That was what got to Kell. Jamie and Dr. Kate were the entire family, a fictional family created to save Jamie’s life. They were two alone, depending solely on one another. Kell had his parents, his brothers, plus aunts and uncles and cousins he saw only a couple of times a year but knew he could tap in an emergency. He also had the Texas Department of Public Safety at his back, coworkers in numbers dwarfing what the Danby women had, and his carried weapons.
The injustice of their situation rankled. Seeing them as victims left him vexed.” Yes, their circumstances were only unique to them; he’d dealt with dozens, hundreds of human casualties as he fought the war against crime, each with their own story, their own nightmares, but from those he’d kept his distance. Why he hadn’t kept it this time…
Oh, hell. Who was he kidding? He knew exactly why he hadn’t kept it this time. He’d walked through the front door of Weldon Pediatrics and seen that ponytail swinging, those big eyes dancing, those freckles spattering that nose, and that ass. She’d done him in, right then, right there; the teddy-bear scrubs hadn’t helped.
And then he’d seen the fear, the devastating realization that her life was coming undone, that her carefully constructed wall of Jericho was tumbling down around her. He was a lawman, a savior, a rescuer. The fact that she was a damsel in distress in name only didn’t keep him from wanting to be a full-fledged, bona fide white knight.
Once he’d released Deputy Aronson from guard duty, Kell approached the two women who, ready or not, were now going to have to say their goodbyes. As he passed, he glanced through his open driver’s-side window into the SUV’s backseat. Good. Jamie’s pack was there with the cooler and boxes.
She looked up at his approach. Her face was pale, her eyes red-rimmed but dry. He needed to question her in detail, but they had a long drive waiting and plenty of time. For now, all he asked her was, “Ready?”
Her nod was brief. She knew nothing of where they were going. All he’d told her while they’d been on the phone was that he was coming to take her away.
“Give me a minute?” she asked.
“A minute,” he said, concern a whetstone making his voice sharp, then walked around to the passenger door. He opened it. He waited. Through the window on the other side, he watched as she hugged Dr. Kate. As gripped as his gut was, he couldn’t imagine what the Danby women were feeling, and when one minute became two, he still didn’t move.
Minute three ticked around, and now his impatience caused him to clear his throat. Jamie stepped back, letting her mother’s hand linger in her own until the distance grew and Kate’s fingers slipped away. She climbed into her seat without saying a word to Kell.
He stayed where he was, waiting, and when she met his gaze, it was all he could do to nod toward her seat belt and tell her, “Buckle up.”
The emotion in her face socked him in the solar plexus as hard as any hit he’d ever taken. Fists, football helmets, baseball bats. Brennan wailing on him after Kell had gone out with Lauren Randall, Brennan’s crush. Terry wiping out his skateboard in front of Kell’s and sending them both to the pavement where they’d broken bones. None of those incidents had left him feeling as hammered as the feelings Jamie couldn’t hold back, a mixture of anger and fear and loathing.
He closed her door, made his way around to his and stopped to offer Kate his hand. She shook it, said nothing as she released it, just climbed behind the wheel of her Suburban and sprayed rooster tails of gravel as she drove away.
Kell remained silent as well, putting on his seat belt, adjusting his visor, settling his hat so low that it bumped his sunglasses’ frames. The sun would be hanging on the horizon a couple more hours, but the day was still bright, hot, dry. Outside, anyway. Inside the SUV, he swore he could safely store a side of beef.
He understood Jamie not being happy with the state of things. Working this case wasn’t remotely how he’d hoped he’d be spending his time. They were both going to have to deal, and cross their fingers that they’d come out in one piece on the other side.
Once Weldon was behind them, he breathed deeply and nudged up the brim of his hat. “I know you told me everything on the phone, but I want you to tell me again.”
“Why? Nothing’s going to change,” she said, her gaze fixed out her window, one hand gripping the edge of her seat, the other doing the same damage to her armrest. “I remember it all. I don’t need to give you a mind’s-eye narrative to have my memory refreshed.”
Part of him wanted to growl. Another part wanted to laugh. He grabbed for middle ground. “I need the narrative. I know you told me everything, but I had a lot of things on my mind when you did. Mainly, securing your safety. I might’ve missed a detail that could’ve sparked a question with an answer that would help.”
She seemed to give that consideration because she released her hold on the SUV’s interior and sank into the seat. “It was a little bit after three. Roni goes on break then and I cover the front desk. I’d been on the phone with a sales rep wanting to schedule time with Dr. Griñon, and was late relieving her. Five or ten minutes.”
Good. An established timeline.
“She headed to the break room—”
“Were there any patients in the lobby then?”
“No. The Irigoyen twins were due at three-thirty for their six-month checkup. Emilio Duran should’ve been there, but rescheduled his school sports physical.” Jamie’s voice softened. “Dr. Griñon has been his pediatrician since birth. I think the other guys on the team give him a hard time about a baby doctor clearing him for football.”
Kell was intimately familiar with high-school locker-room razzing. “So you were there by yourself when this guy came in. And he didn’t set off any bells? Fidgeting, looking around, avoiding eye contact? Asking questions but not really paying attention?”
“He looked around, yes, but as far as I knew, he’d never been in the clinic, so I didn’t think anything of it. He was rather…twitchy, though. I wondered if he might be on drugs, yes. It wasn’t the normal inquisitiveness of a father dealing with child custody for the first time, immunizations for school, stuff like that. It was more like…he didn’t want to be there.”
“Why did you think he was dealing with child custody?”
“When I asked if he had his son’s medical records, he said his wife had taken care of all of that in Midland.”
Midland. Kell wondered if the man had pulled that location out of thin air, or if he had a connection to the city Kell called home. The city where Company E was headquartered. And in light of his earlier conversation with Jamie’s mother, the speculation about a leak in the department…
His gut souring as it churned, he checked his rearview and side mirrors before prodding Jamie for more. “Tell me about seeing the tattoo.”
She took her time responding, staring out the window at the endless acres of yellowed grazing land, acres too dry to sustain more than the few head of cattle dotting them. “I saw it when I handed him a card with the clinic’s phone number and office hours. He didn’t want to make an appointment then, or have me open a file for his son. So I told him if he wanted to have him seen before school started, to call soon. Our schedule’s always full this time of year. He was wearing long sleeves, and the cuff slid up when he took the card.”
Long sleeves. In August. Laborers wore them, in the oil fields, on farms and ranches. Construction and road crews even. “Did he look like he’d been working? Or smell like it? Sweaty, dusty, anything?”
“Not that I noticed.” She paused, added, “Oh, but his hair was clean. It kept falling over his forehead. Why do you ask?”
“The long sleeves. Whether he’s our guy or not, he could be working in the area.”
“An illegal?”
He grimaced, nodded. “Yeah, most likely. And if he smelled like plywood or diesel fuel or fertilizer or road tar, it would give us an idea of where he might be employed, who to question that might be able to identify him…”
“You don’t think he was on his way to work, do you?”
“I doubt it,” Kell said, shaking his head. “Were the cuffs buttoned? Loose?”
“I don’t know,” she snapped. “Why does it matter?”
Her exasperation only made the conclusions he was drawing that much harder to face. But he wasn’t going to deceive her, or hide what he was thinking. After all she’d done to help his investigation, she deserved his honesty.
“I’m trying to determine what he wanted from you. Hear me out,” he added when she turned to interrupt. “If he’s been here all this time, he likely heard about Kass Duren’s body being ID’d, and he could’ve been feeling you out, seeing if you would recognize his face, or his voice. Showing you the tattoo when his cuff slipped up could’ve been nothing.
“But,” Kell continued, trying to corral his thinking into words, “if he knew you’d been through the forensic hypnosis, and knew you’d remembered the tattoo, he very well could’ve been gauging your reaction to seeing it again, and the fact that you didn’t react—”