Behind the Shadows

by Potter, Patricia;

  The television was on. Kira’s face was plastered on it.

  Her mother uttered a cry when she saw Kira. “Thank God.”

  “I’m sorry,” Kira said. “I asked the nurses to keep the television off until I got here. I’m fine. Please don’t worry.”

  Her mother frowned. “It’s a mom’s job to worry.” Her eyes were fueled with worry as she did an inch-by-inch visual inspection of Kira.

  Kira winced as she sat down. Her wound burned and her rib felt as if someone were pounding on it. “I know.”

  “Was that a random shooting or did it have something to do … with me?”

  “Why would you think that?”

  “You’ve been worried, and it’s not just about my kidney.” Her mother sighed. “Although I’m … ill, I still have powers of observation.” She paused, then added, “Don’t hold anything back from me, baby.”

  Kira knew she would feel the same way. She would have hated it if her mother tried to protect her from something she had every right to know.

  “How much has been on television?” she asked.

  “Only that a shooter fired on a crowd leaving city hall. Three people injured, one killed. You were one of the three.”

  “No leads?”

  “They say not.”

  “I think it does have something to do with you,” she said, “and whatever happened in that delivery room thirty-two years ago.”

  “I still have a hard time believing that you are not my biological daughter,” her mother said. “I loved you so much from the first moment I saw you in the nursery. You were so small, and there were all these tubes …”

  “Were you awake when I was born?”

  “No. Dr. Crawford thought there was something wrong, that the baby was in the wrong position. He gave me something … I was in a haze … Then the doctor told me my baby was sick, and I couldn’t hold her. I kept asking for you …”

  “Dr. Crawford?”

  “He was the nicest doctor … so helpful over the next few weeks. He didn’t have to be. It wasn’t his fault you were sick, but he kept stopping in the nursery, and he found me a pediatric surgeon who would operate.”

  Bells were ringing in her head. Why hadn’t she asked her mother these questions earlier? Dr. Crawford. Dr. Crawford was a cousin of Karen’s. He’d probably been her obstetrician as well.

  No wonder that her mother’s medical records had been lost. She and Chris should have asked those questions first.

  Dr. Crawford. Dr. Michael Crawford. He had to be the key to the whole puzzle. The caring Dr. Crawford who’d found a surgeon who would work for free. Or had he?

  What would be the statute of limitations on deliberate baby switching? Certainly, his reputation would be destroyed, and maybe even his son’s would be tainted. Enough to commit murder?

  Her mother was watching her face. “You suddenly thought of something.” It was more question than statement.

  “I was just wondering if Dr. Crawford was responsible for the switch.”

  “No,” her mother said. “He wouldn’t.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “It must have been a mistake.”

  “No, Mom, I don’t think so. Apparently, I was so sick they rushed me to intensive care. They would have known the moment I left your—Karen Howard’s—body that I … was a blue baby. That something was very wrong.”

  “But why …”

  “Dr. Crawford was the cousin of Karen Howard, the mother of Leigh Howard, the woman I think—no, I know—is your daughter. Maybe she didn’t want a sick baby. Didn’t you say that everyone thought I would die?”

  “But he’s a doctor.”

  “He’s also a member of that family.”

  Her mother’s breathing was more labored. “What about the … DNA test?”

  “She’s agreed to do it today.”

  “It has … to be very hard on her.”

  “Yes,” Kira said simply.

  “How long will … it take to get results?”

  “A couple of days.”

  “Do you have a picture of her?”

  Kira had been waiting for that. She’d had copies made of the photos Dan took at the Westerfield house. She took them from her purse and handed them to her mother. It was a strange feeling, almost like handing the right to be Katy Douglas’s daughter to someone else. She felt a sudden ache very different from physical pain.

  Her mother stared at them, and Kira knew she was looking for features similar to her own, and maybe even to her husband. Kira had done the same thing with the painting of Karen Howard in the Westerfield home.

  “She’s very pretty,” Kira finally said.

  “Yes, but so are you.” Her mother knew exactly what she was thinking, just as she always did. She held out an arm discolored from needles. One line was attached to it.

  Kira took her hand. It seemed almost transparent. Yet there was still strength there, and that strength clung to Kira.

  “You’ll always be my daughter,” Katy Douglas said. “Always the best thing in my life.”

  Kira leaned toward her, and an explosion of fresh pain surged through her.

  “Go home, baby,” her mother said, then, “Will you be safe there?”

  “Chris is providing me with my own policemen. He brought me here, and one of them will take me home.”

  “Stay there. Take the prescriptions.”

  Just like her mother. Sick with a terminal condition unless a kidney was found and here she was, worrying about Kira’s minor wound. “You said I would always be your daughter. You know you will always, always be my mother. And I am going to get you a kidney.”

  Her mother fixed a stare on her. “You haven’t asked her to donate a kidney?”

  She squirmed under that stare.

  “Kira?”

  “Kinda,” she admitted.

  “I know what ‘kinda’ means. Hog-tying her and dragging her kicking and screaming to the hospital.”

  “No. I just … gave her a little tug. No more. I swear.” Blackmail qualified as a tug.

  “I won’t do it, Kira. If anything happened to her remaining kidney, I couldn’t live with myself.”

  Kira clasped her hand. “It’s so little risk, Mom. It really is. You’re just fifty. You deserve to live long and well.”

  “I didn’t want to take one of your kidneys, and I certainly don’t want to introduce myself to Leigh Howard by asking for one of hers,” her mother said with the glint in her eyes that said she wouldn’t change her mind. “Drop it, Kira. I won’t give my consent for a transplant under those circumstances. I won’t do it, so go back to her and tell her it’s all been a terrible mistake. Let her go on with her own life.”

  Kira looked at her for a long moment. “I can’t do that. It’s gone too far. I can’t undo what’s been done. And both she and I are old enough to make our own decisions.”

  Her mother’s expression softened. “Go home, baby,” she said again. “For me. Get some rest so I can get some.”

  Katy Douglas had not ceded. Not yet. She’d merely changed the subject.

  But Kira knew they both needed rest. And she badly needed another one of those little white pills. “Okay. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

  She ducked out the door before her mother could protest and ran into a burly man in his sixties.

  “Ms. Douglas? Kira Douglas?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Bob Harold. A friend of Chris’s. I’m here to take you home.”

  Her own personal bodyguard.

  “What about my mother? I don’t think she should be alone.”

  “Chris has already talked to security. They’re to keep an eye on her. No visitors other than you. No information will be given out about her room number.”

  Was she being paranoid? Probably. Her mother had not been targeted.

  “I would rather you stayed here,” she said. “I can take a cab home.”

  He smiled. “Chris would flay me alive if I let you do that. Look, let me make a few calls.
” He moved out of her hearing and spoke into a cell phone. In minutes he came back. “Someone will be over here in an hour. Good enough?”

  She thought of what Max had said yesterday, that he had hired bodyguards. It hadn’t helped her last night.

  “I’m parked a fair distance away,” the retired policeman said. “I’ll get the car and meet you at the entrance.”

  Kira nodded. “I’m going to say good-bye.”

  He took the elevator down, and she peeked into her mother’s room. Katy was already asleep. The visit had worn her out.

  She hurried down the hall and caught the elevator. As she exited on the first floor, she glanced at the people crowding into an elevator across from her. One man caught her attention, and she wasn’t sure why. He wore a florist’s jacket and carried flowers. Her reporter’s mind sized him up. Overweight. Mussed brown hair. Thick glasses. He glanced at her, then turned and moved into the elevator.

  An ordinary visitor.

  She started for the front door, but something nagged at her. The way he’d turned. Lighter than his bulk would indicate. She retraced her steps, waited impatiently for an elevator. Both were stopped at upper floors.

  Maybe the stairs. But with her aching chest, she might never make it. One of the elevators started down. Fourth floor. Stopped. She took out her cell and punched the button for her mother’s nurse’s station. It rang. And rang. The elevator started back down again. Third. Stopped at second.

  She wanted to scream at it.

  A nurse on her mother’s unit finally answered. “My mother’s room,” Kira said in quick gasps. “Check my mom’s room. Now. Someone …” The elevator stopped and she impatiently waited for a crowd to leave. “Dammit,” she yelled into the phone. “Someone might try to kill her.”

  Everyone stared at her as she stepped into the elevator and the signal died. Others followed. “Please,” she said to the other passengers. “My mom might be in danger. Please don’t press a button for another floor.”

  Two stepped out. Three others nodded their heads, standing away from her as they might from a deranged person.

  The elevator stopped at the second floor anyway, and she had to wait for someone to get in. They started to punch the button for three when she said, “No,” and pushed the hand away.

  The elevator reached her mother’s floor. She stepped out and ran to her mother’s room. The door was open, and a nurse leaned over her mother. The IV had been pulled from her arm.

  She looked down. Bloodred flowers spilled across the floor.

  28

  The nurse glanced up. “After you called, I came in to look. A man was leaning over the IV. I screamed. He knocked me aside and took off. I immediately pulled the IV.”

  Panic exploded in her. Kira watched as Julie, a nurse she knew well, took her mother’s vital signs.

  “Heart and pulse okay,” Julie said. “I alerted security. Told them we had an intruder wearing a florist’s uniform, but I doubt whether they’ll find him.”

  “Thank God you got here,” Kira murmured, although she hated the thought of the man getting away.

  “Thank God you called,” Julie replied. She paused, then added, “I heard the news about you today,” Julie said. “I’ve been trying to keep an eye on her, but we got really busy all of a sudden.”

  Kira glanced down at the bed. Her mother still slept. The good news was that she didn’t know what had just happened; the shock of someone leaning over her might have killed her. The bad news was that she hadn’t woken up. She was slipping more and more into sleep.

  “I left instructions that no one, absolutely no one other than myself, was to be allowed in her room,” she said. “No one, but myself and hospital personnel.”

  “I know. We were going to put a sign on the door.”

  “A sign isn’t much of a deterrent.”

  She turned to the room phone and dialed Chris’s cell number. He answered immediately.

  “Someone just attacked Mom,” she said without preamble. She quickly told him what happened.

  “Are you there now?”

  “Yes.”

  “I sent someone over to watch over you.”

  “I know. He came up to Mom’s room, then went down for his car. He thought I was right behind him. I was, until I saw someone getting on the elevator. Something about him seemed … out of place.”

  “Maybe you’ve seen him before … on a train platform.”

  “Could be, but the hair … was different. So was the build.”

  “Both are easily changed. Additional clothes. A wig.”

  She hadn’t had time to consider that.

  “I would come over and get you, but I’m due at the Westerfield house for the DNA sample.”

  “I want to go with you. Then your guard can stay with Mom.”

  “I thought you decided to let me do it.”

  “That was then. This is now.”

  “You must be hurting like hell.”

  “Maybe a little,” she admitted.

  “You should be in bed.”

  “I’ll take a pain pill. I have them with me.”

  “Leigh Howard may not want you there.”

  “Then I can stay in the car, but this is too important …”

  “I’m still not sure that’s a good idea,” he said.

  “I’m going. Even if I have to take a cab.”

  “I’ll be there soon,” he surrendered.

  “Maybe if this is settled, then the violence will stop.”

  There was a pause on the phone, and she realized he didn’t agree.

  “I’m on the way,” he said.

  She stood by as two nurses came in with a new IV. Julie took vital signs again. Blood pressure. Temperature. A blood sample. Oxygen.

  “Everything seems okay,” one nurse said. “We’ll keep checking signs until we get a report back on the IV bag. They’ve tightened security.”

  “A former policeman will be here shortly. I want him at the door.”

  “You can take that up with security,” she said.

  Pain or not, she was ready to do battle. She was outraged that someone could just walk in her mother’s room.

  Just then Bob Harold appeared in the door of the room. “Chris filled me in,” he said. “He asked me to stay here.”

  It was alarming that her mother hadn’t awakened. But then, she’d been awake longer than usual today. She was filled with drugs now.

  Helpless.

  Kira’s heart took a nosedive.

  Ordinarily her mother would have heard them, would be sitting up in bed, figuring out ways to defeat the bad guys. Her eyes would sparkle with the light of battle. Her mother never gave up. She wasn’t giving up now, but time was running out for her.

  She wanted to see the DNA taken, but more than that, she wanted another chance to convince Leigh to consider a donation if she was a match.

  It would be twenty minutes before Chris arrived. She sat down next to her mother. Took her hand. Wondered what she would do without her. Katy Douglas, biological mother or not, was the one person in the world that loved her unconditionally. The one person she trusted completely.

  She touched her mother’s drawn face. A kidney. One small organ that could be easily replaced if only there was another available.

  Why would Leigh Howard hesitate to save a life? Even for a second?

  After Max left, Leigh left the house and walked to the stable.

  Rick was just leaving. “Cleaned out the stalls and fed and watered the horses, Miss Leigh.” Her name was said with something close to a sneer. If it wasn’t for Mrs. Baker …

  The housekeeper had been so grateful when Leigh agreed to take on Rick and help him get other grooming jobs as well. He’d spent summers working with horses at a stable near her sister’s home, she said, but had a hard time getting a job after returning from Desert Storm.

  She would have preferred taking care of the horses herself. “How are they?” she asked Rick. “Getting along?”


  “Yeah. I woulda let them out in the pasture, but I thought you might want to go riding.”

  “Not right now. But I have some apple pieces for them.”

  “Then you don’t need me to stay?”

  “No, thanks. I have to work on the horse show auction.”

  She went into the stable. Silver Lady was snorting. That wasn’t like her. Something had upset her. Leigh checked the water. Clean. The grain in the feed bucket looked fine. Yet Leigh was attuned to Lady far more than the new horse. Maybe it was a little jealousy on Lady’s part. Or maybe it was her own anxiety that Lady picked up on.

  Leigh held out the piece of apple in her palm, and Lady took it. Then she moved to the next stall. Samara stuck her head out and neighed for attention.

  “Pretty girl,” Leigh crooned as the horse took a piece of the apple, then another. She moved on to Maude, the little rescue donkey who almost took her fingers along with the apple.

  She longed to ride. But she knew her apprehension would be only too clear to the horses. Maybe later today.

  What if she didn’t have them next month? What if Kira Douglas was entitled to everything she had?

  Everything she had. None of it really meant anything but the animals. She couldn’t bear losing them.

  Her cell phone rang. She checked the caller identification. One of the board members of the horse show. She winced, then answered it.

  “Leigh, darling. I just heard the news on the television. It isn’t true, is it?”

  “I don’t know. What did you hear?”

  “That someone is claiming to be you?”

  Her heart dropped. She knew it was coming. After she heard about the attack last night, it was bound to happen. Kira Douglas had said she wouldn’t say anything until the DNA tests, but she was no longer in control.

  None of them were.

  “True,” she said. “At least the fact that someone is making that claim.”

  “But can it be true, dear?”

  She went outside, only to see a car approaching. The police, no doubt. “I’m sorry, Anne. I have to go. I have company.”

  “Well, do keep us advised,” Anne Mitchell said. “If you have to take some time to resolve this, let us know.”

  In other words, if she wasn’t a Westerfield, forget it.