Читать книгу Her Detective's Secret Intent - Tara Taylor Quinn - Страница 15

It clearly wasn’t Tad Newberry’s first video game.

Nor had it seemed in any way a hardship for him to have his time engaged with Ethan’s Zoo Attack. Miranda had lunch cleared away, the laundry finished, the dishwasher emptied, and brownies made before either of them seemed to notice that she’d left the table on the patio.

She only had one Saturday off a month and had to make it count—couldn’t just sit and watch the “boys” play—but she caught herself smiling a few times as she heard the deep male voice coinciding with her son’s little-boy enthusiasm. And heard the friendly dissension as they disagreed and ended up in battle. She was grinning from ear to ear as her son, with compassion in his voice, claimed victory.

She wasn’t smiling so much that evening, though, when Ethan hit her up with a request to take his training wheels off his bike the next day.

“I’m done being a baby, Mom,” he told her, his brow furrowed as he gazed at her with those big blue eyes. Jeff’s eyes. She’d never been able to resist Jeff’s pleading. And the man definitely lived on in his son. “I’m the only kid in first grade with training wheels.”

The fact that she’d known it was time didn’t make her acquiescence any easier. Training wheels were a safety net. Miranda was already living more boldly than was comfortable for her. More risks weren’t on her agenda.

You didn’t get to choose when life handed you challenges. Jeff had certainly been proof of that. He’d been her best friend. The only person on earth who knew about the beatings. He’d been her rock. And when life had turned on him, she’d been his rock, too.

Which was why, at nine o’clock Sunday morning, after breakfast and dishes and making beds and washing up—and anything else she could come up with to stall—she was outside on the driveway of her rented haven, a screwdriver in hand, granting Jeff’s son’s request.

Jeff couldn’t do it, so she had to.

Somehow. She’d had the wheels put on at the store two years earlier when she’d bought Ethan the bike for Christmas. They must have used a frickin’ machine.

“Can’t you do it, Mom?” Ethan asked, squatting down beside her and pushing his glasses up on his nose, as though staring at her incompetence would somehow get the baby wheels off his bike.

“Of course I can,” she told him. “I just need some oil.” Or some of whatever it was that helped loosen bolts. She’d read about it...

“Maybe you could call Tad,” he said. “Or I can if you gimme the phone.”

She wished it was the first—or even the fifth—time she’d heard the detective’s name since he’d left the day before. But no...all afternoon, all night long, even that morning, Ethan had been talking about him.

Warning bells had been sounding so loudly in her head, it was a wonder she’d even heard her son’s request—let alone finished the grocery and necessary-item shopping and then managed a trip to the movie theater with her son, followed by the fried chicken that he loved.

Trying to get his mind off Tad Newberry.

Didn’t help that even when Ethan wasn’t mentioning the guy, Miranda’s mind was jabbering on about him.

Bike on its side, with the back wheel lodged between her feet, Miranda sat in the driveway and pulled on the wrench with all her might. It slipped off the bolt and slammed her in the knee.

She didn’t swear out loud. Nor did she give up. She couldn’t afford to do that. She stood. “Let’s go.” She got her keys and headed over to her car. Driver’s license and credit card were already in the back pocket of her jeans.

She never stepped outside without the means to run, to take Ethan and disappear, if she had to.

“We going to take the bike back?” Ethan asked as she wheeled the bike out of their way.

“Nope, we’re going to the store to find something to help us with the bolts.” She’d look up on her phone what she needed when they got to the hardware store.

“Or we could just call Tad,” Ethan said, under his breath and with a touch of belligerence.

She let that go, choosing her battles. “Tad’s only going to be in town for a while, Ethan. I told you that already. We can be friends with him, but we can’t ask for his help with stuff.”

How did you explain life’s hideous complications to a six-year-old?

“You could date him and then maybe he’d stay around.”

“No, he wouldn’t.” Make no mistake about that, little man. Because she couldn’t let him stay.

“He has an important job to go back to as soon as he’s healed enough. Remember?”

Looking out the window he could barely see over, Ethan crossed his arms and harrumphed. “He doesn’t act like he’s hurt.”

“Well, he is.”

“How do you know?” She could feel those blue eyes turned on her.

“I’m a doctor’s assistant. I’m trained to know.” She almost mentioned having seen Tad’s scars, but thought better of it. Remembering Danny’s reaction, she couldn’t take a chance that Ethan would share the seven-year-old’s seeming fascination and ask to see for himself.

“But we can be friends,” he said.

“Yep.” Somewhere over the past six weeks, maybe even during the past twenty-four hours, she’d made that choice.

More like, it had been made for her.

“But we just can’t need him, like, to fix my bike, right?”

“Right.”

“Okay. Cool.”

* * *

Tad had been burning with anger after he watched Miranda and Ethan drive away from their house. Livid with a man who’d father a child and then beat that boy’s mother to the point that she’d feared for her life and run away from everyone she’d ever known or loved just to keep the two of them safe.

Anyone she’d have called to help when she couldn’t get the training wheels off her son’s bike had been left behind in North Carolina.

He hoped to God that Miranda’s husband really was dead, as the chief had testified. For Miranda and Ethan’s safety, first and foremost. And, he had to admit, so he wasn’t tempted to go for the man’s throat himself.

Out of his car, he was halfway between it and the bike leaning up against Miranda’s little house, intending to get those training wheels off and be out of sight before she got back, when he stopped.

He was still a newcomer to the world of domestic violence, but after six weeks as an honorary member of the High Risk Team, in addition to all the reading he’d been doing since agreeing to work for Brian O’Connor, he knew he shouldn’t fix that bike. A woman in Miranda’s position, a woman who’d lived with daily fear, would be more likely to panic at the idea that someone had been on her property, messing with her stuff. The fact that this person knew she’d been struggling to get training wheels off her son’s bike would tell her he’d been spying on her. Chances were she wouldn’t see her benefactor as a Good Samaritan, but rather, someone who’d found her and intended to control her again. Someone who was letting her know he was stronger than she was. That she needed him.

If the panic was too intense, that act, something as simple as fixing a bike, could even prompt her to run again.

He was being paid to keep Miranda and Ethan in sight. To keep them safe. Not to fix bikes.

Back in his older-model SUV, he drove away before he had any other stupid ideas.

* * *

Miranda saw Danny again on Monday. She’d removed his stitches on Friday and Marie was worried about a puffy redness on one end of the incision that had been made during the surgery, which was done to repair the muscle tear he’d sustained during his fall.

“I’m fine,” Danny said, when Miranda asked him how he was doing.

As soon as she had a look at the incision site she knew what the problem was.

Fear. Marie’s fear.

Not infection. Or further physical damage. The scar area was pink, not red. A healthy pink.

Asking a nurse to come and stay with Danny in the exam room, and giving the boy a handheld learning-game device with the permission of his mother, Miranda led Marie down the hall to her office, closing the door behind them.

“What’s wrong? Is it infected or is the injury worse than we thought? Does he need more surgery? Should Dr. Bennet take a look at him?”

Max Bennet, the pediatrician who’d hired Miranda as his PA even before she’d completed her training, would be a good person for Marie to talk to. But not about her son’s leg.

“Danny’s incision is fine, Marie.”

“But shouldn’t Dr. Bennet take a look, just in case?”

Picking up her phone, Miranda sent a quick text to Max, who responded immediately.

“He’s going in now, if you’d like to meet him down there,” she said to the worried mom.

Her furrowed brow smoothing out, Marie shook her head. “He’ll let you know if there’s a problem, right?”

“He’ll text either way.”

“You called me in here to talk to you—separate from Danny—and since there’s nothing wrong with his incision...” The other woman’s words trailed off.

Miranda nodded, words tripping over themselves as they fought for release, while, for the most part, she was forced to remain silent.

For the most part.

“Danny’s leg hurting...we know it’s going to.” She started slowly. “Surgery let us put the fibers back together, but there’ll still be scars. We talked about how the nervous system sends messages when muscles have been compromised, inflaming the area to protect weak fibers, shortening the fibers...”

Marie gave a quick nod. “Rehabilitation is all scheduled, and we’ll be there on time, every time,” she said.

“Good.”

“I just... I’m so scared, you know? Danny—he’s all I have. I should’ve gotten him out sooner and now he’s hurt, and Devon might try to take him from me and... I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have wasted your time today.”

Marie was in daily counseling through The Lemonade Stand. She didn’t need Miranda to work through all the issues with her. Nor was Miranda professionally qualified to do that.

“I know,” she said now, making a silent choice that she prayed she wouldn’t regret. But what was the value of her life if she couldn’t use her experiences to help others? She’d needed to speak to Marie since she’d first heard her story. “And that’s why I called you in here. Fear is insidious. The thoughts it drives can consume you to the point of interrupting your ability to cope with daily life. The stronger those thoughts get, the more real they seem...”

Danny was only a year older than Ethan.

If Miranda hadn’t left when she did, her son could so easily have been that little boy sitting down the hall. Or worse.

Her father had been after Ethan, just as Devon was after Danny.

“I know I’m being paranoid, and I’m sorry...”

“No, no, don’t apologize,” Miranda said, leaning forward with both hands on her small desk, in her small office, as she looked at the woman in the folding chair across from her. “What I wanted to tell you, still want to tell you, is that I understand. And that...anytime you have a concern, even if you pretty much know that it’s just fear, you’re welcome to call me. At home.”

Taking a card from the holder on the front of her desk, she wrote her cell number on it. “Anytime,” she said, handing Marie the card. “Sometimes you have to hear a professional opinion to stop the fear,” she added. “You couldn’t trust your own mind because you knew that someone else had manipulated it, that it played with you.

“I don’t want you to put off calling the doctor, or to have to wait for the office to open, nor do I want you to run up medical expenses with urgent care and emergency room visits. Of course, if it’s an emergency, go! But if you’re not sure, even if it’s the middle of the night—call me.”

Staring at the card, looking like she was fighting tears, Marie didn’t reach for it. “I can’t do that,” she said instead. “I can’t bother you like that.”

“I want you to.” To communicate how intensely she meant those words, she laid her hand on Marie’s, then turned both hands over and placed the card in Marie’s exposed palm, closing her fingers around it.

“I have to do this on my own...” Marie’s words were a trembling whisper.

“Some of it, yes.” Miranda knew she might be overstepping a line between professional and personal, but she wasn’t sure that mattered.

Not in this case.

“But you also have to know when to accept help,” she said, realizing that she was speaking to herself, as well.

“Why?” Marie’s eyes were moist as she looked at her. “Why would you do this? You’ve got your own life. You don’t need patients, or mothers of patients, waking you up in the middle of the night because they’re afraid...”

Miranda told herself to come up with some platitude. Quickly.

She couldn’t break the promise she’d made to herself never to screw up again.

Couldn’t speak of the past she’d left, ever. Doing so could expose her to someone talking to someone else who happened to be talking to someone who’d once known a woman named Dana and was looking for her...

“Just please...if your mind starts to play tricks with you, if you start getting paranoid that something’s wrong with you or Danny, if he sneezes and you worry that he could be getting pneumonia, don’t get scared. Don’t let fear take over your senses. Call me instead.”

“I don’t...”

“Think of me as your weapon in that particular battle,” Miranda said, finding strength out of nowhere. “Fear seems all-powerful, but the truth is, it buckles and evaporates when you stand up to it. Calling me is the way you look that particular fear right in the eye.”

Marie needed an arsenal. She’d collect it one weapon at a time, to face down one fear at a time.

Just as Miranda had.

And she’d need to carry it with her for the rest of her life, too. Because although fear slithered away, it always waited, out of sight, to strike again.