Unforeseen Danger (36 page)

A branch underneath his boot snapped and Darcy whirled to face him.
 
A gunshot cracked through the air.
 
Jake felt a curious sense of weightlessness as he fell backwards in the snow.

***

“No!” Nikki screamed.
 

Darcy turned on her and Nikki heard another boom of gunfire.
 
She watched as some invisible force lifted Darcy off her feet like a rag doll and slammed her against the ground.
 
It took her a moment to comprehend that Darcy had been shot, too.
 
Matt ran out of the clearing toward them.

In slow motion, she saw Darcy struggle to rise.
 
With a trembling hand, she lifted her gun and pointed it at Jake.

Nikki charged her.
 

They tumbled over and over in the snow, scuffling for control over the weapon.
 
The muzzle of the pistol jammed painfully in Nikki’s ribs and she fought to turn the gun away from her.
 
Gunfire exploded between them.
 
And although she felt no pain, Nikki felt a sudden burst of heat and wondered if she’d been shot.
 
Darcy’s
gray
eyes stared into hers for a moment before she collapsed on top of her.

“Nikki!
 
Nikki!” she heard Jake shout, and she tried to wiggle out from underneath Darcy.
 

He ran toward her, clutching his shoulder, but he looked like he was going to be all right.
 
Nikki was so relieved she nearly sobbed.
 
Scooting out from underneath her, Nikki rolled Darcy onto her back.
 
She yanked off her coat and pressed it to Darcy’s midsection, trying desperately to stop the blood gushing from her wound.

“Somebody
help
her!” she cried.

After the paramedics rushed Darcy from the scene, Nikki fell on her knees and scooped up a handful of snow.
 
She furiously scrubbed her hands with it, trying to clean the blood from her red, swollen fingers as hot tears streamed down her face.

Jake called her name, but she couldn’t stop.
 
He knelt in front of her and seized both of her wrists.
  

“Nikki, stop,” he said gently.

She stared into his eyes, and then collapsed against him, sobbing into his chest.
 
It wasn’t until he helped her to her feet and wrapped his coat around her that she realized how wet and cold she was.
 
Her coat lay abandoned on the ground, soaked in Darcy’s blood.

“It’s over,” he whispered.
 
“It’s finally over.”

Nikki sat in the waiting room with Matt as the doctor patched Jake’s shoulder.
 
He  kept asking Nikki questions, but she was too disoriented to answer most of them.
 
He called a doctor over, and she let them lead her to one of the curtained off cubicles.
 
Even though they stood beside her, they sounded distant.

She heard Jake’s voice and tried to force herself to concentrate.
 

“Shock,” the doctor was saying, and Nikki heard a commotion as Jake pushed aside the curtain.
 
Another doctor followed him, arguing with him about something, but Jake turned to him and said, “I’m fine.
 
It’s just a flesh wound and I’m not staying here.”

She met his gaze and he said, “Nikki, are you okay?”

Nodding, she held out her arms to him and he held her.

“Take me to Catherine’s.”
 
Glancing at Matt, she said, “I’ll tell you everything.”

Her fury built with every mile.
 
All the agonizing, all the torment.
 
The pain Jake had suffered.
 
Because of lies.
 
They pulled up in the drive and she jumped out.

Nikki stalked into the house, still covered in Darcy’s blood.
 
Zeke and Elaine hovered around a frantic Catherine, and they all looked confused.
 

Zeke made the mistake of approaching her.

“Are you all right, dear—”

Chaos broke out when Nikki slugged him, a perfect right hook that caught him off-guard and nearly knocked him off his feet.

Matt, with his deep voice, boomed, “Enough!”
 

If he hadn’t been standing in the middle of Catherine’s living room, Nikki had the feeling he might’ve fired his gun in the air, like some cowboy from a Wild West show.

Nikki told her story, exactly as Darcy had related it.
 
The others sat in stunned silence, a silence broken only by Zeke’s unconvincing protestations of innocence and Matt’s occasional curse.
 

Of course, Zeke denied the whole thing, but no one believed him.
 
Even his daughter refused to meet his eyes.
 
Jake never moved and his silence was more terrifying to Nikki than anything.

When there was nothing left to say, Nikki got up and walked outside, needing a moment alone.
 
She was afraid Jake would hate her now.
 
Even though it hadn’t actually happened, she’d intended to sleep with Zeke, just to hurt him, and had destroyed his mother’s marriage in the process.
 

All because she hadn’t trusted him.

The front door creaked open, and she knew it was Jake, but she didn’t turn around, afraid of what she might read in his eyes.

“Do you want to go for a drive?” he said quietly.

Nikki didn’t, because she didn’t know if she wanted to hear what he had to say, but she nodded.
 

They got in Catherine’s car and backed down the driveway.
 
Neither of them said anything for a long while, until Jake finally pulled over in a little park area.
 
When he turned to face her, Nikki realized she was holding her breath.
 

He took her hand.
 
“Do you think you could ever forgive me, for all I’ve done?
 
All this time, I was punishing you, but it was
all my
fault.
 
If I had told you about Elaine—”

“You don’t hate me?” she blurted, amazed.
 
“For Zeke?”

Jake looked at her like she was crazy.
 
“Of course not!
 
You were drugged.
 
He tried to take advantage of you.
 
You
didn’t do anything.”

Nikki threw her arms around his neck and kissed him.
 

***

November 29

Nikki opened the front door and grabbed a freezing Matt by the shirtsleeve.
 
“Get in here,” she said.
 
“Where’s your coat?”

“Real men don’t need coats,” he said through chattering teeth.

“Real men don’t remember their coats, is more like it,” Catherine said behind her and Jake laughed.

“That too,” Matt admitted.

“Want coffee?” Jake asked.

“That’d be great.”

They gathered around the kitchen table and watched Matt gulp his coffee.
 
Finally, he quit shivering and said, “I came to tell you about Darcy.
 
They reached a decision and found her competent to stand trial.
 
It’ll probably happen sometime in the middle of January.”

“About the same time I’ll be in divorce court,” Catherine remarked wryly.

“She’s still saying she doesn’t know anything about the passenger?” Jake asked.

Matt sighed.
 
“Yep.
 
Says she doesn’t know, and I don’t have anything either.
 
Thought I had a hit with a missing girl from
Ohio
the other day, but the DNA didn’t pan out.”

Jake slipped his hand inside Nikki’s and she squeezed his fingers.
 
They fell silent as they thought about the unidentified victim.

Catherine broke the silence.
 
She smiled at them and said, “Well, guess who came by to see me last night?”

Nikki smiled.
 
She already knew, had talked to her on the phone just before Catherine arrived, but hadn’t had a chance to tell Jake.

“Elaine.
 
We had a long heart-to-heart.
 
I told her that even though I’m divorcing her father, I want to be there for her and Eliot.
 
After ten years, they’re like my children, too, and I don’t want to lose them.
 
I think we made a lot of progress, cleared up some misunderstandings.
 
I’ve wanted to do that for so long.”

“I’m glad to hear that,” Jake said.

Matt cleared his throat.
 
“There’s something I’ve
been wanting
to do for a long time, too.”
 
He glanced at Catherine and Nikki watched a red blush creep up his neck.
 
“You remember that remark you made about me never asking you to dinner?”

Catherine smiled.
 
“I remember.”

“Well, I’m asking now.
 
Don’t want the chance to slip by me again.
 
When your divorce is finalized, you think you might
wanna
go to dinner with an old dog like me?”

“I think we can arrange that,” she said with a wink.
 
“Better yet, you can come over and I’ll fix my famous chicken casserole.”

Jake groaned, and Matt’s face lit up.
 
“Jake lived through it.
 
I probably can, too.
 
So it’s a date?”

“It’s a date,” she agreed.

***

The next morning, Jake was eating breakfast as Nikki read the Sunday paper.
 
When the doorbell rang, she jumped up to get it.
 

A handsome blonde boy of about eighteen stood on the doorstep.

He glanced at her in surprise.
 

“Hey, MP!
 
Why haven’t you called?
 
Mom’s been going nuts.”

Nikki frowned and turned to glance at Jake.
 
Pursing her lips, she turned back to the boy.
 
When she didn’t speak, the boy’s perplexed look turned to one of unease.
 
Suddenly, the room seemed to tilt.
 

“C’mon, sis,” he joked half-heartedly.
 
“It hasn’t been that long.”

Nikki stared at him in confusion.
 

Images flashed through her mind in a crazy blur and she lurched backward.

“Chase?” she whispered, just before everything went black.

***

Jake lunged for her, but the boy grabbed her first, barely catching her before she hit the floor.
 

Reaching to take her from him, an inexplicable feeling of dread suddenly overcame
Jake,
much like he had the day he found the socks.

“Who are you and how do you know Nikki?” he demanded as he carried her into the living room and gently laid her on the couch.
 

“I was fixing to ask you the same thing, Mister,” he said, his young face stricken.
 
“My name’s Chase Parker and I don’t know any ‘Nikki’.
 
That’s my sister, Selena, and I want to know what’s going on.”

Nikki moaned, startling them both.
 
Chase knelt beside her and took her hand.

“Hey, Selena.
 
What’s happening here?”

Selena.
 

Jake stared at him uncomprehendingly, watching as she threw her arms around him.
 

“Chase!” she cried and buried her face in his neck.

“What’s going on?
 
What’s happened to her?” the boy demanded, but Jake was too stunned to speak.
 

The wheels in his mind were spinning furiously and coming up with lemons.
 
Dazed, he sank into the sofa and stared at Chase.
 
This all felt like a strange dream.

“Look, mister.
 
You need to say something—
”
 
Chase
sounded very young and very frightened.
 
“Okay, how about this…I’ll tell you what I know,
then
you can fill in the rest.”
 
He took a deep breath before continuing, still holding Nikki protectively.

“My sister Selena left
Alabama
back in November to search for her sister.
 
She and I are both adopted.
 
She has a friend who’s a computer whiz, and he did a little hacking.
 
She’s always wanted to find her birth parents and find out whether or not she had any other brothers or sisters.
 
This guy told her she had a sister and somehow he came up with this address.
 
We let her have her time, but Mom started getting worried when she hadn’t heard from Selena.
 
That’s not like her, not to call or anything.
 
So I decided to drive up here, to see if she was okay…”
 
He paused, and said tersely, “Your turn.”