Stitched Up Heart (Combat Hearts Book 1)

by Tarina Deaton

  “How many stitches?” She didn’t want to take the time to count them all.

  “Thirty-two.” Bree looked toward the door. An average-looking man in a white lab coat stood in the threshold. “I’m Doctor Walsh. How’re you feeling?”

  “Weak. How deep was the cut?”

  “Quarter of an inch at the deepest.” He pulled his hands out of his lab coat pockets and joined them in the room. It was getting crowded in the small space. Mary Ann stepped back to give him access to the bed. Denise shuffled to the side and joined Jase at the end of the bed.

  “Radial artery?” she asked as he picked up her arm and palpated the edges of the wound.

  “They warned me you were a medic. Radial artery. Do you remember telling the police you needed a tourniquet?” He squeezed her fingernails and released them.

  Bree furrowed her brow and shook her head.

  “It saved your life. Without it, you would have bled out before EMS got there. Squeeze my finger.” He put his index finger under all four of her fingers. She tried to close her fingers around his, but hissed as pain shot through her arm.

  “Don’t worry. It’s good you can close your fingers. I have hope there’s no permanent nerve damage. You’ll need to be assessed by a physical therapist after the stitches come out.”

  She gave him a baleful stare. “Are you kidding?”

  He chuckled. “No. You can’t assess yourself. Never a good idea to self-diagnose.”

  She sighed. “When can I go home?”

  He squeezed her hand and motioned to Mary Ann. “I want to do another CBC to make sure your platelets are good. And you need to eat some solid food. Assuming everything comes back normal, tomorrow afternoon. Saturday at the latest.”

  She nodded. She wanted her own bed. Wanted her dogs. Oh, shit. Her eyes widened and the beeping of the machine next to her increased. “Charlie and Polly?”

  Jase rubbed her feet. “They’re fine. They were outside. If you need Polly, Tim can go get her from my house.” She sagged into the mattress.

  Knock, knock. Everyone turned as Detective Johnson stepped into the doorway. “Can I join the party?”

  “You can have my spot,” Dr. Walsh said. “Bree, I’ll be back to check on you during my normal rounds.” He maneuvered his way around everyone in the room and left.

  Detective Johnson took a few steps into the room. “How’re you feeling?”

  She quirked her mouth and her eyebrow twitched. “Okay, all things considered.”

  His gaze was sympathetic. He looked down at her arm, being rewrapped in clean bandages. “You up for answering some questions?”

  “Sure.”

  “Not too long,” Mary Ann said. “She needs to rest.” She packed up the remaining supplies on the tray and left with a pointed looked at the detective.

  He nodded and took up position next to Jase. Denise sat in one of the chairs by the door, thumbs flying across the face of her phone.

  “Walk me through your day on Monday.” He lifted a digital recorder and raised his eyebrows. She shrugged. Pressing a button, he set the device on the tray table next to the bed. “Start from when you realized Cindy wasn’t at work.”

  “It was between seven-forty-five and eight, I guess. She’s usually in by seven-thirty.” Detective Johnson stopped her a few times as she recalled the events leading to the confrontation in her house, asking her to backtrack or clarify some part of the timeline.

  “She landed on the knife?” Bree asked.

  “The medical examiner determined she tried to break her fall, but didn’t let go of it. She was still clutching it in her hand.”

  Her eyes and nose stung. She dropped her gaze to her lap to hide her tears. Jase lowered the bedrail and sat next to her hip. He pulled her hand into his lap, careful of the IV taped to the back. His thumb brushed her cheek, catching a tear.

  She swallowed hard and looked back at Detective Johnson. “Have you been able to figure out why? She wasn’t making a lot of sense. She rambled more than anything.”

  He sighed and grabbed the recorder off the tray. He turned it off and slid it into his coat pocket. “She had several scrapbooks full of news clippings about you. Most of them look like they were downloaded from the internet. Even if the content was the same, if it was from a different site, she saved it.”

  “What kind of articles?” Jase asked. His thumb brushed back and forth along the meaty part of her hand.

  “They start from the time Bree received her Bronze Star.”

  “She mentioned that,” Bree said.

  “From there, it was anything and everything she could find,” Detective Johnson said.

  “How much is there?” Denise asked.

  “Not a lot after the hoopla of her medal died down. A few articles here and there, mostly in conjunction with events her grandmother supported.” He turned to Bree. “There were a lot of pictures after she started working at the hospital with you. Some of them you’re looking at the camera.” He scratched at the back of his neck. “Some were of you at your house or shopping. You seem completely unaware the pictures were being taken.”

  Bree suppressed a shudder. Cindy had followed her? Stalked her? Something didn’t fit. “But why did she kill those women? I don’t understand that part.”

  He pointed at the vacant chair. “Do you mind?” Bree shook her head. He pulled it closer to the bed and rested one ankle over the other knee. “We have a theory about why she started killing. We found journals she kept, going back about five years.” He pinched the bridge of his nose. “They were from around the time her husband left her for another woman.”

  Bree’s eyebrows rose. “She was married?”

  “Divorced. You didn’t know?”

  “I had no idea. I feel like such a shitty person. That’s a pretty significant thing not to know about someone.”

  “It doesn’t make you a shitty person,” Denise said. “You said more than once she was a little weird.”

  “Still, something that should have come up in the two years I knew her.”

  “Not necessarily,” Detective Johnson said. “We pulled her personnel file. She checked Never Married.”

  “Why?” Bree asked.

  “What we’ve gathered from her journals is the divorce, and her husband cheating on her, destroyed her world. We’ve got a psychologist going through them as well. His preliminary assessment is that she lost her sense of self-worth. Then, she found you.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “She hero-worshipped you. In her own words, you were everything she wanted to be. Strong. Independent. Self-reliant.”

  “What did that have to do with Bree’s ex?” Denise asked.

  He glanced over his shoulder, then turned back to Bree. “She wrote about finding out Chad cheated on you. The entries became disjointed from that point forward. She’d refer to Chad, but a few sentences later, use her ex’s name. The psychologist thinks finding out about your situation triggered a psychotic break. She was unable to distinguish between what happened to you and what happened to her. In the end, she took all her anger she felt from her divorce out on the women involved with Chad.”

  Bree stared up at the white ceiling. How did this happen? Could she have prevented it? She squeezed her eyes shut, and her fingers spasmed around Jase’s. Tears streamed from her eyes. Such a waste. So many dead.

  Jase jostled her as he shifted forward on the bed. Her left arm lifted, and she felt Denise crowd her on that side. They surrounded her. Comforted her. Protected her.

  “Bree.” Detective Johnson’s voice was soft, laced with empathy. “Nothing you did brought this on. Cindy was very troubled.”

  She peered over her human security blanket and nodded. Jase and Denise sat back.

  Denise wiped Bree’s cheek with the back of her fingers. “Just think of all the new stuff you’ll have to talk to Dr. Tailor about. She’s probably sick of hearing about the same old shit.”

  Bree snorted and blew out a snot bubble. De
nise threw her head back and laughed while Bree glared at her. She put her hand over her nose and sniffed. “Get me a tissue, you cow.”

  Jase grabbed two from the box by the bed and held them out. Bree replaced her hand with them. “Can you leave the room while I blow my nose?”

  He chuckled. “No.”

  “Fine. Don’t blame me if it grosses you out.” She blew her nose, then laid the wadded up remains on the corner of the table tray.

  Detective Johnson approached her bed. A smile played at the corners of his mouth. “Thank you for answering my questions.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  “I may have more later. We’re already coordinating with hospital administration at Fort Bragg to talk to the people you work with.”

  She sighed. Maybe she could talk Jase into running away to Aruba and not deal with it.

  “Take care.” Detective Johnson touched two fingers to his forehead and left.

  A yawn overtook her, and she covered her mouth with the back of her bandaged arm.

  “I’m heading out,” Denise said. “Gran texted while you were talking to the detective. She’ll be here around two. Plenty of time to take a nap.”

  “Okay.”

  Denise laid her forehead against Bree’s again. “I’m glad you’re safe.”

  “Me too.”

  Denise kissed her cheek. “Later, Jase.”

  “Later.” He didn’t look away from Bree. He raised her fingers to his lips, his eyes twinkling over the back of her hand. “I love you. Snot bubbles and all.”

  Her face flamed. So undignified. Never mind she’d been lying in a hospital bed for three days.

  His smile faded. Her breath caught in her throat as his look became grim. “You can’t ever leave me, Bree. For any reason. You hold my heart together.”

  Tears welled up again. She blew another snot bubble.

  “Happy birthday…tooooo yooouuu.” The final line of the song trailed off. Everyone clapped and cheered as Gran took a deep breath and blew out her candles. All twenty-nine of them.

  Bree squeezed her tight. “Happy birthday, Gran.”

  “Thank you, darling girl.” She kissed Bree’s cheek before she turned to accept more hugs and well wishes.

  Bree left the cake-cutting to the catering staff and made her way to the side of the large party room where Jase stood with his parents and Denise. Several extended family members and friends stopped her along the way, and it took several minutes to reach the small group.

  “Denise broke off as she approached. “I’m getting a refill.” She shook her empty wine glass. “You want one?”

  “God, yes. I was going to get one on my way here, but my aunt Amelia is at the bar and I know she’ll ask awkward questions about my sex life.”

  Denise glanced sideways at Jase. “Especially when she gets a good look at him.”

  “I’m surprised she hasn’t tried to corner him already.”

  “I’ll head her off if I see her walking this way.”

  “Thanks.”

  The resemblance between Jase and his father was uncanny, although he got his eyes from his mother. Bree walked right under his outstretched arm and wrapped her arm around his waist. “Thank you for coming, Mr. and Mrs. Larken. I’m glad you were able to fit this into your trip.”

  “Nonsense. We’re honored to be invited. I think it’s fabulous your grandmother celebrates the anniversary of her twenty-ninth birthday.”

  Bree grinned. “She’s been doing it for as long as I can remember. When I was little, I didn’t understand why she stayed the same age.”

  “And please, call me Melissa.” She tilted her head to her husband, who rested a hand on her shoulder. “You can call him whatever name he’s earned at the time.”

  Bree pulled her lips between her teeth and tried to suppress her smile.

  Jase let out an exasperated sigh. “What’d you do this time, Dad?”

  He opened his mouth to answer.

  “He was complaining about how all his children are involved with Air Force people,” Melissa said.

  “That’s alright, Melissa,” Bree said. “We all make mistakes in life and have to learn from them. Some have to learn the hard way.” A grin spread across Jase’s father’s face until Bree continued. “By joining the Army.”

  Melissa threw her head back and laughed. Jase kissed Bree’s temple, probably to hide the smile she felt.

  Jases’s dad cast a glare at his giggling wife. He held his hand out for Bree to shake. “Bill. You can call me Bill.”

  Bree smiled and shook his hand. “How was your drive?”

  “Long,” Melissa said. “He insisted on taking back roads the whole way here. The drive took twice as long as it should have.”

  “It wasn’t twice as long, woman.”

  “Three-and-a-half hours is almost twice as long.”

  Bree leaned close to Jase. “Are they always like this?” she asked under her breath.

  He put his mouth close to her ear. “Pretty much. I don’t know what they’d do if they didn’t have something to argue about.”

  His voice sent shivers down her spine. Was immediately after blowing out the candles too soon for them to leave?

  She watched his parents argue, but it was easy to tell there was no heat or anger behind the words. “At least I know you came by your bossiness naturally.”

  He smirked. “Yup. Got it from Mom.”

  She looked at him like he was crazy. “So not was I was thinking.”

  Denise rejoined them and handed Bree a glass of wine. “Ms. Mary is shagging.”

  “What?” Jase asked.

  Bree blinked twice, then laughed. “Did someone tell you to tell on her?”

  Denise stared at her blankly. “No. Ms. Mary told me to tell you, she’s shagging.”

  “Why is old people having sex interesting?” Jase asked.

  His mom and Denise laughed. “What? No…” Bree shook her head. “Not…” She faked a shudder. “I need to go bleach my brain, now.”

  “Shag dancing,” Bill said. “Lots of shaggin’ on the Carolina coast.” He winked at Bree.

  “Bree!” Her name rang out across the room, and she glanced over her shoulder at the small wood dance floor. Ms. Mary waved her arm. “Come shag with me.”

  A wide grin spread across Jase’s face. “My mind isn’t wired to think of that as anything other than an invite to—”

  Bree slapped a hand over his mouth. “Quit talking. I’m going to go dance and make sure she doesn’t throw out a hip.” She removed her hand and planted a kiss on his mouth.

  “Oh, yeah. I like her,” she heard Melissa say as she walked away. Her smile was instantaneous. Yeah, she liked them too.

  Ms. Mary decided to lead. They danced for two songs before the DJ switched to sixties music, and people wanting to shake their tail feathers and twist overran the dance floor. Maneuvering through the crush of bodies, Bree approached the bar and asked for a glass of water. She scanned the room until she found Jase sitting with Gran.

  They were in an intense conversation. Jase leaned forward with his elbows resting on his knees. His look was serious, fierce even.

  Her heart pounded in her chest and the blood rushed in her ears. Not again. “Fuck.” She set her glass on the bar and almost missed the edge. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuckity-fuck.” She made a beeline for Denise, grabbed her wrist, and dragged her into the far corner of the room, dropping f-bombs the entire way.

  “Holy shit, woman. What is wrong?”

  Bree felt light-headed. “Jase is talking to Gran.”

  Denise’s nose scrunched and she frowned. “Okay?”

  “Look at them.” She paced back and forth in the corner.

  “What am I looking at?”

  “I’m having flashbacks to last year. I can’t do it again.” She put her hand over her chest. “Fuck. What am I going to do?”

  “Stop.” Denise grabbed her shoulders. “He knows how it went down, right?”

  “Yeah.”<
br />
  “Alright. One, he’s not an asshat, so he’s not going to do the same thing. Two, if I’m wrong and he is an asshat, then I’ll grab you and we’ll run out of here. Okay?”

  That made sense. She was overreacting. Even if he was going to ask her to marry him, he wouldn’t do it here and now.

  Although his parents were here.

  Did she even want to be engaged again?

  To Jase?

  Absolutely.

  “Are you calm?” Denise asked.

  She swallowed around the lump in her throat and nodded.

  “Right. Let’s do a shot.”

  “Shots are good.”

  Denise linked her arm through Bree’s and led her back to the bar. Two lemon drops later, Bree relaxed enough to stop freaking out, but spent the rest of the evening waiting for Jase to make some grand gesture.

  Melissa tracked her down an hour after her freak-out to tell her they were leaving. “I can’t tell you how delighted I am to see Jase so happy.” She hugged Bree tight and whispered in her ear. “Thank you. For bringing him back to us.”

  Tears pricked the back of her eyes. “Lunch tomorrow?”

  Melissa held her at arm’s length and smiled, not fooled by Bree’s deflection. “I’ll call Jase in the morning so we can figure out a time.” She kissed Bree’s cheek and walked toward Bill standing near the exit with their coats.

  Bree jumped as a hand slid across her hip.

  “Are you okay?” Jase asked.

  “Yes.” She smiled brightly. “You just startled me.” She rested her hand on top of his.

  He kissed the top of her head. “You ’bout ready?”

  “Yeah. Need to say goodbye to Gran.”

  They wound through the remaining friends and family to where Gran sat with several people. “We’re headed out.” She leaned down and hugged Gran. “We’re having lunch with Jase’s parents tomorrow, if you’d like to join us.”

  Gran kissed her cheek, then rubbed her thumb over the same spot. “I’d love to. Give me a call in the morning.”

  “I will. Love you.” Bree returned her kiss.