by Dana Marton
He could almost taste the danger. His insides went cold, then colder. His basic instincts pushed him to break down that door to see what was wrong inside. His military and police training kept him calm enough to cobble together an actual strategy instead.
“See you later,” he said. Then he was hurrying down the hallway, calling Bing.
The captain picked up with “I’m not going to involve you any further. You’re not getting updates. You’re not a police officer. You’re not working this case. Dammit, Murph, do I have to—”
“Kate is in trouble. She’s in her office with the door locked. She doesn’t sound right. There’s someone in there with her. She had a violent incident the day before yesterday with a patient.”
“On my way.” To his credit, Bing didn’t waste time on a million questions. “You find out anything else, you call me with an update.”
“I will.” Murph stashed his phone, then ran out to his pickup for the Glock G19 he kept locked in the glove compartment. Weapon securely stashed in the back of his waistband, covered with his shirt, he dashed around the building, until he stood under Kate’s treatment room window—a damn floor above him. He didn’t even pause. He lunged for the rainspout and climbed, using the window ledges for leverage. This was where his daily visits to the gym came in handy.
When he could reach the windowsill, he grabbed on and pulled himself up until he could peer in through the glass.
Nobody in the treatment room. The door to Kate’s office stood half open, angled toward Murph. He couldn’t see past it, couldn’t see her.
He drew a long, even breath to slow the rush of blood in his ears, and listened. He could hear a low murmur. She was talking.
Then a man responded to her, much louder than she’d been, so Murph could make out the words. “I’ll calm down when you help me!”
Murph snapped into combat mode, not so much a conscious decision as training. All emotion shut off. Focus intensified. Every thought in his head locked on her. They would remain locked until she was safe.
He dropped to hanging from one hand, yanked his key ring from his pocket, and used the thinnest key to wedge under the window, wiggling it as quietly as possible, leveraging his strength. When his muscles started to burn, he switched hands.
Come on, come on, come on. The window frame quietly popped, just as the guy inside shouted at Kate about how tired he was of everyone’s excuses. Murph eased the window up.
He needed about a foot of clearance. Slow and silent. A little more. And then he had enough space at last.
He squeezed through and didn’t have to thump onto the floor. He was able to lower himself right onto the massage table—a stroke of sheer luck.
“What if I’m never going to get better?” the man was shouting.
“I can tell you for a fact that’s not true, Ian. Every patient we’ve ever had improved during the course of their treatment.”
Ian?
Two Ians resided at Hope Hill at the moment. This guy didn’t sound like either one of them.
“Listen.” Kate remained commendably calm. “If you want to stay here, we have rules. No shouting matches. People come here to feel safe. I’m sure you understand that.”
“Fuck the rules. You give me some pills.”
“I’m a massage therapist. I don’t prescribe meds. Why don’t we go and see Dr. Maria Gulick?”
Murph slid from the massage table to the floor without making a sound. He didn’t want them to leave, not when he was finally within striking distance.
“I’m trying to help you, Ian.” Kate was nothing but kindness and compassion. “Please let me. Just please give me a chance.”
“You’re lying like all the others.” The desperation in the man’s voice took on a distinctly hopeless quality.
Murph didn’t like that tone. His muscles bunched, ready to propel him forward.
Then he caught Ian’s reflection in the glass of Kate’s massage therapy diploma that hung on the wall. Not a sharp image, just the shadowy outline of the guy, and the metallic object glinting in his hand.
Chapter Twelve
Kate
“I’m going to do absolutely everything I can to get you help.” Kate held still, shoulders down. Nonthreatening.
She faced down the man looming tall across her desk. She’d heard Murph walk away outside earlier. Hopefully, he’d understood her message and had snuck back silently. She just needed to get Ian to walk out her door.
Sweat beaded on the man’s forehead and above his lips, as if he was in pain. That was the reason Kate had chosen her job, to erase pain like that.
They’d gotten off on the wrong foot. She had no file on him. She hadn’t been prepared. But she was not going to lose him. “Let’s go see Maria.”
He didn’t respond.
Okay. Make him relax first.
She kept her smile and her cool. “How about you sit down, we drink our coffee, and talk?”
Her own cup had long finished brewing behind her, but she didn’t dare reach for it, not yet. She didn’t move as she waited for Ian’s response.
Ian’s gaze darted around the room. “You got anything stronger?”
“Sorry. No alcohol on the premises.”
“Maybe it’s not the place for me, then.”
A joke? Good. Some humor would be a step in the right direction.
“It’s not a prison. People go into town. There’s a great Irish pub, Finnegan’s. A beer or two is fine, as long as it doesn’t interfere with your current meds. You could even go with some of the guys tonight. They’re all right, you know. Even here, they’ve got each other’s back. It’s one of the many things I love about working at this place.”
“Any of them as bad as I am?” Ian challenged.
“Since you haven’t been evaluated yet, I can’t really answer that. But we treat a wide spectrum of conditions.”
“I have PTSD, don’t I?”
“Is that what your doctor said?”
“He sent me for a psych eval. I don’t want to be locked up in the looney bin.”
“An evaluation is not the same as locking people up. It’s only so we can put together a treatment plan. Nobody’s locked up here. You know how we just walked in, no security at the front door? Patients can walk out any time, just like that. People stay because they want to, because we help them.”
Ian considered that for a moment, but then shook his head. “I bet people like me don’t ever recover. PTSD for life. I can’t take this shit. I won’t.”
“People like you certainly do recover here, every single day. We have discharge files a mile long. And let’s not get ahead of ourselves. PTSD might not be what you have. An accurate diagnosis is important, the foundation of effective treatment.”
His aggression might come from TBI. Traumatic Brain Injury was often missed as an initial diagnosis and presented later as anger, anxiety, or apathy.
“What do you think I have?” he demanded.
“A rough day.” No sense in overwhelming him with what was nothing more than an educated guess at this stage.
Her easy response calmed him a little. He nodded. “I can’t go on like this. You people have no idea what it’s like.”
“I really don’t. You’re one-hundred-percent right about that. But you could tell me. Let’s give ourselves a much-needed caffeine hit and figure out how you could be best helped.”
She slowly, carefully, reached for the full mug of steaming coffee behind her and sat down with it. His was still waiting, untouched, on the edge of her desk.
“You don’t have to sit down if you don’t want to,” she told him.
And probably because she’d put it that way, he finally dropped into the nearest chair.
“Did you bring clothes for the stay?” she asked. “Shaving kit? Stuff you’ll need for a couple of weeks?”
“In the car.”
“Good.” He really did plan on staying, making it work, instead of just grabbing some drugs and taking off. Th
at gave her hope.
“So, you just give massages?” he asked.
“That’s what I do.” Easygoing. Relaxed. Maybe he’d follow her example. Patients often mirrored their therapist. “Some people come here with mental issues, some with physical, some with both. We do our best to help everyone.”
He rolled his neck. “I have some shrapnel damage.”
“Murph Dolan, my colleague who’ll be registering you, has had a piece of shrapnel in his shoulder for over five years now. His doctor said digging it out might cause more damage than leaving it in. The injury only bothers him when the weather is bad.”
“Mine are all out,” Ian said.
“That’s good.”
He nodded. Finally, they were in agreement about something. Now she’d just have to take it from there.
“My head hurts more than my leg. The pain is blinding sometimes. I need something for that. And this fucking anxiety. I can’t sleep.”
“Once we finish the coffee, we’ll walk over to Maria. If you talk to her, she can probably start you on a prescription right away.”
“Not right away.” Resentment and impatience flashed. “I’ll have to find a pharmacy first. Then they need to get VA approval.”
Kate smiled. “She can get you started on her pharmaceutical samples. We have pharma reps here almost every day.”
Ian swallowed a gulp of coffee, hope sparking in his bleak eyes for the first time, dots of light in a bottomless well of darkness. “She would do that?”
“For every single person who works here, Ian, our number one goal, every single day, is to help.”
He put his phone on her desk so he could hold the mug with both hands. His shoulders relaxed. The tension in the room eased.
And that was when Murph burst from the treatment room, weapon in hand, a one-person commando attack.
Chapter Thirteen
Murph
“Hands in the air!” Murph threw himself on the guy, knocking him away from Kate.
Kate shouted, “Stop! Murph!”
Like hell he would.
Murph held Ian down, putting his full body weight on the man. Where the hell was Bing? They had no handcuffs at the center, an oversight Murph was going to remedy at the earliest opportunity.
“Murph!” Kate rushed around her desk, through the puddle of spilled coffee. “Ian! Are you all right? Murph won’t hurt you. Just stay still.”
The guy seemed to listen. He wasn’t scrambling to break free. He’d given up already, the fight gone out of him. “I’m sorry.” He lay there, prostrate, his gaze searching out Kate. “I shouldn’t have yelled. This is not who I am. I swear.”
“Are you all right?”
Was Ian all right? When the hell was she going to care about herself?
Murph gritted his teeth because blowing up would help nothing and no one, but the freaking steam building up in his head was boiling his eyeballs. At least, he finally heard sirens in the distance. “I’m going to turn you over. Take it easy.”
He pushed up and flipped Ian to his stomach, then gathered the man’s wrists behind his back. He was ready for handcuffs by the time Bing banged on the door.
As Murph reached up to unlock it with his free hand, he caught a glance of Ian’s gun on Kate’s desk. Or what he’d thought was a gun, based on its reflection in the glass earlier. Except it was a damn cell phone. He only had time to think Shit! before Bing burst in.
“Police! Put your hands in the air!”
Only Kate complied, more upset than when she’d been held hostage. “Don’t hurt him, please. His name is Ian McCall. He needs our help.”
Bing was watching Murph, “You too. Gun on the ground.”
“You can’t be serious.”
The captain widened his stance and set his shoulders back. “Look into my eyes. Do you see comedy?”
Okay. Fine. Whatever. Kate was safe. Relief overrode all other emotion. Murph placed his gun on the floor and slid it to Bing. “If you toss me your cuffs, I can put them on him.”
The captain reached down, grabbed Murph’s weapon, then shoved it into his belt behind his back. “My job. Up.”
“It’d be easier my way.”
Bing shot Murph a look that said he was about to lose his patience. “Show me your badge.”
“You know damn well I don’t have a badge.”
“Guess then you’re not a police officer.”
“When did you become such a hard-ass?” Murph snapped as he stood, bringing Ian with him. He would let the man loose with Kate in the room when hell froze over and they opened an ice-skating rink. And the devil served hot chocolate.
“I’ve always been a hard-ass.” The captain reached for Ian’s wrists. “You’ve just forgotten.”
Murph stepped away, following orders at last, but ready to spring again. He seriously hated not being in charge when a damn stranger who’d locked himself in with Kate was still within three feet of her.
To Ian’s credit, he didn’t struggle. He was like a rapidly deflating balloon. If Bing wasn’t holding him up, he might have folded to the floor, which did a lot to settle Murph’s overprotective instincts. He relaxed another notch when the captain finally slapped the cuffs on the guy.
“Ian didn’t mean any harm,” Kate insisted. “He’s just desperate for help. What’s going to happen to him?” She stepped from behind her desk, stopping next to Murph. “He came here to enter treatment. He got upset when I told him he needed a referral. I don’t want him arrested. Could he please have a voluntary psych eval instead?”
“He locked the door,” Bing said. “I’m reading that as a hostage situation that might not have come to a good end.”
“He’s desperate because he’s in pain,” Kate told him.
While at the same time, Ian McCall protested, “I wasn’t going to hurt her. I swear. I just wanted to be alone with her. People popping in and out startle me sometimes. I—”
“All right.” Bing held up a hand. “We have a guy in West Chester I can call.”
Murph could see the tension go out of Kate. She unclasped her hands. “Thank you. Ian needs treatment. He’s not going to improve in jail. I can enter a statement on his behalf. I’ll come with you.”
This was how she drove him crazy, Murph thought. Then again, this was how she’d made him fall in love with her. She sincerely, passionately cared about everyone. She had a heart a freaking mile wide that could hold lost puppies and stray cats along with family and friends and strangers she’d never met, all those kids her foster website helped.
“Don’t forget his phone.” Kate handed it to Bing.
“Thanks.” The captain drew Ian toward the door. “Let’s go.” He paused only to call back over his shoulder to Kate and Murph. “I’m going to need both of you down at the station at one point today to give statements.”
Kate said, “Of course.”
Murph stepped after the man. “My gun?”
“You’ll get it back at the station. After we have a talk.”
The only thing that kept Murph from responding with words he might regret later was Kate in his peripheral vision collapsing into her chair.
He let the captain go and stepped back into her office.
“How did you get into the treatment room?” Kate asked. “Did you climb the wall?”
“Couldn’t think of anything else. I was waiting in there for the right moment. I thought he had a gun. I had about three heart attacks listening to you talk him down. Good job on that, by the way.” She was smart, and brave, and excellent at her job. Of course, he was in love with her. “If you ever need a side gig, you can take up hostage negotiation.”
“I’ll pass,” she told him. “You gave me a heart attack, busting out like that. I thought you were in the hallway. I was trying to get him out there.” She shook her head. “He didn’t mean to hurt me.”
“The mental state he was in, he might have done something without meaning to.”
If this had happened three months a
go, she would be in his arms right now, Murph thought, resenting every inch of distance between them.
They’d had a scare, but it was over, and she was safe. With all the adrenaline coursing through him still, he wanted to celebrate. In the most primal way. On her desk. Or on her massage table. It was available.
Except, he knew what she’d say if he suggested that. It started with an N, and ended with an O.
At least she was almost smiling and not sending him away. And, most importantly, she was all right. Unhurt. The only thing that mattered.
Because he wasn’t ready to leave just yet, he said, “We’ve gone all year without an incident, and now two in one week. Maybe we should hire security.”
“We can’t put guards at the door.” Not a trace of uncertainty in her voice. “This is a treatment facility. Armed men in uniforms would trigger some of the patients. I don’t want Hope Hill to look like a prison camp.”
They’d had this discussion before, and the last thing Murph wanted right then was to fight with her. “Okay. You’re right.”
But from now on, the receptionists would be veterans, carrying concealed. He was going to break that to her later. No way in hell was he going to allow her, or any of the staff or patients, to be in danger.
She was doing her yoga breathing, so he knew she was still shaken. He would have given anything if she just walked into his arms for comfort. She didn’t.
“Thank you. For all of it,” she said instead.
“Even if I knocked him to the ground?”
“Even so. Although, that was absolutely unnecessary.”
Not when Murph had thought the guy had a weapon. He’d never been happier to be wrong in his life.
“Why did you come by?” Kate tilted her head. “Earlier, when you knocked.” She was back in business mode, calm, or doing a damn good job faking it. “Did you need to talk to me about anything?”
Earlier was a lifetime ago. “Just wanted to check in.”
It wasn’t the right time to tell her that her neighbor might have been murdered.
