Deadly Ties (2 page)

Ms. Reese slug the brown leather strap of her purse over her shoulder. “Good afternoon, Dr. Kinncaid.” She walked to the elevators and jabbed the down button repeatedly.

“Good afternoon, Ms. Reese.” He started to say ‘have a nice day’.

Yeah, that’d be good. What in the hell was with him? Gavin stood there with his hands on hips, watching the woman step into the elevator and the doors quietly swishing shut.

Damn woman. So much for his apology. He frowned for a minute. What the hell was the matter with him? He was a doctor. It wasn’t exactly standard procedure to come out, inform someone of fatal news then grill them about job proficiency. And she’d questioned
his
competency. Gavin wasn’t a braggart, but he knew he was one of the most successful doctors in his field for his age. He glared at the shut elevator doors, wondering at what had just happened and his total lack of tact, lack of control.

And if Gavin Kinncaid was anything, it was in control.

It was only then, he realized she talked like Jesslyn, his sister-in-law. Ms. Taylor Reese smiled her vowels. Maybe she was from Texas. On that absurd thought came another, more pressing one.

Social Services and lawyers. He shook his head as he turned and shoved the door back open through which he’d entered the waiting room. Hell. He needed to call the Chief of Staff and let her know what was going on.

Still cursing, he walked back up the hallway. The battered face of a young dark haired girl haunted him.

So much for his day off.

* * * *

Journal Entry
I know I said I thought this journaling stuff was stupid, but I’ve kinda gotten used to it.

Dr. Petropolis was right. It helps to write things out sometimes, so I guess I’ll keep doing it.

Today is hot here in D.C. I really like that Taylor and I moved here. I didn’t like Austin. I

10

hate Austin.

I’m at the neighbor’s house. Jeremy Webster and I are friends. He has two brothers.

They’re really cool. And his mom and dad are neat too. I hope Jeremy and I get to be in the same
class when school starts.

Taylor got a call this morning to go to the hospital. We were supposed to go to the
Smithsonian again. I love the Smithsonian, but a call came about one of the kids she tries to help.

She said I could go with her, but I don’t like hospitals. They bring back all those bad
things I wanna forget. They remind me of Austin, and of HER. Nina. Dr. Petropolis said I don’t
have to call her mom if I don’t want to and I DON’T WANT TO. So I won’t. Dr. Petropolis is
nice and she understands stuff, but I still don’t like talking about all that stuff she wants to know
about. At least I like her better than Dr. Siel, my shrink in Austin. I’m not supposed to call them
shrinks, but shrinks binks, it’s what they are.

So, that’s why I begged Taylor if I could stay with Jeremy. I didn’t want to go to the
hospital. And I’m glad I didn’t.

Sometimes I know things, like that time I couldn’t find my bow to my violin and then I just
knew. Like that. But today it was worse. Bad. And I don’t really like when I see things. I get all
cold and I can’t hear things around me. It’s kinda like when I sit on the bottom of the pool when
we go swimming and I can hear other kids yelling and splashing but it’s muffled.

At least Jeremy was in the house or he might think I’m a freak and not want to be my
friend anymore. I was up in his tree fort when I got all cold and stuff and I just knew. Just knew
that the girl Taylor was trying to help wasn’t going to make it.

She’s dead. I think a blue eyed doctor with black hair told Taylor. I ‘saw’ them arguing,
but he’s nice, I think. Maybe not. Just cause someone looks nice doesn’t mean they are.

Lots of times people are just mean, no matter what they look like. Some people just like to
hurt others. I wish I knew why. O.K. gotta go. Mrs. Webster has snacks ready and is calling us.

* * * *

Taylor thrummed her fingers on the steering wheel as she sat in late Saturday traffic. The knowledge that Amy was dead still hadn’t sunk in, she knew that. It was vague, in the background. It had to be, because if she dwelled on it, she knew there wasn’t a damn thing she could do about it and the failure would consume her. The entire situation had all been so pointless, so preventable.

Dr. Kinncaid’s words echoed in her and made her question herself.
Had
she done enough? Could she have done more? Was there anyway she could have prevented this tragedy?

No answers came. And stupid, proud anger still shimmered through her at that arrogant doctor. Were all med school grads given classes in self-assurance? Every last doctor she’d ever met were the most self-assured people, arrogant and usually rude.

Rude or not, those blue, blue eyes of his kept interrupting her thoughts. They reminded her of the shade of the Northern Atlantic. And the rest of him hadn’t been bad either, in a rugged, six-foot-four-or-five-kind-of-pro-football-player way. His sharp nose was ridged and his square jaw had bunched when she’d questioned his doing his job properly. She’d been surprised when she’d met him in the ER before the surgery. He’d thought she was Amy’s sister because he’d said she was too young to be the girl’s mother. When she’d told him she was the social worker, he

11

thought she was too young for that too.

Figures. Even insulted her then. Though it hadn’t sounded like an insult. For a man as large as he was, he all but swallowed up the space in a room, it seemed he’d have a loud booming voice. Instead, his voice was soft, like distant thunder, faintly echoing.

But enough about Mr. Doctor.

Taylor held a hand to her cheek. She’d just left the meeting at the city jail with her boss, the prosecutor from the D.A.’s office and the Gibbonses. Mr. Gibbons had taken exception to a remark Taylor had made and before anyone could stop him, he’d decked her clean out of her chair. The man had hard fists, but then, were there soft ones? Maybe he had scrambled something in her brains after all.

The prosecutor had all but danced with glee at the new charge against Mr. Gibbons. Glad she could be of assistance.

Carefully, she moved her jaw out and in, back and forth. It felt like her eye was about to pop out of its socket.

Taylor held the baggie of crushed ice to her face as she waited on the light to turn green.

She checked her watch--five o’clock. Great. Ryan was probably wondering where in the world she was. She’d dropped him off to play at the neighbors when the call came in about Amy earlier this morning. What a weekend.

She pulled the visor down. The little lighted mirror reflected off her cheek.

Good God, it was going to look really bad tomorrow. Her cheek was already bruising.

Wonderful. This was just what she needed.

On a sigh, she flipped the visor back up and moved along with the rest of the traffic as they crawled through the D.C. streets.

She was ready to go home, where things were normal, and figure out where she and Ryan were going, or if they still had time to go somewhere for the weekend. She needed to make today up to him because today was supposed to be their day. Instead he’d been playing at the neighbors’, Mr. and Mrs. Webster, who had three boys. She’d been gone since almost noon, though she’d called and checked in with Mrs. Webster before the meeting in the police station.

Ryan was fine. The boys had spent the afternoon up in the tree fort.

Taylor shook her head. At least Ryan was making some friends.

What to do to make up today to him?

Maybe they would head up Montgomery County and see some of the sites. She’d heard the countryside was scattered with bed and breakfast stops. They could stay at one tonight and catch some of the tourist traps tomorrow. Having moved here under a month ago from Texas, both she and her son were still finding their way around, in more ways than one.

Her cheek throbbed and she gently touched it. Some ibuprofen would be great right about now. Then again, it seemed she and Ryan had always had to find a new path in some hostile situation. Maybe one day things would go smoothly for them.

12

That day was not today. Taylor took a deep breath and tried to see through the rain blanketing down from the night sky.

Ryan, headphones stretched across his light brown hair, hummed some classical piece from the back seat of her older Mercedes, one of the few things she got out of the settlement with Charles Shepard.

She slowed down again and flicked her lights as an oncoming car barreled towards her.

Taylor hated to drive in weather like this. She wanted to pull over, but there wasn’t really a shoulder. She’d taken a wrong damn turn at some point.

“Are we getting close? I don’t see any lights, Taylor,” Ryan commented from the back seat. She sighed. “No, neither do I. I need to turn around somewhere.” Though she had no idea where. “We could just spend the night at that last little town in a motel. It’s okay. We don’t have to stay in some historical bed and breakfast.”

Taylor’s head hurt, the ibuprofen doing little to take the throb out of the left side of her face. Finally the rain lessened and she saw the road sign. She grabbed the map and tried to find it while slowly maneuvering the narrow winding road.

Hell.

She tossed the map aside. “I think I’ll just go a little further up this road, whatever this road is, and find a spot to turn around.”

“Okay.” He started humming again. Ryan was always humming. He was gifted in music, thank goodness. She discovered his talent by accident, but he’d become more than proficient in playing the violin in an amazingly short amount of time. She often wondered if it was God’s way of bringing something wonderful and beautiful into his otherwise darkened life.

Taylor listened to his humming, Beethoven. Figured. The boy loved Beethoven and Handel and she had no idea what else.

The wet black pavement gleamed in her headlights. As she rounded a curve, the steering wheel jerked in her hand. The tires swooshed over the large puddle of water.

Her heart slammed in her chest.

She grabbed the wheel and realized they were heading across the yellow center line.

Hydroplane.

“Oh, God.”

She jerked on the wheel and the car spun out of control.

“Taylor!” Ryan yelled from the back seat.

“Hang on!”

13

The car rocked over the opposite non-existent shoulder and nose-dived into the steep bar ditch on the opposite side of the road. It slammed to a bone jarring halt against a tree. The airbag exploded from the steering wheel.

For a moment, she sat absolutely still. Then she punched the already deflating airbag out of the way. Tired of fighting it, she reached down and leaned the seat back.

Her heart slammed against her ribs. Lightning flashed outside, thunder ripped the air apart. Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God.

She licked her lips. “R-Ryan?”

Oh, God.

“Yeah?” he whispered.

The seatbelt. Her fingers fumbled with the latch, and she shook her head. When it snapped open, she turned in her seat.

“Ryan?”

She could see his ashen face in the dim lights. She reached over the seat, her hands running over him.

“I’m okay. I’m fine, Taylor. Are you okay?” he asked, letting her fluster over him.

“Taylor, you’re crying. Are you hurt?” It was the fear lacing his words that stopped her.

A deep breath. She just had to breathe. For one moment, they stared at each other. Ryan’s sky blue eyes and freckles clear in the low light against his pale cheeks, his scar a pink contrast.

He was okay. he said he was okay. “You’re sure you’re not hurt?” she asked, her voice trembling.

“I’m okay. Really. You can stop crying.”

She grinned and wiped a hand over her cheeks.

“What happened?” he asked her.

She thought, then shrugged. “I think we hydroplaned.”

“What’s that?”

What was a little accident when it afforded an eight-year-old such questions?

Taylor sighed and sat back, still facing the back seat. “It’s when water comes between the tires and the pavement and you glide instead of stay on the road,” she simplified.

She closed her eyes and reached for her phone.

Damn it! No. She whirled around in the seat, looked in the console. “No. No. No.”

Where was it?

“The phone is charging at home,” Ryan told her.

And a lot of good it did her there. Damn it. Why hadn’t she grabbed it?

Rain pelted down from the heavens again and lightning strobed the outside world.

This was
not
happening.

What the hell could she do? It was miles back to the town and she could hardly walk in the rain with Ryan and she wasn’t irresponsible or stupid enough to leave him here. Someone could come along and….

“Taylor, there are lights over there.”

She jerked around. Sure enough. Headlights winked through the trees.

“Thank you, God.” She reached under her seat and pulled out the umbrella. “Stay in the car.”

14

“Be careful. The policeman on the Discovery Channel said how you shouldn’t flag cars down and--"

“Yes, and he’s right. But right now, I have little choice.” She opened the door. “Ryan, stay. In. The. Car.”

His huff floated on the air. “Yes, ma’am.”

She shut her door. The sweet smell of rain, musty wet ground, and earthy leaves and mud assailed her. Taylor could barely hear the sound of the car coming. She needed to hurry, or it would pass them by and God only knew when the next one would come.

The slope of the ditch wasn’t easy to climb in her slick soled shoes, but she reached the top. Huffing, she waited for the car to come around the corner. Already soaked, she cursed the umbrella and tried to keep the rain off.