Fragile

by Shiloh Walker

  Remembering last night, she smirked and said, “I had to make an end-of-the-day run to the hospital with Tim yesterday, and Luke ended up coming out to the hospital and hanging until I was done.”

  “Man, I knew I liked this guy,” Noelle said, shifting on the seat and crossing her legs. “Watching after you like that.”

  Devon grimaced. “He’s worried.”

  “I’d say he’s got reason. Have the cops been able to tell you anything?”

  “Nope.” She shrugged with a carelessness that she didn’t really feel. “I don’t think they’ll be able to, either. No fingerprints in the house; nobody saw anything. It’s like a ghost slid inside.”

  “You know, if somebody had left a dead animal in my house, I don’t think I’d be so blasé about it.”

  “I’m not blasé.” Her lack of sleep and the perpetual knotted state of her gut were plenty proof of that. “But I’m not going to let it control my life, either. That’s what whoever is doing this wants . . . for me to be afraid.”

  Devon had been controlled before—those few years so early in her life had left deep, ugly scars. She wasn’t going to let anybody do that to her ever again.

  “Devon.” Noelle’s voice was soft, understanding and compassion glowed in her blue green eyes. Noelle was one of the few friends that knew about what had happened to Devon. Devon could tell by the look on her friend’s face that Noelle understood all too well. “I can understand that, but don’t go letting that need interfere with your safety. Don’t do anything stupid.”

  “Hey, I like safety. I like safety just fine.” Giving Noelle a wan smile, she said, “Don’t worry so much. I won’t do anything foolish.”

  Her phone started to ring, the strains of “Brown Eyed Girl” filling the small cubicle. Luke had programmed the phone to play that when he called. With a wry grin, she said, “Besides, I got my own personal bodyguard. He won’t let anything happen to me.”

  “Hmmm. Tell that sexy doctor of yours I said hi. We need to go out sometime, the four of us, get a drink.”

  As Noelle slipped out of Devon’s cubicle, Devon flipped the phone open. “I’m supposed to tell my sexy doctor hi.”

  “You better not be expecting a phone call from your doctor’s office, babe,” Luke drawled.

  “Nah. Only doctor I expect phone calls from is you. What’s up?”

  “Just wanted to hear your voice.”

  “Liar,” Devon said, rolling her eyes. “You’re checking up on me.”

  “You make it sound like a bad thing that I want to see if you’re okay.”

  “Not a bad thing,” Devon said, shrugging. She spun around on her chair and stared at the pictures tacked to her cubicle wall. “Just a little unnecessary. Luke, I’m at work; nobody is going to try something while I’m in a government building surrounded by several hundred people.”

  “You probably don’t want to be telling me that. That’s going to make me think that I need to be double-checking on you once you leave work.” His voice was wry, and she could almost see that faint grin that would tug at his lips. “Make me think that I need to see if I can’t get a friend to come watch over you while I’m stuck here or maybe figure out a way to not work nights for a while. Hell, I’m already trying to work that out.”

  “Luke,” Devon said. “I don’t want you rearranging your work schedule over this, and I damn well don’t want you getting somebody to babysit me. I am fine.”

  “I’m going to make sure you stay that way,” he replied, his voice steel-edged.

  “Why in the world do I even try to argue with you? You’ve got a head like a rock. Look, I’m being careful. For the love of God, please don’t hire somebody to watch my back. That’s a waste of money.”

  “I wouldn’t hire somebody.”

  Blowing out a breath, she muttered, “That’s a relief.”

  “I’d get a friend to do it.”

  Her jaw dropped open, then she snapped it shut. She wanted to ask him if he was serious, but she already knew the answer to that. “Don’t do that, Luke. Please. Geez, even the thought of that is enough to make me nauseated. I can’t have some stranger hovering around me, or even thinking about it. I’d go crazy.”

  “It would keep you safe.”

  “I’ll be careful. I’m being careful, I promise. Hell, you go and do that to me, it’s going to make me a nervous wreck, and I’d be more likely to do something stupid. Stupid right now isn’t good. I’m already a wreck; don’t make it worse.”

  “How is wanting to keep you safe making it worse?”

  “Having some stranger following me would make it ten times worse. I’m already paranoid, and I can’t do my job, I can’t function very well, if I’m too busy worrying about somebody watching me.”

  “You’ve been functioning just fine when I’m doing it.”

  She huffed out a breath. “It’s not exactly the same thing.”

  He was quiet for a moment. “Devon, I have to know you’re safe. The hours the two of us work, I can’t be with you all the time, and you need somebody with you.”

  “I can’t live my life looking over my shoulder or being afraid of the dark. I can’t live like that. You can’t ask me to. You wouldn’t live like that.”

  “It’s not the same thing.”

  “Why? Genetics?”

  “Ahhhh . . . is there any way I can answer that without sounding completely sexist?”

  “Doesn’t matter if there is or not, because the fact that I’m female is why you’re so worried about me.”

  “No. The fact that you’re my female is why I’m worried.”

  My female . . . Devon closed her eyes and tried not to melt, tried not to notice that her knees had gone a little weak, and she tried really hard not to smile. She didn’t completely succeed, but she managed to stay upright and reply in a fairly normal voice, once she swallowed the knot in her throat. “Your female is going to be fine, Luke.”

  “Damn right.”

  “So we can table the talk about getting somebody to play watchdog or you juggling your shifts around so you can play watchdog?”

  “For now, we can table the talk about me getting you a watchdog. But we’re not going to agree on my job, Devon. I’m already doing what I can, and I’m not changing my mind about that.” His voice was flat.

  She didn’t bother arguing with him. Sighing, she smoothed a hand back over her hair and rubbed her temple. There was a headache of mammoth proportions building there, and she wanted nothing more than a hot bath, her bed, and Luke. But she had hours of work left to do and a stubborn doctor to deal with before she could even start on that work.

  She figured she could do one of two things: either get irritated over it or accept it. Getting irritated seemed a little dumb, since even Devon wasn’t so stubborn that she couldn’t deny the very real threat lurking around her. Accepting it wasn’t much easier, though. Her independence was a part of her. Besides, he’d backed down on finding somebody to tag along behind her like she was still a little kid. That was a step in the right direction.

  “You’re not going to turn into some Neanderthal over this, are you?”

  “I dunno. Exactly what do you consider Neanderthal?”

  “Hovering twenty-four/seven, interrupting me at work nonstop, following me home . . . Oh, wait. You’re already doing that.” Devon smirked. “Just don’t start smothering me, Luke. Don’t go calling in the cavalry to babysit me while you’re working. This is hard enough; I feel like I’m waiting for the other shoe to drop. I don’t need a mama hen at my back, either.”

  He sounded amused. “A mama hen?”

  “Complete with the clucking.”

  Movement caught the corner of her eye, and Devon glanced at the door of her cubicle and saw the child advocate lawyer. Dorrie Fields gave her a wan smile, and Devon waved toward the chair. “Duty calls, Luke.”

  “You going to be there late tonight?”

  “I have no idea.”

  “So what else is new?” Luke
muttered. Then he sighed. “Call me when you’re done there. I want to know when you leave work.”

  “Okay.”

  “I love you.”

  Blood rushed to Devon’s face. Averting her gaze away from Dorrie’s curious gaze, she squeezed the phone with one hand and worried the cord with the other. “Uh . . .”

  Luke chuckled. “I’ll talk to you soon, baby.” And then he was gone.

  She looked back at Dorrie, and Dorrie was eying her with a wide grin. “Was that the sexy doctor I keep hearing about?”

  Flipping her phone closed, she leaned back. “The sexy doctor does have a name.”

  Dorrie shrugged. “Not one of the important pieces of info bandied about. What’s important is that he is apparently nuts about you, that he’s sexy, and he’s a doctor. With all that, how important is the name?” With a wicked grin, Dorrie leaned forward and asked, “So . . . is he sexy?”

  Sexy didn’t describe Luke. Her mouth went a little dry even thinking about it.

  “Damn.”

  Jumping, she looked back at Dorrie, who was watching her with a smirk. “I’ll take that stupefied silence as a hell, yes, he’s sexy. You were practically drooling there.”

  Instinctively, Devon wiped her mouth and then scowled at Dorrie. “I was not.” Not yet, anyway. She eyed the file that Dorrie held and said, “Don’t you have some sort of business to discuss with me?”

  “I’d rather talk about the good-looking boyfriend,” Dorrie said, making a face. But she sighed and tossed the file onto Devon’s desk. “I had a friend do some digging for me. And there was a decent amount of digging to be done. You’re not going to find a whole lot of information on Tim before five years ago. Tim or his dad.”

  Devon shook her head. “This isn’t a new thing, Dorrie. It took years to make Tim the way he is. And some of the abuse . . .” As she spoke, she opened the file.

  The first thing on top was a death certificate. Made out for a Linda Waller.

  “Tim and Curtis Wilder didn’t exist before five years ago, Devon.”

  Devon looked over her desk at Dorrie and saw a familiar, suppressed anger in the woman’s dark brown eyes. Her lips compressed into a flat line as she nodded toward the file. “Before 2003, Tim and Curtis were known as Tim and Curtis Waller. They lived in Greenwich, North Carolina. Linda was Tim’s mother; she died in a one-vehicle accident.”

  Puzzled, Devon started flipping through the file, reading an obituary, finding a birth certificate. It matched Tim’s perfectly, except the last name was different. “They changed their name and left the state because the mom died?”

  “No. They changed their name and left the state because the mom died three days after she was released on bail for child abuse charges—charges she was adamantly denying.” Dorrie pinched the bridge of her nose. “I talked to her lawyer. He wasn’t able to tell me much, but he remembers the case. I mentioned that Tim and Curtis were living here, and the first thing he asked me was if Tim was okay.”

  Devon looked up, met Dorrie’s eyes. “You think he had reason to think that Tim wouldn’t be okay?”

  “I think he expected to hear that Tim wasn’t okay.” Shrugging, Dorrie said, “There’s only so much I can base my opinion on. I’ve requested whatever paperwork there is on the case, but right now, I’m guessing that somebody found out Tim was being abused, and his mom was the one who got arrested—but Curtis was the one beating the shit out of his son.”

  “I’m still not getting why the name change, why they moved . . .” Then she flipped yet another sheet of paper. She recognized Tim first—younger, more vulnerable-looking—standing at a gravesite. The man at his side was Curtis, all right, looking almost exactly the same. “Greenwich Mayor Buries His Wife,” the headline read. In smaller script, there was a subtitle, “Woman Dies Three Days After Being Charged with Child Abuse.”

  “Mayor.”

  “Hmmmm.” With a shrug, Dorrie said, “I suppose it’s possible the mom was beating Tim, and his dad wanted to leave to protect Tim.”

  “I bet you believe that explanation as much as I do.” Devon snorted and continued to flip through the file. There were a couple of emergency room reports, none of them from the same hospital. Then she came to a background report on Curtis Waller: Staff Sergeant Curtis Waller. “He was in the military?”

  “Yep. In the marines—got a few commendations in Desert Storm. Was already married to Linda at the time. Came home a war hero, taught at his hometown high school, ended up running for mayor and winning. Seemed like the perfect family, and he acted like the doting daddy when Tim was born. He was in his second term when a teacher reported to the police that she suspected Tim was being abused.”

  Devon hummed under her breath. “Bet that went over swimmingly. War hero, local boy makes good, ends up an elected official. And then his wife gets accused of child abuse? Why her, and not him?”

  “Because Curtis Waller said it was her. Apparently he got all teary-eyed and confessed to the police that it was his wife—but she needed help, not prison.”

  Devon flipped the file closed and leaned back in her chair. “This is a mess. Even more of a mess than I’d originally thought.”

  “Oh, I think I can make it even more interesting.” Dorrie shot Devon a humorless smile. “The official report on the car accident was that Linda Waller was going too fast and lost control. Car went off the mountainside, crashed, exploded. The only thing they had to bury was a very badly burned corpse. I have to wonder . . . How hard would it be for a smart man to make something like that look like an accident?”

  “You think he killed his wife,” Devon said flatly.

  “Honey, I’m almost positive he killed his wife. The Greenwich police deny it, claim he was the perfect husband, perfect father, great guy. But I don’t buy it.”

  Dorrie reached down and took one of the newspaper clippings, studied Curtis’s face. “I spent two hours in front of a judge last night fifteen feet away from that man. And Devon . . . he’s got no soul. His eyes, they are empty.”

  “HIS eyes, they are empty.”

  Dorrie’s words still echoed in Devon’s head a good five hours later as she pulled into her driveway. Shivering, she sat there staring up at her house and dreaded leaving her car.

  Her cute, homey little place seemed dark and ominous now, especially with Luke not being there. “Brown Eyed Girl” started drifting from her phone, and she grabbed it like a drowning man would grab a life jacket.

  “Hey, you!” When she heard her bright, overly cheerful voice, she winced.

  “Hey back,” he replied. “You okay?”

  “Why wouldn’t I be?”

  “Devon.”

  She made a face and then sighed. “Yeah, I’m fine. Just jumpy—sitting in my car and staring at the house, and all of a sudden, I’m scared to death to go in there.”

  Luke’s voice was gentle, understanding, and for some reason, that made her feel even more foolish. “I wish I could leave—”

  “No,” she said flatly, getting more irritated with herself by the second. It was sweet of Luke to be that worried, but she could see him telling the hospital to kiss his ass. Luke specialized in emergency medicine. He didn’t have an office where he saw patients; the hospital was it, and if he came running every time she got wigged out, he was going to have trouble with his job. “Don’t even think about it, Luke. I’m not going to let this mess control my life.”

  “You’ve got reason to be worried, Devon. You know as well as I do that only a sick person could do something like that—sick and dangerous. Worst sort of person all around.”

  A dead dog.

  A dead skunk—and they couldn’t even be sure the two were related.

  Her tires . . . her missing planner. Other little things, all so seemingly random, up until she’d walked in and found that dead dog in her kitchen, cut open and left in the most repulsive manner.

  “Damn it, Luke, what’s going on?” she muttered, but she was talking more to herself t
han anybody else.

  “You have any luck trying to figure out who could have done this?”

  “Specifically? No.” Sighing, she brought up her elbow and propped it on the door so she could rest her head on her hand. “The cops came by the office today—the two detectives who were out here Thursday night. Wanted a list from me, difficult parents, any of my kids with violent tendencies.”

  “You gave it to them, right?”

  It wasn’t very easy to hedge with Luke, especially when she was talking to him on the phone. If he’d been there with her, hedging would have been easier. She could have kissed him, or maybe just taken her hair down. The man had serious issues with her hair. A time or two, she’d pulled it out of its knot and seen him watching her, a weird, glazed look in his eyes. But on the phone, that wasn’t possible.

  “Not a list exactly,” she said.

  “Damn it, Devon, you want them to find that guy or not?”

  She rolled her eyes. “No, Luke. I want to come home again and find another dead animal gutted in my kitchen. That was just so exciting.” Then she dropped the sarcasm and went for cajoling, hoping he’d understand. “Luke, most of my kids are jumpy enough around cops anyway. Do you have any idea how many cases I’ve handled in the past six months that involved unhappy parents or violent kids?”

  “They’ve got to start somewhere. It’s not like you have a lot of places where you could have come in contact with this fucker.”

  “I’m aware of that. Geez, Luke, I’m not a moron. I’m not a helpless little kid, and I’m not naive. I realize what’s going on, and I know I need to do what I can to help.” Irritated all over again, she started getting her stuff together, her bag, her lunch tote, and her purse. Climbing out of the car, she glanced around, checking her environment. That was automatic. But then she slowed, took another look, longer, slower. That second glance stemmed from last week.

  Keys held in her free hand, she wedged the phone against her shoulder and headed up the sidewalk. “I gave them a couple of names to start with. Out of all my cases, there are probably less than five that have this kind of stuff inside them. Those names, the cops are welcome to. A cop showing up on their doorstep is a common enough occurrence for most of them, and it’s not going to freak them out the way it would with most of my kids.”