by B. J Daniels
“I’m fine,” Eve told Carter as she climbed onto the examination table.
“I’ll be the judge of that,” Doc said as he stepped in, going to the sink to wash his hands before he turned to look at her. “Kind of banged yourself up pretty good, young lady.” He looked at Carter, hovering beside the exam table. “Help yourself to a soda in that fridge down the hall. I’ll take care of her now.” Doc closed the curtain as Carter stepped out.
Eve heard the buzzer at the E.R. door as Errol must have left. Under the drawn curtain, she watched Carter’s boots as he paced back and forth.
“That cut looks like it might need stitches,” Doc said, after he gently pulled her arm down and removed the cloth Carter had had her holding on the cut. He hurried on before she could protest. “I know how you feel about needles, so don’t go fainting on me. I might be able to get a butterfly bandage to do the trick if you don’t mind a small scar. Yeah, that’s what I thought.”
Her head was throbbing and she hurt all over, but that pain was nothing compared to her feeling of betrayal. She’d known Doc all her life. He’d patched her up more times than she could remember. She’d trusted and admired him and always believed he’d brought her into this world.
Looking into his kind grandfatherly face, she found it nearly impossible to believe that he was part of the deception.
Every instinct warned her not to confront him. Not until she had the file. But the file was in the wreckage of her pickup. At least she hoped it was still there. What if whoever had shot at her had come back and taken it?
She never would have left the evidence behind, but she hadn’t been herself when Carter found her and he hadn’t given her time to get anything out of the truck before he’d rushed her to Whitehorse and the hospital.
Eve tried to remain calm, to think. She could use this opportunity. If she was careful. “You know my grandmother,” she said, grimacing as he cleaned the wound.
He glanced at her as if worried the cut on her head was more serious than he’d thought. “Nina Mae? Of course I know her.”
“I mean, you knew her when she was young. Didn’t she date your older brother for a while?”
He kept working and, for a few moments, she thought he hadn’t heard her. “George was far too tame for your grandmother.”
She winced as he put pressure on her cut—and remembered the medical file she’d seen earlier in his office basement regarding her grandmother. She felt ice settle in her chest as she remembered that the file had been dated February 7, 1975, the day the plane presumably crashed in the Breaks.
“She broke her leg once, I heard,” Eve said, trying to sound as if she was just chatting to keep her mind off the pain. “Didn’t you set it after an accident she had?”
He stopped what he was doing to look at her again. “That leg bothering her?”
She had no idea. “I never heard how she broke it.” Eve was shaking. So her grandmother really had broken her leg. Because of the plane crash?
“Hold still,” Doc ordered a little less gently. She felt more pressure over her eye, pain, then he stepped back. “Why the sudden interest?”
She shrugged. “Just curious.”
“Sheriff, stop pacing and either sit down or wait outside,” Doc snapped irritably.
Eve watched Carter’s Western boots disappear from under the curtain, his footfalls disappearing down the hall. “All I remember is Grandma Nina Mae telling me something about a blizzard?”
Doc gave her an impatient look. “Yes, she went out to check one of the animals, I believe, and fell. Are you sure you’re all right?” He was studying her, frowning as he looked into her eyes. “How hard did you hit your head?”
“Not hard. She said it was the same night I was born.”
He began putting away his supplies, his back to her. “As I recall, Nina Mae fell on the ice. It was only a hairline fracture. Your grandmother was a strong, determined woman. I just splinted it until she could get into my office.”
It all sounded so plausible. If Eve hadn’t found the file on her mother’s infertility, she wouldn’t have noticed that his explanation seemed a little too practiced. She would have believed him.
Also, Doc had given himself away. He hadn’t corrected her when she’d mentioned being born the same night her grandmother had broken her leg. She might have been born on February 5, 1975, but according to the file she’d seen in Doc’s office, her grandmother had broken her leg on February 7—the same date as that in the crashed plane’s logbook.
She knew it didn’t constitute evidence. How could Doc remember every birth, every broken leg?
But it made her all the more convinced not only was she adopted but that there was some sort of conspiracy involving her birth and grandmother and the plane crash.
He closed a drawer and turned to look at her. She schooled her expression to one of nothing more than mild interest.
Doc leaned back against the counter, both hands gripping the edge behind him. “Why don’t you tell me what this is really about?”
“Sorry, you know me. All this,” she said, glancing around the E.R., “makes me nervous.”
He studied her. “You should take it easy for a while,” he said quietly. “Let your mother see to you.”
Let her mother see to her? Eve felt a chill as if the temperature had suddenly dropped in the room. “I’ll do that,” she lied, shocked by what felt even more like a conspiracy to keep the truth from her.
What had really happened the day the plane crashed in the Breaks? Two days after Eve was allegedly born? One thing was for sure. Her grandmother hadn’t been checking animals on the ranch. And a few miles to the south, a man in a small airplane was being murdered. Her grandmother wasn’t the only person who’d gotten out of that plane that night. The murderer had been with her.
When Doc led her out of the examination room, Eve realized with a start that he hadn’t asked how she’d gotten injured.
CARTER NOTICED that Eve was especially quiet as she came out of the exam room, Doc Holloway behind her, his hand on her shoulder.
“You all right?” Carter asked Eve, worry shooting him to his feet.
“She’s going to be fine,” Doc said. “She just needs to take it easy.”
“We’re talking about Eve Bailey, here, Doc,” Carter joked, but Eve didn’t crack a smile.
“Reminds me of when she was a girl,” Doc said. “Always in here for one thing or another. Poison ivy. Broken wrist. Always scraped up and bruised. She just never seems to learn.”
Carter saw Eve shiver. He slipped off his jacket and put it around her. She flinched at his touch. He stepped back, giving her space.
“I remember how the two of you used to squabble as kids,” Doc said, apparently noticing her reaction. “Didn’t she bloody your nose once? Or did she break it?”
“I’d prefer not to go there,” Carter joked, but his gaze was on Eve. He was surprised she hadn’t jumped into the conversation. It wasn’t like her. She was acting strange, no doubt about it. “Thanks for coming down, Doc.”
“I had to come down, anyway.”
“Yeah, I saw Errol leaving. What happened to him?” Carter asked.
“Working on his tractor, nailed the back of his head good,” Doc said. “Glen Whitaker came in before that. Seems he ran off the road. Hit his head. Can’t remember what happened.”
“He’s all right, though?” Carter asked, relieved that Glen had been found and his disappearance apparently solved.
“He’ll live,” Doc said with a shrug.
Carter noted that Doc hadn’t even mentioned the break-in at his office earlier tonight. “Anything missing from your office?”
Doc shook his head. “Probably didn’t have time to steal anything, since your deputy said the dispatcher got an anonymous call right away that someone was breaking in. A woman.”
“A woman was breaking in?” Carter didn’t dare look at Eve.
Doc shook his head again. “No, the call was from a woman
. Said she saw someone trying to break in. Too dark to make out who it was. Probably just kids.”
Carter wished he believed that.
Eve moved toward the exit, as if anxious to leave this discussion behind. Or maybe just anxious to get home after everything she’d been through.
The cut over her right eye was covered with a white butterfly bandage. She had a baseball-size bruise on her upper left arm from where she must have hit the pickup door and the knee she’d scraped falling into the ravine only the day earlier was bleeding through her jeans.
On top of that, she was still limping a little from her hurt ankle. The woman was a mess. And yet, he thought, he’d never seen her more beautiful.
Doc’s cell phone rang on his hip. He excused himself, saying over his shoulder, “Eve, remember what I told you. No more foolishness.”
Carter glanced at Eve. What was that about? He recalled overhearing her ask about her grandmother’s broken leg. Seemed strange unless you knew that Eve believed her grandmother had been on the plane that crashed in the Breaks February 7, 1975. Carter took her arm as she started to slump. “Let’s get you home.”
Eve said nothing as he led her outside.
Once in the car, Carter said, “Okay, what’s going on? Is it something to do with your accident?” She’d scared him when he’d seen her pickup’s headlights and realized that she’d lost control of her pickup…just as she was scaring him now because she’d acted almost as if she was afraid of Doc.
“It wasn’t an accident,” she said without looking at him.
“What?”
“Could we get out of here,” she said, as Dr. Holloway came out of the building and looked in their direction.
Carter started the engine, backed out and headed south out of town. “What wasn’t an accident?”
“Someone shot out the front tire on my pickup.”
He darted a look at her. She wasn’t serious. If what she was saying was true, wouldn’t she have said something on the way into town earlier? He recalled that she’d seemed to be in shock on the way into the hospital.
He’d heard a vehicle taking off up the road but it hadn’t registered at the time that the driver might be somehow involved in Eve’s wreck.
Once he’d seen how badly Eve was bleeding, all he’d thought about was getting her to the hospital.
And why would anyone want to shoot out her tire? She had to be mistaken.
“Sometimes a blowout can sound like a gunshot,” he said, hoping to hell that was all it was.
“Do two gunshots sound like a blowout?” she asked, glaring over at him.
“Why would someone shoot at you?” He was trying to remain calm, trying to be the sheriff and not her former boyfriend—and lover, even if it had only been that one night.
“You tell me, Sheriff. Couldn’t have anything to do with what I found on that airplane, right?”
He preferred her sarcasm over the terrified look he’d seen when she’d come half crawling, half falling, out of her wrecked pickup. Or the odd way she’d been acting around Dr. Holloway.
“Did Doc say something to upset you?” he asked, trying to figure out what was going on with her.
She shook her head and looked away.
“I’m taking you home, then I’ll check your pickup.”
“No. Stop on the way. There’s something I need to get out of the truck.”
“Eve, you really need to—”
“I really need to stop at the pickup.”
“Fine. I’ll stop on the way.” He had a bad feeling about what she wanted out of her pickup. The last thing he wanted to do was have to arrest her for breaking and entering before the night was over.
EVE LEANED BACK against the seat, closed her eyes and pretended to sleep. She needed that file. If it was still in the pickup. And she was going to have to tell Carter about it. No getting around that.
As he drove, she considered her actions of the past forty-eight hours and winced inwardly. She’d gone from tampering with a crime scene and withholding evidence to breaking and entering and stealing personal medical records. She’d come home determined to get to the truth. She’d always felt there was a mystery to her birth, but now she suspected it was much more than the fact that she was obviously adopted. A man had been murdered in that plane. And now someone seemed determined to keep her from finding out the truth.
“If there’s anything you want to tell me…” Carter said.
She opened one eye to look at him, then closed it.
“Fine.”
A thought struck her and she opened her eyes and sat up. Doc said a woman made the anonymous call to the sheriff’s department about the break-in. That would explain why the woman hadn’t used her cell phone. Everyone had cell phones, even though most of them worked only in a five-mile radius around Whitehorse.
So what had Deena been doing on that pay phone down the block from Doc’s office? Calling the sheriff’s department? Eve felt a chill. Had Deena been following her?
“Something wrong?” Carter asked.
She shook her head, leaned back and closed her eyes again, not wanting to talk. Her head was reeling. She didn’t really believe that Deena had nothing better to do than follow her around, did she?
“Are you sure this item you need to get out of your truck isn’t something that could wait until morning?” Carter asked as they neared her wrecked pickup lying in the ditch.
She opened her eyes again to glance over at him. He sounded worried. Almost as if he already suspected what she had to get from the truck.
“How did you just happen to come up on me after my pickup went off the road?” she asked.
He cut a look at her. “You don’t think I shot out your tire, do you?”
“I thought you didn’t believe that.”
He groaned. “I saw you leaving town,” he said as he turned off the road. “I’d been worried about you.”
The patrol SUV’s headlights illuminated her pickup. She was shocked to see how badly the truck had been damaged. To realize how lucky she was to be alive.
CARTER FELT a shaft of cold move through him as he saw Eve’s wrecked pickup in the headlights. She opened her door and hopped out before he even came to a full stop. He could tell she wasn’t steady on her feet. Not that it slowed her.
“Hold on,” he called after her. He left the patrol car running, headlights on, and, taking his spare flashlight, went after her.
In the glow of the headlamps, he saw Eve going through the wreckage for something that had apparently been in the cab.
“Here,” he said, handing her the spare flashlight.
“Thanks,” she said. He saw her shiver as she looked at her destroyed truck.
The way she’d been bleeding, he hated to think what would have happened if he hadn’t followed her. Let alone if someone really had shot out her tire.
He reminded himself that the only reason he’d followed her was because he suspected she’d just broken into Doc’s office. Actually, he was pretty sure she had. But for the life of him, he couldn’t imagine why. Unless it had something to do with her grandmother. Is that why she’d been questioning Doc about Nina Mae’s broken leg?
He unhooked his flashlight from his belt and turned it on. “You say the front tire blew?”
“Right front,” she said, stooping down to shine her light into the cab. “And it was shot out.”
He was still hoping she was wrong as he left her to search for what she was looking for while he went to inspect the right front tire. It definitely had blown. There wasn’t much left of it. He was thinking he wouldn’t be able to tell what had caused the blowout when he saw the dent in the rim.
He let out a curse as he stuck the end of his finger into the hole a bullet had made. Son of a bitch. Eve was right. Given the size of the dent, he would guess the shot had come from a high-powered rifle at some distance away.
When he looked up, he saw Eve crawling out of the demolished cab of her pickup. She had what appeared
to be a file folder in her hand. Oh, hell.
“Unless you want me to arrest you for breaking and entering and destroying personal property, you’d better have a good reason for having that file, Eve Bailey.”
“I’m adopted,” she blurted out, and headed for his patrol car.
“What are you talking about?” he demanded, following her. She had climbed in and was sitting in the passenger seat, the file folder on her lap, her hands on top of it as if she thought he’d try to take it from her.
He slid behind the wheel.
She stared straight ahead and said, “My whole life I’ve known there was some secret that had to do with me.” He heard the catch in her throat. “Just as I’ve known that I didn’t fit in with my family. It isn’t just that I don’t look like my parents or my sisters. I’ve always felt…different, incomplete. I know there is a family that I belong to. People who look like me, who have the same smile, the same color hair, the same genes.” She stopped to take a ragged breath. “The same medical history.”
He could see how upset she was. He’d never dreamed she felt this way. “Why didn’t you tell me this when we were—” he was going to say dating “—in high school?”
She shook her head. “My mother swore I was just being silly.” She looked over at him. “I couldn’t understand where these feelings came from. All I knew was that I felt restless. It’s why I came back home. I thought maybe I could come to terms with whatever this was that has haunted me all these years. I have to know who I am, can you understand that?”
He couldn’t really. He’d always known who he was, although there’d been plenty of times he wished he wasn’t a Jackson. But he could see how much this meant to her, how much she needed the truth. And wanting to get to the truth was definitely something he understood.
“This,” she said, holding up the file, “proves that I was right. My mother went to Dr. Holloway to discuss infertility days before I was born. A woman nine months pregnant isn’t worried about being infertile. There is no way Lila Bailey gave birth to me on February fifth, 1975, like it says on my birth certificate. Doc Holloway lied and so did my mother and my father and my grandmother.”
