Word of Honor

  She didn’t know if she did or not. Suddenly, her head hurt, and she raised her hands to her temples. He saw the splint on her wrist.

  “Did you break any bones?”

  “No,” she said. “It’s a sprain.”

  “Any other injuries?”

  She tried to filter out the kindness she heard in his voice. “The man who was with me dislocated his shoulder.” She swallowed back the anger in her throat. “Look, I just came here to warn you to call off the dogs. So help me, if there’s another attempt on my life, I’ll make sure you pay for the rest of your life.”

  “And what if I’m the wrong guy to pay?”

  “I don’t think you are.” With that, she clicked away from the cell.

  “Don’t go home,” he said, stopping her.

  She turned back to the cell. “What?”

  “I said, don’t go home. Whoever this is…he’ll come back. He’ll find you. I don’t think he’ll give up easily.”

  A foreboding chill went over her, and she stared at him for a long time.

  “No, it’s not a threat,” he said, as if winded. “It’s just good advice. You don’t need to go home tonight. If I were you, I wouldn’t go anywhere I usually go. Be careful.”

  Her anger seemed to dissipate like escaping air from a balloon. She walked out past Sid and back into the stairwell. Then, as Sid locked up, she stood at the bottom of the steps and took in a few deep breaths before she went back up to the police station.

  She was exhausted and terribly afraid. She wondered if Mark and Allie really didn’t mind if she slept in Justin’s room again. They had insisted, but weren’t they afraid to have her near them? She supposed they wouldn’t have suggested it if they didn’t want her there.

  She only hoped the killer didn’t somehow get wind of where she was. The last thing she wanted was to draw Mark and Allie into danger, too.

  Chapter Thirty

  Mark and Allie were both still up when Dan brought Jill to their house. When they saw saw the exhaustion on Jill’s face, Allie quickly ushered her to the baby’s room where she was going to sleep. Mark, worried about the pain and tension on Dan’s face, stepped out on the front porch with him.

  “You okay, buddy?” Mark asked.

  “No, I’m not okay,” Dan said. “I don’t want to leave her alone.”

  “Man, she’s not alone. I’m here with her.”

  “Yeah, but there’s no telling what could happen. Somebody’s out there, Mark. He got away. I’m scared for her.” He turned around quickly as a thought came to his mind. “How would it be if I just slept on your couch?”

  “Dan, you don’t need to sleep on the couch. Not unless you’re worried about him coming after you. I mean, you’re welcome to stay here, but I don’t think it’s necessary.”

  “I don’t know what I’m thinking,” Dan said. “You’d be crazy to want both of us here, making you a sitting duck.”

  Mark frowned. “That’s not it at all. That guy is probably still hiding out in the woods around Lake Pontchartrain somewhere. He doesn’t know to look for her here, anyway. What about you? You think he knows who you are?”

  “I don’t know.” His hand went up to his shoulder, and a pained look came across his face.

  “Maybe you need to take a pain pill. Want to come in and get some water?”

  He shook his head. “No. I don’t want to be out of it if something else happens. Mark, are you sure you can protect her if—”

  “Yes. Relax. I have it under control.”

  Dan began pacing in front of the porch steps. He looked as though he had more to say, but he seemed to catch himself. Taking a deep, weary breath, he said, “I guess I’ll go and let ya’ll get some sleep. I could use some myself.” He started out to the rental car.

  “Hey, Dan?”

  Dan stopped midstride and turned around. “Don’t worry, man.”

  Dan didn’t answer as he got into the car.

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Dan had trouble sleeping because the pain was too great, and he didn’t want to take a pain pill with a killer on the loose. The phone woke him at about 9 A.M. Startled, he jerked it up. It was someone from the highway department, telling him they had retrieved his Bronco from the bottom of Lake Pontchartrain. They wanted to know where to have it towed.

  He got up and called his insurance company, and they promised to take a look at the car as soon as it got to Newpointe. He didn’t have to hear from them to know it was totaled. As many times as the maniac had rammed it, it was totaled even before it had gone into the lake.

  He showered, then decided to go to the fire station to tell Ray, the fire chief, about his dislocated shoulder. He supposed it was for the best that he couldn’t work for a while. It would keep him available to look out for Jill until the killer was caught.

  As he headed to the station, he racked his brain for answers about the killer. If Jerry Ingalls was locked up, who could have run them off the road? Curious, he pulled over to a pay phone and, in the phone book hanging at the booth, he located Jerry Ingalls’s address. He didn’t know why he needed to see the Ingallses’ house, but he supposed it came from the same place as whatever had sent Jill down to Jerry’s jail cell last night.

  He changed his route and headed for Spencer Street on the north side of town. He counted out the addresses, then slowed down when he got to the Ingallses’. It was a little house, no bigger than where Mark and Allie lived. For a moment, he just sat there and stared up at the frame structure with wisteria vines growing up the porch post and full ferns hanging from hooks. It boggled his mind that a man who lived in a neat little house like this, with a tricycle on the side and a ball lying beside the front door, could actually be a killer. And it puzzled him even more that he might have others working with him. Maybe his wife was the one who had run them off the road last night. The wife who hung the ferns and swept the porch and planted the flowers. He had assumed the culprit was a man, but in the darkness he hadn’t been sure.

  Frustrated, he went to the station, tempted to take off his sling so he wouldn’t call attention to his injury. He was known as the one in great shape, the one who never had a problem with his weight, the one who jogged five miles a day and bench-pressed more than anybody in the department. He didn’t suppose he would be bench-pressing anything for a while.

  He found Ray Ford in the office they had recently built on to the back of the Midtown Station. Dan broke the news that he wouldn’t be able to come in for a while, and was barraged with questions from Ray about what had happened last night. Dan gave him a few sketchy answers, then headed into the kitchen.

  Nick—his coworker and preacher—was sitting at the table with books and papers spread out in front of him. “Whatcha doing? Writing your sermon for Sunday?”

  Nick looked up at him. “No, I’m getting ready to do two of the funerals tomorrow.” He nodded toward the sling on Dan’s arm. “I’m sure glad it won’t be yours, man.”

  “You and me both.” Dan pulled out a chair and sank down. “Pretty stupid, but I guess I forgot about the funerals. So much has been going on.”

  “Wanna talk about it?” Nick asked.

  Dan shook his head. “Don’t know what to say. Don’t even know what to think.”

  “Well, we could start with why you’ve made yourself Jill’s rescuer.”

  “I haven’t rescued her,” Dan argued. “Night before last, that man could have blown her away and I couldn’t have stopped him. Last night she called because her car broke down, which wasn’t a coincidence. The scumbag did something so it wouldn’t run. If I hadn’t shown up, he might have killed her right there.”

  “But you did show up. And then you got her out of the car before it went over the bridge. I’d call that a rescue.”

  Dan couldn’t help feeling defensive. “So what should I have done? Let her go over?”

  “No, of course not. But that kind of danger does kind of bond you, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah, it does.”
Dan stared down at the wood grain on the table. “Nick, have you ever considered marrying a woman just so you could protect her?”

  Nick started laughing, and Dan grinned. After a moment, both of their smiles faded. “I’m laughing, but it’s not so funny. Truth is, I can understand the feeling.”

  “Really?” Dan asked. He stood up and went to the refrigerator, got out some orange juice. “Cause see, I know that Jill’s not safe. And I have this overwhelming, irrational feeling that I’m the only one who can protect her. But I can’t move in with her and hover over her. I know it. So it’s actually been crossing my mind that maybe I should marry her so I could be there.” He got out a glass and began to pour. “Like she would even consider that in the first place. She’s not even sure she wants to date me yet, much less marry me.”

  Nick’s grin returned. “I don’t think I have to tell you that’s the wrong reason to get married, and I would not do the ceremony.”

  “But you said you understood it.”

  “I do,” Nick said. “There’s this woman that I think about…” His voice faded out, and Dan came back to the table.

  “Yeah? You’ve got a thing for a woman?”

  Nick shot him a look. “Being a preacher doesn’t exempt you from normal feelings, Dan. I wouldn’t call it ‘a thing.’ I just think about her sometimes.”

  Dan was riveted. “Go on.”

  Nick couldn’t meet Dan’s eyes as he spoke. “She’s not a Christian, and she’s a little reckless, and I keep feeling this heavy burden for her, like I’m the only one who can save her. Only she doesn’t listen to me. But so often, I’m tempted to ask her out to dinner or something…but then I know that if I did I might get more involved with her, I wouldn’t think clearly…” He looked up at Dan again. “The idea of rescuing someone is not a good basis for a relationship. Especially not a marriage.”

  Dan looked into his glass, as if the answers swirled there in the pulp. A wry grin stole across his face. “So you wouldn’t marry us,” Dan said, thinking out loud. “We could go to the justice of the peace. Who’s got that job now? Jesse Pruitt?”

  “Yeah, I think he’s still holding it. Come on, Dan. You don’t want to do that. You don’t want to marry her on a technicality. You want to get married under God.”

  Dan chuckled, considering that as he took a drink. “Well, all right. So what if I thought it over and realized that I really wanted to marry her for the right reasons? Because I want to take care of her for the rest of her life.”

  “You’re not ready,” Nick said.

  Dan’s grin fled. “How do you know?”

  “Because I’ve watched you and Jill for the last year. I’ve watched all the women you’ve taken out over the last few months, and all the ways you’ve avoided her. Just because she’s in danger now is no reason to start shopping for rings. Marriage isn’t going to protect her. Even if you’re married, you can’t be with her every minute.”

  “I know that,” Dan said. “It’s more than protection. For the past few months, I’ve been thinking about her a lot. Wishing I could call her. But there was part of me that just couldn’t. I didn’t want to start it up again, because I knew…”

  Nick’s eyes bored into his. “You knew what?”

  “I knew that if I called her one time, if I went out with her, if I gave an inch, that I’d be in for the long haul.”

  “The long haul?” Nick asked. “Now, that’s a healthy way to look at marriage. And if it took a crazy man with a gun to get you to make that move—”

  “So it takes a lot to break through this tough skull of mine.”

  “What does it take to break through hers? You said she doesn’t even know if she wants to date you.”

  Dan realized he had a point. “But she did call me when she was in trouble last night. There were a million people she could have called, right? But she called me.”

  “That’s a good sign,” Nick said. “But how many successful marriages claim close calls with death as the foundation? On the other hand, she’s vulnerable right now. So are you. Maybe you should just see how it goes. Spend some more time with her. Some time that isn’t filled with stress.”

  “If people would stop taking her hostage and running her off bridges, maybe we could do that.” Dan shook his head. “I don’t know why he wants her dead. I don’t understand it. She never does anything but help people. She spends her whole life trying to keep people out of jail. Keeping them from being sued, keeping them from getting taken. Why did they come after her so brutally?”

  “They came after you, too, pal.”

  “Only because I was with her,” he said.

  “That would make most guys avoid her like the plague,” Nick said. “But not you.”

  Dan shook his head. “I stayed away too long already.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Jill had been so tired the night before that she had not set the alarm, and she slept right through the baby’s crying and didn’t wake up until nine. The moment she noted the time, she leaped out of bed, threw on her robe, and ran out of the room.

  “Morning, Jill,” Allie said, standing in the kitchen with the baby on her hip.

  “I overslept!” Jill said, rushing for the telephone.

  “That’s okay,” she said. “You’re the boss.”

  “But I had appointments.” She punched out her office number, then winced at the pain in her wrist.

  “Jill Clark’s office,” her secretary said.

  “Sheila, this is Jill.”

  “You’re still alive?” Sheila asked.

  Jill swallowed back the aggravation she often felt when talking to the woman. If she wasn’t so competent, Jill would have replaced her years ago. The one time she’d fired her, she’d learned that there wasn’t anyone else in town as capable, so she’d hired her back. “No, I’m not dead,” she said. “Did you hear that I was?”

  “No, if I’d heard that I probably would have taken the day off.”

  “Sorry I spoiled your fun.” She raked her fingers through her hair. “Look, I overslept. I’ll be in shortly.”

  “If you don’t mind my saying so, I don’t want to be within a mile of you today, and I don’t think any of your clients do, either. They’ve got enough problems.”

  Jill frowned and opened her mouth to argue, then realized that Sheila was right. “All right, Sheila,” she said. “Cancel my appointments. I guess I could use a day off.”

  “What a relief. I’ll go home, too.”

  Jill closed her eyes. “You’re right. Why don’t you forward the calls to your house? I hadn’t thought about it, but my office probably isn’t the safest place to be right now.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “And don’t tell anybody where I am.”

  “Where are you?”

  Jill closed her eyes. “Never mind. Don’t worry about it.”

  “What if somebody really wants to know?”

  “Then I want you to really not tell them.”

  “And what if they come after me and torture the information out of me?”

  “Then you’ll be safe, because you won’t know.”

  She heard Sheila pause long enough to light up a cigarette. The woman constantly denied that she ever smoked in the office, but every time she came in she was certain she smelled smoke.

  “My doctor thinks I’m under too much stress as it is,” Sheila said. “I don’t need bombs going off around me and bullets flying…”

  “Sheila, I said you could go home.”

  “Well, if you’d let me off the phone, I could go.”

  Jill slammed the phone down and bounced down on the couch. Allie was standing in the doorway watching her. “When are you going to fire her?” she asked. “She treats you with so little respect.”

  “Even smart alecks have to work somewhere,” Jill said wearily. “Besides, she’s a whiz in the office. I don’t have to like her very much.”

  Allie put Justin on the floor near a play center, and Jill got
down on the floor next to him. He grinned up at her as he chewed on a set of plastic keys. He handed them to her, and she arched her eyebrows. “Thank you, Justin!” She looked up at Jill as she stroked his soft hair. “He gets sweeter every day.”

  “You need to get you one,” Allie said with a smile.

  “Nope,” Jill said. “I think I’m called to be single.”

  “Yeah, right.”

  “You don’t think people can be called to the single life?”

  “Oh, sure I do. Paul the apostle apparently was. Lots of people are. Just not you. And if you’re not, then Dan just might be the guy.”

  “And if I can prove he’s not, will you leave me alone about this?”

  “Hey, you don’t have a mother nagging you for grandchildren,” Allie said. “So I have to do it.”

  Jill’s expression faded. She missed her mother, who had died while she was in college, and wished she could be here to talk to. Allie saw her expression and instantly regretted her words.

  “Oh, Jill. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to sound so flip about your mom.”

  “It’s okay,” she said, holding a mirror up for Justin. He saw his reflection and grabbed at it. “So my children will be your grandchildren? Do I need to remind you that I’m older than you are?”

  Allie laughed. “I’d always hoped we were going to have children grow up together. It’s not too late, you know.”

  Jill shook her head. “You’re hopeless.”

  “Actually, I’m full of hope. You’re the one who’s afraid to dream. Besides, there’s nothing I love more than a good wedding.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Lately there was nothing Aunt Aggie loved more than a good funeral. She cut through the funeral home to the visitation room to get a look at Sue Ellen Hanover before they closed the coffin. But to her chagrin, it hadn’t been opened. So she wandered into the room next door, where a ninety-eight-year-old woman lay. Aunt Aggie recognized her right away, and pretended she had come to pay her respects as the family greeted her. The funeral director came into the room, as he always did when Aunt Aggie was on the premises. It was as if he was a security guard hired to keep her in line.