ADAM LOOKED AT HIS CELL PHONE, WONDERING IF HE SHOULD TRY to call Carrie again. Then he noticed that the display was dark. He’d let his battery run down. He hurried to the parking lot and found the sack with the box his phone had come in. The first charger he dug out was the one for his car. Fair enough. He needed to be doing something anyway. He plugged in his phone and set it on the seat next to him. Then he started his pickup and began to drive toward Carrie’s house.
In a few moments a tone from his cell phone got his attention. Someone was sending a text.
He pulled to the side of the road and looked at the phone. “Blocked Number” showed on the caller ID. He scanned the message and his mouth went dry. The words were typical texting, abbreviated but easily understood. He read them quickly at first, then again, more carefully. “DR MRKHM N ACCIDENT. N SRGRY NOW CENT HOSP. COME QUICK.”
He didn’t bother wondering who sent the message, what the circumstances were. Carrie had been in an accident and was in surgery at Centennial Hospital. He needed to get there quickly. Adam put the pickup in gear and sped through the night, leaning forward as though he could make the vehicle go faster by doing so.
Adam’s phone lay on the seat beside him. A beep made him look at the display. Missed calls. Voice mail. He ignored them. They were probably from the ER, someone with more details about Carrie’s condition. He didn’t want to take the time to answer. Besides, it might be bad news. And he couldn’t stand that right now.
The Rancho Motel was normally fifteen minutes away from Centennial Medical Center. Adam made it in nine. He skidded into the ER parking area and took the first open slot he found, one marked for “Patient Unloading.”
He threw the selector into park, turned the key, and paused to whisper, “Please, God. Please let her be all right. I’ll do anything—” He slammed the door of his vehicle and sprinted toward the ER’s sliding glass doors. Suddenly, to his left, bright lights flared and the engine of a powerful vehicle roared. He glanced in that direction just before a white sedan barreled toward him. Reflexes carried Adam, rolling, to his right and back. He stopped when he was tucked under the front bumper of a car. The vehicle sheltering him rocked and a loud noise assaulted his ears as the pursuing car grazed the front fender just inches away.
Either this was a trap, or someone was taking advantage of Carrie’s accident to catch him unaware. Adam rolled out and ran toward his pickup. At the end of the row, the white sedan skidded into a turn, ready to come back for another try at him.
In his pickup, he started the engine and rammed the gearshift into reverse, burning rubber as he backed out of the parking space. Adam turned the wheel, slammed the selector into drive, and stomped hard on the accelerator. He didn’t take the time to fasten his seat belt. The sedan was right behind him now.
At the last minute, Adam slammed on the brakes and cut the steering wheel of the pickup sharply to the right. He skidded into one of the parking aisles, barely missing cars right and left. A glance in the rearview mirror showed a flash of white going down the main aisle he’d just vacated.
He had to get out of here. Where was the exit? Adam slowed and began turning randomly right, left, left again, right, until he spotted an arrow and the welcome word “Exit.” He screamed out of the parking lot, turned onto the main street that fronted the hospital, and floored the accelerator.
After a number of twists and turns, during which Adam finally took the time to fasten his seat belt, he was in a residential neighborhood. He remembered this one. It was full of streets that dead-ended, interspersed with speed bumps to keep motorists from racing through. Unfortunately, that was what Adam had to do right now. He navigated by dead reckoning, enduring bump after bump, grateful for his vehicle’s heavy-duty suspension.
There’d been no headlights behind him for several minutes now. He spotted a house that was dark, with a vacant driveway leading to a closed garage door. He stopped, backed into the drive, killed his lights and engine, and hunched low in his seat. The few streetlights in the subdivision were low-powered, yellowish ones, casting eerie shadows but making Adam almost invisible as he sat there.
He waited—one minute, two, five—and finally decided his attacker had given up the chase. When his pulse had slowed almost to normal, Adam started the engine and drove away, keeping his lights off until he was back on a main street. Two blocks away, he stopped the pickup in the parking lot of a strip mall. He was pretty sure this had been a trap, but what if Carrie had really been in an accident? Adam dialed her cell phone. After three rings, she answered, and relief washed over him.
“Carrie, where are you?”
“I’m in the parking lot of your motel. I’ve been looking for you everywhere, but I finally came back here. Where have you been? Why weren’t you in the room?”
“The battery on my phone went dead, so I missed your call. While the phone was recharging, I got a text telling me you’d been in an accident. At the hospital parking lot, someone tried to run me down. When I managed to get back in the pickup, they tried to ram me from behind. I finally lost them, but the sequence of events started me thinking, and what I’ve decided isn’t pretty.”
“What do you mean?”
“First, there’s no question that the killer knows you and I have been seeing each other. And that you’re important to me—important enough for me to drop everything and rush to the hospital if I thought you were hurt.”
“So he’s been watching you longer than a few days,” Carrie said.
“What’s next?” Carrie asked.
“We need to meet. Stay right where you are. But keep your car doors locked and the motor running. And if anything looks suspicious, get out of there.”
“Adam, this is scary,” Carrie said.
And getting scarier every minute. Adam ended the conversation and pulled out into traffic, his eyes flicking every few seconds to the rearview mirror. Suddenly every car behind him carried a potential murderer.
He wondered if he’d ever feel safe again.
Carrie was parked at the end of the row behind the Rancho Motel, not far from a red Dodge, the only other vehicle in sight. When she saw headlights approaching, she pressed the start button of her Prius and put her hand on the gearshift. Her foot hovered over the accelerator. A black pickup pulled in beside her, the door opened and closed, and Adam tapped on her window.
She unlocked the door, and Adam slid inside. His kiss was quick but heartfelt. The next words came out in an urgent hiss. “Lock the door again.”
Carrie swallowed twice. Her heart was hammering. “Adam, you frightened me.”
“Sorry, but we have to take precautions.”
“Where’s your car? I didn’t see a black Toyota in the lot.”
“I guess I didn’t tell you. I changed it for that Ford pickup.” He turned until he was facing her across the front seat of her car. “Why didn’t you meet me here like we’d arranged?”
“I’m sorry, but I had an emergency I couldn’t leave.” She explained a bit about what happened.
Adam took almost no time to respond. “I understand.” His face was hidden in the dark, but his words conveyed his feelings quite well. “You care about your patients. That’s one of the things I love about you.”
A car wheeled into the lot, and Adam stopped talking as it pulled into a space at the end of the row and turned off its lights. Carrie hunched her shoulders against an invisible bullet. She wondered if it was true a person never heard the shot that ended their life. She hoped she wasn’t about to find out.
Two doors slammed, and a young couple joined hands and walked slowly to one of the unit doors. Beside her, Adam let out a big breath, and Carrie realized she’d been holding hers as well.
“We’d better get inside,” Adam said.
Carrie’s senses were on high alert as she scurried through the semidarkness beside Adam. She heaved a sigh and dropped into the room’s only chair while he closed and locked the door.
Adam perched on the edge of the bed. “Here’s the big question,” he said. “How did the person who sent the text get the number of this new cell phone? No one knows it except you. I haven’t even called my brother to give it to him.”
Carrie’s answer came without hesitation. “I haven’t told anyone.”
“I’ll accept that,” Adam said. “But what if someone had access to your cell phone? Whoever texted me, and I have to assume it was the killer, must have thought, ‘This was the last number dialed on her cell phone.’ It was a pretty good bet that your last call would have been to me. When would you have made that call? And who had access to your cell phone after that?”
When had she called him last? They’d talked while she was on her way back after lunch with Julie. Where had her phone been since then? “After we talked I put my phone in my pocket. Sometimes I get text messages or calls from the hospital.”
“Was it there the rest of the afternoon?”
Carrie started to say yes, but then she stopped. “No. I was seeing that patient in the ER, and while I was bending over his gurney, my phone almost dropped out of my pocket. I gave it to the nurse to stow in a locker in the break room, along with my purse.”
“Was it locked up?”
“It’s supposed to be.” She thought back and felt a chill down her spine. “When I went to pick up the purse, the locker was unlocked.”
“So for an hour or two, anyone going through the ER could have had access to it.”
“I can’t believe someone on the ER staff would do this,” Carrie said.
“Not just the ER staff. It could have been someone pretending to be a patient or family member. Almost anyone could have walked through the ER and slipped into that room. It would only take a matter of a minute or two to identify your purse and check the call log on your phone.”
“Would they know where to look?” Carrie asked.
“I’ll bet I could find the nurses’ locker room inside three minutes,” Adam said. “And even if the locker was secured, you can open those things with a bent paper clip.” He shook his head. “No, the list of suspects is pretty large.”
Carrie couldn’t help it. She got up and walked to the window, where she peered through a slit in the blinds. The parking lot was dark and still, but there could be a killer out there somewhere—a killer who had marked Adam for death.
“Let’s talk about what I have to do next,” Adam said.
Carrie was still at the window with her back to Adam, so he couldn’t see her face, but her next words, the very tone, left no doubt of her feelings. “Not just you—we. I’m with you on this. Neither of us is going to be safe until we identify the attacker and see that he’s locked up.”
“You know this could put you in danger,” Adam said.
“I’m already in danger,” Carrie said. She turned to face him. “Besides . . . I love you.”
Hearing the words made Adam’s heart sing. His happiness was fleeting, though, because he knew what he had to do. And it broke his heart.
“I love you too—more than I can say. And that just makes this harder.”
“What do you mean?”
“Whoever the shooter is, the driving force behind him has got to be Charlie DeLuca. I could stumble around here for weeks trying to figure out the identity of the person trying to kill me yet never succeed. And the fact that the caller got my number from your phone . . .” He shuddered. “They’re involving you in this entirely too much. I’m going to go directly to Charlie.”
“I don’t understand.”
But Adam did. He was through running. He needed to go out and meet the challenge head-on. He needed to confront Charlie DeLuca once and for all—not just for his own safety, but for Carrie’s.
Adam walked across the room to the window, where Carrie had turned back to stare into the night. He embraced her from behind. They stood that way for a moment, then she turned and kissed him, a kiss that made his decision even more difficult. “I don’t want to go into details,” he said. “Even with you. I have to leave town. Let’s leave it at that. If people ask, you can simply say, ‘He left. I don’t know where he’s gone or when he’ll be back.’ That’s the safest thing for you.”
Carrie’s expression melted Adam’s heart: a frown, a hurt look, tears. He took her hands in his. “Just trust me,” he said. “Give me two weeks. That’s all I’m asking.”
“Two weeks?”
“Maybe less, certainly no more than that. And I’ll call you as often as I can.” Adam unlocked the door. “Now, I want you to drive straight home. I’ll follow you and make sure you get into your house safely.”
The hurt in Carrie’s voice was obvious. “If you love me, why can’t you share your plans with me? Why won’t you tell me?”
“When I went into the Witness Security Program, one of the marshalls took me aside and warned me about telling people my plans . . . even people I trust. ‘What they don’t know, they can’t tell,’ was how he put it. You’re better off not knowing.”
Adam insisted on seeing Carrie safely inside her home. Not until he was sure there was no intruder hiding anywhere did he say, “Lock the doors. Keep the blinds and drapes closed. I’ll sit out front until I’m sure you’re settled.”
Carrie did as he’d asked. When she heard his motor fire up, she moved to the window, pulled back the curtain, and watched Adam’s pickup disappear around the corner. She still couldn’t understand what had happened. She wanted to help him out of this mess. And now he was gone. She wanted to contribute, but how could she when he was leaving her behind? Carrie had never felt so powerless, so frustrated.
As his taillights faded into the darkness, she turned away from the front window and slumped into a chair in the living room. Carrie reached for the lamp beside her, then drew back her hand. No, she’d sit here in the dark. It was a better setting for her to ponder what might happen next.
Where was Adam going? Would he come back? God knows. She marveled at the truth of that off-hand thought. She had no idea where Adam was going or what he’d do when he got there. But God did. And all she could do was trust Him.
That was when the tears started—first a few at the corners of her eyes, then a trickle down her cheeks, and finally the floodgates opened, and sobs accompanied it all. Carrie buried her face in her hands and let the tears come. She cried for the loss of her husband. She cried for the danger to Adam. She cried for the relationship with her parents that disappeared when she became a Christian. And she cried for herself, for turning loose of the only Anchor in her life that ever really held her secure.
Her prayer was silent at first, then continued as a whisper, and finally ended with words that echoed through the empty room. “God, I’ve pushed You away. I’ve blamed You for things that You didn’t cause. I’ve found fault when You didn’t respond to my prayers the way I thought You should. I’ve tried to be self-sufficient, to do it all without You. And it doesn’t work. Please show me what to do. Please help me find the way. And bring Adam back safely. Please. Please. Please.”