Sacred Trust

Critical Praise for

HANNAH ALEXANDER'S

Novels

SACRED TRUST

“Alexander is great at drawing the reader into her story line and keeping them hooked until the resolution of the plot.”

— Christian Retailing

A KILLING FROST

“Running dialogue and a few twists will keep romantic suspense fans coming back for more.”

— Publishers Weekly

DOUBLE BLIND

“Native American culture clashes with Christian principles in the freshly original plot.”

— Romantic Times BOOKreviews

GRAVE RISK

“The latest in Alexander’s Hideaway series is filled with mystery and intrigue. Readers familiar with the series will appreciate how the author keeps the characters fresh and appealing.”

— Romantic Times BOOKreviews

FAIR WARNING

“The plot is interesting and the resolution filled with action.”

— Romantic Times BOOKreviews

LAST RESORT

“The third novel in Alexander’s Hideaway romantic suspense series (after the Christy Award-winning Hideaway and Safe Haven ) is a gripping tale with sympathetic characters that will draw readers into its web. The kidnapped Clarissa’s inner dialogue may remind some of Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones. ”

— Library Journal

Sacred Trust

Hannah Alexander

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To the Great Physician,

the Author and Finisher of our faith.

In memory of our fathers:

Johnie R. Cook & Ralph B. Hodde

We wish to thank Joan Marlow Golan and her excellent staff for giving us this opportunity to share our books with a new reading audience.

Sacred Trust

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty-One

Chapter Twenty-Two

Chapter Twenty-Three

Chapter Twenty-Four

Chapter Twenty-Five

Chapter Twenty-Six

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Chapter Twenty-Eight

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Chapter Thirty

Chapter Thirty-One

Chapter Thirty-Two

Chapter Thirty-Three

Epilogue

Questions for Discussion

Prologue

F rankie Verris held the plastic cup in his trembling left hand and stared out the bedroom window. Broken limbs from winter storms littered an unmowed lawn. Weeds lay flattened in the vegetable garden. The jonquils and tulips, which Doris had always loved so much, had refused to bloom this spring. It pretty well summed up Frankie’s life over the past year, with Doris gone. Another sleepless night, filled with pain and loneliness, had brought him to this despair.

He looked at the easy-open prescription vial in his right hand, cherishing even the look of his wife’s name on the white label. Why hadn’t he cherished her more when she was alive?

With unsteady fingers, he flipped off the cap and poured the pills onto the dusty chest beside the window. They had helped Doris sleep. Would they work for his pain?

He gagged on the first swallow, but it finally went down. He sank into the bedside chair and took two more. They went easier. He watched the silent flight of a hawk as it winged over the horizon of forest past the yard. Everything seemed to remind him of Doris these days. She’d loved the hawks because of “the poetry in their wings.” She’d loved so many things. She’d loved him, unworthy as he was.

She’d loved God most of all.

For years Frankie had been jealous of God, often resentful because of the special relationship Doris seemed to have with Him. And now God had taken her and there was nothing left.

He swallowed two more pills, then kept going, two at a time. It grew easier and easier.

The drug was fast acting, and he appreciated that. He didn’t want to sit around and wait for it to work. In fact, he thought he might be feeling the first effects already….

Jacob Casey gripped the telephone receiver hard, fighting back another wave of pain in his upper thigh. “Hello, emergency room? This is Cowboy again. I’m coming in with another injury.” It had been a few months since they’d seen him, and he’d never been there in the daytime. Maybe today’s would be a different staff, and maybe this time the doc on duty wouldn’t give him the familiar three-hour sermon about being careful around wild animals.

He grimaced as the secretary questioned him. “Nope, no ambulance. I’ll do it myself.” He’d called an ambulance once—last year when the bison had kicked the paddock gate over on him. It had taken him longer to get to the hospital then than ever before or since.

He looked down to find more blood dripping from his thigh. “Can’t take the time to talk. Just be ready for me. My pet cat bit me. No rabies, so don’t even think about shots.” Leonardo was well vaccinated.

With a short grunt Cowboy hung up the phone and reached for his hat. The room started to go black on him, and he lowered his head. Must be losing more blood than I thought. Forget the hat. He picked up his keys from the kitchen table and flung one last, angry glance out the window toward the cage outside where Leonardo the lion paced from end to end. Let him go hungry if he was going to behave like this.

At this rate there would be blood all over Cowboy’s beautiful vintage Mustang. That cat had a lot to answer for.

Frankie stood up unsteadily from his perch at the un-curtained window. The sun had passed the tree line and now blasted through the bedroom with unrelenting force. Dust particles danced in the sunbeams, and Frankie stared at them for a moment, fascinated. The neighbor kids would want to see this. He’d have to show them the next time they came over….

No, he wasn’t planning to be here to show them. He was going to be with Doris by then.

He would be with Doris, wouldn’t he? She was dead and he’d be dead, in the ground.

His mind worked through that thought slowly. Doris had never believed she would just end up in the ground. She was sure she was going to heaven. He’d gotten sick of listening to her talk about heaven so much. But it sure had comforted him after she was gone.

Frankie’s hands felt numb. He wiggled his fingers and tried to shake the muzziness from his head, but it just made him dizzier. Man, oh, man, this drug is working fast.

Maybe he didn’t want it to work so fast. What about the kids next door? He hadn’t thought about them. What if this drug worked and he died, and those little kids found him?

He did not want that to happen.

Using all his strength to force his feet to move, he walk-stumbled from the bedroom toward the living room. He’d better try to reach that phone. He could call 9-1-1 and stop all this. Then, even if he died, the kids wouldn’t be the ones who found him.

Ivy Richmond sat on the chair closest to the front door and listened to the siren. Soon the ambulance would pull up outside. They’d take care of everything. She pressed her hands against her chest and tried to breathe slowly, as if that would help normalize the crazy rhythm of her heart. This was not a heart attack. She wouldn’t let it be.

So what was it? Stress? She could get philosophical about it and say she had a broken heart. It would be true. Her heart was breaking more and more every day, but she hadn’t expected to get so physical about it. She’d experienced grief before, but maybe it was different every time. Maybe it dug deeper each time until it finally destroyed either the mind or the body. Or maybe she was just being melodramatic. She needed to snap out of this.

The siren stopped as the ambulance pulled up outside. She could see the reflection of the lights against her living-room drapes. Time to let them in.

She stood up and opened the door just as they stepped up to knock.

“Mrs. Richmond?” It was the big guy she’d seen before.

She nodded and stepped back. “This way. She’s in the first bedroom.” She gestured down the hallway, and her hand shook.

The man stopped in front of her. “Are you okay?”

“I didn’t call for me,” she snapped. “It’s my mother. Cancer. Get her to the hospital!”

Frankie never realized how much effort it took just to walk. He could not concentrate long enough to form his steps. He finally leaned against the wall and pulled himself down the hallway that seemed to stretch for miles. If he could just get to the phone…

Doris would be so ashamed of him, trying to buy his way out of life like this. He couldn’t do it. He wanted her to be proud of him when they greeted each other again.

Would they ever see each other? What if she was right about heaven and hell?

He needed time to think about it. He had to reach that phone.

There it sat on the end table. Frankie teetered as he stepped away from the wall and reached forward. His foot caught on something, and he fell as if in slow motion.

Yes, he should have thought about this to begin with. He could crawl so much easier than he could walk. He inched across the remaining space on his elbows and knees and raised his hand toward the phone. He knocked off the receiver, and it fell next to him. He squinted at the face of the dial pad and realized he’d lost his glasses. He peered closer, fighting the heavy darkness that rushed in toward him like a hard wind. He hit the first button: nine. He found the one and poked it, then raised his finger to hit it again, but the black wind grabbed him.

The receiver slipped from his hand, and his head and shoulders slumped helplessly onto the carpet.

Chapter One

A delicate carpet of spring-green crept across the central Arkansas-Missouri border. The buds of serviceberry and dogwood had clothed their trees in pristine white just in time to welcome Dr. Lukas Bower to his new place of residence in Knolls, Missouri. He refused to call it home yet. After his most recent experiences in the job market, he couldn’t place his trust in these strangers. Nevertheless, nestled between patchwork properties of Mark Twain National Forest, this Ozark community of ten thousand promised to meet the needs of a country boy who loved the outdoors, especially hiking. When he had driven down from Kansas City to check out the area, the first order of business, before interviewing for the position of full-time emergency room physician, was to count the logging trails and off-road-vehicle paths that crisscrossed the forest. He’d even followed several of the trails in his Jeep. By the time he’d appeared for the interview with Mrs. Estelle Pinkley, the hospital administrator, he was sold on the place.

He was just finishing his usual morning repast of grease and eggs in the hospital cafeteria when the phone rang for him. He recognized the voice of an emergency room registered nurse.

“Dr. Bower, this is Beverly. We have a man by the name of Jacob Casey on his way here in his own car. He says he’s been bitten by his pet cat. He sounds pretty excited about it.”

Lukas frowned. “His cat bit him?”

“I gathered that the bite was pretty bad,” answered the RN.

“Rabies?”

“He specifically said there were no rabies. From the way he talked, the secretary thinks he’s been here before.”

“Okay, Beverly, I’ll be there shortly. Would you please pull his chart?” How much damage could a house pet do?

“But I’ve got good news,” she said. “We’ll have double nursing coverage through the noon rush.”

“As far as I know, this cat bite is the noon rush.”

Beverly chuckled. “Don’t worry, when Lauren and I do a double-coverage shift together, we always have some excitement.”

“I’ll trust your judgment.” Lukas hung up and took the one-minute walk to the emergency room.

He stepped in to find everything quiet. “Beverly, did Mr. Casey estimate how long it would take him to—”

The sudden blare of a car horn interrupted him and continued, obnoxiously loud.

“What on earth…?” Beverly walked through the open E.R. entrance and disappeared down the hallway. In less than fifteen seconds the honking stopped. Beverly came running back.

“Dr. Bower, Carol, I need your help.” She reached for one of the two gurneys sitting just inside the entrance. “There’s a man parked in the ambulance bay who looks like he’s bleeding all over the place. He’s alone.” She pushed the gurney out the door, with Lukas and Carol, the secretary, close behind.

By the time they reached the bay, the forty-odd-year-old man had opened his door and now clung to it desperately as he tried to get to his feet.

“Can’t seem to stand up,” he grated in a deep voice. His face was the color of recycled paper, and even his lips looked bloodless. “Cat bit me.”

Lukas, Beverly and Carol grabbed him and eased him onto the gurney.

Beverly gaped at him, then at the blood around his upper right thigh. “A cat did this?”

He held out a set of keys to her. “I always wanted a beautiful redhead to drive my Mustang. Take good care of her.” His eyes shut and his head dropped sideways.

“Let’s get him inside.” Lukas closed the car door. “Beverly, give those keys to Carol. She can drive this car out of the way and park it as soon as we get him transferred to a bed.”

“Oh, come on!” Beverly protested. “He told me I could take care of it.”

“He needs you worse than his car does.” Lukas held out his hand as they pushed the gurney through the automatic sliding glass doors. “The keys, please.”

Beverly curled her lip at him, but handed over the set of keys. “I’ve never driven a Mustang before.”

“Thank you.” Lukas handed them to Carol. “Would you do the honors? Beverly, let’s get an IV established on this man immediately, and we need to get his clothes off and see where the blood is coming from.”

While they worked on him, the double-coverage nurse arrived. Lauren groaned when she saw Beverly. “We’ll be swamped.” Even as she spoke, the ambulance radio blared. She pulled her long, blond hair into a ponytail and fastened it as she sat down at the desk to take the call.

In fifteen minutes, the emergency room was nearly full. The man in exam room seven had a deep laceration in his right forearm from an industrial accident. Lukas called industrial accidents his “graveyard specials,” because they happened most often during the predawn hours when the need for sleep was at its highest. Lukas used them as an example when arguing against twenty-four-hour shifts for emergency room physicians. This patient had worked since midnight, having had no sleep the day before. Dangerous?

A high school track student in room two had a possible broken wrist. The E.R. staff was waiting for parental consent to treat, enduring endless telephone calls from classmates to check on the patient’s progress while the track coach searched for the completed consent form. Naturally the parents were out of town for the day.

A baby in room three had a red ear, and Lukas was still trying to decide if it was serious enough to treat with an antibiotic. The young mother had come in crying almost as loudly as her baby, and for a while no one had known which of them was here for treatment.

Two unwashed females stood out at the reception desk complaining loudly because they hadn’t been treated yet for their head lice.

“No, you did not ‘wimp out,’ Mr. Casey.” Lukas stood beside the bed of their first arrival, thirty minutes after they’d wheeled him in. The man still looked weak, although his color had improved. “You lost a couple of pints of blood. Your loving pet nicked an artery in your thigh.” He indicated Casey’s bare leg.

Lukas traced the stablike wounds on the inside of Casey’s right thigh. “That’s some cat.”

“This is just a love bite, Doc. My name’s Jake, or Cowboy, but don’t call me Mr. Casey.”

“A love bite?”

“Male African lion.”

“A pet?”

“Had him for four years, since he was a cub. I raise exotic animals for parks and zoos, but I kept Leonardo. He’s good company.”

“When he’s not eating various parts of your anatomy. You must live alone.”

“How’d you guess?”

Beverly entered the trauma room to recheck Cowboy’s vitals and help Lukas finish irrigating the wound.

Covered in nothing but a towel, Cowboy’s whole body blushed. “Uh, Doc, I’d be grateful if you could spare one of those skimpy hospital gowns. It’d cover a whole lot more.”

Lukas grinned at him. “I think that could be arranged.” He glanced at Beverly. He had already seen the way Cowboy looked at her—and the way she looked back. “Maybe I should help him dress.”

“You don’t have time,” Beverly said. “I hear the ambulance phone now, and we have a mom out in the waiting room with three children she wants to have checked out for sore throats and earaches.”

“How long before our surgeon arrives?” Lukas asked.

Beverly wrote down Cowboy’s vitals on a clipboard. “Any minute now, Dr. Bower. He laughed when I told him who it was. He says he’s had this patient before.” She grinned at Cowboy. “I hear you’re pretty adventurous.”

He returned her smile and blushed again. “The folks I work with aren’t always predictable. Dr. Wong took care of a gash I got in the head when a scared zebra kicked me.” He looked at Lukas. “But why do I need a surgeon for this bite? Can’t you just sew me up and let me get home? Leonardo will be hungry before long, and he’s probably worried.”

“Good,” Beverly said. “Let him worry. Maybe he’ll remember this the next time he confuses you with a beefsteak.”

“Sorry, Cowboy,” Lukas said. “Leonardo bit into a deep artery. That’s surgeon territory.”

“But you’ve stopped the bleeding.”

“With pressure. When we remove the pressure, we’ll be leaving an unstable wound that can burst open at any time. You’ve lost enough blood already. You can’t afford to lose more.”

“But, Dr. Bower—”

“Listen to your doctor.” Beverly laid a hand on Cowboy’s arm. “He knows what he’s doing. Besides, if you’re too eager to get out of here, we’ll think you don’t like our company.” She winked at him. “You never want to offend your local emergency department personnel. You can’t tell when you’ll need them.” She dug into her pocket and pulled out the set of keys she had retrieved from Carol. “I’ll make a deal with you. If you’ll let me drive your car and give me some instructions, I’ll go out to your place when I get off work and feed Leonardo for you.”

Both men stared at her.

“Uh, Beverly,” Lukas said, “you do realize we’re talking about an African lion.”

“I heard through the crack of the door. Besides, I’ve read the chart.”

“Sorry,” Cowboy said in his gravelly voice. “No way am I sending a pretty female out to do the job I should’ve done. Get a man to feed Leonardo, and you can drive him out there in my car.”

Lukas expected Beverly, with her obviously independent spirit, to spit fire. Instead, she gazed bemusedly at Cowboy and nodded. “I’ll see what I can do.”

Someone approached the trauma room entrance. “Dr. Bower?” It was Lauren’s voice.

“Oh, Doc, please,” Cowboy said. “I’m still practically naked here. Don’t give me an audience.”

Lukas slipped through the partially open door, leaving Cowboy his privacy. “Yes?”

“We have an elderly man in exam room one who has just been brought in unresponsive.”

“I’ll be right there.” He rechecked Cowboy’s wound, then crossed to exam room one, where Lauren was rushing through the vitals of an unconscious, toothless elderly man in his pajamas, who was already hooked to a monitor and a nonrebreather oxygen mask.

A worried-looking woman in her thirties stood at the patient’s side, her eyes puffy and red from crying.

“Hello, I’m Dr. Bower,” he said to the woman. “Are you his daughter? Granddaughter?”

“No, I’m Shelly, Frankie’s neighbor. My children go over to see him every day, and today they found him like this on the floor of his living room. I think he’d been trying to call someone, because the telephone receiver was off the hook and lying beside him.”

“Did you bring him in by yourself?”

“Another neighbor helped me get him into the van. We should have called an ambulance, but I just didn’t think. We only live four blocks from the hospital.”

Lukas adjusted his stethoscope and did a quick auscultation of the man’s chest. He had mild tachycardia and slow respiration. His skin was pale and cool to the touch. A quick check of his head and upper body revealed no signs of injury. Lukas didn’t smell alcohol.

“Lauren, let’s get a bedside glucose on him.”

“Yes, Doctor. We have a new patient in room eight who needs you next.” She lowered her voice. “It’s cancer. She’s a DNR.”

Lukas grimaced. Those were the hardest. “Okay, thank you, Lauren.” He checked Frankie’s eyes. The man had good papillary sparing. Lukas quickly but gently turned the patient’s head, holding his eyes open. The eyes remained fixed on the ceiling. Positive doll’s eyes told him that this was either drug related or that there was bilateral brain swelling.

“Shelly, has he been ill recently? A cold? Flu?”

“No. Yesterday he was fine. He always brags about never getting sick.”

“Does he ever drink?”

“You mean liquor? Never.” She held out two prescription bottles. “I brought these. I found them on the bureau in his bedroom. His bottle is almost full, but the other one is empty. It belonged to his wife. She died last year.”

Lukas took the bottles from her and glanced at the names of the drugs. Both were benzodiazepines for sleep. He glanced at the patient and didn’t like what he was thinking.

“Blood sugar’s 125, Dr. Bower,” Lauren said.

“Thank you.” He glanced again at Shelly, hating to ask his next question. “These are tranquilizers. Is it possible he might have taken an overdose of his wife’s prescription?”

Her eyes widened with alarm. “On purpose? No way! I don’t even want to consider it. He’s so good with the kids, and he never seems depressed. He was doing so well after his wife, Doris, died.”

Lukas was also reluctant to believe this kindly looking older gentleman would do anything so drastic. He’d probably flushed his wife’s pills after her death. But what if he hadn’t?

“He hasn’t talked about going to be with his wife lately?” he asked Shelly.

“No.”

“Has he displayed any changes in his normal habits, like changes in sleep time or amount? Changes in eating habits? Has he given any of his personal items, such as jewelry, to friends or neighbors?”

“Nothing that I know about.”

“How long ago did his wife die?”

“About eight months ago. Long enough for him to show signs of depression if he’s going to, I would think.”

“Not necessarily. A wedding anniversary could have set him off, or her birthday, anything of significance to him.” Lukas was well aware of this because his own father had gone through a similar depression after Mom’s death. So had Lukas, though not as severe as Dad’s.