Chapter 22
He didn’t have a plan.
Not nearly enough of one, at any rate. Dove was capable of flying in the wind and landing on her feet. Mitchell, not so much. He didn’t take off without the flight plan firmly mapped out, recorded and called in with responding verification of receipt.
Aviation laws were in place for good reason. Without them there would be plane crashes, with untold number of deaths, on a regular basis.
He could do the sex part. All day long. And night, too. He just needed the plan.
Pulling up outside the medical center the next afternoon, Mitchell was as tense as he ever got, due to the lack of firmly considered next steps.
Starting with Whaler’s homecoming.
He’d offered his home to the old sea captain and had been turned down. Not all that kindly. The man damn well didn’t need charity.
So Mitchell had paid for private security—all off-duty law enforcement—at least for the first twenty-four hours. Dove, who’d be staying at Whaler’s place, knew the officers would be inconspicuously watching her father’s property. Whaler did not.
She also had the head of command’s cell phone on speed dial—a phone that would be on-property at all times, held by whoever was in charge any given hour.
Had promised to push the speed dial icon every hour if need be.
She was to report every single creak she heard in the floorboards.
Even if it was because she was walking on it at the time.
Mitchell hadn’t yet decided where he’d be staying. Close, he knew that much. Probably sleeping in his car. No way he was going to his place outside of town—too far away.
And there was little likelihood that Whaler was going to stay home. The man was headed straight for a bottle. Probably starting with glasses of amber liquid poured from one for him while he sat on the stool that was as much home to him as his own bed.
Dove didn’t think so. She’d been adamant—with Mitchell during a phone call, and, according to her, with her father—that he was not leaving the house.
Nor was she going to let him undo the healing his body had worked so hard to do over the past week. Another couple of days and his liver would be completely detoxed. The rest, the mental and emotional healing, would take a lifetime.
She wasn’t looking that far ahead yet.
Which was why she couldn’t see what Mitchell already knew. Whaler had no desire to stay sober. Which meant she’d lost the battle before she’d even started to wage the war.
Seeing Whaler’s truck already in the parking lot, with Welding just climbing out of it, Mitchell parked and joined the detective.
As already laid out, Welding would be catching a ride back to his own car with the officer currently on duty outside Whaler’s hospital room.
After they led Whaler and Dove home, with Mitchell right behind the truck.
It wasn’t a great plan. Or even a good one. But it was the best they could do after Whaler’s very loud assertion that he had the right to make his own choices and he was damned well going home in his own truck.
How the man could be so confident that he’d be okay when he’d just spent days in the hospital after having been abducted and left for dead, Mitchell couldn’t even begin to understand.
The only thing that made sense was that Whaler just plain didn’t care if he lived or died.
But he’d allowed the fact—mostly because it was the only way the doctor would release him, which was required in order for insurance to pay his medical bills—that he probably shouldn’t drive. Dove would be in the truck with him.
She’d readily agreed to the proposed entourage.
And didn’t yet know that Mitchell was financing all of the extra security.
When she’d come to his office to hire him, she’d said she’d pay his bill, no matter the cost, on installments.
There’d been no stipulations as to getting costs approved first. And it was up to him what line items he chose to include on that bill.
As were any discounts he chose to offer.
If she thought the city was financing the locally employed police officers outside her father’s home, he could choose to just leave it that way, too.
All smaller aspects of the lack of solid planning that was making him so uneasy.
While Welding waited outside, watching the area, Mitchell went in to let Dove know that her father’s old truck was there and ready to go.
He walked up just in time to hear, “This is garbage! You’re nothing but a whiner. Always have been. I said I want you to drop me at the bar, and that’s exactly what you’re going to do.”
Dove had told him that the anger was to be expected. As heavy a drinker as Whaler had been, he’d be going through serious withdrawal. But hearing anyone talk to her as her father had just done…he had to make a conscientious effort to unclench his fist.
She’d told him during one of their conversations that her father had never spoken harshly to her growing up—except the time she’d been in the water without permission.
And that she’d never heard him speak to her mother that way, either.
Didn’t mean he hadn’t done. Only that he’d never verbally attacked his wife in front of their daughter.
Mitchell took a deep breath, trusting her version—that Whaler was in the throes of a medical situation and couldn’t be held accountable for his rage. And put a smile on his face as he played his part in getting all of them out of there.
Whaler followed instructions, keeping himself glued to his daughter, and climbed immediately into the passenger seat of his truck, allowing Welding to help him up.
And then, looking between Welding and Mitchell, who’d seen Dove to the driver’s seat, he said, “Thank you both. I’m sorry for being so much trouble.”
Mitchell nodded. Glanced at Dove in time to see tears brimming in her eyes, and as he was closing the truck door heard “I’m most sorry to you, my girl. I’m not myself.”
As he moved quickly to get into his own car and be ready to follow closely behind when Dove hit the gas, Mitchell was glad he hadn’t decked Bob St. James back in the hospital.
Once again, Dove had called the situation better than he had.
Because she was far better at winging through life than he was.
Not a bad thing. Just a fact of life.
She’d made it all so clear the night before. They were night and day. And both were equally necessary and valuable.
They made it through the winding drive and out to the thoroughfare that would lead them to Main Street without issue. Mitchell was on complete alert. Calculating turns, counting down streets, until they got to Whaler’s place, where his security detail was already in place.
A few more minutes, five to seven at most and…
Mitchell heard the loud crash before his eyes had even registered what had happened.
Heart pounding, he slammed on his brakes in time to see Whaler’s truck, with Dove and Whaler belted inside, rolling over an embankment.
They’d been hit broadside. By a truck that had come out of a parking lot, plowing through a median and straight into them.
Adrenaline and fear pumping through him, Mitchell was out of his car and running full speed down the embankment before he heard sirens coming from above.
Dove. He had to get to Dove.
The truck lay at an angle, passenger side down. The bed was half-separated from the cab.
“Help!” Dove’s scream, unrecognizable to him, but for the fact that it was feminine not masculine, propelling him through the weeds and fallen trees between him and the vehicle. Two feet away, he could see her head clearly enough to know that she was conscious. Rocking forward and backward.
He was there almost instantly, finding the roof so smashed there was no way Mitchell could get the one door accessible to him open.
But the window had broken out, and he could reach in to cup Dove’s face.
“I’m here,” he told her. “Help’s on the way, and I’m going to stay right here with you until it gets here. ”
“Daddy,” she said, tears streaming down her face. “Get to Daddy, first.”
Mitchell had already taken the only glance he needed to toward what had once been the passenger side of Whaler’s old truck.
Thankfully, the seat was pushed back so far that Dove, trapped by her seat belt, couldn’t see.
The man’s injuries were something that would have haunted her for the rest of her life.
Whaler was clearly dead, but Mitchell didn’t say so.
Holding her head with one hand, just supporting it, not moving it, he positioned himself so that she could look him in the eye. “Stay with me, baby,” he said. “Help is on the way.”
“Mitchell? I’m okay, get to my dad.”
“It’s best that I don’t move either one of you,” he said, finding words out of nowhere. “Just until the paramedics get here and make sure you’re okay.”
She nodded. Started to cry but didn’t take her eyes away from him.
“I can’t get my door to open.” She hadn’t tried since he’d been there.
Wasn’t sure if she’d already discovered that the door was jammed shut, or was just talking off the top of her head.
Heart thrumming through his body, his ears, he focused on her.
Her face. Making sure that she got from him whatever she needed most.
Smiling he said, “That’s because I’m leaning against it.” He was hardly touching the vehicle for fear of dislodging it.
Her eyes seemed well focused. Her words were slow and shaky but clear.
And where in the hell were the…
“I’m glad you’re here.” Her eyes were still holding his gaze. And he smiled, blinking back tears. “I’m glad I’m here, too,” he said.
And heard voices calling just before multiple sets of boots trampled in the dirt behind him.
“The paramedics are here,” he told her, pulling his hand gently away from her head.
A hand splattered with blood came up to grip his arm as panic filled her eyes. “Don’t leave me,” she cried.
“I’m not going anywhere, Dove. I promise. I’ll be right here.”
The last was said as first responders, equipped with metal cutters, pushed him aside.
And two minutes later he heard Dove scream his name.
The little room was cold. Dove didn’t much care. Cold was real.
And all she had left.
As soon as she had the all clear from the trauma doctor, she’d be free to go home. Or…just go. No place felt like home to her.
Not one that existed anymore.
Not in the future.
Her father was dead. She’d known the second she’d been freed from the locked-up seat belt and could turn around.
She’d called for Mitchell. He might have been there.
She hadn’t seen him. She’d been surrounded by emergency personnel scooting her onto and then strapping her down to a stretcher that had been solid, excruciating wood.
A spine board, she’d later found out. In case she’d suffered potentially paralyzing spine or neck damage in the crash.
At the time all she’d known was that she’d gone from one hellish situation of being held prisoner into another, worse one.
Daddy was dead.
All the energy…all the hope…all for nothing.
Her bold last-ditch effort to save St. James Boats—to give her father a reason to live—had been a waste. A prompting, she’d believed.
Fantasy cooked up by a desperate mind, more like.
It would have been better for all concerned if she’d just kept out of it. Gone on teaching her little classes, believing that there was actually a way for human beings to have a choice in whether to be happy, ways to get rid of the negative energy if one was willing to work at it.
She’d really believed that the inner spirit could get messages if one could keep one’s heart open to accessing them.
Right. That’s why she’d just seen her father’s mangled body in a vision she was never going to forget. No matter how many times anyone tried to cleanse her aura.
The kids at school, so many of the people in Shelby who’d looked at her askance had been right all along. The joke was on her.
She’d laugh if she had any humor left inside her.
The doctor had proclaimed her a miracle. Other than the obvious soreness she’d be experiencing over the next days, even into a week or two, she was fine. Cuts and scrapes, but nothing that needed stitches. No broken bones.
She’d been incredibly lucky. Escaping from the horrific accident unscathed.
Physically.
In reality, the body the doctor had been concerned about was all she had left. Her father—and the spirit through which she’d believed she lived—had both been fatalities.
At least one good thing had come of it all—she gave a brief, distorted chuckle at the fact that her poor behind-the-times brain was still trying to combat evil with anything that felt positive—at least her future was clear to her.
Something she’d never had before. The ability to look ahead with a set of clear plans from which she wouldn’t sway.
Within the next hour she’d take the police escort she’d been told was waiting for her to the small house she’d purchased not far from the marina, back when she had the power to make good things come to her.
She was going to start packing immediately.
Put the house up for sale. Cancel the lease on her studio.
And let Brad Fletcher have St. James Boats.
He’d won.
She was leaving. No way she could continue to live in a town where she’d established a life that couldn’t possibly sustain her. That was just plain stupid.
Coasting on hope was a pipe dream.
Mitchell had been right all along. Logic, practicality, they were all that mattered in life.
So, lesson learned. A real one, not some make-believe fairy tale.
He was there, at the medical center. Asking to see her.
She’d refused to see him. There was no point. She wasn’t who she’d thought she’d been. Wasn’t who he’d thought he’d known.
There were others there, too, she’d been told, but she’d waved away the nurse’s words before she could tell her more. It was probably Peter Welding.
And maybe a client or two. Hetty Amos.
All of whom believed she was something she was not. They’d find out soon enough it had all been a lie.
She’d do what she could to make it up to them. Find a job and slowly begin to return all the client fees she’d collected over the years. She’d pay Mitchell, too, when she could.
It was the practical thing to do. That or face lawsuits and risk damages being awarded in amounts far greater than those she’d collected. Money to compensate for any pain and suffering she’d caused.
She’d pay that too, if she could…
But she was getting ahead of herself. First release papers. Then ride to the house she owned.
And from there, make short order of cleaning up and finding the quickest way out of town.
It was the only option she could see.
So the only one she believed in.
At least she had that. Something to believe in. Count on. That which she could see.
It wasn’t a lot.
But it was going to have to do.
It was all that she had left.
All that she’d ever had.
She just hadn’t seen it.