Love Inspired Suspense July 2015 #1 (32 page)

His cheek muscle ticked. “The divorce put her emotions through the wringer.”

Sherri's heart yo-yoed. She'd always adored his mother. And his father. He hadn't seemed like the kind of guy who'd cheat on his wife.
But that just goes to show how easy it is to make people see what you want them to see—
she tucked her trembling hand under her thigh—
unless they happened to catch you in the throes of a nightmare.

“I'm sorry about your mom and I appreciate your concern, but I'm fine. I've scarcely had any nightmares about the dog attack.” They'd started long before that.

Cole lifted his lemonade glass and took an inordinate amount of interest in the condensation pebbling on the sides. “It's not just the nightmares. When's the last time you've hung out with friends?”

“I've been working a lot of shifts to get the hours I need to apply for the flight medic opening.”

“You're distancing yourself from family, too.”

How would he...? She folded her arms. “What did Jake tell you?”

“That you've been detached. Uncommunicative.”

All symptoms of PTSD.
She shook off the thought, rolled her eyes and sprawled back against the couch. “I've been busy.”

The muscle twitches in Cole's cheek grew more pronounced. “Why are you getting defensive? I'm trying to help you.”

“By cataloging my social faux pas?”

He set down his glass. “No, Sherri...I think you might be suffering from PTSD.”

“That's ridiculous.” She sprang to her feet and scanned the dining-room table, the countertops. “Do I look depressed to you? I don't drink. I don't do drugs.” She didn't have PTSD. He had to have spotted the article and just assumed.

She stalked down the hall to her bedroom where Cole had come in and scanned the night table and dresser. The PTSD article wasn't anywhere to be seen. So where had he gotten the idea from?

She jolted at her reflection in the dresser mirror—the sunken eyes, the purple smudges beneath them. She smoothed her sleep-mussed hair. Oh, this was worse than she'd thought. If he suspected after only a couple of weeks in town, how long before her boss clued in and took her off duty?

* * *

Cole sprang up from the armchair to go after her. Except...darkness crept into the edges of his vision and he crumpled to the floor with a thud.

“Cole!” Sherri skidded to her knees at his side, sounding as frantic as the rain lashing the windows.
Rain? When did it start raining?

He blinked open his eyes. The doctor had warned him that head injuries could trigger delayed symptoms. Had he actually passed out?

“Cole, what's wrong?” The concern in Sherri's eyes made his heart hammer. Her fingertips found the pulse point at his wrist, sending tingles charging up his arms as her gaze shifted to her watch. “Your heart is racing.”

He chuckled. “Yeah, having a gorgeous woman fuss over him will do that to a guy.” He turned onto his side to push to his feet.

“Whoa.” She pushed his shoulder back to the floor. “What do you think you're doing? You need to lie still.”

“I'm fine.”

“You're not fine. You just passed out.”

He wedged his elbows behind him to raise his head closer to her eye level. “I'm fine.” But...
her
breathing didn't sound too good, and the fear that he'd heard in her voice when he came to had crept into her eyes. In her nightmare, she'd begged him not to die. Had finding him on the floor triggered a flashback?

“We'll see,” she said. “A few simple tests should tell me if you need to go straight to the ER. First, can you tell me the date?”

He twisted his arm to capture her hand still resting at his wrist. “I'm sorry I upset you. That wasn't my intention.”

She squeezed his hand. “I'm more concerned about you at the moment. Do you know the date?”

He rolled his eyes. “Okay, I'll make you a deal. I'll let you give me your tests, but in return, I want some honest answers to a few questions.”

She slipped her hand free of his grasp, sat back on her heels and pulled the cardigan she must've grabbed from her bedroom across her middle. For a long moment, she just stared at him. “What kind of questions?”

“For starters, I'd hoped you'd tell me about your nightmares. Just before I nudged you awake you'd been begging me not to die.” Not the way he wanted to fill her dreams. “I thought if we talked about them, they might ease.”

She gulped, her gaze shifting to the rain-splattered window. “Did talking about her nightmares help your mother?”

“Yes.” He eased into a sitting position, not wanting to trigger another blackout. His head was pounding, but Sherri didn't need to know that just yet. “At first I ignored her cries in the middle of the night, assuming she'd be embarrassed, but after I finally got up one night and made her a cup of cocoa and urged her to talk, the nightmares began to let up.”

A hopeful light flickered in Sherri's eyes. “Really?”

“Yes.” He leaned back against the front of the armchair. “So what do you say you sip your lemonade and tell me about your dreams?”

She arched one eyebrow in a perfect imitation of his first-grade teacher's reaction when he'd thought he'd talked his way out of something.

Not good.

“What's the date?”

He grinned. “June fourteenth. My birthday is June twenty-eighth. And in case you're interested, I love caramel and pecan-filled chocolates. Your birthday is May twelfth.”

Her eyes widened.

“You shouldn't be so surprised. We were neighbors for how many years? Do you know how many little girl birthday parties you had in your backyard in that time?”

Her melodic laugh warmed him. “As I recall, you and your brother would always
happen
to lose a baseball over the fence at about the time the cake and ice cream were served.”

“Yup.” He winked. “Good times.”

“Okay, stand up. Hold out your arms. Close your eyes. Touch one index finger to your nose. Then the other.”

He obediently did as she asked, although he was pretty sure the test was for sobriety, not a concussion “Okay, your turn.”

She closed her eyes and touched her nose.

“Very funny. That's not what I meant.”

Her mouth quirked sideways. “If I tell you about the dreams, will you promise not to say anything about them to anyone else?”

“Of course.”

She opened her catch-all drawer and fished out a small penlight. “Not to my family? Or to Jake? Or...to my boss?”

Ah.
He was beginning to see what she'd really been worried about with his PTSD theory—that she'd be forced to stay on leave if it proved true. He sat on the couch. “It's between you and me.”

She silently considered his offer. At least he hoped that was what she was doing as she flicked the light across one of his eyes and then the other. “Because, like you said, nightmares are natural after a traumatic event. They don't mean I have PTSD.”

“You have beautiful eyes,” he interjected before he could censor the thought. Maybe that bonk on the head
was
worse than he'd thought.

The corners of her mouth tipped up. So apparently she didn't mind. She pocketed the penlight, seemingly satisfied with his response. “If I did have PTSD, I'd be avoiding activities similar to those that triggered the nightmare. Right?”

“Typically, that's true, yes.” He had a bad feeling that he'd been closer to the truth than he'd realized. Could she have countered the most common reaction—avoidance of similar situations—by sheer willpower?

She relaxed and joined him on the couch. “Okay, then as long as you promise, I'll tell you.”

“I promise,” he said, and prayed he wouldn't regret it. She'd seemed to be functioning fine on the job. None of the other paramedics had made any disparaging comments about her competency. If she'd suffered flashbacks or anything else on the job, surely someone would have noticed.

“And promise me you'll go see your doctor first thing tomorrow. We'll skip our morning jog. You shouldn't be doing anything more strenuous than pencil pushing if you're still getting headaches. I can't believe you didn't tell me. I never would've let you come with me.”

Yeah, that's why he hadn't told her. “I promise.”

“Okay.” She sucked in a big breath and stared at her hands folded in her lap.

His arms ached to hold her, to ease the anxiety that had to be writhing her insides worse than she was twisting her hands. He cupped his hand over hers.

“The nightmares started after Luke's shooting. He was shot in the chest and in my nightmare his blood seeps over my hand as I try to stop it.” She pressed a palm to the left side of her chest.

Cole recalled her doing the same thing when he'd asked about Luke in the hospital. Had she been having a flashback then?

“In reality, I didn't apply pressure to his wound for very long, because Luke said he could do it and he begged me to save the patient and her unborn child. The woman's husband had pushed her down the stairs then kicked her in the stomach and she was hemorrhaging badly.”

“Did you save them?”

Sherri's hand dropped back to her lap along with her gaze. “Yes.”

The deep sadness in her voice didn't match her answer, and he knew she was thinking about who she'd lost—Luke.

With another deep inhalation, her expression blanked. This must've been what Jake had been talking about.
She seemed to stuff away all her emotions. He wanted to ask if she blamed herself for Luke's death, but was afraid the question would open up wounds best left alone. The silence lengthened and he waited, remembering how it had taken awhile for his mom to work up the courage to share.

Sherri finally continued. “After you got blown off your feet in the house explosion, the nightmares morphed. Sometimes you, not Luke, would be bleeding out on the patient's porch.”

Cole groaned. She'd relayed the experience without emotion, but the flatness in her eyes betrayed her torment.

“Then after the dog attack, sometimes a dog would show up in the dream, too.”

An image of the dog ripping into her shoulder flashed through his mind, and he shuddered.

“Yeah, not pretty. So you can hardly blame me for not wanting to burden my family with it, let alone talk to anyone else.”

He squeezed her hand. “It's not a burden to me. Your trust is a gift.”

A gorgeous blush bloomed on her cheeks. “Well, my boss wouldn't think so. He'd stop me from working, from doing what I'm supposed to be doing. And...” She fluttered her other hand. “Guys wouldn't exactly clamor to marry a woman who might whack him in the throes of a nightmare every night.” She laughed on a huff of air, clearly trying to make light of her revelation now. But his expression must've given away where his mind had veered at “marry a woman,” because her blush deepened. “Not that I think we'd...” She waved her hand as if to wipe out what she'd said, looking more flustered by the second. “I meant—”

He pressed a finger to her lips. “It's okay. I understand.” Oh, wow, her lips were soft. And despite his vow to stay unattached, he suddenly had the indefensible impulse to kiss her. To wrap her in his arms and feel the steady beat of her heart against his. To hear her whisper his name in a contented sigh, because she knew he'd keep her safe.

TEN

J
ust before three the next day, Ted's vintage orange Chevy Nova pulled out of an apartment complex around the corner from Sherri's.

“That's his car.” Cole pointed.

Zeke tailed it. The sunny day had been a quiet one for the sheriff's office, so Zeke hadn't balked at Cole's suggestion that they concentrate their patrols around Ted's neighborhood. In fact, from the zeal of his cat-and-mouse maneuvers through traffic, he looked as if he was enjoying himself. “You do know that unless an ambulance call came in that we didn't hear about, Ted's not going after Sherri.”

Cole strained to see around a truck that had pulled in front of them. “I still want to know where he's going.” What he really wanted was a look in the man's medical records. The odds that he'd happened to be walking past Sherri's apartment when she screamed were slim enough, but his intense gawking once inside had sent all Cole's alarms bells clanging.

Eight minutes later, Ted parked in front of the mall and stepped out of his car dressed in a custodian's uniform.

Zeke cruised slowly down the next lane. “Well, he won't be bothering Sherri for the next eight hours if he's reporting to work.”

Cole swept his gaze across the store signs—fourteen on this side alone. “I don't know. A mall this size must have a large cleaning staff. Would be easy enough to slip away for an hour with no one the wiser.”

Zeke snorted. “I'm telling you, your brother's the one we should be keeping an eye on. This guy didn't strike me as a mental case. The department didn't have a shred of paperwork on him.”

“Doesn't mean he's not.” The guy was fixated on Sherri. Of that much Cole was certain.

“Look at that.” Zeke stopped the cruiser at the end of the lane closest to the main entrance and jutted his chin toward Ted swallowing an elderly woman in an exuberant hug outside the door. “I bet she can tell us all you want to know about him.”

Cole shifted in his seat for a better look. “Do you know who she is?”

“Sure. Mrs. Eden, my favorite high school English teacher.”

The idea that Zeke had a favorite teacher, let alone one who taught English, left Cole a little stunned.

“Didn't you have her?”

“No, I've never heard of her. She must've retired before I got to high school.” His partner had a good ten years on him at least, but Ted didn't, so how'd he know the teacher?

Zeke whipped into a parking spot. “No problem. I'll ask her.” The instant Ted disappeared into the mall, Zeke shoved open his door and headed off the elderly woman.

By the time Cole stepped up beside him, the woman was twittering about how wonderful Ted looked now that he'd gotten off the drugs and had put on weight.

“He almost died, you know. Oh, my. It was horrible. I lived next door to the family then and I still remember how hysterical his mother was as the paramedics worked on him.”

At the word
paramedic
,
Cole jumped into the conversation. “How long ago was that?”

The woman slanted a stupefied glance his way. “Were you one of my students?”

“No, ma'am.”

“I didn't think you looked familiar.”

“Do you recall how long ago Ted almost died?”

Her gaze drifted to the sky. “Three years ago now, I think. He got addicted to painkillers after he hurt his knee playing basketball.”

“Do you happen to recall if a female paramedic responded to that call?”

Mrs. Eden's wrinkles realigned into a beaming smile. “Oh, yes. Hers was the first face he saw when he came back to us. Made quite an impression. He talked about her for months.”

Cole exchanged a victorious look with Zeke. This explained the man's obsession.

“His heart had stopped, you see.” Mrs. Eden went on, “And she jolted him back to life with one of those defibrillators.”

A report of a car accident came over Cole's radio, injuries reported, which meant an ambulance would be dispatched. Cole called in an estimated time of arrival of three minutes.

They thanked Mrs. Eden and hurried back to the cruiser. Zeke flipped on the sirens and swerved onto the street. “Sounds to me like Ted's more interested in being Sherri's protector than hurting her.”

Yeah, which meant their best hope of nabbing the real creep was to tail her runs. Oddly, Zeke seemed as eager as he was to do it.

Six minutes later, they pulled into the grocery store parking lot where two paramedics already were helping a young female victim. Sherri wasn't one of them. The accident amounted to the driver's bumper tapping the cement abutment and triggering the airbag, which in turn had gashed her arm. There was no exterior damage worth noting. Zeke thumbed a text message into his cell phone as Cole wrote up a report.

“Is the other team back at the station?” Cole asked the paramedics.

“They were when we left. Been a dead day.”

Dead was good if it meant Sherri was keeping out of trouble. A call crackled over Cole's radio. “Attention all units, 10-79 at East End Mall. All available units report in.”

Bomb threat.

* * *

Sherri and Dan parked outside the mall's south entrance, and a mall security officer held open the door.

“The kid's in the food court. Straight ahead.”

“Thanks.” They rushed the gurney inside as curious shoppers scrambled out of their way. The going got slow as they neared the food court and a thickening crowd. “Make way. Let us through,” Dan yelled.

“The paramedics are here,” someone shouted and the crowd that had been circled around the victim parted like the Red Sea.

A frantic-looking teenage girl was kneeling beside a male, about eighteen, triggering memories of Sherri's frenzy after Cole's collapse last night. Her heart thumped at the thought of how that had transpired, but she didn't regret confiding in Cole. And he'd been right. She'd slept through the night without a single nightmare for the first time in months.

“You have to help him. He can't breathe,” the girl said. “He's allergic to peanuts.”

The boy, dressed in black jeans and a black T-shirt, was clasping his throat and gasping for air, although his color didn't indicate a lack of oxygen. Reaching his side, Sherri fixed her stethoscope into her ears and exchanged a skeptical look with Dan, who'd already grabbed the vial of epinephrine and a needle from the trauma bag.

A fire alarm sounded.

Sherri could scarcely hear her patient's breathing over the surge of blood pulsing past her ears, but the boy was definitely pulling in air. She scanned the faces of the people around her who were now breaking away from the scene. What had happened to the security guard?

A loud voice came over the PA. “We need to evacuate the building. Please proceed to the nearest exit in an orderly fashion.”

Great.

“This is not a drill,” the voice over the PA went on. “I repeat. This is not a drill.” The alarm resumed its blare, and Sherri pivoted on her knee to tell Dan they should load the teen on the gurney.

Another kid shoved a cloth over Dan's mouth and shouted, “It's a bomb!”

“What are you doing?” Sherri clawed at the kid's hand and screamed for help as Dan went limp, but no one paid any attention.

Everyone started screaming. And racing for the exits. Everyone except the teens circled around her and Dan and their questionable patient.

Her throat closed up.
Oh, God, help us, please.

The patient smashed his head into Sherri's nose and sent her reeling backward. Pain exploded in her head. Blood spurted from her nose. As she struggled to her knees the girl pounced on their trauma bag. The kid holding the cloth to Dan's face snapped a handcuff on Dan's wrist then shoved him under a table and snapped the other cuff to the table's center pole.

Two guys grabbed her hands and pinned them to the floor as another pawed at her pockets.

She thrashed and kicked and screamed.

The girl, who moments ago had been pleading with Sherri to save her friend, stomped on Sherri's stomach. “The vials are in her belt, idiot.”

Sherri roared in pain as a blur of blue sprang at the girl.

The punks let go of Sherri's hands and she curled onto her side, clutching her stomach.

* * *

Cole tried to reach Sherri on her cell phone as their cruiser chewed up the five blocks back to the mall. Sirens rose up from every direction of the city, and he prayed that Sherri's ambulance wasn't one of them. “She's not answering.”

“You thinking what I'm thinking?” Zeke asked.

“That we need to locate Ted?”

“Yeah.”

By the time they reached the mall, frenzied shoppers were pouring out the doors.

Cole scanned the sea of faces. “It'll be impossible to find him in this crowd.”

“His car's still where he parked it.”

“Good. Does the department have bomb-sniffing dogs?”

“One.” Zeke snaked their cruiser around the frantic shoppers, blipping the siren to get people to move out of the way. “But from the look of the frantic evacuation, mall staff have already located it or something suspicious.” Zeke rammed the brake, and Cole grabbed the dash, his gaze slamming into that of a pigtailed girl standing frozen in the center of the roadway.

The sheriff himself snatched her up and pressed her into the arms of a screaming mother. Then, slapping the hood of their cruiser, he said, “Take the east entrance. Help get people calmed down.”

“Has the bomb been located?”

“No, but after the fire alarm was pulled, someone yelled
bomb
and everyone panicked.”

“We need to see the surveillance feeds,” Cole said. “We think we know who's behind this.”

The sheriff shot them a skeptical look, but must've seen Cole's certainty, because a heartbeat later, he said, “Okay, I'll let mall security know you're on your way. It's that door there. One flight down. And stay off your radios.”

Radio silence was standard protocol with a bomb threat. They didn't want a radio transmission inadvertently setting off the bomb. Cole's mind flashed to last week's blast, and his steps faltered as not-so-phantom pain knifed through his skull. Gritting his teeth, he shoved through the crowds battling to exit.

“This way.” Zeke pointed to a flight of stairs, but two steps down, he grabbed a hoodie-clad teen by the arm and spun him toward Cole. “Look who we have here.”

“Eddie? What are you doing here? You're supposed to be in school.”

Eddie jerked his arm from Zeke's hold and stuffed his hands into the front pocket of his hoodie. “School ended half an hour ago.”

Gripped by the fear that the bomb threat was meant to lure Sherri into a trap, Cole yanked Eddie out of the flow of people. “Were you meeting that
guy
? Is he here?”

Eddie didn't meet Cole's gaze.

Cole gave him a hard shake and raised his voice. “Is he here?”

Eddie shrank back, his hands fisting in the hoodie's front pocket.

Suddenly, a different picture materialized in Cole's mind.
A drug buy.
He yanked Eddie's hands from his pocket, but it was empty. “Answer me.”

“I was just hanging.”

Zeke clapped Cole on the shoulder. “Unless the kid knows where the bomb is, he needs to get out.” Zeke pointed to the glass doors that the last of the customers were scurrying through.

Eddie's face blanched “I don't know nothing about a bomb.”

Cole released his brother. “Get out of here. Go home.”

“C'mon.” Zeke tugged Cole down the stairwell. “The caller said the bomb was set to blow at four.”

Cole glanced at his watch. Twenty-three minutes.

Cole trailed Zeke into a room full of monitors being scanned by a mall security guard and a lone deputy. “You see who pulled the alarm?”

“No.” The deputy fiddled with dials on the control panel. “I've been rewinding surveillance footage to five to ten minutes before the call came in to see if I could spot anyone abandoning a suspicious package.”

“Good. We're looking for a lanky male custodian. Have you seen him or anyone acting suspicious?”

“Nah.” The guard's gaze bobbed from the monitors to Zeke and back again. “Everyone's scrambling to get out.”

Cole rewound a feed from the mall's south end.

“What are paramedics doing in there?” Zeke pointed to the monitor and snatched up his phone.

At the sight of Sherri and Dan pushing a gurney through the south entrance, Cole's heart chilled. “When was that image shot?”

The deputy squinted at the screen. “A couple of minutes before we received the bomb threat.”

“Yeah,” the security guard said. “We had a guy choking or something in the food court. Had to call 9-1-1.”

Cole grabbed the joystick that remotely controlled the camera near the south entrance and panned it to the limit of its range. He couldn't see them anywhere. “Have they already left? Where were they headed?” Cole demanded.

“I, uh...” the guard stammered, his gaze shooting to Zeke, who was talking on the phone.

The deputy fast-forwarded the feed Cole had been rewinding. “They didn't leave the way they came in.”

“Dispatch says they haven't reported back in,” Zeke relayed. “The call was for an anaphylactic reaction in the food court area. They'll have a deputy sweep the area.”

Cole scanned the labels under the TV screens, found the one marked Food Court. “The screen's black. Why's the screen black?”

The security officer flipped a couple of switches. “I don't know. It should be on. Someone must have covered it.”

Cole raced out of the room.

“Where are you going?” Zeke shouted after him.

“To find her!”

* * *

Sherri's heart shattered at the sound of fists connecting with Cole's flesh. He'd taken down the girl like a flash of lightning, but the punks had tackled him just as quickly. Squinting at them, Sherri strained to climb out of her pain and help him—she blinked—not Cole? Ted?