remarked finally, looking for neutral ground.

“Did she? How can you tell? I liked her for sure.”

“She tosses her head a bit when she doesn’t like her rider. Not that she gets rough or anything. She’s too gentle for that. But you can tell.”

“It was so much fun I didn’t want to stop.”

“Then we’ll do it again. Soon. Maybe even a little later today.”

“I’d love that,” she admitted. Then, more shyly, added, “I get my energy in spurts right now. I’m not wiped out for the day just because I get tired every now and then.”

“That’s good to know. Do you have any directions from the doctor you have to follow?”

“Take a couple of walks every day, as far as I can, and eat six times a day, small meals. I felt so bad leaving all that food on the plate.”

He could imagine where that came from, knowing her father. “Don’t. Rosa can’t imagine serving anything less, and I’m sure she saved the leftovers. You’ll probably go home with them.”

She surprised him with a little giggle. “How do you and Al manage not to gain weight?”

“Hard work.” He smiled back at her.

“So is being chief of police much different from being a deputy?”

“More work and a hell of a lot more politics.” He leaned forward, reaching for his own mug of hot chocolate, then sat with his elbows on his knees. “I think the city council invented new paperwork just for me. Then these guys don’t always get along well, and they try to put me in the middle. I’m not sure what I’m supposed to do from there, but they try. The six of them are a private soap opera, but a lot less interesting.”

She nodded. “It seems silly having a separate police department.”

“It is. But Gage likes it. Even though he’s elected and doesn’t report to them, they used to give him a hard time. Now they reserve it for me.”

“Is it worth it?”

“Right now. I could change my mind at any moment.” He winked and was glad to see another smile. “Gage would take me back.”

“It’s good to know that.” She sighed and rested her mug on her thigh. “I’m trying to decide if I should look for someplace to live.”

“Your dad giving you trouble?”

“Not yet. But he hasn’t changed a bit. It’s like...” She bit her lip, clearly uncertain if she should speak, but finally the words burst out. “It’s like exchanging one nightmare for another. It’s like being a child all over again.”

And that hadn’t been a happy time for her at all. He didn’t need her to say it. “That’s not good.”

“But I guess I need to find a job, too. He wants me to work at the pharmacy but I...” She trailed off and shook her head. “I’ll figure out something, but it’s not going to be that.”

He was glad to see the spark in her. “Your father is a handful, all right.”

“He should have been born in the nineteenth century,” she said vehemently.

“I never thought of it that way, but you’re probably right.”

“I know I am. I got away, and amazingly enough there’s a whole world out there where women don’t have to bow and scrape, where people can actually have a good time without feeling like sinners. Of course, I’m just waiting for him to tell me none of this would have happened to me if I’d just stayed home like a good girl. That sin brought this all down on me.”

Rage began to seethe in Jake, and he could feel every muscle of his body tense. “If he ever, ever, says that to you, let me know. I’ll have more than a few words for him.”

Her look grew forlorn. “What if he’s right? What if I hadn’t gone to Minneapolis?”

He cussed then, words he was sure her father wouldn’t like. Maybe words she still wasn’t used to hearing. He didn’t give a damn. “Bad things happen to good people. They just happen because life is random. Blaming yourself for being in the wrong place makes as much sense as blaming yourself for being born. Trust me on this, Nora. It could have happened to anyone, including a nun. So don’t even edge near those thoughts.”

“It’s hard to avoid them.”

He figured it would be. He had ten years of experience in law enforcement, and he’d heard that kind of self-blame before. In Nora’s case it was augmented by the blood-and-thunder pulpit pounding she had grown up with. God rewarded the good and punished the bad.

“I’ve seen a lot of good people get hurt,” he said evenly. “Kids. Kids who never had a chance to do anything wrong. What does a six-year-old do to deserve leukemia?”

She didn’t answer, but sat staring down into the mug on her lap. Finally she asked in a small voice, “Then how do you figure it?”

“Bad things just happen. If there’s ever any fault, it’s with the person who does the bad thing. It certainly isn’t with the people they hurt.”

“But I don’t even know why that man attacked me!”

“You may never know. He may never explain it. His lawyer is sure going to tell him to be quiet about it.”

“So how do you explain people like him?”

“I have to believe there’s something wrong with them. Most of us stop ourselves from doing bad things even if we happen to think of them. A few of us don’t. The whole difference is whether we act on those things. This guy acted. And he’s going to prison for a long time.”

“I hope so.”

He fell silent, realizing that she had to work through this in her own way. Hammering it for her wasn’t going to help.

But it made him furious to think he might take her home today to a man who could blame her for this. Her own father, for the love of Pete. The one person who should be on her side more than anyone else.

The phone on the table beside him rang. “Excuse me.” He answered it and immediately shifted into another gear.

“Nora, I’m sorry, but I’m going to have to take you home. Something’s come up at work.”

Something he sure as hell didn’t want to tell her about.

* * *

Nora arrived home with enough rice and pulled pork to feed both her father and herself a large dinner. Rosa had insisted, and Nora hadn’t wanted to argue. It was a generous offer, and might take some of the sting out of her dad when he got home, probably still angry that she had refused to come to work for him today. As if she could have stood at a register for much more than ten or fifteen minutes.

She guessed he thought life was going to carry on as if she had never left. Of course, it couldn’t. Any chance of that had died when he’d blamed her for her mother’s death, claiming she had died because Nora had gone away to college and hadn’t been able to take care of her.

Nora knew better than that, but the ensuing fight after the funeral had been ugly enough for an entire lifetime.

What the hell had she been thinking, coming back here? Surely she hadn’t hoped the man had changed. As a psychologist she knew how unlikely that was. Could she have even for one foolish moment have thought he had? All she knew was that she had become desperate, and maybe she hadn’t been thinking clearly at all.

But she couldn’t stay in Minneapolis, not while that man was still there. Not when he’d whispered more threats on the phone to her. Panic had driven her more than anything. And where else could she have gone? When she got well enough, she was going to find another job, far away from here, but in the meantime... In the meantime, her resources were too limited.