Mallory Kane - The Paediatrician's Personal Protector

So she’d called a taxi to take her back to her dad’s house to pick up her rental car. Then, exhausted, she headed to the Oak Grove Inn, a bed-and-breakfast she’d booked in Chef Voleur, stopping along the way to pick up a bottle of wine.

After her flight the night before, she’d barely had time to unload her bags and fall into bed. Then this morning she’d been up at dawn, unable to sleep with her father’s nine o’clock sentencing hearing looming. Now more than twelve hours later, her dad was in the hospital, and all she wanted to do was go back there and sit with him. But she couldn’t. The last thing the nurse had told her was to rest. “It’s the best thing you can do for your father now. It won’t help him if you’re exhausted.”

Irritatingly, it was the same thing she told worn-out parents of her young patients. It was bitter medicine to swallow, but she knew the nurse was right.

She took a deep breath and squeezed her burning eyes shut. She vowed to take the nurse’s advice.

As she approached the inn, which was on a quiet street in a residential section of Chef Voleur, she thought about the difference between the north shore of the Pontchartrain and Boston. As much as the north shore had grown over the last twenty years, the cities still retained a lot of small-town character.

She pulled into the small parking lot. A loud roar announced a big pickup pulling in beside her. Living in Boston for six years, she’d forgotten how many pickups were on the roads in Louisiana. She couldn’t remember ever seeing one in Boston proper.

She got out, grabbed her purse and the bag holding the wine and headed for her cottage, sending a vague smile toward the darkened windows of the pickup. As she walked past the main house toward the third of four tiny cottages lined up behind it, a motion-sensing light came on. But her cottage was dark. Someone—the maid?—had turned off the light she’d deliberately left on this morning.

Behind her, heavy footsteps crunched on the tiny seashells that were mixed with gravel to form the path to the cottages. The driver of the pickup, probably.

Her big-city instincts kicked in and she clutched her purse tightly against her ribs as she quickly inserted the key into the door and turned it.

The crunching footsteps came closer.

It’s just the person in Cottage Four, she told herself as she opened the door to slip inside.

A crushing blow hit her on the back and sent her sprawling onto the floor.

When the blow slammed Christy to the floor, the bag containing the bottle of wine flew out of her hands and landed with a thud in front of her.

Still driven by the momentum of the blow and the weight against her, she pitched forward, hands out to break her fall. She hit the hardwood floor hard and felt a distinct, painful snap in her right wrist.

Pain and panic immobilized her for an instant as a heavy body landed on top of her. He straddled her, pinning her down.

Her heart pounded violently and her limbs quivered. The man grabbed a fistful of her hair and slammed her face down onto the hardwood floor. He put his mouth near her ear. She could smell stale cigarettes on his breath.

She tried to suck in enough air to scream, but his weight pressing her chest into the hardwood floor was too heavy. She tried anyway. All that came from her lips was a feeble squeak.

“Shut your mouth,” his gravely voice whispered.

Christy’s hands were pinned underneath her, and her right wrist pulsed with a sickening pain. Using her left hand, she tried to move, to roll, anything to get him off her. Nothing worked and every tiny movement intensified the piercing agony in her broken wrist. It was making her nauseous.

Whatever the man intended to do to her, she couldn’t stop him. He was too strong and she was too weak.

“Please—” she rasped. “What do you want—?”

His hand pushed her cheek harder into the floor. “Go back where you came from,” he growled. “Or you’re as dead as your sister.”

Terror sliced through her like a razor blade. Her sister’s killer. He’d followed her. Just as the thoughts whirled through her brain, he grabbed her hair again and banged her head against the floor—twice. The blows stunned her.

At some point, she was aware that his crushing weight was gone. Dazed, her head spinning and her wrist throbbing, she managed to roll over onto her side.

Where was he? Dear God—she couldn’t see anything in the dark. Was he really gone? Or was he hiding in the shadows, preparing to kill her?

Instinctively she reached for the tiny can of Mace she carried in her pocket, but when she moved her hand, the pain nearly took her breath away.

She rolled onto her back and tried to reach it with her left hand. It was awkward—almost impossible. Tears welled in her eyes and slid down her cheeks. Tears of frustration, of pain, of paralyzing fear.

Finally, she got her fingers on the object in her pocket, but it wasn’t the Mace. It was her smart phone.

Desperately she grabbed it, trying to press the buttons for 911. But her fingers were shaking too badly. The device slipped from her fumbling fingers and clattered across the hardwood floor.

No!

“Help!” she whispered, her lungs deflated by sobbing. She rolled onto her stomach and reached out with her left hand, feeling along the floor. Where was it?

“Where are you?”

She gasped, at first thinking it was her attacker’s voice. But no. This voice was tinny, mechanical. Was it her phone? She squinted.

There. She saw the light from the display. Thank God. But it was halfway across the room.

Forcing a deep breath into her spasming lungs, she tried to pull herself up enough to crawl toward it, but her right wrist was useless. Worse than useless. If it didn’t stop throbbing, she was going to throw up. The pain was making her sick.

Giving up on trying to move, she cried, “Help me!”

God, what was the name of this place? Her brain was so fuzzy, and she hurt so bad. “Three—! she cried breathlessly. “Cottage Three,” Christy sobbed. “Please hurry!”

REILLY DROVE LIKE A bat out of hell toward the Oak Grove Inn. What if he was wrong? What if he’d misunderstood Christy Moser’s sobbing words? The only cottages he knew about were on Oak Street in Chef Voleur, about two miles from his Covington high-rise condo.

He should have asked her where she was staying when he’d gotten her phone number. Now it was too late. Something had happened to the beautiful black-haired serial killer’s daughter, and she’d called him—because his number was the latest number in her phone.

“Christy? Christy can you hear me?” he yelled into his phone. “Hang on. It’s Reilly Delancey. I’ll be right there.” He kept talking to her because the line was still open. He had no idea whether she could hear him or not. Holding his breath, he listened. Was that a sob? Or harsh, panicked breathing?

“Christy. Talk to me. Where is Cottage Three? Is it Oak Grove Inn?”

“Oak—?”

Fear arrowed through him at her weak, rasping voice. “Christy? I’m coming. Hang in there.”

He careered around the corner onto Oak Street and into the driveway of the B&B. His brain registered three vehicles in the parking lot. A silver Avalon with rental plates, a light blue pickup with Louisiana plates and a Prius with a Mississippi vanity tag that said LVG CPL. He pulled into the parking lot beside the pickup and vaulted out of his car.

Cottage Three. As he sprinted toward the row of small cottages lined up on the grounds of the Oak Grove Bed-and-Breakfast he grabbed his weapon and flashlight from his belt.

“Hey!” he shouted. “Guerrant! Guerrant, you in there?” The owner, Guerrant Bardin, lived in the back of the main house. “Call the police!”