Page 45 of Maverick Detective Dad
“Don’t,” he snapped. “I don’t want to hear your lame excuses for why you left me with that SOB.”
“He was going to kill me,” Helen muttered. She didn’t wipe away her tears, and they spilled down her cheeks like rain.
“You left me with him,” Bobby repeated in a shout.
The shout got the attention of the nurse at the check-in desk, and Noah didn’t stop her when she reached for her phone. She was probably calling for the lone security guard who manned the hospital, but Noah doubted they’d need him. Grayson and he were both armed and ready to respond to the situation if Bobby tried to attack Helen.
“Do you know what my life was like with that monster?” Bobby went on. “It was hell,” he provided before Helen could respond. Not that she was capable of saying anything. The woman was outright sobbing now.
“You ruined my life.” Bobby lowered his hands to fling an accusing finger at her, and then he pointed to Everly and Noah. “Their lives, too.” His voice broke, and he, too, began to cry. “You ruined so many things.”
Noah was in agreement with Bobby on this, but he also felt the relief rise up in him. The hope, too, that knowing the truth might eventually help them get on with their lives.
“Did you kill those people and attack Everly and me because of all the things Helen ruined?” Noah came out and asked Bobby.
Bobby’s head jerked toward Noah, and while the tears were still there, so was the fresh anger. “No.” He repeated the denial in another shout. “I told you I didn’t have anything to do with that.”
Helen stared at him as if trying to decide if that was true. Despite the tears, there was hope on her face as well. Maybe she thought she would eventually get Bobby to forgive her for what she’d done. And he might. After all, Helen had had a good reason for trying to leave her old life behind, but she should have tried to get Bobby out of the hellish situation. Even if she couldn’t have taken him with her that night, she could have had someone in the underground group try to rescue him.
Helen took a few steps toward Bobby. “Can we go somewhere and talk?” she asked in a whisper.
“No.” Bobby didn’t hesitate with that answer, and his glare returned with the vengeance. “I wish you’d just stayed dead.”
Bobby turned and sprinted toward the exit. It all happened fast. The automatic ER doors swished open, and Bobby bolted outside.
Noah moved to go after him, and then he remembered just what a bad idea that could be. In fact, all of this, including Helen’s visit, could be a setup to distract them or lure Noah away so the killer could try to grab Everly.
“Stay here and call for backup,” Grayson insisted. “I’ll go after him.”
Noah didn’t have time to argue that plan before Grayson sprinted out into the storm.
Chapter Fourteen
Everly watched the lightning bolts flash through the night sky. Not just one but clusters of them that in turn triggered rounds of booming thunder that seemed to shake the cruiser Noah and she were using.
There were no tornado warnings yet, but the rain was coming down so hard, the windshield wipers couldn’t keep up, and the wind gusts were battering the vehicle. That was the reason Noah was driving at a snail’s pace, and that in turn meant what should have been just a very short drive would turn into something much longer. Something much longer where she had time to think.
Everly had so many thoughts going through her head that it was hard to latch on to just one. The remnants of the tranquilizer probably weren’t helping with that, but even without the drugs, she would have had to deal with the whirl of memories mixed with what Noah and she had just learned.
Helen was alive.
They hadn’t killed her all those years ago.
Soon, she would need to try to come to terms with that, but for now, she had to put it on the back burner and deal with some more immediate things. Things that could get Noah and her killed if they weren’t careful. That was the thought bearing down on her as Noah drove through the storm toward her house.
Yes, toward her house.
Grayson, Noah and she had had an intense discussion about that after Grayson had returned from his failed attempt to find Bobby. After Helen had left, too, saying that she intended to check into a room at the inn since it was too dangerous for her to try to drive through the storm to get back to Dallas. In the end, Noah and Grayson had reluctantly agreed to go with the bait ploy.
Bait with lots of security.
Grayson would need to man the sheriff’s office, but one reserve deputy would remain parked out front of her house while another deputy would be positioned on the road behind the greenbelt in case the killer tried to make a return trip using that route. They’d be visible which would likely cause the killer to try to sneak around them, but it wouldn’t be easy what with the storm still raging. The road to her house wasn’t flooded, but the ditches soon would be if they weren’t already.
Another security measure was that Noah would be armed, of course, and they’d monitor the cameras that Hudson had installed on the porches.
Locked doors, cameras and weapons might not be enough of a deterrent though. And if the killer was River or Jared, they still had the motive that might spur them to continue the murders.
Noah’s phone dinged with a text, something it had done several times on the short drive from the hospital, but this time Noah didn’t frown when he saw the message that popped up on the screen on his dash. It was from his mother, and she’d sent them another picture of a sleeping Ainsley.
