Shirlee McCoy - Night Stalker

She grabbed the doorjamb, her fingers curving around cool wood.

“You okay?” Adam asked, and she realized he had both of her shoes in his hand and was watching her.

“Fine. Just anxious to get out of here.”

“For the record,” he said, placing the shoes on the floor so she could slip into them, “I don’t approve.”

“Your disapproval is noted.”

“But you’re leaving anyway?”

“Yes.”

“I’ll get a wheelchair.” He gave in with a lot less of a fight than she’d expected.

“I can walk.”

“Suit yourself.”

“I will.” She stepped toward the door, and he touched her arm. Not stopping her. Just offering support. Her breath caught, her heart skipping a beat. His lashes were still long, thick and curly, his skin deeply tanned. He had a faint scar on his left jaw, and a solemnness to his demeanor that had been missing when he’d been a young deputy sheriff, fresh-faced and eager to prove himself. She felt dizzy with the memories, or maybe from moving too much and too quickly.

“On second thought,” she murmured, “a wheelchair might be good.”

He slipped his arm around her waist and led her to the recliner. She was sitting in it before she realized what was happening, his jacket settled around her, the scent of his cologne filling her nose.

“I’ll be right back,” he said, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. He was looking into her eyes, and she was looking into his, and for a moment, there was nothing between them. No past. No pain. No heartache. They were simply two friends taking care of each other the same way they had since the first day they’d met.

He backed away, turning on his heels and striding from the room. Minutes later, he wheeled the chair in, helping her settle into it with the same quick efficient manner as any of the nurses or orderlies would have.

Whatever had been there was gone.

They were strangers again, and she told herself she was fine with it.

“Are you sure you want to do this?” he asked, and she nodded.

“Clover has been alone for eight nights. That’s seven too many.”

“He’s a dog,” he pointed out. “And Bubbles has been spending every day with him.”

“He’s family,” she corrected.

He nodded, his dark eyes tracing the curve of her cheek and jaw. She could feel it like a physical touch.

Maybe they weren’t so much like strangers, after all.

She frowned, relieved when he walked around to the back of the wheelchair and rolled her into the hall.

“One of my colleagues is waiting for us at the service entrance. We figured taking you out that way would attract a lot less attention than wheeling you through the lobby,” he said. “You remember meeting Special Agent River Callahan?”

“Blond hair, blue eyes, nice smile?”

“I never paid much attention to the smile, but the other two are accurate. He and Wren are accompanying us to your place. They’ll be staying there until you make a decision about protective custody.”

“I don’t remember agreeing to that.”

“You didn’t.” His quick blunt response left no room for argument.

Not that she cared about that.

She could have argued.

She could have listed a dozen reasons why she didn’t want or need federal officers in her house. Except that she wasn’t a hundred percent sure she didn’t need them.

She thought she didn’t.

She hoped she didn’t.

But if the Night Stalker really did live somewhere nearby, he might be someone she knew, someone who’d recognized her.

Someone who wanted to make sure that she didn’t recognize him.

“Okay,” she said.

“That was easy,” he responded.

“You expected me to argue?”

“You’re leaving the hospital against the advice of law enforcement,” he pointed out, “so that seemed like a reasonable assumption.”

“I’m tired of the hospital,” she replied. “But I’m still really fond of being alive. If there’s any chance the Night Stalker knows who I am—”

“We’ve been very careful about what information is released to the press.”

“That doesn’t mean much in a small town.”

He didn’t respond as he rolled her out into the hall.

She hadn’t expected him to.

He might have moved to Boston, joined the FBI, lived the high-stress busy life he’d always wanted, but he’d been born and raised in Whisper Lake. He knew how small towns worked, how information traveled over backyard fences and across church pews and made its way through the entire population so quickly it was nearly impossible to stop it. Regional papers had gotten wind of the Night Stalker’s attempted kidnapping. They’d been fed information from anonymous sources who’d been happy to tell them that a woman had been shot saving a nurse from the serial killer. Charlotte had seen the story running on local and national television. It had been front-page news for a week, and there was no doubt that Whisper Lake was buzzing with it.

People who lived there knew the police had responded to a shooting near the lake. They knew there’d been two women at the scene. They knew everything except for the fact that Charlotte had been involved.

She wanted to keep it that way.

They reached the nurse’s desk and the bank of elevators across from it. Adam passed both.

“Where are we going?” she asked, suddenly wondering if her escape from the hospital had seemed too easy because it was too easy.

Maybe Adam had his own plans.

Plans that didn’t include letting her return to the cottage.

“To the freight elevator,” he replied, turning down a quiet corridor that led deeper into the hospital.

“We are going home, right?” she asked as he stopped at the oversize elevator and tapped the call button.

“Yes.”

“If you don’t, I’ll find a way to get there myself.”

He leaned down, his lips so close to her ear, she thought she could feel their warmth. “I was a lot of things when we were married, Charlotte, but I was never a liar.”

The doors slid open and he wheeled her into the cavernous space.

He didn’t speak again, and she couldn’t.

All the words were caught in her throat, a million memories of Adam and what he’d meant to her flitting through her brain and lodging in her heart.

When the doors slid open again, she inhaled deeply, the breath she hadn’t realized she’d been holding puffing out into the chilly basement air. This part of the hospital wasn’t one visitors normally saw. The cement floor was old and paint-spattered, track marks from thousands of carts being wheeled through etched into it. Up ahead, what looked like a wide garage door was illuminated by a few dim overhead lights.

A man waited there, his suit jacket crisp and neat, his expression grim. He had a holster beneath his sports coat. She’d seen it and him a lot during her hospital stay. He was a member of the FBI’s Special Crimes Unit. He was also quiet, reserved and pointed in his questions. No matter how many times she answered, no matter what she said to him, she always had the idea that River Callahan didn’t believe her.

He nodded as Adam wheeled her closer, pressing a button so the door rose. Beyond it, moonlight cast long shadows across a nearly empty lot. Like so many other places in Whisper Lake, the hospital was bordered by state land, the edge of a national forest just beyond the lot.

She couldn’t take her eyes off the trees, off the circles of streetlights that illuminated the bare branches of old sycamores. Someone could be standing in the shadows, pointing a gun in her direction. She wouldn’t know it until it was too late, until the bullet had already flown and she was lying on the ground, bleeding to death.