Chapter 19
They had him! Standing in her father’s office with Peter Welding and Mitchell, Dove wanted to throw her arms around the attorney’s neck, hug him and never let go.
She didn’t, of course. But she was smiling from ear to ear as Welding took possession of the security-camera memory card that showed Brad Fletcher himself using some kind of gun that shot what looked to be electrical current onto the deck of Wicked Winnings.
There’d be no fingerprints, no bullets that could be identified by striations.
If not for the cameras that Mitchell had had installed, it could have been near to impossible to prove who’d done the damage.
Welding, as an extra precaution, sent a digital copy of the footage to his secure email at the station, and after Mitchell inserted a new memory card into the camera’s mainframe, the officer walked with Mitchell and her to Mitchell’s car.
Mitchell had an early appointment and needed to drop her off at the hospital first.
“I can take her,” Welding offered, looking from Mitchell to Dove. “It’s only a mile out of my way.” Two for Mitchell, and Welding had no urgent business.
So as disappointed as Dove was not to have those minutes alone with Mitchell, to celebrate the victory in private conversation and ask him the next steps as far as St. James Boats was concerned, she said, “I’m good with that,” and before Mitchell could argue, grabbed her bag out of the back seat of his vehicle.
She’d never met Peter in person until that week and enjoyed his conversation as they drove across their small town.
She watched as they passed Repo and Namaste, longing for her peaceful space, for her clients, but knew that she carried too much risk of passing her negative energy to them while she still felt… hunted.
Soon, she told herself, feeling as though the universe backed up her silent promise. With Brad Fletcher’s arrest imminent, and so clearly, provably guilty, she could be back in her studio as early as that afternoon.
The thought filling her with happiness, she smiled when Peter mentioned that maybe they could get a cup of coffee sometime. And shrugged. Not a no. Not a yes.
Not an admission that she couldn’t stand the stuff.
He didn’t push. She didn’t reject him. And she gave him an extra warm smile as he pulled up in front of the medical center’s main building. “This where you need to be?” he asked, and she nodded.
“Thank you so much,” she told him. “You have no idea how much this means to my father and me. We are most certainly in your debt. Maybe, once he’s home, we can have you over to dinner. To thank you?”
Let him make what he would of that. He was a nice man. She liked his company.
And had zero desire to lead him on with an acceptance of what could only be considered a predate invite.
“I’d like that,” he said, smiling in a nice way as she hopped out and shut the door quickly behind her, turning to wave and watch him drive off.
More because she didn’t want him to see her walk from the front of the building over to the inpatient wing that was attached to the separate, urgent care portion of the medical complex, rather than the doctors’ and imaging offices where he’d left her.
The man didn’t do anything for her in that department. He might have done. If she’d met him at an earlier time. And maybe, at some future point?
She wasn’t closing the door on the idea. But wasn’t alluding to it, either.
And he wasn’t leaving. Reminding her of Mitchell for a second there. Until she reminded herself he was a good cop and doing his job. He needed to see her enter the building.
And so she did. Waiting around for several minutes, before she headed back out to get over to her father.
And then, just to be safe, went out the back way, through the playground and park area set up for lunches or kids who had long wait times between procedures.
As she walked, her mind filled with the future’s possibilities.
The early morning chill seemed to lift her to a higher wakefulness, while the sun filled her with the serotonin that fed her intuitive abilities with its added ability to access good feelings.
She had so much to tell her dad. Now that they had Brad, it would be all systems go with the plans to get the boat rental business back to earning good money.
Yes, they’d have a bit of a delay while Wicked was fixed, but with Brad Fletcher’s money, it shouldn’t be hard to at least force the man to pay that bill immediately…
Ugh!
A sudden blow to her back knocked the wind out of Dove, would have thrown her to the ground if she hadn’t been honing her body since she was old enough to walk.
She saw the cloth coming around the side of her face, toward her mouth, in the split second before it stunted her breathing abilities, and threw an elbow straight to the side of her face.
Knocking the hand behind the cloth just as she kicked one leg straight up behind her.
Landing in a squat facing behind her, knees bent, apart, hand on the ground to steady her, preparing for a throw of her palm to a nose with enough of a lunge to knock her attacker to his back.
Except…no face was there. Winded, stunned, Dove looked up to see an average-size figure dressed all in blue, or black…a hood running around the corner of a wing of the building and disappearing out of sight.
She ran then, too. At a pace fast enough to win races on the high school track field, and hurriedly, with shaking fingers, pushed in the code she’d been given to access the private inpatient wing. Fumbling once. Forcing herself to focus and push again.
Once inside, she walked at a rapid pace past the chairs she and Mitchell had occupied the other day, into the waiting area in view of the nurses’ station.
Seeing two uniformed women and one man behind the desk, all of whom she recognized, she waved and pulled out her phone.
With her finger on the icon she’d set up for Mitchell, she remembered he was in an appointment and, as reality hit, went straight to the officer standing watch outside her father’s door. Someone new, a woman she’d never met before.
Angela Waites her badge read. A first-year officer who called Peter Welding the second she heard about the near attack.
Apparently, Brad Fletcher hadn’t been satisfied with damage to the St. James Boats ability to earn an income. Or threats. He was hiring thugs to make certain that she didn’t get in the way of his goal.
“I don’t think he was going to hurt me,” she told Peter when, in short order, he was sitting with her in the same seats she and Mitchell had used out in the hallway between the trauma and inpatient units.
She’d given him all the details, the minimal description she had, and had answered his questions mostly with I don’t know or I didn’t notice.
“He was definitely planning to knock me out, though,” she added after her last useless response.
“Probably just to scare me. A warning to sell my father’s business since, without Wicked Winnings, I can no longer afford to keep the place. ”
Peter’s frown didn’t slow her down at all. Not even when he asked, “That doesn’t make a lot of sense,” he said. “He’s going to abduct you, get you to sign, and then think he can just walk away?”
He was right. Didn’t make sense. Fear shot through her.
A stab at a time. Growing more electrifying with each stab.
“He was going to make me sign and then dispose of me, wasn’t he?
Just like he tried to dispose of my dad?
” And then, before giving him a chance to reply, she said, “Or…” eyes wide with horror, she stared at him “…the serial killer…” She swallowed. Hard.
Struggled to draw in air.
The uniformed officer’s gaze was kind as he looked at her, shrugged and said, “We can only speculate at this point, but I hope you’ve taken your last walk alone until this is resolved?”
He didn’t call her on letting him drop her off at the wrong spot.
He’d only been in town a short while, having applied for and taken the job, leaving a smaller force he’d worked for upstate.
But he didn’t know she knew that. She wouldn’t have, hadn’t, until Mitchell had mentioned it when the man had first been assigned to check out Brad Fletcher.
One of Brad’s boat rental businesses was located in the small seaside town where Peter had last been employed.
Peter likely knew Brad. Maybe even well.
Filling with horror chills again, Dove wondered if she’d just walked into her own demise—leaving the unit to sit out there alone with Welding. Was he on Fletcher’s payroll, too? Like the thug who’d just tried to kidnap her?
And the guy who’d been watching her house?
And had debased the sacredness of her studio?
Glancing at the door into the unit and feeling for her phone in her bag, she was trying to determine her best course of action against an armed and well-trained police officer when Mitchell barged through the door at the opposite end of the hall and came toward her.
Weak with relief, she felt tears fill her eyes.
But didn’t take her gaze off him.
Not even when she saw the flare of his nostrils, the anger glaring from those blue eyes.
He’d come.
His anger didn’t bother her. It was a natural reaction. What mattered was that he’d somehow known she was still in trouble.
And he’d shown up.
And…was shaking Peter’s hand like they were friends.
Mitchell was in on it, then? He was…
The thought hit but only lasted for the split second it took her to slap down the fear that was trying to rob her of her senses.
Mitchell was there to help her. She had to believe that.
And if she was wrong? The insidiousness of negative energy wasn’t letting go easily.
But she had an answer for it.
If she couldn’t trust Mitchell, she’d just as soon be dead.