Jenna had been taken from the woods straight to the emergency room at UAB. They’d put a light cast on her arm to stabilize the fracture revealed by the X-rays. Other than that, she’d been given a clean bill of health and permission to go back to Bingham’s office to give her statement, a process that had been far more difficult than she could ever have imagined.
Sean had been allowed to sit in on that, a concession that had apparently been made because he’d been instrumental in figuring out where to look for her. Until she’d glanced across the clearing this morning and seen him lowering his gun, she hadn’t even known he was alive, much less that he’d been with the officers who’d rescued her.
As she’d told her story, always conscious of the watchful blue eyes focused intently on her face, it was brought home to her how close she’d come to being the last of the Inquisitor’s victims. No one had been able to give a satisfactory explanation as to why Evers hadn’t killed her during the time between her recapture and the deputy’s arrival.
The closest to something that made sense was on a news bulletin she’d heard on the television in the emergency waiting room. One of the profilers had speculated that the ritual Evers always followed hadn’t yet begun.
On some level, she had still been Jenna Kincaid to him. A colleague. A person in her own right rather than a substitute object of his rage against the woman who had raised and brutalized him.
That was something else she’d learned from watching those cable news interviews—what had driven the murderer. Since the search for information on Evers had begun as soon as the police identified him, quite a lot was already known about his background.
The grandmother into whose lap he’d been dumped as a toddler had eventually ended up in a state-run mental institution. Unfortunately, that hadn’t happened before her insanity had created the monster who’d visited the same cycle of mutilation and humiliation he’d been subjected to on more than a dozen women. In this case, as in many others, no one would ever be able to separate the roles heredity and environment had played in that creation.
“I think that’s everything,” Bingham said finally. “Or everything that can’t wait until the two of you get some rest.”
“If you think of anything else,” Sean said, rising and holding out his hand to the detective, “you have my number.”
“And mine,” Jenna added, although the last thing she wanted was to relive the terror recounting today’s events had brought back with such force.
“Hopefully we won’t have to get back to you until after the holidays. You going back to work, Dr. Kincaid?”
“Today?”
“I doubt anybody’s that dedicated. I meant before Christmas.”
“I haven’t had a chance to think about it.”
Now that she did, she realized how difficult that would be. She would contact the people she’d been told had played a role in her rescue, especially Paul and Beth. But walking back into the office where Evers’s presence would haunt them all wasn’t something she was in any hurry to do.
“Most people think they can shake off the effects of something like this and just will themselves back to normal,” Bingham said. “I know I don’t have to tell you that isn’t the way it works. Give yourself some time. And my advice, if you want to hear it—” The detective paused to give her an opportunity to say if she didn’t.
“I’d be grateful for anything you have to suggest.”
“Then get some counseling. And do it right away. I don’t know who treats psychologists, but…whoever it is, I think it’s important that you talk to somebody.”
“I will. And thank you.” She held out her left hand, which was quickly enveloped in both of his.
“Thank you. I appreciate your willingness to do this today. With the press foaming at the mouth, I figured the sooner we could get the story out there, the sooner they’ll leave you all alone.”
Secluded here in the police station for the past two hours, Jenna had almost forgotten what a frenzy this would cause, nationally as well as locally. Another thing she wasn’t ready to face. “You think they’ll be waiting outside?”
“Since we put out the bulletin on Evers this morning.”
“Is there another way—” She broke the sentence to look questioningly at Sean.
Because, she realized, she was still expecting him to protect her. Something that was no longer his job.
Actually, it never had been. It hadn’t even been his intention. “We can take you out through the underground garage where we brought you in,” the lieutenant said. “Have a car pick you up there and take you wherever you want to go.”
Wherever you want to go. Despite her acknowledgment that Sean was no longer under any obligation to her, her eyes clung to his, hoping he’d provide an answer to that.
When he didn’t, she turned back to Bingham. She could have sworn there was compassion in his black eyes.
“If you don’t mind, I’d like a few minutes to make some repairs before I go anywhere.” Right now her grip on her emotions was tenuous at best. She didn’t want to break down in front of these two. Especially Sean. “I don’t suppose there’s a comb and a mirror and maybe even a washcloth around here.”
“I think we can provide those.” Bingham stepped back to his desk to push the button on his intercom. “Would you send Officer Dillon in? Ask her to bring her purse.”
He turned to smile at Jenna. “Just tell Helen what you need. She’ll get it for you.”
“I don’t want to put anyone to that much trouble.”
“Trust me. She’ll be more than ready for a foray outside. What about you, Sergeant? Anything you need?”
“Just to make a couple of phone calls. My cell doesn’t seem to be working after the river.”
“Be my guest,” Bingham said, gesturing toward his phone.
“Long distance,” Sean added, looking as if he expected to be turned down.
“I think we can cover that in the budget. After all, we owe you. Believe me, nobody around here is going to forget that.”
“Nobody ‘owes’ me. My motivations were entirely selfish.”
Jenna told herself there was no reason for the spurt of disappointment Sean’s disclaimer evoked. He’d been up front about those from the first.
Bingham’s eyes rested on her face again before he took her by the elbow. “Why don’t I take Dr. Kincaid someplace she can freshen up and give you some privacy? Take as long as you want. Just open the door when you’re through.”
Too tired to even consider protesting, Jenna allowed the lieutenant to lead her out of his office. He reached back to close the door as soon as they were outside.
“I expect he wants to let his family know he’s okay. And maybe to tell them the outcome of this. They aren’t the only family that’s gonna be real glad this is over.”
Jenna nodded in agreement, although her gaze lingered briefly on the frosted-glass top half of his office door.
“You call your folks?” Bingham asked.
“Not yet. I doubt they even know what’s gone on here. Much less that I was involved. I know I need to tell them before they hear it from someone else, and I will. Right now, I’m not sure what to say.”
“Want me to get in touch with them for you?”
She shook her head. “Thank you, but I think that would scare them to death. I’ll do it. I just need to…I don’t know. Put it into perspective, I guess.”
“The only perspective you need right now is that you’re alive. Relatively unharmed. And that you got only one person to thank for that. No matter what anybody tells you, including him, I was right here for all of it. That man in there—” he tilted his head toward the door behind him “—wasn’t huntin’ a killer to get revenge for his sister. He was huntin’ you. And without him—” The detective stopped, taking a quick breath and blowing it out before he finished. “I frankly don’t know that we would have gotten there in time.”
“Thank you for telling me that.”
Bingham nodded, a quick, decisive motion of that well-shaped head. “Thought you should know. Now, let’s go see what Helen can do about getting the stuff you need.”
Bingham had escorted Jenna and Sean to the elevator that would deposit them to the basement garage. He hadn’t gone downstairs with them, pleading the need to prepare the press statement detailing what had happened. He was already skating close to the deadline of the announced media conference.
The cop who’d ridden down with them had gone to find out what had happened to the car that was supposed to already be here. His suspicion, he’d told them, was that the driver had been held up by the traffic generated out front by the throng of reporters.
They watched him walk toward the exit to the street in silence. With Bingham’s words echoing in her head, Jenna was conscious that this might be the last time they would be together—and alone. And she very much needed to know what came next in order to prepare for it.
She wasn’t sure that right now she was in control enough not to react if this was it. If Sean was going to walk out of her life without anything other than the handshake he’d offered Bingham, she needed some kind of warning. And the only thing she could think of to solicit information about his plans…
“You think they’d be willing to stop and let us pick up something to eat on the way? The cupboard’s pretty bare at my apartment.”
She realized it was the wrong thing to say even before Sean turned to look at her. It brought back too many memories—all of which he would want to forget. The box tied with red ribbon. Gary’s visit. All that had happened after it, culminating in his discovery of Carol Cummings’s body.
“I imagine after they get us away from here, they’ll be willing to take you anywhere you want to go.”
You. Not we.
“And where will they be taking you?”
“To the airport.” He glanced down at his watch. “There’s plenty of time to make a stop for food and deliver you to your apartment before I have to be there. If you’re sure that’s where you want to go.”
Surely he wasn’t about to suggest that she go to her parents’ house. She would have to get someone out there before they returned from their trip, but that would have to wait until the police had processed the crime scene in the kitchen. She certainly didn’t intend to stay there while that was going on. And maybe never again.
“You have a better suggestion?” She waited, hoping he would say the right thing.
“You’ll be fine at your apartment.” Maybe her eyes belied his confidence in that because he added, “It’s really over, Jenna. He isn’t going to hurt you—or anyone else—ever again. Bingham will make sure of that.”
“I know. Intellectually, I know. It’s just that somewhere inside—”
“Let it go. Let him go. Back to whatever pit of hell he crawled out of.”
For a fraction of a second the therapist part of her remembered that Gary Evers had once been a terrified little boy, tormented by a woman who should never had been allowed to have contact with a child. In the next she remembered that something very similar could be said about the man at her side. One had become a monster, and the other had become…
Someone willing to protect, even at the cost of his own life. Just as he’d done for Makaela all those years ago. Just as he had done for her.
“Does it have to be tonight?”
“What?”
She strengthened her voice, determined, no matter the result, to ask him. “Why do you have to leave tonight?”
“Because I promised someone I’d be home for Christmas.”
“Someone?” The tone of the question was as casual as she could make it under the circumstances.
“She’s eight. Bright enough to have figured out what I was doing down here. He’s four. And expecting a puppy.”
Makaela’s children. The ones Sean had become responsible for when his sister had been murdered.
“Then…It sounds as if you have some shopping to do when you get home.”
“Know anything about dogs?”
She wasn’t sure why the question made her heart jump into her throat. After all, he hadn’t actually invited her to help him with the purchase, which would probably have to be made in Michigan.
“I always had one when I was growing up.”
“What kind?”
She smiled at the memories, although the upward movement of her lips felt stiff. Unnatural. “Not any I can see you buying.”
“Yeah? You had the yappy kind?”
“With papers.”
“I was thinking about getting a mutt from the pound. It’s not that I couldn’t afford the kind with papers. It’s just that I think there would be something…I don’t know. Satisfying, maybe, about giving an abandoned dog a good home.”
That word, too, resonated in her heart with far too much meaning. She seemed determined to read significance into everything he said. Maybe because she was afraid there wasn’t any to any of it. After all, no promises had been made. On either side, she reassured her surge of insecurity.
It had been that way since she’d met him. More than any man she’d ever been involved with, Sean Murphy made her unsure of her own worth.
And she no longer bothered to deny that she was involved. Whether he was or not.
“Are you going to let the kids make the choice?” she asked, working to keep any trace of disappointment out of her voice.
“Not if I want to get out of the place with just one.”
“I figured you’d be in complete command of the expedition.”
“Which shows how much you know about kids.”
That was another thing she hadn’t had time to consider. If this did go anywhere—that was something she’d have to think about.
She knew enough about Sean Murphy to know that his niece and nephew weren’t responsibilities he had undertaken lightly. He would be there for them as long as they needed him.
Maybe that was the key to his hurry to be gone. She no longer needed him to protect her. And she’d never bothered to tell him all the other ways she still needed him. Maybe because—until right now—she hadn’t had to acknowledge them.
“I’d like to know more,” she said. “At least about yours.”
As admissions went, it wasn’t particularly bold. She waited while the blue eyes examined her face.
“You got plans for Christmas?”
Her throat closed with the promise of that. And then she remembered all the seasonal things she was committed to, from Paul’s annual party for the staff to the bread pudding she was supposed to deliver on Christmas morning to her mother’s family gathering. Right now, none of them seemed nearly as important as Sean’s question.
“Not really,” she said.
“You like snow? I mean a lot of it?”
“I haven’t seen ‘a lot of it,’ but…I’ve always liked the little we get.”
She had. Despite the traffic snafus it invariably brought, even the predictions of snowfall were still exciting.
“Kids?”
“You said you liked dogs. And snow. I figured I might as well go for a hat trick.”
“Are you talking about…Are you by any chance asking me to go home with you?”
“You said you didn’t have plans.”
“Not any that can’t be changed. How will your family feel about that?”
“That’s why I asked if you like kids.”
“I haven’t really been around them a lot, but…I think I would.”
“Yeah? Well, trust me, they’ll be around. Especially since I’ve been away.”
They would want him all to themselves. Just as she did. “Then it’s probably not a good idea to spring a visit from a stranger on them,” she said, hoping against hope he’d refute the out she’d given him. “Especially this time of year.”
“I figured they wouldn’t notice as long as I brought the puppy home, too.”
Her heart rate slowed to something approaching normal. “You plan to just sneak me in during the excitement.”
“Something like that. If you’re interested.”
“I’m interested. I don’t know if I could get a flight. Not this late. And especially this time of year.”
He reached into the inside pocket of his leather jacket, pulling out a couple of sheets of paper. He unfolded them before he held them out to her.
Despite everything she could do, her eyes blurred as she read her name on the airline e-ticket receipt he’d printed out. Blinking, she slipped that page under the one for his seat, right next to the one he’d reserved for her.
She looked up, no longer worried about whether he would notice the tears. “Pretty damn sure of yourself.”
“I prefer to think of it as being skilled at risk assessment.”
“Is that how you see this? As a risk?”
“You don’t?”
She did. She just hadn’t expected him to be that open about it. “Maybe. But it’s one I’m willing to take.”
For a second, the blue eyes were suspiciously bright. By the time the long, dark lashes swept down to cover that gleam, it had cleared.
“Yeah, well, you’d better check the time on those,” he advised, nodding toward the papers she still held in her hand.
She glanced down obediently, realizing that the tickets were for today. For a flight that would leave Birmingham in less than four hours.
“How fast can you pack?”
“Fast enough,” she said with complete assurance.