Eye of the Storm

“You need time from the memories, Megan,” Gerard said. “You need someone to listen. Help. Support.”

“And that would be you, of course.”

“Exactly. Have the nightmares stopped since you arrived here?”

Megan turned away. “Please, I’m not ready for this. I can’t—” She shoved away from the post. There was the sadness again, not only in her eyes, but in every inch of her body.

“Kirstie told me about her blackouts,” Gerard said. “Did she mention to you that she was afraid she was being poisoned?”

Megan’s expression froze, her eyes darkened with shock. “She told you that? Why didn’t she say something to me about it?”

“You refused to take her case.”

“Of course I did. She needs a neurologist.”

Gerard shook his head. “You still think that?”

Megan raised an elegantly arched brow. “What would you say if I told you she warned me recently that I could be in danger?”

Hannah

Alexander

Eye of the Storm

www.millsandboon.co.uk

He stilled the storm to a whisper;

the waves of the sea were hushed.

—Psalms 107:29

Eye of the Storm is dedicated to the Jolly Mill Park Foundation, a group of people who unselfishly give of their time, energy and finances to keep Jolly Mill Park active and remind us of its fascinating history. We very much appreciate the permission we were given to bring the tiny town of Jolly Mill alive and populate it with more buildings, more people, more suspense than typically takes place in this beautiful setting. Readers are wholeheartedly invited to come visit the real Jolly Mill and explore reminders of its long history. Prepare for a taste of the actual history of this town in upcoming historical titles about the Village of Jollification.

ONE

A silver blade sliced through the curtained exam room, its target the helpless patient of Dr. Megan Bradley. The hand that held the blade was crusted with grime, fingernails whitening as it squeezed the handle with the force of fury. Megan clutched the cold steel of a revolver in her hand, aimed it at the faceless attacker’s chest and pulled the trigger.

No burst came from the chamber. No sound touched her at all. She tried to scream. Silence. The blade reflected Megan’s contorted features as it plunged downward again. The pressure of her scream threatened to explode from her chest. She fought her way out of the silent nightmare of a Corpus Christi rescue mission clinic and into her soft bed in the darkness of her tiny cabin in the Missouri woods.

“No!” She battled the blankets and sat up, still seeing the sweet, dark-haired young homeless woman with the huge belly. “Oh, Joni, no.”

Megan squeezed her eyes shut at the hideous memory that repeated itself far too often at night…the killer ripping his way through the curtained cubicle…the blood…the screams mingling with the recoil of Megan’s weapon as the loud report deafened her. She watched the grimy killer hit the floor, splattering blood and ripping a section of the curtain from the ceiling. And then she slid through the blood to Joni’s side to find the young woman’s eyes staring into nothing.

Gerard Vance rushed into the ruined cubicle, his head brushing the rails that held the curtain, his shoulders framing him as he entered. At the sight of Joni, his face filled with grim pain. He dropped to his knees at Megan’s side without a glance at the dead man tangled in the fallen curtain. “I’ve got your back, Megan. Don’t look at him. Let’s get the baby out.”

With his aid, Megan held her tears and controlled her hands, performing a postmortem C-section, sickened by the desecration of her sweet young patient’s body. The cry of little Daria, Joni’s orphan, soon filled the clinic, the sound of life echoing past her young mother’s death.

Megan forced away the malignant memory, forced herself to breathe slowly, forced her eyes to open. She brushed the hair from her face and focused on her surroundings, anything but the reason she’d fled Corpus Christi. A slight breeze outside moved a tree branch across the window beside her bed—a lifeline to reality. A trickle of moisture drew her fingers to her neck; she touched the droplets of perspiration.

She blinked slowly and in that brief moment she was attacked once more by the memory of her own contorted features in the killer’s knife blade, like a misshapen mirror. The dregs of the nightmare mingled with reality.

She flung the blanket from her legs and leapt from the bed. “Wake up,” she muttered into the chilly one-room cabin. “Stop this. You’re doing it to yourself, Megan.”

Talking to herself, yes, but even the sound of her own voice helped break the spell. Inhaling deeply and then exhausting her lungs of air, as if she could cleanse her system of the weight of knowledge with the carbon dioxide, she kept her attention on the movement of that one branch outside the nearest window. Though gray in the night, she knew she would see the green color of life when the sun rose. Focus on the hope of dawn.

“It isn’t happening,” she whispered into the cool air. “Not now. It’s over.” The nightmare receded with great reluctance, but left behind emptiness. How long would she live with these terrors?

Distracted at last by the gray-and-black silk of nighttime in the forest, Megan sank back onto the bed. The softness of the mattress reproached her despite the good intentions of Kirstie and Lynley Marshal, the dear friends who had furnished this hideaway for her two weeks ago. Her patient, Joni Park, was relegated to the grave, separated from her baby forever. What had the surviving doctor done to deserve such luxury?

“I failed,” Megan whispered to the room. All those months she’d carried a weapon to protect the helpless, but when a knife ripped through that curtained enclosure, she’d been unable to do a thing. There’d simply been no warning.

The peeping of tree frogs drifted in through the mass of windows in the cottage’s front wall. Megan willed the sound to wash over her and clear away the hovering menace. These were safe Missouri sounds, not the setting of her recurrent dreams. It was a rent-free cottage just past the outskirts of the village of Jolly Mill, near the bank of Capps Creek. So why did she continue to dwell in that hot place of dread every night when she closed her eyes?

Cool air chilled the moisture of her skin; her shivering returned, this time as much from cold as from lingering memories. She stood up again, allowing her bare feet to conform to the ridges of the old wooden floor before she checked the lighted numbers of the alarm clock. It was five in the morning. Upon her return to her childhood hometown, she’d put an end to her practice of rising before the sun and studying her latest medical journals or a new textbook.

She’d put an end to several old habits, hoping the change would bring about at least the impression of healing. Nothing worked. Old habits didn’t like to be abandoned. Though her sleep aid had gotten her through the past two weeks, last night’s dose seemed to have developed a shorter half-life.

Her heart continued its tachycardic rhythm. She pulled on her warm terry robe, rubbing her arms with her hands as she stepped to the multi-paned window in the front door of the cottage. How many times since Joni’s murder had she considered getting therapy?

But shouldn’t she know the drill after working with so many patients at the Vance Rescue Mission? She wasn’t living on the street or battling psychosis or alcoholism or drug addiction. Couldn’t she work this out for herself?

Still, the foreboding persisted as every creak of the cottage, every odd sound outside, instead of comforting her, sent a fresh chill through her. Maybe resuming her habit of early-morning study would be a good distraction.

She stepped around the red antique room divider, tugging the collar of her robe more closely around her neck as she glanced around the room. The furnishings so generously provided to her by her tiny group of longtime girlfriends were barely outlined by the gentle glow of moonlight that drifted down through the treetops and through the windows.

She went to the kitchenette for a drink of water, her shadow faint against the sand-colored walls of the one-room cottage—a hue that reminded her too much of the place from which she’d fled.

Megan seldom concerned herself with the appearance of her surroundings. The recent flurry of decorating—the red divider, the Roman shades over the multiple windows across the front of the cottage—had been Kirstie Marshal’s idea. When thinking clearly, Kirstie was good with a hammer and screwdriver. The love seat in the tiny sitting area had come from Nora Thompson’s own home. This cottage was Thompson property.

As a teenager, Megan once dreamed of living in this very cottage, so deep in the woods, so isolated from the world…but of course, not far from Alec Thompson, the boy she’d had a crush on since fifth grade. Most times, she loved the peace of this place. Though Alec no longer lived in the family home with his mother, Megan took comfort in knowing that Nora was still barely two hundred yards through the woods in the big house on the cliff above the creek.

Five in the morning, however, wasn’t a good time to call Nora to come running down the hill with hot cocoa and a dozen of her famous black walnut–butterscotch cookies. Megan saw Jolly Mill as a place of comfort, but she also saw it as personal failure. She hadn’t even been able to face a full two years of real life in the trenches.

Here, everyone in town knew her by her first, middle and last names, and some could recall the subject of her valedictorian speech on graduation night. She had old friends and classmates who’d lingered in Jolly Mill to carry on the family businesses, to settle with their own families and continue a long tradition of farming. They weren’t hiding here—they were living here.

She was hiding.

The sleeping pill had made her thirsty during the night, and she swigged down the whole glass of water and poured another, listening to the music of the peepers and the breeze that gently rustled through the spring leaves outside. The faint sound of a small motor kicking on in the pump house to replace the water she’d poured. It kicked off just as quickly.

A quiet melody took its place and it took her a few seconds to recognize the tone of her new cell phone. It grew louder as she listened, shooting through the cottage. She stiffened. A phone call in the dark had always been her least favorite sound.

Her legs felt stiff as she rushed to the phone, then answered and peered out at the foggy, moonlit haven that surrounded the cottage.

“Lynley?”

“Thank goodness.” Her best friend’s voice, normally brisk and filled with energy, sounded tight and raspy through the receiver.

“What is it?”

“Mom’s disappeared again and this time I haven’t been able to find her.”

Megan turned from the window. No. Not again. Poor Kirstie. “How long has she been missing?”

“Maybe all night. I can’t believe I didn’t check on her, but she was doing so well the past few days and I was studying late. I remember laughing with her because she teased me about what she should call me when I got my doctorate in nursing. She named me Dr. Nurse Marshal. I was tired and I thought she’d gone to bed, and I fell asleep—”

“Lynley, calm down,” Megan said. “Call some neighbors and ask them to help search. She may have taken shelter in a barn again until it gets light enough for her to find her way home.”

“I’ve already called everyone whose land adjoins ours. No one’s found her. I know they’re getting tired of my calls, though Elmer Batschelet offered to use his dogs to track her. I’ll probably take him up on it if she doesn’t show up soon. Do you know how many times this has happened in the past month?”

Megan took her lower lip between her teeth. Now was not the time for recriminations, but couldn’t Lynley see the obvious? “This makes the second since I’ve arrived.” An average of once a week.

“It’s getting worse.”

“Have you called the sheriff?” Megan asked.

“He and his men are out searching. Again. Poor Sheriff Moritz. And poor Mom. She’s always so embarrassed when this happens.”

“We can help her deal with the embarrassment later. First get her safely home.” Megan stretched. “When she shows up, bring her by the clinic so we can check her out.”

“I’ll be in for work as soon as I find her.” There was a sigh. “If I do. If she’s okay. I doubt she’ll be in shape to even answer phones today.”

Megan allowed those statements to linger. Maybe Lynley would talk herself into doing the right thing and prevent a quarrel that neither of them wanted right now. Kirstie’s daughter needed to see reason before Kirstie got hurt.

“Megan?” The voice was tentative, almost as if Lynley could hear Megan’s thoughts. And she probably could. They’d known each other from the cradle. “What if she doesn’t come back this time?”

Instead of reassuring her friend as she had been doing since Kirstie’s mysterious episodes began last month, Megan pressed her lips together. It was a good question. Maybe Lynley needed to follow it to its logical conclusion and start dealing with the dangers of her state of denial.

“Megan?”

“I don’t know, but you can’t keep trying to do this alone.” Megan felt awful as she spoke the words, but as Kirstie herself had said, her daughter wouldn’t listen to reason. “You need help.”

“We just need to get through this until we figure out what’s really causing the problem.”

Megan forced a gentleness to her voice. “Then if you won’t accept help, place her into protection until we do get it figured out.”

“Protection?” There was a soft snort. “You mean imprison her, don’t you?”

“I mean arrange it so this doesn’t happen again.”

“Megan, she’s a vital, active, fifty-two-year-old woman, not someone accustomed to sitting in a rocking chair or being cooped up in a block of rooms. You think she deserves to be locked up in a nursing home?”

“I don’t think she deserves Alzheimer’s, but—”

“Don’t say that! I hate that word. You know as soon as that diagnosis is made and the patient is shoved into a lockdown ward, no one ever searches for other causes, they just treat the symptoms. I’m not giving up on her that easily.”

“I’m not telling you to give up.”

“This isn’t sundowner’s syndrome.”

Megan couldn’t miss the increasing tautness of Lynley’s voice. “It’s okay,” she told her friend. “You’re not alone in this. I’m here for you.”

There was a brief silence and then “How? You wouldn’t move in with us.”

Shame attacked Megan. She didn’t have the strength to explain yet. “I’ll do all I can to help you and Kirstie through it.”

“You mean help Dr. Kelsey convince us she really is losing her mind?” There was a plaintive sadness in Lynley’s words.

Megan closed her eyes. “I didn’t say that. I’m here as your friend.”

There was a quiet sigh. “Okay. Thanks. I’m glad you’re back in Jolly Mill even if we don’t agree about everything.”

“We’ve never agreed about everything.”

“This is different.”

“Can’t you just trust me for once? I am a doctor now.”

“And I’m a nurse. So is Mom.”

“So you’re saying two nurses trump a doctor?” Megan forced a smile so it would bleed into her voice. Anything to lighten the moment.

“Something like that. Megan, are you…” She paused, sighed. “Be honest with me. Why did you come back here?”

Megan closed her eyes. There it was. The question.

“Your family’s all in Cape Girardeau now,” Lynley continued. “Why didn’t you go there? Not that I didn’t want you to come here, because I did, but—”

“You should know why. This is still home to me.” Unlike being with her family. If she heard Mom tell her one more time how wonderful it was to have grandchildren, and that she wanted more, Megan would pledge lifelong celibacy. Let her big brother provide all the descendants for the Bradley family. Randy seemed happy to do it.

“Megan,” Lynley said, “did Mom ask you to come here and convince me to let her check into a nursing facility?”

Megan hesitated a second too long. “That’s not why I came.”

“But she did ask you.”

“She’s afraid you’ll waste the rest of your life taking care of—”

“Waste? Did you say waste?”

“She’s the one who said it, Lynley, not me.”

“Careful, or you’ll begin to sound like Dad.”

“Notice I actually came to Jolly Mill. I didn’t leave,” Megan snapped. Unlike your father, she wanted to say, but Lynley knew what she meant. Barry Marshal was a self-centered egotist who had split soon after Kirstie’s Alzheimer’s diagnosis. For everyone’s sake, he should have split long before that. Megan knew too many of that man’s secrets. Too many Jolly Mill secrets.

“Sorry,” Lynley said. “You’re right. I know.”

“Just bring Kirstie to the office when you find her,” Megan said.

“I will. Thanks.”

“I can come help you search.”

“No. You just be there for us when I find her.” That slender edge of tension lingered after Lynley disconnected. Megan knew her friend’s resentment wasn’t directed totally at her. She was just the punching bag for all Lynley was going through, for all Barry’s failures as a father. Megan wasn’t taking punches very well right now. Lynley didn’t know about Joni’s murder. No one here did.

Kirstie would be found again—or she would return herself home when she regained her senses, as she had done every time she’d gone missing. Everyone in the Jolly Mill community knew her and watched out for her.

Megan pushed her cell phone back into her deep purse and was turning back toward bed when a flash of light struck one of the panes. Brief. Barely there.

She frowned, staring out into the darkness. Had she actually seen that, or was it a side effect of her sleeping pill? The drug could do strange things to some people. She’d considered more than once the possibility that the drugs were causing the dreams, but she’d so craved sleep after the weeks of sleeplessness following Joni’s murder that she took them anyway.

A whisper of a different kind reached her from outside—not wind or frogs or the sound of the electric water pump. There was another flash. A newly familiar strum of panic restricted Megan’s feet to the woven mat by the front door.

She clenched her fists. Don’t allow the panic to control you. This wasn’t the mean streets of the city. This was tiny Jolly Mill, safe, quiet, secluded. She didn’t need a weapon here to protect herself.

Another sound reached her—tires crunching on rock?

Her fear quickened. When she entered her drive, her tires always met the gravel on the quarter-mile track that led to this cottage. What she’d just heard might be that gravel pop-snap in the distance. Maybe someone had turned around at the mailbox and was driving away. That had to be it.

The only sounds she typically heard here at night were the occasional bark of a farm dog, the lowing of a cow separated from her calf or the spine-tingling call of an owl that sounded more like mocking laughter at her plight. None of the wildlife in this area sounded like a car.

As she wavered, the soft rumble grew louder, followed by a flicker of shadows through the trees. A vehicle. An aura of stealth seemed to fill and then illuminate the darkness like a hunter stalking its prey.

The drive to this cottage was private. No one else around here had reason to be on it at this time of morning—except maybe a patient in trouble? She’d decided not to have a landline, despite the spotty cell coverage in Jolly Mill. If there was an urgent medical need, it was feasible someone could be coming for help, though there was a hospital in Monett less than twenty minutes away and in Cassville only a little farther in the other direction.

She checked the dead bolt lock on the front door. Of course she’d locked it. The past few years had taught her that. No one had ever locked the doors when she was growing up in Jolly Mill. Something else people seldom did was close the curtains, but right now lowering the Roman shades over all the windows seemed like a good idea.

The tight cords bit into her hands as she jerked them down, one by one. Her movements double-timed as lights crested the hill and shot through the tiny cracks in the woven material. The sharp, quick sound of her breath was harsh as it hit the matted shades. This was no dream. One set of cords tangled together, the shades tilting drunkenly as she worked a knot free and straightened the bottom edge. She rushed to the next window and then the next until she had a pseudo-barrier from the onslaught of light.

Megan’s suddenly overactive imagination transformed her little patch of wooded paradise into a battleground. Even as she castigated herself for her fear, she could do nothing to ease it.

Calm. Stay calm. Joni’s killer is dead. There’s no one after you. She wouldn’t call for help just because of a car approaching the house. She didn’t need anyone in town to think the doctor at the new clinic was unhinged. But who was coming here? Mom and Dad would have called if they were planning a trip across the state, and they wouldn’t have driven all night to get here.

Megan retreated into the shadows of the far corner of the sitting area. She curled into the love seat, clutching the throw pillow to her chest as she waited.

The holy scent reached her from the homemade sachet her former Sunday school teacher had sewn into the pillow. Martha Irene called it one of her “prayer pillows,” but Megan couldn’t pray. Who would hear her? She just squeezed the cushion hard against her chest and tried to slow her panicked imagination while the rhythm of her heart encroached on the chambers of her lungs.

She should definitely have sought treatment for PTSD.

The vehicle lights went off and the engine died, plunging her into dark silence for another few seconds before she heard a door opening and then footsteps brushing through unmown grass and last year’s leaves. There was a soft sound of someone stepping onto her wooden front porch and then a pause while she tried to still her panicked breathing, fingernails digging into her hands. This was crazy. If someone wanted to hurt her, they wouldn’t approach this way. And yet she hadn’t been totally rational since arriving here. Everything was still too fresh, and the dreams each night reminded her that the world was a dangerous place.

No one knocked. There was no doorbell. The pain in her hands distracted her.

A familiar voice reached her. One word, softly spoken. “Megan.”

She silently gulped in a great lungful of air. It couldn’t be.

“Megan? It’s me. Gerard.”

She stared through the darkness toward the door, and at once her fear metamorphosed into something even less manageable. How dare Gerard Vance follow her here?

TWO

Gerard didn’t want to knock. “Megan, please.” He could hear the cracking fatigue in his own voice. Could she hear it too?

According to his late-sleeping sister, Tess, who’d taken a couple of road trips with Megan last year, Megan had never slept this late when she lived in Corpus Christi. In fact, Tess complained that Megan never even allowed the sun to rise before her on a day off.