Maybe It's You

by Candace Calvert

  “On top of a cotton-candy cone.” Zoey gave him a look just shy of a glare. “When can I ditch it?”

  “Well . . .” Stack blew a perfect smoke ring and began laying down cards again. “Tonight, if you want. It’s served its purpose. Go boost yourself some Clairol.”

  “Okay. I will.” She stood, glad for an excuse to get out. “I won’t be long. There’s a CVS two blocks down.”

  Stack lifted her half-empty bottle of beer. “You over the legal walking limit?”

  “I’m good.” She offered a thumbs-up. “See ya in a few.”

  Stack regarded her for a moment, then reached for his wallet. “Hang on. I’ll give you some cash. You did good on that last job.”

  “Thanks.”

  Zoey took the money and headed toward the drugstore. It was a short walk down a street dotted with stunted and sickly palms. The night sky was shot through with half-dead neon, and the air reeked of gasoline, cheap Mexican food, and back-alley hookups. Too many cars had the bass on their sound systems dialed way too low, like an earthquake starting. She auditioned hair colors in her mind and tried to ignore the small jab of guilt over Stack’s compliment.

  “You did good . . .”

  Zoey shoved her hand into the pocket of her baggy jeans and touched the slithery-cool chain of the necklace. It was something she’d found herself doing more and more since she took it from that flour jar. She’d given Stack the diamond ring and most of the money from her unexpected score at the nurse’s house. But not the silver cross. Zoey wasn’t sure why, but she’d decided to keep it. Beyond that, she’d better play it straight with Stack. Had to.

  She was a liar, a thief, and a con artist. She had nobody, nothing—and was worth less than that.

  But Zoey still had it better than Oksana.

  “Anyway, I saw you sitting here and thought you were probably waiting for word from OR,” Sloane explained after she’d given Micah the update on the knifing victim. “I thought you’d want to know.”

  “I did—I do. Thanks,” Micah said, relief mixed with genuine surprise to see Sloane standing beside him in the chapel. Her voice sounded tentative and there was no hint of impending fireworks in her eyes. She simply looked concerned. And beautiful. “If Jane Doe has ‘stabilized,’ that means she’s going to be all right?”

  “It’s too early to tell. The bleeding’s under control and they’re keeping her oxygenated. So far, she’s holding her own.” Sloane’s fingers moved over her stethoscope. “Most of us thought we’d lose her before we could get her to the OR. There was so much damage.”

  “Scumbag left her drowning in her own blood.”

  “I’ve never seen anything like that. Outside of a war zone,” Micah heard himself say. Then realized it wasn’t entirely true. He’d seen Stephen.

  “Earlier,” Sloane continued, “when those people came in from the restaurant near the crime scene . . .” She’d lowered herself to half perch on the chair next to him. “I saw you talking with them. Helping that old woman who was so upset.”

  “A cook, the great-grandmother to the young man who found the girl,” Micah explained. “There was a language barrier, but from what I heard, the assault brought back memories from an incident in her village in Vietnam. Not surprising. Crisis situations can do that. More people are affected by traumatic stress than we’d think.”

  “Yes.” Sloane held Micah’s gaze long enough to make his breath snag. “I didn’t know you were doing that,” she said finally. “The chaplain work.”

  “The crisis team is part of California Crisis Care. We don’t really call ourselves chaplains in this group.”

  “Same thing. Whatever you call yourselves. I saw it in Sacramento. And San Diego.” Something in Sloane’s eyes said she regretted mentioning it. “Anyway, I was surprised to see you here. I had you pegged . . . well, not anything like that.”

  “Slick, charming . . .” Sloane Ferrell didn’t have him merely pegged; she’d tried her best to nail him to the wall.

  “I guess I was wrong,” she admitted, “when I said that you don’t get it about people. With what you’re doing out there, it seems like you’d have to.” Her lovely lips pressed together. “So I’m sorry. About that part.”

  “No problem,” he told her. A total lie because he now realized her words had been grating on him since their last run-in. It suddenly felt like he’d passed some essential test. “Thanks.”

  “Okay then,” Sloane said, a small sigh hinting she’d checked an unpleasant chore off her list. “This is supposed to be my free Saturday, but I said I’d come in for a few hours. My relief is here, so I’m going to head to my car.”

  The old Volvo with all the at-odds bumper stickers. It seemed like peace was finally possible. . . .

  “Hey,” Micah began, deciding not to overthink it. “Want to go out and get something to eat? Or maybe some coffee?”

  13

  “YOU MEAN NOW? Go out somewhere?” Sloane asked, not sure she’d heard it right. Apparently she had a language barrier too. “With you?”

  “Yeah. That’s what I meant.” Micah’s quick smile was more of a wince. It made his face look boyish. “Sounds crazy, I guess, considering that you hate me.”

  “Mmm.” The man didn’t need to know that she only half hated him now.

  “I’m still on call,” Micah added. “We’d have to drive separately. Go somewhere I could wrap up my food and run if I had to. So it’s not like this is . . .” His brown eyes held hers. “It’s food. You. Me . . . Sushi?”

  He is. He’s asking me out.

  “Uh . . .” Sloane floundered. It wasn’t only a language barrier; it was the piled-high bunker she’d carefully built over the span of nearly three years. The string of zip codes, the new name, and all the precautions she’d taken to keep herself physically safe. But most of all, the wall she’d built around her heart.

  “If you don’t like sushi, it doesn’t have to be that,” Micah offered, the look in his eyes—chaplain’s eyes, whether he claimed the title or not—saying he got this too. But he wasn’t going to let it go. “It could be anything you want.”

  It occurred to Sloane she didn’t really know what that was.

  “Thanks, but I’m going to pass,” she said finally, feeling a strange twinge of regret as she rose from the chapel chair. A chapel, a chaplain—more than a language barrier. She was a foreigner in a foreign country. “I just wanted to let you know about the girl.”

  Micah released a breath. “I appreciate that.”

  She started to turn away, then glanced back at him. “For the record: I do like sushi.”

  “Good to know.”

  It took her less than twenty minutes to get home. The late-afternoon sun had begun to wane, and once again Sloane realized how much she’d lucked out by finding this place. Celeste had chosen it with her own commute in mind, all those years she worked at LA Hope. Sloane smiled to herself, remembering something else Piper had said during her visit: she might become a nurse one day too. After she got her black belt in martial arts.

  Sloane switched off the ignition, pulled the parking brake, then grabbed her purse and slid from the car. Her stomach rumbled as she locked the Volvo’s door. She hoped there was more than cereal for dinner. She’d never checked the carton of eggs she’d planned to use for breakfast before Zoey raided her flour canister and took a hike.

  Sloane cringed, remembering the tattoo on Jane Doe’s hip. Too much like Zoey’s.

  The detectives had photographed the lettering and the small inked crown, talking among themselves about gang tattoos and trafficking. Sloane wanted to believe it wasn’t the case with Zoey. But after all that had happened, it was more than hard to swallow the girl’s story about a friend in Bakersfield. And that she’d be working at the YMCA, helping “underprivileged kids.” Still, Sloane wouldn’t have believed Micah Prescott had a heart for volunteer service either. That had completely blindsided her. Almost as much as his invitation for dinner.

  She stood
beside the car, letting it wash over her again. She couldn’t remember the last time a man had asked her out.

  No, that wasn’t true. She chose not to remember the last several times. Men on barstools getting far too friendly for the price of a watered-down drink, telling her she was movie-star gorgeous and that their wives didn’t understand them. Saying their lives could be so much better with someone else, and “. . . maybe it’s you.”

  Lines only a complete fool would buy. And she’d shopped like it was a price drop at Walmart. Not anymore.

  Sloane glanced toward the guest cottage windows, saw the lamp with the auto-timer switch on. Security measures. Her new reality didn’t include impromptu dinners with men. Even men who surprised her in a good way. She couldn’t afford the risk. Not with her sobriety, her heart, her safe—

  “Miss Ferrell?”

  Sloane whirled around, heart thudding.

  “It’s Jerry. From the hospital . . . Jerry Rhodes.” He stepped out from the shadow cast by Celeste’s dwarf peach tree. “I’m sorry if I startled you.”

  “What . . . ?” Sloane glanced toward the main house. Her pulse was pounding in her ears, confusion making her dizzy. The man was carrying a shovel. “What are you doing here?”

  “Working. Setting some stakes for Ms. Albright’s beds. She wants some new ones.”

  “Beds?”

  “Her garden.” Jerry pointed with the handle of the shovel. “Two more next to the other one. One for winter vegetables, she said. The other for her pumpkins. Hundred-pounders, the little girl told me.” He chuckled. The pencil was behind his ear like this was just another day at the hospital. “Ms. Albright didn’t tell you I was coming?”

  “No.” Sloane’s mouth was dry. “She didn’t.”

  “Well . . .” Jerry’s amiable smile scrunched his dark eyes. “We’ve got ourselves a draw. She didn’t tell me you were coming for a visit either.”

  “Uh . . .” If he was telling the truth, she couldn’t hide hers. “I rent the guest cottage.”

  Jerry glanced toward the lit window. “You have a cat. I saw her in the window playing with the curtains.”

  Sloane didn’t correct him about Marty’s gender. She didn’t like this conversation; it felt like too many steps backward in her sense of security.

  “Small world,” he said. “But I guess that’s the way it is with hospital folks. Ms. Albright needing help and asking round LA Hope. Me being a handyman on the side. And now you—”

  “I keep to myself, Jerry.” Sloane met his gaze directly. “I value my privacy. I don’t give out my address or phone. I’m sure that’s why Celeste didn’t say anything. Out of respect for my wishes.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Jerry’s expression turned somber. “I understand.”

  “Thank you,” she told him, thinking that he couldn’t possibly. She wouldn’t want him to. She didn’t trust anyone that much. “Well . . . good night.”

  “Good night, Miss Ferrell.” Jerry changed his grip on the shovel handle and looked toward the main house. “I’d better give the wife a call and head home myself.”

  “Drive safely,” Sloane said, knowing she’d sounded blunt before.

  “You bet.”

  She watched as Jerry walked toward a pickup truck parked on the gravel beside her landlady’s driveway. A heavy-duty wheelbarrow was secured behind the cab, its handles sticking up like the proverbial sore thumb. Sloane hadn’t even noticed it before, proof she was letting her guard down. She was getting too comfortable and making mistakes. Like striking up a friendship with Harper, bringing Zoey here . . . and considering having coffee with Micah Prescott. Had she? Had she really been tempted to do that?

  She remembered how intent he’d been in his efforts to help the distraught Vietnamese woman. Doing his best to put her at ease. Micah was probably still at the hospital, conferring with the chaplain about Jane Doe. There had been warmth in his eyes when he’d invited her out. It was hard to deny she found him attractive. Even harder now that he’d revealed another side of his character. But . . .

  Even if Sloane weren’t forced to hide away, the truth remained that every mistake she’d made and every disappointment she’d been handed involved trusting a man. It wasn’t as if she could erase that. But she could be on guard and stop it from ever happening again by swearing off men like she’d sworn off alcohol. Another sort of twelve-step program—twelve steps and then run like crazy. Men and alcohol: she couldn’t trust herself with either. And in combination . . . deadly.

  Sloane paused on the porch and peered toward the pickup truck. She could hear the sound of an idling engine. And see a small illumination in the darkened cab—a cell phone probably. Jerry calling his wife.

  She went inside and locked the door behind her. Marty meowed at her from his perch on the back of the couch. Sloane smiled. Their start had been rocky, but they’d been soul mates from the get-go.

  “Hey there, big guy. I’m all yours for the evening. Who cares about sushi?”

  She climbed onto the couch and chuckled as the lanky cat responded to her attention in blissful excess, sprawling out and then rolling onto his back to offer his belly for rubbing.

  “There you go,” she said, obliging. “How’s that, you spoiled thing?”

  Marty’s purr rumbled and Sloane’s shoulders relaxed, her heart settling at last. She was home. It was okay now.

  “I’m going to scramble us some eggs. Then load up an old movie in the DVD player. Maybe Cary Grant and Kate Hepburn. Philadelphia Story. You love that one, don’t you? And then we’ll—”

  What’s that?

  The lamplight hit the window, highlighting a collection of smudges. Sloane frowned. Celeste was a stickler about seasonal cleaning; she’d had her window guy in only last week for the main house and Sloane’s cottage. She’d obviously wasted her money. The man had missed this whole section.

  Sloane leaned closer, studying the dozens of oval smudges. And sort of longer dragging smears. Almost like someone—

  Her stomach lurched.

  “You have a cat. I saw her in the window playing with the curtains.”

  Jerry Rhodes’s fingerprints? Had he climbed through her bushes, up to her window, and—?

  Sloane’s cell phone buzzed.

  She checked the screen. No ID, but a perfectly timed distraction.

  “Yes?” she answered, tearing her gaze away from the disturbing fingerprints.

  “Sloane,” the deep voice began. “Hey, babe—long time.”

  No . . .

  “It’s me. Paul.”

  “I figured I should check it out, for sure,” Coop continued after taking a last slurp from the straw of his Big Gulp. His grandmother kept her thermostat cranked way too high, he’d complained. Changing kitty litter was like shoveling sand in Death Valley. “This could all be playing right into my hands, you know?”

  Micah glanced across the hood of his car toward the lights of the ER entrance. Several police cars were still parked near it. “You mean for a story?”

  “A tie to my prison research.” Coop lowered his voice as if there were reporters in the cars nearby eager to steal his idea. “Fat Russian kingpin pulls strings from behind bars. Little blonde sex slave pays with her sad, hopeless life.”

  Micah frowned. Coop was doing his best to get ditched as a friend. “Nobody knows for sure she’s involved in that.”

  “Then ‘nobody’ is fooling himself.”

  “And she’s alive,” Micah corrected, resisting the urge to give him a solid thump. Plotting human interest stories wasn’t even close to being a compassionate human. “She’s in the SICU on a ventilator. Holding her own,” Micah added, remembering Sloane’s words. “They’re replacing the blood. Protecting her airway. She’s critical but stable.”

  “Still Jane Doe.” Coop’s expression was close to a pout. “And not talking.”

  “Not possible with her injuries.” Micah tried not to imagine the implications of what little medicalese he’d understood. Trauma t
o the windpipe, cartilage, vessels, and a nick dangerously close to the girl’s spinal cord.

  “Won’t talk, I mean,” Coop clarified. “Even if they patch her up enough and she can plug off that trach thing to speak, Jane won’t talk. Because she’s supposed to be dead and she knows it. And she knows way more. That’s the problem. Why do you think they have cops guarding her?”

  Micah had heard about the officers. But he wasn’t going to encourage Coop. As a crisis volunteer, he was expected to honor confidentiality. Plus, there had been enough reporters around. Still were. He had a horrible feeling a shot of that bloodied teddy bear would end up on the Internet.

  “. . . crown’s big with them.”

  “What?” Micah asked, realizing he’d tuned Coop out.

  “The tat on her behind. A black crown. The Russians have a few select symbols they like to use.”

  Micah wasn’t going to ask him how he’d found out about Jane Doe’s tattoo. He’d only say he had “a gift for gleaning.”

  “The point is,” Coop explained, “someone screwed up. What happened to that kid was amateurish. That she’s still alive. And that she was found at all.”

  Micah shot him a look. “Most people call it a blessing.”

  “All I’m saying is that a big mistake was made. Either her ‘bosses’ decided she was a liability and somebody did a sloppy job, or some ‘customer’ turned substandard Jack the Ripper. Either way, our Jane Doe’s in a bad spot.”

  “Her throat’s cut. She’s tied down to a hospital bed and surrounded by strangers.” Micah didn’t try to temper his tone. “I don’t think bad is a strong enough word.”

  “Okay—I get it.” Coop raised his palm. “But as soon as she wakes up, there’s going to be another pile-on. Everybody will be asking that girl questions.”

  “And you wish it could be you.”

  “Pointless. I’m the Lifestyle guy, remember? Besides, they’re not going to let media get anywhere near Jane Doe. The cops will be doing the asking. And she’ll lie.”