Identity Withheld

A knock sounded on the door. “You okay?” Sherri called.

“Yes. Almost done.” Kara lifted her voice over the noise of the fan, and then cupped her hand around her mouth at the receiver. “Ray, it’s Kara. They made me come to the hospital and the sheriff wants to question me and... Please come get me if you can. Or I’ll meet you as soon as I’m released.”

Sherri knocked again. “They have a bed for you. You ready?”

Kara stuffed the phone back into her pocket, snapped off the faucet and fan, and jerked open the door. “Ready.”

Rather than return her to the gurney, Sherri led her to a curtained-off bed at the end of a long room lined with beds. “Here you go. Lie down here and the doctor will be in to see you soon.” Sherri nodded at the sheriff waiting by the bed, then left. Facing the sheriff alone, Kara suddenly felt a whole lot worse than she had a minute ago.

A very efficient nurse wasted no time checking her vitals as the sheriff pulled up a chair and flipped open his notebook. Between his crisply ironed shirt, unflattering crew cut and the hard lines creasing his face, he reminded her of a drill-sergeant principal she’d once worked under—the kind of guy who didn’t let anything slip by him.

“Your pulse is very rapid,” the nurse scolded.

Yours would be, too, if someone was trying to kill you! Kara took a deep breath and willed it to slow.

“Tell me what happened,” the sheriff said.

“I was upstairs watching a movie in my room when my landlady’s cat started scratching my door and mewing frantically.” Kara dug her fingers into the sheets. Had she cost Mrs. Harboyle her dear companion, too? “Did the firefighters save the cat? It ran when I tried to pick it up.”

With a suppressed huff, the sheriff stopped writing. “A large, long-haired white cat?”

“Yes!”

“Yes, he was rescued. Please continue.”

“I turned off the TV and—” She squeezed her eyes shut as the panic crashed over her all over again. “That’s when—” Her breath came in short gasps. “I heard the crackling, smelled the smoke.”

The nurse touched Kara’s shoulder. “You’re okay now. Take deep breaths.”

Inhaling, Kara pressed her lips together.

“Did you hear anything downstairs before that?” the sheriff asked.

“It’s an old house. It creaks and groans a lot. I try not to pay too much attention.” She bit her lip. It wasn’t a lie, exactly. She did try not to pay attention, but with a death threat hanging over her head, every creak and groan made her jump. That was why she’d turned on the movie, extraloud, to drown out the noises of the storm outside, and the one inside her head and heart. She was spending Thanksgiving alone, and couldn’t help wondering if she’d ever be able to spend another holiday with her family, as paltry as their celebrations had always been.

“How about outside? A bark? A car engine? Any kind of movement?”

She twisted her hands in the sheets and buried them in her lap. “No, nothing.”

“Were you home alone all day?”

“No, I work for a janitorial service.” The furthest thing from a kindergarten teacher the marshal’s office could find. And she missed being with kids so much. “I got home just after five.”

“Was the door locked?”

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t smell any smoke at that time?”

“No, I reheated leftovers and went to my room.”

“You didn’t check the other doors?”

“I did.” She gulped. She was always checking and double-checking the locks, because Mrs. Harboyle had a bad habit of letting out the cat and not relocking the door.

“And you didn’t hear anyone break in? See any evidence of a break-in?”

“No.” Kara’s throat constricted at the possibility that Mrs. Harboyle had left the back door unlocked before her daughter picked her up. That the arsonist might’ve still been in the house when she got home.

The sheriff flipped over a page in his notebook. “How did you get out?”

She fixed her gaze on the sheriff’s badge. “I covered myself with a wet towel and tried to get downstairs, but—” The words clogged in her throat. The flames had moved so fast.

“That’s how you burned your arm?”

She hugged it to her belly and nodded. “I ran back to my room and jumped out the window onto the roof of the woodshed and from there to the ground.”

“Did you see anyone then?”

“A car stopped on the street and I hid in the bushes.” Her heart ratcheted in her chest at the memory—the fear that she’d escaped the fire only to face the man who’d set it.

“Our 9-1-1 caller. Yes, I talked to him. He said he pounded on the door. Why didn’t you show yourself? Tell him no one else was inside?”

“I—” She gulped. “I guess I was in shock.”

The sheriff drilled her with the same questions, phrased a dozen different ways, for what seemed like forever. Finally the nurse shooed him out to make way for the doctor. To Kara’s relief, he said he had all the information he needed for the moment.

By tomorrow, she’d be out of town and it would be the marshal’s problem to explain her disappearance.

The nurse returned with a tall, dark-haired doctor who immediately started into his own litany of questions as the nurse removed the arm dressing so he could examine the burn.

The more questions he asked, the edgier Kara grew, but she couldn’t figure out why. There was nothing weird about his questions. Except...

He never actually looked her in the eye. Not once. Was he afraid she’d be able to read something there?

She muffled a gasp. What if the adoption ring was connected to organized crime and they had a hold over him, like that doctor on the TV show, and they’d ordered him to kill her?

She swallowed. Okay, get a grip. He could just be preoccupied. He wore a wedding band. Maybe he’d just got off the phone with his wife about a problem at home. He had to at least be a doctor, right? Otherwise the nurse wouldn’t have brought him in.

The doctor glanced at her now-bare wound. “That doesn’t look too bad.”

And it didn’t. Aside from a few blistery spots, she’d had sunburns that were worse.

“You can go,” the doctor said, turning to leave.

“I can?”

Someone stepped around the curtain on her other side, and she practically springboarded into the air.

The person glanced at her in confusion. “Sorry, wrong bed.”

Meanwhile the nurse hurried after the departing doctor. “Are you sure? Her BP is low. And look at her eyes. I’m concerned she’s still in shock.”

Kara blinked. What was wrong with her eyes? Aside from her overreaction to Mr. Wrong Bed.

The doctor stopped, and for the first time met her eyes, for all of a fleeting nanosecond. “She’s fine.”

Kara swung her legs off the bed, not about to wait around long enough for the nurse to change his mind. Maybe it was her imagination, but the woman seemed a little too anxious to keep her here.

As Kara pushed aside the curtain to leave, the nurse trotted up carrying a hypodermic. “Hold on a second.”

“What—what’s that for? The doctor said I can go.”

“Yes, but he just ordered this to help with the pain.”

“I don’t need it.” Kara edged sideways, putting the bed between her and the needle-happy nurse. How had she not clued in to that maniacal glint in her eyes sooner? It was the exact same glint she’d seen in that goon’s eyes back in Boston when he’d spotted her snapping his picture and pulled his gun.

An orderly popped a wheelie with a wheelchair at the end of her bed. “You the one who’s getting sprung?”

“That’s me!” Kara jumped into the wheelchair.

The orderly didn’t get three feet before the nurse rounded the bed with the needle. “She’s not going yet.”

“Yes, actually, I am,” Kara insisted, reaching for the wheels herself. “The doctor released me.”

The orderly hesitated.

“Let’s go,” Kara prodded, cranking the chair out of the nurse’s reach.

“Fine, take her,” the nurse relented, and the orderly snapped into action.

“Your ride waiting outside the E.R.?” he asked, wheeling her past the long row of beds and into the hall.

“Uh, no ride.”

He pulled the chair into an abrupt U-turn.

“What are you doing?”

“Taking you to the front doors. There’s a cab company across the street.”

As they passed the E.R.’s reception desk, she glimpsed the nurse talking on the phone and eyeballing her. What if she’d alerted a cohort to cut her off out front?

Spotting an exit sign at the end of the next side hall, Kara said, “Stop, I’ll get out here.”

“Oh, you drove yourself?” the orderly asked.

She shot a glance over her shoulder to see if the nurse was looking. She wasn’t. “Is that the back parking lot?”

“You got it.” The orderly accepted the detour easily.

Maybe too easily, Kara thought as they approached the exit—the uncomfortably dark exit.

“You want me to wheel you right to your car?” he asked.

“No!” Kara hauled down her voice. “Here’s fine. Thank you.”

Two seconds later, the orderly was already halfway back up the hall as she hovered inside the doorway scanning the poorly lit back lot. She dug into her pocket for her cell phone, except...did she really want to hang around here waiting for Ray if maniac nurse had called goons to nab her on sight?

Two blocks. She could run that in under five minutes. Clutching her phone, she yanked up her hoodie and plunged into the misty darkness.

The slap of footsteps on the wet pavement sounded behind her.

Heart pounding, she quickened her pace.

The sound got louder, closer.

Breaking into a sprint, she glanced over her shoulder. The shadowy figure behind her abruptly stopped. “Whew,” Kara breathed, and then slammed into a solid wall of muscle.

Powerful hands clamped around her upper arms. “I gotcha.”

TWO

“Kara?” Jake tightened his hold on the terrified woman and glanced at the man who’d been following her. Or had seemed to be. He’d since veered down a row of parked cars and appeared to be unlocking one.

“Oh, Jake. It’s you.” Raindrops streaked Kara’s face, looking too much like tears, but the relief that oozed from her words gave him a kick of pleasure.

He’d hoped to run into her here. Not this way. But he wasn’t complaining. “Who was that guy?” He hitched his chin in the direction of the man who’d since climbed into a nondescript sedan.

“I—” Kara caught her breath. “I don’t know. I thought he was following me and I...I guess I got spooked.” She suddenly tensed, backed up a step. “What are you doing here?”

The lights in the hospital’s back parking lot did little to push back the darkness, but this close, he could see wariness replace the relief that had been in her eyes moments ago. Still, he thought better of releasing his hold just yet. “One of my men was brought in for smoke inhalation. I came by to check on him.”

And on you.

But she didn’t need to know that. What were the doctors thinking releasing her so soon? She didn’t look ready to face the night with no home to return to. He was convinced that she knew more about the fire than she was saying. And one way or the other, he needed to coax her into telling him everything she knew.

“Oh.” She shot a nervous glance over her shoulder but didn’t make another attempt to escape his hold. “I’m sorry. I hope your friend will be okay.”

That much, at least, he believed. But this latest fire had all the earmarks of being another of their elusive firebug’s. That made five in the past nine weeks. Four of those had been on his watch, and this was the only one they’d come close to getting a lead on the culprit...in the person of Kara Grant.

Jake gritted his teeth. His gut told him she wasn’t the firebug, as he’d initially suspected, but no way was her wild-eyed panic merely a post-traumatic reaction to a random attack. She thought she’d been deliberately targeted.

If he hadn’t been sure of it before, he was now. As far as he was concerned, she was the key to nailing this guy. He steered her to an overhang, out of the rain. “I volunteered to help with the fire investigation.”

“Wow, that’s really nice of you.”

“So I’ll probably see you again.”

Kara fussed with the zipper on her hoodie, clearly reluctant to meet his gaze.

“This guy needs to be stopped, Kara. He’s gotten away with torching places across the county for too long.”

Her attention snapped to his face. “You think tonight’s fire was the work of a serial arsonist?” An odd note of hope rang in her voice, as if she knew it was personal, but hoped it wasn’t.

“Yes, didn’t the sheriff tell you? That’s why if you think of anything else you heard or saw tonight, we need to know.” He cocked his head. Something about her expression seemed eerily familiar. He blinked, recalling the day his mother-in-law had shown up on their doorstep, the first time she’d left her abusive husband.

Was that why Kara had resisted being photographed?

Jake’s concern for her ballooned. He pulled a card from his wallet and jotted his number on the back. “That’s my cell number. Call me if you think of anything that might help. Or if you need anything, okay?”

Nodding, she tucked the card into her hip pocket. “Sure.” Her gaze strayed to a car pulling out of the parking lot—the car of the guy who’d seemed to be following her. As it disappeared around the corner, her shoulders relaxed. “I really need to go now. My friend’s still waiting for me.”

Jake caught her hand. “Hey, let me give you a lift.”

The wild-eyed look returned as she jerked free of his hold. “That’s okay. I can walk.”

He raised his palms to assure her he meant no harm. “What kind of gentleman would I be if I let you walk in this weather?”

Doubt flickered in her eyes.

Had an abusive husband put it there? His gaze flicked to her bare ring finger. Except that a missing ring didn’t mean anything. He traced his own ringless finger, remembering the Thanksgiving night five years ago that he’d lost his wife. He drew in a deep breath.

After he’d lifted Kara into the ambulance earlier, he hadn’t been able to walk away as he normally would have. Not when her gaze kept straying his way, as if he was the one person who made her feel safe. His wife used to tease him about his hero complex.

Except in the end, of all people, it’d been her he hadn’t been able to save.

“I prefer to walk, thanks,” Kara said, already backing away.

“Are you sure you’re okay?”

Her tiny smile nuzzled into his chest as palpably as his five-year-old son at bedtime. “Yes. Thank you for your concern.” With that she ducked around the side of the building and jogged toward the street.

For half a second, he debated letting her go, but if he was right about Kara’s situation being the same as his mother-in-law’s, he couldn’t just walk away. Not when his mother-in-law’s fatal mistake had been agreeing to meet the abusive husband she’d fled from. Bracing himself against the staggering regret that piggybacked that thought, Jake hopped into his truck and followed Kara. He tried to stay far enough back to not spook her, but twice she threw a glance over her shoulder and quickened her pace. When she veered into the coffee shop’s parking lot, he pulled onto the side street flanking it.

The rain had stopped, but that didn’t make the dimly lit shop, with its tired awning and ancient-looking specials scrawled on the front window, look any more inviting.

A lone guy, shaggy hair, leather jacket, sat at a booth next to the window, his back to it as he chatted with the waitress. Was he the friend she was supposed to meet? What kind of jerk wouldn’t walk the two blocks to meet her at the hospital?

Her steps faltered as she neared the door.

Jake gripped his truck’s door handle, ready to move in if she needed help.

The waitress and customer looked Kara’s way as she pushed through the shop’s door. Without moving any closer, Kara chatted with them a moment, then took a seat at the counter.

Okay, not what he expected. Had she been feeding him a line about meeting a friend here? He scanned the deserted parking lot. Or had her friend given up waiting for her?

Jake released his grip on the door handle and returned his hands to the steering wheel. Maybe he’d let his imagination get the better of him about the danger she was in. For all he knew, she’d been petrified that he was still trying to pin the arson on her.

He could see only her back through the window, but there was no mistaking the way her shoulders slumped. If her friend didn’t show soon, he could happen in and offer her a lift. With her house burned, she was going to need to find a place to crash for the night. Hadyn didn’t have a hotel, and the only one in Stalwart was likely already booked solid for the holiday. And chances were she hadn’t escaped the house with her wallet to pay for a cab to get her any farther.

His cell phone rang. “Hi, Mom. Is everything okay with Tommy?”

“Yes, but he insists you said he could wait up for you. How much longer do you think you’ll be?”

Jake blew out a breath. As much as he wanted to make sure Kara was really meeting a friend, his son was his first priority, especially tonight of all nights. “Not much longer. I have to check in on one of my men at the hospital and then I’ll head straight home.” He started his truck and gave Kara one last glance.

The smile she’d given him when she’d thanked him for caring flickered through his thoughts. Given time, he was pretty sure he could coax her to be more forthcoming. Except they didn’t have any time to spare.

Up until tonight, their arsonist had struck every other Friday, and he’d torched vacant buildings, abandoned sheds. The only lives threatened had been firefighters’. But tonight, the stakes had escalated.

Kara could have died in that fire.

With lights on in the upper part of the house and her car in the driveway, there was no way the guy who torched the place couldn’t have known that someone was in there. But did he know that someone was Kara?

* * *

Where was the marshal? Kara had almost lost her supper when two steps into the coffee shop she’d yelped, “I made it,” and the man who’d turned in the booth to gape at her had been a stranger. Part of her had wanted to bolt right back outside, but instead she’d shaken her hood off her head and griped about how wet it was outside, then sank onto one of the stools lining the long counter.

The waitress pushed a coffee-stained menu her way. “What can I get you, sugar?” she drawled, sounding as if she belonged in Texas, not Washington State.

Kara dug into her pocket and came up with a wrinkled buck and a couple of quarters. “Uh, just a coffee, please. Black.” She pushed the money across the counter as the waitress filled a white mug from a pot that had probably been sitting around all day. “I guess you haven’t had too many people in tonight?” Kara fished.

“Not a soul until Bruiser—” the waitress hitched her elbow in the other patron’s direction “—stopped by to keep me company.” Returning the coffeepot to the burner, she glanced at the clock. “You only just made it. Be closing in twenty minutes.”

Kara swallowed a mouthful of the bitter brew. Not a soul? She twisted on her stool and scanned the dimly lit lot through the main windows. Would Ray have waited for her outside? “No one all night?” she clarified.

“Nope, not since before supper.”

Before the fire, too. What did she do now? He should’ve been here hours ago. Did he get her message and go straight to the hospital? But then why not phone to let her know?

The waitress deposited the money in the till, then looked curiously at a business card and pushed it back across the counter. “This must be yours.” She resumed her conversation with Bruiser.

Kara glanced at the card, realized it was the one Jake had given her and breathed in his lingering scent—as calming and steadfast as a pine forest. He’d looked ruggedly handsome in his jeans and flannel-lined jacket. She traced her thumb over the number he’d scrawled on the card. Had he volunteered to assist the fire investigation so he’d have an excuse to see her again?

If only...things were different.

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

How many times had she recited that nursery rhyme to her students to encourage them to act instead of sitting around dreaming?

If only she were free to act...

She stuffed the card back into her pocket and twisted the mug of coffee between her chilled hands, the brew as black as her future seemed. As much as she wanted to believe that she’d merely been the victim of a random arsonist attack, she didn’t think she’d imagined the guy in the parking lot coming after her, or that nurse’s less-than-subtle attempt to stab her with a needle.

And what made her think Jake could be trusted?

Seemed way too convenient how he kept showing up when she was in trouble, acting like someone she could depend on. Hadn’t she once thought Clark was a guy she could depend on?

Look how wrong that perception had turned out. They’d dated for six months, but he’d walked away the minute the Boston paper had hit the stands with a front-page story on an unidentified kindergarten teacher who’d exposed an illegal adoption ring. Unidentified, that was, if the reader didn’t look too closely at the grainy picture of her that accompanied the article. Worse than that, he’d all but said “I told you so” after a bomb had nearly killed her later that same day. He’d never cared about her. Only himself. Just like her father.

No, Jake would turn out to be like every other man in her life—never there when she needed him most.

Not even the marshal showed up when needed. And he was paid to protect her!

She closed her eyes and let out a bone-weary sigh. Lord, can I count on You?

She sipped her coffee and slipped her phone from her pocket. No missed messages.

The coffee curdled in her stomach. She was wet and cold, had no money, no ID, and in twenty minutes—correction, seventeen minutes—she’d have nowhere to go. The last place she wanted to show her face again was at the hospital. The whole way to the coffee shop, she’d had the creepy feeling someone was following her. She glanced at the window and shrank at the realization of how easily someone could be watching her even now. The thought of going back out there without the marshal made her stomach lurch.

She thumbed a text message to Ray. I’m at the coffee shop. Where are you?

She set the phone on the counter and forced down another gulp of coffee as the clock’s second hand ticked its way around the clock face. After four minutes went by, she punched in his number. It immediately went to voice mail. Maybe he’d been trying to call her. She waited another three minutes. Checked her messages.

Nothing.

The screen on a small TV mounted in the corner above the counter flicked to an image of a bloated body being pulled from the Charles River in Boston. She choked on her coffee as the camera zoomed in on the man’s face. She couldn’t believe it! It was the man she’d seen collecting money for the child he’d handed over. If the adoption ring would kill its own employee...

Her heart hammered in her chest as she punched Ray’s number into her phone again. Again, it went straight to voice mail, and a scarier thought gripped her. What if they’d gotten to him, too? Gotten his phone? Heard her messages?

They would’ve guessed she was at the hospital anyway, but now they’d know she was at a coffee shop, and there weren’t that many of those in a town the size of Hadyn. Not to mention, they’d have her number, be able to track her phone.

She turned it over in her hand. She had to get rid of it.

Snatching up her spoon, she pried open the back of the phone, pulled the battery. But what if that wasn’t enough? She had no idea how GPS tracking worked. She slipped into the bathroom, tossed the phone into the trash can, stuffed crumpled swaths of paper towel in over top.