The Unexpected Hero Read online

  “Maybe I’m smart. Maybe I’m diverting you.”

  “Yeah, right.” He shook his head. “Calm down and think. You’re in but not from me.”

  She had called David immediately after the police. Now he had arrived and was standing with his arms folded, leaning against the wall facing her. “One of two things is going on here, Krissie,” he said. “Think about it. Which two things could this mean?”

  “Other than that I’m killing my patients?” Her laugh was a little hysterical.

  “Yeah, other than that,” Gage said. “Either someone else was intended to find that in your bag during your shift, or someone is sending you a message. The thing I can’t and won’t buy is that you’re a killer who is stupid enough to keep pointing the finger her own way.”

  “Or that you’re a killer at all,” David said.

  She looked at him gratefully, but then shook her head, trying to drive away her own thoughts. What had already been ugly enough, and scary enough, had just climbed the scale to the top. And she was beginning to feel like the prisoner in the Kafka tale, unable to sort out any rhyme or reason for this new version of hell.

  At that moment her father arrived. Even in his sixties, he managed to appear to her like the cavalry coming to the rescue. He didn’t say a word, just bent over and hugged her tight.

  It was almost as if someone had saved her brand new armchair for him: because it was empty, that’s where he sat when he let go of her.

  “Okay,” he said, still the sheriff and always the dad, no matter how retired. “Krissie needs protection until we find a way to get to the bottom of this.”

  “I was just getting to that,” Gage agreed.

  “A four-by-six cell is probably the best way,” Krissie said morosely.

  “Krissie.” Nate’s tone chided her.

  She looked at him. “Dad, if I were anybody else in the world, I’d be going out of here in handcuffs.”

  “Not likely,” Gage said. “I saw your face when I got here. Everything else aside, you can’t make yourself turn white as a sheet without a major shock.”

  “As a medical doctor,” David said, “I have to agree with that. You’re still looking too pale. And why the hell are you so busy arguing that you should be under suspicion? It wouldn’t have anything to do with a little guilt about something else, would it?”

  She glared at him, wondering how she could have been so stupid as to entrust him with that. Just like a man, to throw it back up in her face. “Don’t psychoanalyze me.”

  David held up a hand as if to say sorry.

  “Guilt about what?” Nate asked. Then, in a very obvious instant, understanding dawned. “Oh, hell.”

  Gage also seemed to understand. “I felt that way for years,” he admitted. “All because I felt I’d failed. That won’t work, Kris. It won’t help. Not you, not your buddies, not anyone else.”

  Her jaw clenched tight. “Is everyone a shrink?” she asked between her teeth.

  “Those of us who have been there,” her dad said. “The war may change, but the price never does.”

  She knotted her hands together, remaining silent. What else could she say? The realization that they might be right left her without any protests.

  “So,” Nate said, “you come stay with me and your mother until we figure out how to get this guy.”

  “No,” she said flatly.

  “No? Are we that bad?”

  She shook her head, and managed to roll her eyes to make the point. “I just won’t let him do that to me. I won’t let him make me run home to mommy and daddy.” It was probably a stupid stand, but she felt a desperate need to make one.

  Nate smiled faintly. “There’s my girl. So give me an alternative, short of putting Micah on your tail 24-7.”

  “I’ll do it,” David said.

  She looked at him in astonishment. The guy who’d scrupulously avoided her for the last few days was volunteering to be her housemate. What’s more, she wasn’t sure she liked the idea of anyone just moving in on her. Her independence had been hard won. She summoned the only polite protest she could come up with. “You have to work!”

  He shrugged. “I’ve worked so many hours in the last year, my partners had better not utter a single word of complaint. I’ll take some time off and camp on your doorstep. Plus, I’ve had infantry training, so I won’t be a useless bodyguard, and my presence here will just look like a hospital romance.” He offered a little smile. “Much better sort of gossip than the kind that would come from having a deputy on your doorstep.”

  “And at work? I still have to go to work.”

  “Not for two more days,” he said. “And by then we’ll figure out how to handle it.”

  “Agreed,” said Gage. “We’re going to figure out how to catch this sucker by then or I’ll eat your dad’s hat.”

  “Eat your own,” Nate retorted. “Took me years to get this one to fit just right.”

  In spite of herself, Krissie gave a little smile. Those warm arms of love were wrapping around her again, this time to distract her.

  “Okay,” she said finally. “But David, all I have is that stupid air mattress.”

  “I’ll sleep on the couch.”

  “You’re joking, right? I get the couch.”

  “At least I know where I rank.”

  “Yeah,” said Nate. “On the floor. Do I need to have a fatherly word with you?”

  David held up a hand. “Trust me, I know better than to mess around in your backyard.”

  Krissie wasn’t sure she liked that at all. “I’m not anyone’s backyard.”

  David looked at Nate. Nate looked at David. Then they both looked at her. “Yes, you are,” they said in unison.

  A deep laugh rolled out of Micah, and almost in spite of herself, Krissie smiled. Some of the tension was beginning to seep away thanks to all the support she was getting. Whatever was going on, she certainly wasn’t facing it alone. And independence be damned, that was a good feeling.

  David ran back to his house to pick up a few things he’d need at Krissie’s, including his pillow. As he stuffed things into a suitcase, he wondered what had possessed him to make this offer.

  But he knew. In his gut he knew. Something about the stand she was taking had touched him. Her refusal to be driven home to “mommy and daddy,” while perhaps not the smartest move, had reached him at some deep level. She was fighting to hold her ground while forces she couldn’t identify threatened her.

  He respected that.

  So okay, he’d just planted both feet back in the middle of a situation he’d warned himself to avoid—and with a woman he had very mixed reasons to protect. Too bad. After finding out about that doll being in her backpack, he didn’t care about the other risks. He just cared about helping to make sure Krissie didn’t get hurt by this creep.

  After that, they’d just have to sort out anything else that happened.

  He figured they were both adult enough to do that.

  Yeah.

  Right.

  Still shaking his head, he hurried out with his suitcase.

  When he returned to Krissie’s, all the cops were gone except for Micah, who sat in his patrol car in the parking lot. When Micah saw him, he nodded, then pulled away. David went inside, tugged his suitcase up to the second floor and knocked on Krissie’s door.

  She let him in, but didn’t smile. All she said was, “Hi.”

  He left his suitcase by the door, and watched as she went to sit on the couch. She almost seemed to curl up into herself, as if she were expecting another blow.

  He didn’t blame her for feeling that way. Finding that doll in her backpack couldn’t have failed to knock her for a loop. All their speculation before that had been just speculation based on what he called the “configuration.” But now, it was speculation no longer.

  He hesitated, not sure what, if anything, he could do or say. Everything that popped into his head seemed to be a pointless platitude.

  Finally, he sat on
the armchair facing her, because it seemed stupid to stand by the door. Maybe she would say something, and give him a clue as to how he could help.

  Seconds ticked by slowly, turning into minutes. Just as he began to think that he would have to do something, simply because his nature didn’t allow him to sit and do nothing, Krissie spoke.

  “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m being rude.”

  “You’ve had a shock.”

  She lifted her head and smiled wanly. “Yeah, but it’s not the first one I’ve had, nor will it likely be the last. I don’t usually go into a funk. I’m the kind who ordinarily gets a rush of adrenaline and drives everyone crazy trying to do something even when there’s nothing I can do.”

  “I get like that, too. But honestly, Krissie, I don’t know what we can do right now, except keep the guy from using you somehow.”

  “Yeah. Maybe that’s why I’m so down. I don’t like it when I can’t see what’s going on or why, mainly because I can’t take care of anything.”

  “Nobody likes to feel powerless. But you’re not. We’re all getting together to sort this out, you included.”

  She nodded and sighed again, this time a more invigorated sigh. “You’re right. And sitting here feeling sandbagged isn’t doing me or anyone else any good. Maybe I’ll bake.”

  “Bake?” David felt his interest perk about the way a dog’s would when it heard the word “treat.”

  “Baking soothes me. If you don’t mind, I’ll go make cookies or something.”

  “I mind only if I’m not invited to sample them.” That at least drew another smile.

  “You can sample all you want.”

  She put him to work, too, which was fine. He wasn’t a total tyro in the kitchen, he just didn’t bother to bake. Once she had checked the contents of the cupboards, she announced they were making a chocolate cake.

  “Chocolate,” he said, “being the cure for all the world’s ills.”

  “You got that right.”

  After the cake went into the oven, they returned to the living room. David, casting about for a safe subject, asked, “So what was it like growing up as the daughter of the sheriff?”

  At that Krissie smiled. “Oh, I was very safe. Maybe too safe. Dad wasn’t overprotective, he’s not the type. But everyone knew who I was so I didn’t have much room to mess up.”

  “Like being the preacher’s kid.”

  “You’re not the first one to make that comparison. Kind of like that, I guess, except that a preacher doesn’t have the weight of the law behind him.”

  “So did you feel constricted?”

  “Sad to say, I didn’t often have the urge to do anything stupid. I had five older sisters keeping an eye on me, too.”

  “Is that why you left?”

  “Sometimes I think so. I mean, a whole lot of things went into my decision, but yes, I think, like a lot of kids who grow up here, I felt a need to get away so I could stand on my own two feet. Spread my wings a bit. I always knew I’d come back, but I needed to make my own way all alone for a while.”

  “Glad you did?”

  “Basically. I learned a lot about myself, and I guess that was the point. What about you? How did you grow up?”

  He shrugged one shoulder. “Very differently. Tampa’s a big enough city to get away with stuff, and I got away with some. Nothing major, but I pushed the boundaries the way you do in high school. I got myself grounded more than once, I went to a few keggers I was too young for, I drove fast and picked up a few tickets, I ignored my curfew a number of times, and my dad threatened to make me drop out of school and get a job when my grades plunged.”

  “Wow. A real daredevil.”

  He laughed. “At times. I diverted most of my devil into dirt biking and girls. Much safer than some of the other stuff.”

  “But you enlisted right out of high school?”

  He nodded. “I wasn’t ready for college and I knew it. Graduating from high school felt like the end of a prison sentence, and I couldn’t wait to get out and away. The last place I wanted to be was in another classroom.”

  “Funny, I didn’t feel that way at all. I was eager to get to college.”

  “Everyone’s different. When I look back at it now, though, I can laugh. I hated the thought of going to college back then, yet look at me now. I sure went back to school in a big way.”

  “You sure did.”

  He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “I think I needed a goal. When I got out of high school, I didn’t have any idea what I wanted to do with my life. In that respect, choosing the army was the best thing I could have done. They gave me options I hadn’t considered before, then pointed me toward medicine. That had never entered my mind before, but I’m damn glad I got here.”

  “I never wanted anything else. From the first time I can remember I wanted to be a nurse.”

  “Maybe because of Wendy?”

  “Maybe in part. I have two other sisters who chose nursing, too, but one works in Casper and the other in Albuquerque.”

  “So they didn’t come home.”

  “Not yet.” She half smiled. “They will eventually. This place pulls you.”

  “I’m beginning to realize that myself. I sure wouldn’t want to leave now.”

  She cocked her head. “So we both had fairly good, secure childhoods?”

  He started to smile crookedly. “Which is probably why we both chose to turn ourselves into basket cases.”

  A laugh escaped her. “It looks that way. Except that’s not true of everyone I met in uniform.”

  “Of course not. I’m just talking about the two of us. We emerged from high school with fairly intact psyches and then ran them as hard as we could over the speed bumps of life.”

  “So it seems.” But she was still smiling. “There’s probably a psychological message in that, but it’s beyond me.”

  “I don’t know that I would take it as a negative. I wanted to do something worthwhile, I just didn’t know what it was. Something important. I suspect you felt the same impulses.”

  “I suppose I did.”

  “And no amount of imagination could have prepared us for what we walked into. Not at first. I admit I came back for more after tasting it on the ground, but the Gulf War, bad as it was on occasion, didn’t come close to what I saw in Iraq.”

  She nodded, listening.

  “So I set myself up for the second round, because I wanted to be able to do more. Nobody to blame for that but me.”

  “We were already at war when I signed up,” Krissie said quietly. “I felt it was my duty.”

  “I would have done the same, if I hadn’t already been in.”

  “So there you have it. The tsunami was awful, but I was on a hospital ship and felt I was doing a lot of good for people. Then I got attached to the Marine Corps and everything changed.”

  “I know.”

  “I bet you do. It’s not just the wounded, which was a nightmare in itself, it was the constant danger of attack from the unlikeliest places.”

  It was his turn to nod.

  “You couldn’t even feel safe on your cot at night.” She drew a deep breath, clearly trying to shake it off before the memories moved in like an invading army of zombies.

  Unfortunately, he was the one who got hit by the tidal wave of memory. All of a sudden, he was elsewhere, his nose full of the smell of cordite and burned flesh and blood, his ears full of the sound of men, women and children screaming and shouting. He was belly crawling through the dirt and over pavement—once again a medic instead of a doctor—because all he’d been doing was moving with a convoy to his new station when the roadside bomb exploded and the sniper fire started raining from the rooftops and the rocket-propelled grenades started to whoosh through the air, and he wanted to scream too, but people needed his help, and the bloody heaps of them were almost indistinguishable. Civilians or soldiers, men or women…only the kids stood out in their smallness….

  He had his emerg
ency kit strapped over his shoulder, and he dragged it along the ground with him, ignoring the sniper fire because it was the only way he could hope to save any one of those people. He heard a soldier screaming “Ambush!” probably into a radio, he heard the sound of the convoy returning fire, but the screaming never stopped not even for an instant—

  “David! David!”

  He snapped back to Krissie’s apartment in a flash. His heart hammered and he was gasping for air, and every muscle in his body had knotted up. “Sorry,” he said raggedly. “Sorry.”

  “Don’t ever be sorry for that,” she said gently. She crouched in front of him, holding his upper arms. “Never, ever be sorry for that.” Lifting one hand, she cupped his cheek. Her palm was soft and cool and so very different from the place he had just gone to in his mind. He closed his eyes and focused on controlling the adrenaline rush, on calming himself.

  “It’s okay. It happens to me, too. You know it does.”

  “It hasn’t happened to me in a while. Not like that. I’m sorry.”

  “I already told you not to be sorry.” Her voice was gently chiding. When he turned his face into her palm so he could inhale her scent rather than the manufactured ones in his brain, she didn’t pull away.

  Gradually the moment passed. Or at least as much as it could. Somewhere at the edges of his mind, the smells, the screams, the horror, remained lodged, a persistent background to the here and now. But it wasn’t like a movie running in the background. No, a movie didn’t feel like this. A movie couldn’t make him hurt like this.

  “Okay?” she asked after a few moments.

  He nodded, his eyes still closed, and felt her leave him. For some reason, the loss of that contact felt almost as painful as the memories.

  He opened his eyes, drinking in the evening sunlight, bringing himself steadily back from the precipice. “I had almost thought,” he said apologetically, “that I was past that.” This was his first flashback in at least six months and he couldn’t have said which disturbed him more: the flashback itself or the fact that it had happened when he’d just begun to believe he might be done with them.