“Yeah, well, I can live with that,” Jake said. “I've been through enough in the last few weeks to know that nothing comes with guarantees. Not life, not health, nothing. In fact,
you
could walk out of here right now and meet with a terrible accident and never walk again. So essentially, you and I have the same guarantee.”
Dr. Randall smirked. “Thank you, Jake, for pointing that out to me. I appreciate it.”
“No problem. I give as good as I get.”
Dr. Randall laughed again and patted Jake's leg. Jake thought he felt it.
“Allie and Buzz are putting you in the pool today. It should be a nice change of pace.”
“What will that do?” Jake asked. “Increase circulation? Help with motor coordination?”
“Well, it does a number of things. Today you'll just float and do some resistance exercises with your arms. The lack of gravity sometimes makes it easier for people to stand when they're ready, but you're not ready for that yet. We'll just take it a step at a time.”
But Jake decided he
was
ready. When they took him to the pool and moved him from the chair into a harness seat that would lift him mechanically and lower him into the water by a chain, he saw the parallel bars in the pool and immediately knew what they were there for. People used them to balance . . . to stand . . .
To walk.
The water felt like liquid heaven, and as he slid into it, he let his upper body relax. Allie helped him float then ordered him to push his arms against the water.
She stood waist deep, and he tried to determine where the water would have come on him. He was six-two, and she was only five-seven or so. If it came halfway up her ribcage, it was probably waist deep for him.
He kept at the arm exercises the doctor had told him about for as long as he could but didn't want to tire himself out. He would need his arm muscles when he stood. “Can we go to the parallel bars?” he asked Allie finally.
Grinning, she shot Buzz a look. “Jake, we were just going to float today.”
“Come on, Allie. Just let me see what my feet will do without gravity.”
“I say we take him over there,” Buzz said.
Allie's grin grew more mischievous. “Truth is, I have been wondering just how much function you might have in those feet.”
“Then let's go.”
They helped him over to the bars, and Jake grabbed one on each side of him. The weight of his legs made them float to the bottom, and for the first time since the accident, he was in a standing position, upright, his height towering above Allie and even above Buzz.
“Can you feel your feet touching the bottom?” Allie asked.
He barely felt the smooth bottom of the pool and looked down at his limp legs. “Sort of.”
“Now, see if you can let your weight rest on your legs. Use your gluteus,” Buzz said. “That's the trick. You have to hold your torso up with your glutes.”
He felt his face reddening as he put every ounce of concentration he had into tightening his gluteals, and he looked down at his body. His legs weren't taking the weight, and his stomach was trying to arch outward. He tightened more and felt his body aligning more normally, but it was still only his arms that held him up. His legs were useless.
But Allie and Buzz didn't see the futility of it, and he saw that they were pleased by the smiles on their faces as they checked the alignment of his legs and feet to his torso.
“This is good, Jake,” Buzz said, standing in front of him. “Real good. You have the muscular strength to stand, even if your legs aren't cooperating.”
“What good are the muscles if I can't use them to do what I want?”
“You
will
be able to get them to do what you want, Jake. It's happening a little at a time, but we're seeing a lot of progress. So are you, and you know it.”
He let his arms relax a little, and his body collapsed into the water. Allie caught him.
Defeated, he let her pull him into a float, but he feared the weight of his disappointment would drown him completely. And he almost didn't care if it did.
S
omething was wrong. It wasn't like Brianna not to want to go outside. But since the day Jake had moved in and Brianna had run in screaming that her daddy was trying to get her, she had absolutely refused to set foot through the back door, with or without her mother. Paige was getting frustrated; they'd been too cooped up in the house, and she wanted Brianna to get some fresh air.
“Honey, why can't we go out there? I'll be right there with you. There's a fence and everything. Nothing's going to happen to you.”
Brianna's bottom lip puckered out, and she looked worriedly through the door. “No, Mommy. I don't want to.”
“But why? Just tell Mommy why.”
“Daddy's out there.”
“He's not, honey. He doesn't even know where we are. How could he be out there?”
Brianna shrugged, but she didn't accept Paige's logic. Paige realized that regardless of what had originally triggered it, Brianna's fear was real, not imaginary, and she couldn't dismiss it. Stooping in front of her daughter, she got to eye level with her. “Brianna, tell Mommy why you think Daddy is out there.”
“Because he is,” she said, and big tears filled her eyes. “He's waiting for me.”
“How could he be?”
The question confused the child, and she didn't answer, just wiped her eyes and smeared the tears across her temples.
“That day you thought you saw Daddy, it was Jake. He scared you, and you thought he was your daddy. But it wasn't him.”
“Yes, it was,” Brianna said. “I was chasing the butterfly, and he told me to come with him.”
“The butterfly?”
“No, Daddy!” Brianna was getting upset now, and Paige pulled her into a hug.
“It's okay, honey. We don't have to go out. You don't have to cry.”
Brianna hiccuped a sob and nodded her head, as though that would be fine with her.
But Paige couldn't understand what the problem was, and later that afternoon as Brianna napped, Paige stepped out into the backyard and looked around at the perimeter of the fence. There was nothing but woods that backed up to the fence and no trails. No one would be there by accident. If there had been someone there, he would have been there deliberately.
Had Brianna really seen someone?
She wanted to dismiss the possibility, as she had so quickly done when it had first come up, but she realized now that Brianna had never really demonstrated a fear of Jake except for that first meeting. And she wasn't entirely sure that Brianna had even seen Jake at that point.
Had Brianna been trying to tell her something all along, something that she had refused to believe?
She looked through the trees again, shivering with the sense that she was being watched, that someone was out there. Someone dangerous.
Had Keith found them? Had he approached Brianna in the back yard?
Starting to tremble, she backed into the house. Quickly, she bolted the door then ran to the front and checked the lock. In the master bedroom, she locked the door that opened to the patio.
By the time she was back in the kitchen, she heard a car door. Lynda was back with Jake.
Breathing a huge sigh of relief, she rushed outside.
Jake was getting into his wheelchair with a hang-dog look on his face, and Lynda was decidedly sober, too. But Paige hardly noticed.
“Thank goodness you're both home.”
“What is it?” Lynda asked.
“Keith,” she said breathlessly. “You know how Brianna keeps insisting that her father is in the backyard?”
Lynda waited for Jake to move away from the car door then closed it. “Yeah.”
“Maybe he was.”
Lynda stopped cold. “You think Keith was back there? When? How?”
“I don't know,” she said. “But I'm scared. What if Brianna wasn't imagining it? What if he really was back there? I mean, she's obviously terrified of something, and it isn't Jake because she warmed right up to him that night. But she still won't go outside.”
Lynda stood still, thinking for a moment. “Maybe we ought to give Larry a call.”
Jake pulled the house key out of his pocket and quietly opened his apartment door.
“Jake?” Paige asked before he could go in.
He looked back at her over his shoulder. “Yeah?”
“Would you mind . . . coming into the house for a while? Just for security. Until we hear from Larry? I'd feel better if there were a man around.”
He looked stunned by the request. “Who are you worried about? Me or you?”
She didn't understand the question and glanced at Lynda for help. “I'm just scared, Jake. I was hopingâ”
“So you think I need a couple of women to protect me?”
She looked stricken. “No. I wanted you to protect us.”
“Nice try,” he said, rolling over the threshold and pivoting at the door. “But I think I'll stay here.”
He closed the door hard, and Paige jumped. “What's wrong with him?”
Lynda sighed. “He had these grand delusions of walking today, I think. It didn't happen. He's really depressed.”
“But I really meant it, Lynda. I'd feel better with a man in the house. Why did he twist what I was saying?”
“Because he truly doesn't feel that he can offer us any protection. In his own mind, he's useless, so he thinks he's useless to everyone else, too.”
“Oh, for heaven's sake.” As if she had no more time to dwell on Jake's problems, Paige headed inside. “I need to go in and check on Brianna.”
Lynda gave Jake's door one last glance then followed her in. “I'll call Larry,” she said.
K
eith knew better than to come back, especially in the daytime, but the obsession that kept him from sleeping, eating, or thinking drove him to take chances.
In the three days since he'd tried to grab her, Bri-anna's face had haunted him day and night: the fear in her eyes when she'd spotted him; the way she'd backed away; the shrill scream that had startled him and sent him running through the woods. . . .
She'd been brainwashed, and he had to put a stop to it. He couldn't allow her mother to poison her mind against her own father. It would take some time to get those thoughts out of her mind and win back her trust. But once he had her in his possession, he would have all the time in the world. He would tell her that Paige was dead, that she'd been in a car wreck or something. She'd get over it quickly; kids are like that. Resilient.
He moved quietly through the trees, again approaching the fence around Lynda's house. He had to be bolder if he was going to succeed. He hadn't gotten many breaks lately. Even his lawyer was turning against him.
He took his usual place, sitting on the ground against a tree, hidden behind two bushes, between which he had a clear view of the back door. He still seethed from the call he'd gotten from McRae that day, asking him whether he'd found where Paige was staying and whether he'd approached the child without permission.
“I don't
need
permission,” Keith had said. “She's my kid. I'm her father, and no judge is ever going to tell me I can't see her.”
“Does that mean you did show up at their place and threaten the kid?” McRae asked.
“How would I know where they're staying?”
McRae had thought about that for a moment. “You're a smart man, Keith. Did you or didn't you find them?”
He'd been amused at McRae's assessment of him; he always enjoyed it when people found out this night-shift employee had some brains. For a moment, he'd entertained the thought of telling him how he'd found Lynda's house, but then he realized that it wouldn't pay to brag. McRae was liable to resign from the case, and then where would he be?
So he'd lied and told McRae that he didn't have a clue where they were, but that if some guy had approached his daughter, he wanted the police to find out who it was. He'd even suggested filing another motion for temporary custody since she still seemed to be in danger, but McRae had rejected it. Court was only two weeks away, he said. He wasn't going back before the judge on Keith's behalf until the trial.
But Keith could see the writing on the wall. McRae was pulling back, losing faith in him. If Keith couldn't depend on him anymore, then he couldn't depend on the justice system to get Bri-anna. He could only count on himself.
And in just two weeks he would have to go into court and face Lynda Barrett. Unless something happened to her in the meantime.
So he was back here, waiting for a glimpse of Brianna, praying for another chance to grab her. This time he wouldn't botch it.
And if he couldn't reach Brianna, then he'd bide his time until he caught Lynda leaving and rush to his car to follow her.
He heard the side door open; he got to his feet, still crouched low, and moved until he could see who was coming out. It was Lynda, all dressed up, as though she was going to church, but she was alone.
Perfect. He took off through the trees. If he could make it to his car and follow her, he could plant his little surprise under her gas tank while her car was in the church parking lot. Talk about hellfire and brimstone.
Laughing breathlessly, he fired up his car and drove up the block and around the corner. He pulled over and waited.
Today was the day. Lynda would be taken out, Paige would be homeless and without representation, and his court case would be in the bag. Piece of cake. Even McRae would have to give him credit for working things out.
He saw the car come to the end of the street, stop, and then turn right. He waited until it was far enough away so she couldn't see him. Then he began to follow.
I
thought you were going to invite Jake,” Paige said as Lynda turned the corner.
“I did. Last night and again this morning. He wasn't interested.”