Double Blind

by Hannah Alexander

  That was why Preston had recognized Sheila’s courage when he’d seen it…and fallen in love with her. Now, sure, he admired her spirit, but she wasn’t being reasonable about this. Why not?

  He reached up to brush several strands of her thick, dark brown hair from her shoulder and to look at those lush lips, usually so quick to smile. At this moment, they seemed as weighted with sadness as her eyes.

  “This is what you feel you have to do?” he asked.

  Her eyes narrowed slightly. He could tell she was expecting him to continue to protest.

  “I’m keeping my promise,” he said. “I meant it. I have no right to tell you what you can and cannot do.” They’d made no promises to each other about their relationship—or rather, at this point, nonrelationship.

  He was learning to use that word more often. Relationship.

  She gave a soft sigh and reached up to touch his chin, gently. “Yes, Preston, I feel I need to do this.”

  He braced himself. “Are you doing it to get away from me?”

  The soft touch became a sharp tap on his shoulder, and the tender glance disappeared. “I told you the reasons. You don’t seem to listen.”

  He raised his hands. “Okay, that’s fine, I realize this isn’t all about me, but I just don’t think you’ve been completely forthcoming. If even part of the reason you’re doing this is to escape me, there are many safer ways than hauling yourself alone across country to a desolate—”

  She raised a hand. “Finish that sentence, and you’ll be forking over your Jeep for my trip.”

  “Sorry.” He forced a smile. “Of course, my Jeep has air-conditioning, and yours doesn’t. You probably should use mine.”

  “Who needs air-conditioning? It’s barely May.”

  “You know how hot it gets out there in the summer? May becomes June becomes July, and you don’t know how long you’ll be there.”

  She slid a folded sheet of paper from the pocket of her tiger-print scrubs, her slender hands graceful as she unfolded and scanned the letter.

  Preston studied her face as she read. He knew the contents of the letter, of course. She’d shown it to him Saturday after she found it on her father’s desk in his home office.

  Buster Metcalf was an agricultural engineer who had moved with his family to the Navajo reservation in Arizona when Sheila was five. Five years later, when Sheila was ten, her mother had died suddenly, mysteriously. And that was all Preston had learned in the year he had known Sheila. He’d marveled at the lack of information he’d been able to get out of her about Evelyn Metcalf.

  Sheila looked up and caught him watching her. “What?”

  “Since we’re not arguing now, I’m just asking a question for the sake of information, but I don’t want you to bite my head off.”

  Her eyes narrowed once more.

  “Honestly,” he said, holding up his palms. “I’m just curious. How close were you to the victims of that fire?”

  “Those victims have names. Tad and Wendy Hunt.”

  “Right. It’s just that I’ve heard you speak in glowing terms about your other friends, but Tad and Wendy never came up.” Though Sheila’s father had kept in touch with some old friends from the reservation from time to time, Sheila hadn’t seen anyone from her past in all these years, but now that the school’s clinic suddenly needed emergency staffing, she was ready to drop everything and hurry to be of help?

  Granted, selflessness was a part of her character, but Preston thought that she was also responsible to a fault. And right now, her own life was in such flux, she couldn’t afford the time or the emotional energy.

  “I had a lot of friends.” She returned her attention to the letter.

  Besides Tad and Wendy Hunt, who had returned to their alma mater to work and serve after college, someone else had died—Bob Jaffrey, the principal of the school. He had contracted and succumbed to an aggressive illness only days before the fire that took the other lives.

  Sheila looked up at Preston again. “Canaan needs help in the worst way, not only because he had to step into Bob’s shoes, but there’s no one to take Wendy’s place as office assistant. I’m free.”

  Preston had heard enough about Sheila’s treasured memories of her friend Canaan York to provide enough misgivings about her trip back to the school all by themselves.

  “I thought Canaan was the school’s doctor,” he said. “Why is he suddenly filling in as principal? Can’t a teacher do it?”

  “Good question. I’ll ask when I get there.”

  Preston tamped down his frustration. “Have you even checked to see if they’ll accept you?”

  “I called and spoke with Johnny Jacobs yesterday evening.”

  Preston nearly groaned out loud. Johnny Jacobs was Canaan’s grandfather, the man who owned the school.

  Preston could no more help his strong distrust of this situation than he could help his growing madness over this bullheaded woman to whom he’d had the questionable pleasure of giving his heart.

  How, for instance, did Johnny Jacobs found a religious school, pay the staff himself and not give in to the temptation to direct the curriculum with his personal biases about God? He did accept donations for the school, as well, but what kind of overseers kept track of his actions? He could be one of those control freaks with his own religion, a cultist.

  How could Preston stand by and watch the woman he loved involve herself in this situation?

  And yet, far from influencing her, he knew if he said any more about it now, he would only lose what little favor he had left with her.

  He felt more than helpless. More than frustrated.

  Sometimes she just didn’t make sense to him.

  “It was home for five years. I can’t ignore it,” she said, looking up at Preston.

  “I don’t understand why anyone would have sent your father the news, anyway. He isn’t a doctor. After all these years—”

  “But Mom was a nurse, and she worked with the kids. She knew everyone.”

  Preston stared at her, and he knew the puzzlement he felt was plain in his expression.

  She closed her eyes, and he heard her soft intake of breath.

  He waited, staring at the dark fan of her eyelashes against her pale skin, then felt his heart squeeze, falling head over heels once again as she opened her eyes and looked up at him.

  “What?” he asked softly.

  “I think Johnny Jacobs always suspected that my mother’s death wasn’t from natural causes.”

  “Did he ever say that?”

  “He would never have said anything like that to me.”

  “But after all this time—”

  “I can’t tell for sure, but when I spoke with him, I got the impression that he suspects…I don’t know…something odd about these recent deaths. Maybe I’m jumping to conclusions, but I had the impression that he feels Mom’s death and these recent ones might be connected somehow.”

  Preston held his tongue between his teeth. Even more reason for her to not go out there!

  She read his expression once again. “Yes, I know my mother’s death was a long time—”

  “And no reason to suspect that—”

  “But if Johnny feels there’s a connection—”

  “You don’t know that for a fact.”

  “Not in so many words.”

  What Preston thought was that Johnny Jacobs was eager to get Sheila out there because she was willing to be cheap labor. Had the man given any thought to her safety?

  “There’s no reason to think I might be in danger,” she said.

  “Except that Wendy Hunt worked in the clinic, your mother was the school nurse and now you’re going out there to work in that same clinic.”

  As she gazed into his eyes, his heart contracted again. “You’ll think this is crazy, I’m sure, but I can’t help thinking this could be God’s timing.”

  Oh, great, she’s pulling out the big guns. Who could argue with God? Of course, Preston had promised not to
argue. But it couldn’t hurt to gather as many facts as possible about this endeavor. “So am I to understand that the reason Mr. Johnny Jacobs contacted your father about these deaths was to find out if you would go out there?”

  She hesitated. “He knew I was in the medical profession now. Apparently he called Dad a week ago to see if I could go out. Dad just never told me.”

  Preston took the letter from her hands and looked at it. There was something in Sheila’s past that she held back, even at those times when she seemed to share everything else in her heart. He’d realized Saturday that she was drawn to return to the place that had her history, where she’d been robbed of her mother….

  Yes, she was going to help her old friends and she loved working with children, but she needed to solve a mystery in her life.

  “Let me go with you,” Preston said.

  She gave him a look of infinite tenderness, then took the letter from him and shook her head. “Nope.”

  “You think I’ll only be in the way.”

  She hesitated, then gave him a quick kiss on the cheek. “I know you will.” She looked at her watch, then refolded the letter and slid it back into her pocket. “I’m on my way to Arizona.”

  As she turned to leave, he reached for her and caught her hand. In the year he’d known her, in all the time they’d spent together, he had never told her of the depth of his commitment to her. She didn’t want to hear it. Even now, he could see the wariness in her eyes.

  “I…want you to know that I…My Jeep is yours if you need it.”

  She smiled and squeezed his hand, then pulled away and went back into the hospital. The words he longed to say remained unspoken.

  Chapter Three

  O n Friday the thirteenth of May, the blue canopy of Northern Arizona sky shimmered with the sun’s rays, baking clumps of sage and meager stands of white-gold bunchgrass. The few clouds that nestled against rims of distant mesas did nothing to ease the punishing heat.

  In spite of dry, hot air rushing in through window and vent, sweat gathered and dripped from every pore of Sheila Metcalf’s body. Where had all this heat come from? It was only the middle of May.

  She couldn’t remember when she’d felt this alone or frightened. She missed Preston. She missed seeing the way his blue-gray eyes contrasted vividly against his tanned face. This separation would be good for both of them, but that knowledge didn’t keep her from wanting to be with him.

  Her father hadn’t been too crazy about her return to this place, either. Together, he and Preston had mounted a united front for the first time since they’d met, but she hadn’t allowed them enough time to complete their mission. After making the decision to come, she’d taken two days to handle her arrangements and pack, and then she was off before either man could catch his breath.

  Now she stared at the shimmering mirage on the deserted blacktop road ahead of her, driving ever nearer to the setting of her childhood nightmares. What on earth had she done? She wasn’t prone to making impetuous decisions. Why start now?

  What kind of phantom was she chasing, alone, in the heart of the Navajo reservation? Dad had implied she might encounter the same danger her mother had met twenty-four years ago, but that brief comment had been all she’d been able to get out of him, the cranky old widower.

  Actually, Dad wasn’t old at all. He was fifty-eight. And he only got cranky when she tried to talk to him about Mom, or when anyone tried to set him up with a woman.

  Though Sheila couldn’t remember her mother very well—the shadowy images in her mind took clearer form only when she looked at old photographs—she never forgot the love that filled her whenever she thought of Mom. She always carried with her an impression of happiness at the memory of the small Navajo school she’d attended while Mom and Dad had worked in the area—Dad helping the farmers and shepherds, Mom treating children and families.

  Mom had been Sheila’s inspiration to pursue a medical career. Right now she couldn’t help wondering if she’d have been better suited to Dad’s specialty—agriculture.

  All during this hot drive—why hadn’t she taken Preston up on his offer to let her use his Jeep?—Sheila had journeyed as deeply into her memories as she could, frustrated by Dad’s unwillingness to communicate with her about Mom. With every mile she drew closer to the school, the tension in her body was increasing, the images from the nightmare arising more frequently, and more horribly.

  At the school, Sheila would be conducting the children’s year-end physicals, drawing blood, as well as operating the clinic lab, keeping a close watch over the students who boarded at the school. When the term ended, she would be testing families coming to collect their children for the summer break. In a mission school such as Twin Mesas, families were encouraged to take advantage of the medical care. Sheila would truly be following in Evelyn Metcalf’s footsteps.

  Johnny Jacobs and his grandson, Canaan York, remained concerned about the cause of the former principal’s death, she knew. It was a natural concern, of course, considering the responsibility on their shoulders not only for the health and safety of the children, but for all the families of the student body. According to Johnny, Bob Jaffrey’s family had refused to allow an autopsy.

  Sheila squinted into the sun’s glare as she rounded a curve, and, for perhaps the tenth time today, questioned her decision. But after two long, painful years, dealing with the loss of her husband, and his betrayals, she felt she was at least finally making an effort to sort some sense out of the first part of her life—even if it meant returning to the scene of her childhood terrors to find answers to some difficult questions.

  A movement far ahead on the right side of the road drew her gaze and broke her concentration. Whatever it was disappeared in the white glare of the sun. She fidgeted in her seat, stretching taut muscles, willing away the anxiety that had persisted throughout this trip. It was a frequent condition lately, something she couldn’t blame on the letter from the school, or even on her turbulent attraction to Preston.

  Her digestion had started acting up about a week after Ryan’s death and the discovery of his unfaithfulness. Within three months, she’d lost so much weight she had to punch extra holes in her belt to hold up her jeans—a need she would have rejoiced about at any other time of her life.

  Many mornings she’d awakened with a stiff neck and a headache from troubling dreams she couldn’t remember—at least not until the past few days.

  The shock of Ryan’s death, and the gradual discovery of his affairs during their marriage had chipped away at her self-confidence and her faith in life. For the first year of widowhood, she’d often battled against a wavering faith in God.

  Why her? After losing her mother at such a young age, why had she been forced to endure yet another tragic loss?

  Dad had instilled strong Christian convictions within her. Sometimes she even questioned whether that set of standards was at the root of her troubles. Although Twin Mesas held many good memories for her, it was also where all her worst memories had been made—and it was a Christian school, where strict Christian values were taught and upheld.

  Though Sheila had never renounced her faith entirely, she had rebelled against many of its strictures—most notably the one about believers marrying within their faith.

  And look where it had landed her. Never again.

  What hurt the most was that she had been the last to know about Ryan’s affairs. His final fling had been with the woman who was killed in the auto accident with him, Theresa Donohue, the fourth-grade math teacher whose classroom had been just down the hall from Ryan’s. But not one of Sheila’s friends had told her, though she’d discovered later that several of them had been aware of Ryan’s extramarital activities.

  The movement on the desert, closer this time but still several hundred feet ahead, caught Sheila’s attention once again. The sun’s glare continued to blur the figure, but when she looked away she could see it dimly in her peripheral vision, the same way her nightmares caught her
sometimes when she woke up in the mornings. The figure was too small to be a horse. A sheep, perhaps? Or a large dog?

  She kept her attention on the road and allowed the approaching animal to develop along the side of her vision. It drew nearer, and she recognized the shape. A German shepherd.

  Or a wolf.

  She flexed her damp hands, wiping first one then the other on her jeans, blinking several times. It could have been anything but canine, and she’d be okay. But she’d rather see a nest of rattlesnakes in the middle of the road than the shape of a dog.

  Suddenly, the animal disappeared, and a cloud of dust rose where it had been. She glanced that way, but saw nothing. Strange.

  The steering wheel jerked in her hand. The right front tire of the Jeep sank into the soft shoulder of the road, and Sheila realized she’d allowed her focus to drift too far. She pulled the steering wheel to the left. A loud pop-thunk startled her.

  She caught her breath, fighting the wheel, but the deep sand would not relinquish its hold. The Jeep coasted a hundred feet down the road and then came to a stop.

  She’d blown a tire.

  “Great driving, Metcalf,” she muttered to herself. “Now look what you’ve done.”

  Glancing again across the broad slope of the desert horizon, she found herself wishing that a blown tire was her only problem.

  Canaan York slowed his silver-blue Plymouth Voyager to ease the impact of a deep pothole that stretched across the dirt road. He scanned the broad plain of desert surrounding the solitary mountain of White Cone. Tanya Swift’s family lived about two hundred yards ahead. Their small frame home, painted clover-green with dark spruce shutters, was a mansion compared to the other houses in this section of the Navajo reservation.

  When Canaan reached the house, he stopped, frowning. Maybe the little runaway hadn’t come back home.

  A cloud of trailing dust rolled past the van and drifted in through the open windows, depositing a layer of grit over everything. Canaan blinked and tugged down on the bill of his baseball cap.