Deathtoll (Broslin Creek Book 8) Read online

  Then, before Kate could protest, Joe was gone again.

  “Wait!” She scrambled up and tripped over her sneakers.

  She had to plop back down and untie the laces before she could shove her feet in, then tie the laces again so she wouldn’t trip and fall on her face. And then, finally, she was out of there, leaving her chair spinning behind her like some cartoon character. “Wait!”

  By the time she rounded the corner, Joe was long through the doors on the other side of the lobby. He might not be a football player anymore, but when he ran, he ran.

  “Do not hurt him!” Kate called after him, just in case he could hear.

  By the time she burst outside, he was halfway through the parking lot. She stopped short because she didn’t want to startle Ian, who was keeping a close eye on Joe’s progress. Joe’s physique was pretty intimidating, to be fair. Kate imagined having him coming at you was like watching an approaching freight train.

  He slowed a dozen feet out and stopped, held up his hands, away from his weapon. “Hi, Ian. I’m Joe Kessler. Kate’s friend.”

  He was good at this, trained for this, but Kate was still having a heart attack.

  “I don’t want to talk to you,” Ian said, surly, backing away, completely focused on Joe, whom he saw as a source of danger. “I want to talk to Kate.” He hadn’t noticed her yet.

  “All right. I get that. She’s nice. Everyone wants to talk to her. I’m a poor substitute, but hear me out. Last time you two talked, it didn’t go well.”

  “And I’m sorry about that!” Ian slapped his palm on the tailgate of his beaten-up black pickup.

  He didn’t drive a tan Nissan after all, Kate thought. She’d just been paranoid the morning before.

  He said, “I feel better now. I don’t want to hurt her. I don’t want to hurt anyone. I just want to talk to someone who can give me some pills.”

  “Okay. You know Kate doesn’t do that. Right? She told you?”

  “She did.”

  “How about I help you get hooked up with someone who does? A psychologist. My wife goes to therapy. Makes a big difference. She had an abusive ex who left her with some issues. I can’t even tell you how much she’s improved over the years.”

  “Tried that before.” Ian dropped his gaze and kicked at the dirt before looking back up at Joe and shoving his hands into his pockets. “He was an asshole.”

  Joe moved closer. “How about Maria, the psychologist here? She’s Kate’s friend. Just as nice as Kate. They do damn good work in this place.”

  “You gonna let me go in?”

  Joe paused. “Honestly, after last time, I don’t feel comfortable doing that. I’m sure you understand.”

  “So I’d have to go back to the station.”

  “I can take you. Maria might even be able to follow us right down.”

  I would make sure of it, Kate thought. The last time, half the problem had been waiting for the therapist to come out from West Chester. Ian had been locked in a room all that time, getting more and more worked up, more and more anxious. That certainly hadn’t improved his already agitated state of mind.

  He was calmer now. Progress. Taking a step back as he watched Joe. Not progress.

  “I don’t want handcuffs.” His voice grew brittle with tension.

  The negotiation was deteriorating.

  Kate stepped forward from the shadows, where one of the potted evergreens by the door had mostly hidden her. “Hi, Ian!” she called from the top of the stairs as if she’d just come outside. “I’m so glad you came back.”

  And then she walked down the steps and toward the two men without hesitation, radiating an all-is-well vibe for all she was worth.

  Joe shot her a warning look. She kept going anyway. She wasn’t going to lose Ian again.

  “How about if I go in the car with you? I’ll call Maria on the way. And I’ll stay with you at the station until she gets there.”

  Ian’s gaze snapped from her to Joe. “Can she do that?”

  “I’ll have to pat you down first. Make sure you’re unarmed.”

  Ian held his arms out to the side. “I am.”

  “Nothing personal.” Joe stepped forward. “I have to be sure.”

  He was quick, but not abrupt, careful, no sudden movements. “All right,” he said as he straightened. “Cuffs next.”

  Ian’s gaze darted to Kate. He looked ready to bolt.

  She stepped closer. “Are cuffs really necessary?”

  “Anybody gets a ride in the back of the car gets cuffed,” Joe said, keeping himself between them. “Standard procedure. It’s what we do, no exceptions. Like the Army, man,” he told Ian. “You get your orders, you follow your orders. My orders are, people in the back get cuffed.”

  “I’ll be right there with you,” Kate added. “Don’t focus on the cuffs. By the time we’re done catching up, we’ll be at the station.”

  A moment of tension-laden silence passed. Then Ian put his wrists together behind his back. “All right.”

  Kate had to give it to Joe, he managed to be quick once again, without giving off any aggressive or threatening vibes. He even added, “Comfortable?”

  Ian shot him a baleful glance.

  Joe took the man by the elbow. “Let’s go over to the cruiser. You sit in the back, Kate and I sit in the front.”

  Ian looked at Kate.

  She nodded, and he moved forward, stopping only when Joe opened the back door for him. He slipped in without trouble. Then Joe closed the door, carefully, not slamming it.

  “Thank you for being so good with him,” Kate said as he opened the passenger-side door for her in the front.

  “You shouldn’t have come outside.”

  “I’m trying to help.”

  Joe shook his head, but if he thought she was the opposite of helpful, he didn’t say it. He went and slid behind the wheel.

  Kate turned around as they rolled out of the parking lot and Joe radioed the station. “How have you been doing, Ian?”

  “Been better. I’m really sorry about last time. I mean that.”

  “I know you are. We’re all right. I’m not the grudge-holding type.” She dug out her phone.

  Nothing from Emma. Not as much as a one-word text.

  Half worried, half angry, Kate said, “Let me call Maria to make sure she can meet us as soon as possible.”

  She waited for her friend to pick up. “Hey. Joe and I are taking Ian McCall down to the police station. He says he’d rather talk to you than their usual guy. You think you could come down and do an evaluation?”

  To her credit, Maria didn’t hesitate. “I just finished a session two minutes ago. I don’t have anything for the next two hours. I’m walking out right now. How is he? If he’s agitated, you can put me on speaker and I’ll talk to him.”

  Kate smiled at Ian. “He’s just fine. But thanks.” Then she hung up with Maria and told the men, “She’s on her way. We call her Miss Lead Foot. She’ll probably be there before we are.”

  Ian offered a weak grin. “Not if Joe pulls her over.”

  Even Joe laughed.

  Good—everyone nice and relaxed. Kate was going to keep it that way. “What have you been up to these last couple of days?”

  “Called an old Army buddy.” Ian shifted into a more comfortable position. “Lives in Lancaster. Hung at his place. Played video games. He’s all right, you know. Lost a leg, plays baseball anyway. He’s got one of those fancy prosthetics. Like he’s in some sci-fi movie.”

  “It’s good to have friends. That makes a huge difference in recovery. One of the most important factors, in fact. I’m really glad you didn’t go home. I’m glad you hung around and came back to us.”

  “I can’t get better if I don’t get help. That’s what Brian said. I’m going to bite the bullet and do it.”

  Committed to treatment. Another harbinger of successful therapy. Ian McCall was going to do just fine. Kate would make sure of it.

  “How long ago did you
return to civilian life?” she asked, to keep the conversation going.

  “Six months. I thought things would get better.”

  “They will now. Does your family know you’re here?”

  He shook his head. “Brother’s with the Marines, deployed right now. Don’t know where. Parents gone.”

  “Girlfriend? Wife?”

  “She moved back to her parents with the kids. I didn’t hurt them or anything,” he was quick to add. “I should call them. I don’t have a phone. I punched the screen yesterday.” He looked down with a sheepish expression. “I got frustrated.”

  “They would probably want to know how you’re doing. They’ll be glad you’re getting help. If you give me their contact information, I’ll contact them for you, if you’d like. Explain how things stand.”

  Even if he and his wife had a fight, even if the wife was mad at him, he was still the father of the children. They would still be asking about him.

  “Boys or girls?”

  “One of each.”

  “How old?”

  “Six and seven.” He dropped his head back and stared at the roof of the car to hide the moisture that was gathering in his eyes. “I want to be back with them. I want that more than I want anything in life.”

  Motivated.

  “You follow the treatment plan,” Kate told him, “and there’s a very good chance of you seeing them again. And, in the meanwhile, even the restricted facility we work with allows visitors.”

  His gaze snapped back to her, some of the misery slipping from his face. He was close to breathless as he asked, “For real?”

  “Have I lied to you yet?”

  “Wish I could just stay at Hope Hill.”

  “I’ll set that up with the VA while you start getting better at the first facility. Then as soon as you’re discharged there, you’re coming to us. I’m going to make it my personal mission to make that happen. I hope to meet your daughter and your son. Why don’t you tell me about them?”

  “Matty is mini-me.” Ian came close to smiling. “Paige is a little princess. All pink all the time. Bicycle, toy ponies, clothes…pink and sparkles. Wants to have her ears pierced.” His forehead smoothed out. Memories of better times clearly made him happy. They were at the station long before he ran out of stories.

  Maria wasn’t there waiting for them, but she pulled in thirty seconds later—in her silver, sporty, little BMW—like a Formula-1 driver into a pit stop. She jumped out, in silver stilettos that matched the car.

  Joe raised an eyebrow at her.

  She flashed an angelic smile. “Traffic was light.”

  Joe shook his head and led Ian toward the entrance by the elbow.

  Ian looked at Kate over his shoulder, the tension back on his face, eyes and mouth tight. “You said you’d come in.”

  “Right behind you. Just give me a second to catch Maria up.”

  As the men walked through the door, Kate stayed behind with the psychiatrist. “Thanks for taking this on at short notice.”

  “I want to do what I can. Probably not much, right here, right now, but when we eventually get him, if we get him… Was he aggressive again today?”

  “Not at all. Just unsure. He wants help, but he’s scared.” Kate caught Maria up on everything she knew about Ian, finishing with “I’d like it very much if he ended up with us. I think a place like Hope Hill would be beneficial to him. For some reason, he trusts me. I don’t want to let him down.”

  “All right. Let’s talk again after I check him out.” Maria reached for the door and held it open.

  Kate looked pointedly at her friend’s shoes as she passed through. “Another hot date?”

  “Third date, same guy.” Maria walked in behind her, then they stopped, because Ian was still being processed at the front desk.

  “It’s refreshing,” Maria said. “Half the time when I meet someone, as soon as they find out what I do for a living, every date turns into a free therapy session. It’s all about how they got messed up when they were kids. Or they just want to talk about how certifiably crazy their exes were.”

  “Like the guy who wanted you to write a letter to his ex-girlfriend’s employer to certify that she’s a psychopath?”

  “Like that and worse.” Maria made an eloquent warding-off motion with her hand, as if erasing the memory. “Anyway. This guy is a psychologist like me. First date, first ground rule was that we’re not going to talk shop when we’re together.”

  “This guy? You’re ever going to tell me his name?”

  “Maybe. Someday. Still don’t want to jinx it.” Maria tilted her head. “Heard from Emma yet?”

  Kate pulled out her phone. “No.”

  Zero messages. She was about to call again when Joe stepped away from the front desk and led Ian to the interview room in the back. Kate put away her phone and followed with Maria.

  Once inside the small, bright room, Maria stepped forward. “Dr. Maria Gulick. Nice to meet you, Ian.”

  Joe Kessler pulled out a chair for her.

  “I’ll be staying,” he said and pushed a chair in the corner for himself.

  “Can Kate stay?” Ian asked.

  “If she wants to.”

  She’d planned on calling her sister again, but Ian was looking at her so beseechingly…

  “I can stay.” Kate moved a chair next to Joe’s before he had a chance to do it for her.

  Maria pulled the smallest, thinnest, most feminine laptop possible from her bag. “All right, Ian. Why don’t you start with telling me about yourself?”

  He did, haltingly at first, jumping around in time, childhood in one sentence, war in the next. Then he settled into his last deployment, the attacks, the friends who were dead.

  After the eval, Maria made some calls and placed Ian at the secured facility they normally worked with, in the Philly suburbs. While Kate and Maria stayed with him to wait for the pickup. They talked to Ian about what he might expect, how things worked, and then Ian wanted to know more about Hope Hill, so they told him about that.

  Then Captain Bing stuck his head in the door and Joe stepped out to talk to him.

  A minute later, Joe came back in. “So here’s the deal,” he told Ian. “As long as you promise to check in to treatment and stay there until discharged, the captain is willing to let last week’s incident go.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m gonna do, man.”

  The handcuffs came off. And when the treatment center’s transport van arrived, Ian went peacefully with them.

  Kate rode back to Hope Hill with Maria, who, considerately, drove at a speed that didn’t make Kate clutch the door handle.

  The second she was back behind her desk, she called her sister.

  Emma still wouldn’t pick up. Not on the third ring, not on the fifth, not on the tenth. Kate left another message. Then she called her mother.

  “Hey, could you tell your crazy daughter to check in with your sane daughter when she stops for a driving break? She can’t punish me forever.”

  “I’ll try,” Ellie Bridges said, “but she hasn’t been picking up.”

  “You haven’t talked to her yet today?”

  “Not since she texted this morning to let me know you kicked her out and she was leaving.”

  “I did not kick her out. Okay, not like that. I asked her to leave to make sure she was safe. Same as I asked you and Dad to postpone your visit. You didn’t throw a fit.” Kate glanced at the time on the bottom of her laptop screen. “When was the last time you tried her?”

  “Half an hour ago. Your father tried too. I know she doesn’t like to pick up when she’s driving, but…” Kate’s mother sighed. “You know how I worry.”

  The rental came with Bluetooth. She doesn’t have to hold the phone to talk. Kate’s stomach clenched.

  Emma might ignore her out of sheer stubbornness, but not their mother, and definitely not their father. She was Daddy’s girl, always had been, from Little League baseball to assisting with changing th
e oil in the car, to choosing to study finance at college—Daddy’s little shadow all the way, in a good way, a sweet way.

  “Do you think she might have been in an accident?” The question came in a trembling voice from the other end of the line, but Kate could barely hear her mother over the word that roared through her mind.

  Asael!

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Kate

  After Kate hung up with her mother—her chest tight, blood rushing in her ears—she called Murph. Should have called the police. Old habits were damn hard to break. She was pulling her phone away from her ear to do just that as Murph picked up.

  “Kate.”

  His voice made her feel better, and she didn’t care what that said about her, not in that moment.

  “I can’t reach Emma.” Panic pushed the words from her in a rush. “Asael is alive.”

  “What?”

  “Agent Cirelli called me this morning.”

  “And you didn’t tell me?” The sound of shoes slapping on a hard floor came through the phone. He was running. His next question came on an angry snap. “Where are you?”

  “In my office.”

  “Do you have your gun?”

  “No.” She never brought it in, not even after the incident with Ian. For one, they didn’t allow weapons on the premises. Two, she wouldn’t have risked it if they did. Locked doors could be pried open. Her patients’ safety took priority.

  “Is Joe there?”

  “No. Ian McCall showed up and agreed to go into a restricted treatment facility. After Joe took Ian to the station and Ian went off to get better, there was no reason for Joe to come back here.”

  “Ian showed up.” Murph’s voice took on a pronounced chill. “And you didn’t feel the need to tell me about that either.”

  “He cooperated fully. Joe and I handled him without any trouble. Maria helped.”

  A hard silence on the other end. “Lock your door. No more patients today. I’m going to call Bing, bring him up-to-date, and ask him to send Joe back over. He’s closer. But I’ll be there as soon as I can.”