Standing Guard

by Valerie Hansen

  He’d seen plenty of widows overseas; enough to last him a lifetime. And every time his work had fractured more families, his gut had tied in bigger knots. Knots that still lingered and had resulted in a medical discharge in spite of his continued desire to serve.

  The doctors who had judged him no longer fit for duty hadn’t understood. Nobody did. There was no job Thad had ever tackled that he hadn’t approached with complete dedication. That was why he’d assumed personal responsibility for the outcome of every skirmish and why the shrinks who had debriefed him had insisted he be sent back to civilian life.

  Well, here he was. And, in retrospect, his presence had been advantageous after Rob and Ellen had died in the fire that Ellen’s sister, Natalie, had caused. But that didn’t make life fair; not for his lost brother, not for Rob’s orphaned kids who had been given to people who were not even kin, not for all the survivors who had to carry on in spite of broken hearts.

  That needless sense of loss continued to disturb Thad but not in the same way it had at first. His personal faith had faltered initially, then had deepened in the aftermath of the tragedy, yet he was still searching for a satisfactory explanation for all the pain his family had suffered.

  Perhaps he always would.

  * * *

  Lindy knew she was being foolish to trust a virtual stranger but there had been something about Thad Pearson that had emotionally connected him to her. From the moment he had touched her hand and shown such concern for Danny, she had liked him. She couldn’t help herself.

  But do I dare trust him this much? she asked silently. If she’d been the least bit computer savvy or had known someone else who might be willing to go to bat for her, she wouldn’t have turned to Thad. However, since he was not only handy but had dropped into her life at exactly the right time, as if heaven-sent, she felt compelled to let him try to help. Worst case scenario, she’d have to change the passwords on a few accounts. Other than that, she couldn’t see any big risk.

  Sensing movement out of the corner of her eye, Lindy glanced into her side mirror. Speaking of risks, what did the driver of that big, white, dual-cab pickup think he was doing? This narrow section of road was no place to try to squeeze by.

  Her hands tightened on the wheel. The other truck had pulled even with her and was easing to the right, encroaching on her lane.

  She tapped the brakes, slowing to give the larger vehicle room to drop in between her and Thad. Since she knew where they were headed, she didn’t need to stay right on his bumper. Besides, somebody had to do something before that other driver caused a wreck.

  Lindy fell back, waiting for the more massive truck to sail on by. It did exactly the opposite, pacing her exactly.

  Scowling, she glanced over, trying to see who was driving, but was thwarted because the truck sat so much higher off the ground than her car. Its broad side door and right fender stayed even with her no matter how she varied her speed.

  Her heart pounded. Her breathing grew shallow, rapid. Had Thad noticed what was going on? It sure didn’t look like it.

  Again, Lindy changed speed, shoving the gas pedal to the floor. Forty became fifty. Then fifty-five.

  The rear of Thad’s truck loomed ahead. She thought she saw his head turn, saw him look back.

  Suddenly, the white truck swerved.

  Slammed into the side of her sedan.

  Hit hard enough to shove her onto the narrow shoulder!

  Metal crunched and grated. Gravel flew. She almost overcorrected and went into a ditch, then regained the edge of the roadway and came to a stop as the reckless driver accelerated and sped away.

  Incredulous, she just sat there, her fingers clamped to the steering wheel, her eyes wide. Staring blankly.

  The driver who had forced her off the road passed Thad as if his truck were standing still and disappeared around a curve.

  She could barely breathe, barely think straight.

  This was turning into the second worst day of her life.

  * * *

  Thad stopped the moment he realized what had happened. Jumping from his truck he ran back to Lindy. “Are you all right?”

  The side window rolled smoothly down. Her breath was condensing into visible clouds and her complexion had lost its rosy glow. “Did you see that? That idiot was trying to wreck me!”

  “Sure looked that way.” Thad continued to check the road as he spoke in case the heavy-duty truck came back. “I thought he just wanted to pass us until I saw him deliberately ram you.” He was leaning against her car with both hands capping the edge of the door over the window slot. “Who was he?”

  “I don’t have the slightest idea. I didn’t recognize his truck, either.” She peered forward and winced. “How bad is the damage?”

  “Looks mostly cosmetic,” Thad said. “Though you should still have a garage check over the car before we go on.”

  Lindy let go of the steering wheel and stared at her hands, watching them shake. “I’m not sure I’m ready to drive again, anyway.”

  “No problem.” Straightening, Thad slipped his cell phone from the clip on his belt, flipped it open and stepped away from her car to speak. He didn’t ask Lindy’s permission. He simply called the sheriff.

  She was tugging at his elbow long before he finished the call but he persisted. “That’s right. Hit-and-run. Highway 9, south of town. Nobody’s injured. A guy in a white truck sideswiped Mrs. Southerland’s car then took off. No. We didn’t get a license number and we didn’t know the driver.”

  Lindy yanked on his arm. “Stop!”

  He ignored her. “It’s pretty cold for us to wait out here. How about we leave the car as it sits and I take her with me to the warehouse? Is that all right with you?” He recited the license plate number and make of her vehicle. “Okay. If you have any questions for us, you can reach us at this number. It’s my cell. Or at Pearson Products. We’re headed there.” He ended the call with, “Right. Thanks.”

  “What did you do that for?”

  Lindy was practically screeching at him so he reached to place a calming hand on her shoulder. To his amazement, she ducked as if expecting a blow.

  Thad raised both hands and backed away. “Whoa. I’m not going to hurt you. Just calm down. You’ve had quite a shock.”

  “I told you I didn’t want the authorities involved in my business. Why did you have to call them?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Maybe because somebody almost rolled your car into a ball—with you in it.” He knew he’d spoken gruffly but he didn’t know how else he was going to get through to this stubborn, irrational woman.

  Lindy covered her face with her hands.

  Thad started to reach for her, then stopped himself. She’d already indicated reluctance to accept physical comforting. He could get himself into deep trouble by trying to give it again.

  Instead, he waited patiently until she pulled herself together, then nodded toward his pickup. “My ride’s not fancy, but right now that’s our only transportation. Unless you want to wait out here for the cops and freeze to death, I suggest you come with me the way I told them you would.”

  She stood so still for a few moments he wondered if she was going to refuse. Finally, she seemed to regain her composure. “I’ll need my purse. And I suppose I should take the groceries in case they tow my car.”

  “I’m assuming they will,” Thad said. It was a relief to see her acting more stable. “They probably won’t need your keys so you’d better pull them. The dispatcher said
they were really busy today. Since nobody was hurt here, it may take them a while to respond and we don’t want your car stolen before they arrive.”

  Lindy almost laughed. At least Thad thought she did. She’d been so upset before, it was hard to tell how she was feeling until he heard the sarcasm in her tone when she said, “The way my life’s been going lately, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised. I’d expect it.”

  He stood back while she unlocked the trunk, then carried her purchases to his truck and placed the plastic bags in the cab between the driver and passenger seats. The way he saw it, he was already on thin ice with this woman and having a pile of groceries as a buffer between them was to his advantage.

  Did he wish he hadn’t volunteered to help her? Not really. If he hadn’t been there when she’d almost wrecked, she’d have been stranded, particularly because she was so against police involvement.

  Thad observed her as he held open the passenger door and she climbed in. She seemed pretty normal in most ways, so why was she so scared of the cops? Could there be a connection between her current problems and her late husband’s criminal activities? Had she been personally involved?

  No. No way, his instincts insisted. He’d know if Lindy was a crook at heart. Truth to tell, she seemed so totally innocent it was laughable. He could far more easily imagine her as a helpless lamb being circled by a pack of hungry wolves than the other way around.

  That picture of helplessness stuck in his mind as he rounded the truck and slid behind the wheel. If he were to consider the accident he had just witnessed as a deliberate attack, how might that change his tactics going forward?

  He cast a sidelong glance at the woman riding beside him. She was obviously still tense. Her hands were clasped around the strap of her purse and she was holding on to it as if she were suspended above a bottomless chasm by that one, thin strip of leather.

  Strange notions kept surfacing, insisting to Thad that he had been put there to provide an anchor for Lindy’s lifeline. Was that possible? Sure. Why not? If someone had asked him a few years ago what he’d be doing these days, he would never have guessed he’d be managing a kitchen-gadget business in a little Ozark town. And if they’d suggested he’d be playing bodyguard to a pretty but unstable widow, too, he’d have laughed in their faces.

  So, what now? Only one thing was certain. No matter what his original motives had been or how circumstances had conspired to draw him into this woman’s problems, he was committed. He knew Lindy Southerland needed help and it was his duty to provide it. Period.

  THREE

  Pearson Products was located next to the single-runway Serenity airport outside town. Lindy had passed the site often but other than the one time she had tried to apply for a job there, she’d never had reason to stop.

  As Thad drove around to the rear of the largest metal building, she was struck by how isolated the manufacturing and shipping complex seemed. The hardwood trees on the surrounding hills were bare but would soon begin to bud, and by summer the open area would feel like a tiny island amid a sea of green leaves.

  If there had not been other cars parked there, she might have been more uneasy. “I never realized how far out of town this place is. It’s really secluded.”

  “It wasn’t always.” Thad pointed. “Rob and Ellen used to have a house attached to their office on the far end of this long building. You can still see the foundation. I made my office in the warehouse instead of rebuilding after the fire.”

  “So, you don’t live out here like they did?”

  “No. I have a little place off Old Sturkie Road. It isn’t fancy. I don’t spend a lot of time there.”

  She chose to open her own door rather than wait for Thad to do it. Ben had always made a big deal of holding doors for her and otherwise treating her gallantly in public, though he’d abused her in private, so Lindy now insisted on fending for herself. It wasn’t that she objected to a man showing good manners, it simply seemed intrinsically necessary for her to demonstrate self-reliance as often as possible.

  If Thad minded her behaving so independently he didn’t give any sign of it. Smiling, he directed her to the rear entrance to the warehouse and caught the heavyweight metal door behind her as she passed through. The area was open and airy like a barn, yet bore the chemical odor of new plastic. It wasn’t an unpleasant smell but it was a noticeable change from the crispness of the February air outdoors.

  “This is our shipping department,” Thad said, pointing to rows of bins and shelves filled with brightly colored kitchen tools and several long tables. “You probably know most of these folks better than I do. That’s Margaret over there in the brown sweater doing the packing and Louise Williams pulling orders. Vernon Betts looks after the factory and Angela runs the mail room.”

  Lindy raised a hand to wave when Louise looked up and smiled. “I do recognize a few faces. We moved to Serenity a couple years ago but I really haven’t gotten out much.”

  “I know what you mean. I’ve been so tied up in trying to salvage this business I don’t have time to socialize, either. If it wasn’t for church, I’d probably be a hermit.”

  She followed Thad as he led the way to a rudimentary office located at one end of the cavernous, rectangular building. That area was anything but posh. The floor was concrete, the walls unpainted plasterboard. There were bundles of assorted cardboard boxes stacked in one corner. The massive, oak desk was so messy it looked as if someone had upended a carton of trash in the middle of it, then stirred the pile of paper with the blade of a shovel.

  Lindy had to smile. “I love your filing system. How’s that working out for you?”

  “Poorly.” One corner of his mouth quirked and his dark eyes sparkled. “I know I need help. I just don’t want to hire and then have to lay off somebody. Orders are sporadic since Rob died and I can never be sure how the cash flow will hold up. Ellen used to process orders while her sister, Natalie, kept the books.” He grimaced. “You probably heard how that turned out.”

  “The embezzlement? Yes. I’m sorry.” Lindy’s fingers itched to get a chance to sort through the messy piles of paperwork.

  “Tell you what,” she said, eyeing his desktop. “While you try to figure out what happened to my credit, why don’t I start sorting this stuff into some semblance of order?”

  “I don’t know...”

  “Well, I do,” she said flatly. “You’re helping me and I’m going to return the favor.” She pushed up the left sleeve of her jacket to check her watch. “I can stay until just before three when I have to pick up Danny at school.”

  Thad nodded. “It’s a deal. Let me know when it’s time and I’ll run you back into town.”

  “If you do that, I’ll owe you even more hours of work here,” Lindy said.

  She was delighted to see him grin and hear him say, “Uh-huh. That’s kind of what I’d figured.”

  * * *

  Thad was so engrossed in his computer search he let Lindy answer the business phone. He had to smile at how professional her “Pearson Products. How may I help you?” sounded. It was good to have an accomplished executive assistant, if only for one afternoon.

  She made a face as she covered the mouthpiece and held out the receiver. “It’s the sheriff. They’ve taken my car into town and parked it behind the station. We can pick it up any time.”

  “Okay. Tell them I’m going to call Seth Whitfield at the garage and have him check it over first. You shouldn’t drive it until we kno
w it’s safe.” To his surprise, Lindy looked anything but pleased.

  She put the phone back to her ear. “Thank you, Sheriff. Mr. Pearson has suggested that I have the car examined by a mechanic but I’ll take your word for it that it’s roadworthy. We’ll be there before three.”

  As soon as she’d hung up he questioned her. “What was that?”

  “That was me, taking care of myself and making my own decisions,” Lindy said firmly. “I decided to skip the expense of taking the car to a repairman. The sheriff assures me the damage is only cosmetic.”

  “Okay. I can see you don’t want car advice.” He swiveled in his chair and gestured toward the computer screen. “However, I think you should look at what I’ve found online.”

  “What?”

  Thad allowed her to look over his shoulder while he brought up screen after screen. Then, he ended with her official credit rating and heard her gasp.

  “I didn’t know they went that low,” she moaned.

  “Neither did I until I saw yours. What’s going on? This shows that you maxed out your credit cards and failed to pay the minimum so they were all canceled.”

  “No!” It was nearly a shout. “I don’t use any credit cards unless I absolutely have to. What about my debit card? Did you check that?”

  “I’ll need your account number and password,” Thad said. He started to get up so she could take his place at the keyboard.

  Instead, she merely recited a short sequence of numbers. He typed them in. He could sense Lindy’s closeness behind him and hear her rapid breathing. The woman was clearly agitated. He didn’t blame her.

  The checking account balance blinked onto the screen, accompanied by Lindy’s sharp intake of breath. “That’s impossible. I just transferred money into that account from my savings.” She leaned closer. “Can you check that, too?”