Loe raamatut: «For Her Eyes Only»

Chapter One

Thunder rolled outside the walls of Squaw Creek Lodge, ripping through the gray, overhanging clouds. Rain splattered against the shake-shingle roof before running onto the ground. It had been raining for so many days, but it was getting worse. It seemed as if heaven was weeping. And while it was fashionable to cry at weddings, Jessica Hanson thought this was ridiculous.

She sat hunched over her computer, determined to concentrate on getting out the payroll for the lodge employees, and not on the wedding about to take place in the nearby ballroom. As she flipped through the time cards, her lower lip slid out of position just enough to pass for a pout. A sign to those who knew her best that she was more than slightly annoyed. She knew the couple who were about to get married, yet she hadn’t been invited to the wedding. But she was honest enough to admit that part of the reason could lie in the fact that she hadn’t been back in Grand Springs long enough to reestablish her place within her old circle of friends. Jessica’s reason for leaving Grand Springs two years ago had been traumatic enough for her to break all ties with her past except for those with her sister, Brenda. And although she’d been back a little over two months, she had yet to see the man who’d been her reason for leaving.

Stone Richardson.

Just thinking his name made her heart hurt, and she blinked back a quick spurt of tears as she let the memory of him back into her mind. Stone—as in…with a heart of. Then she sighed. Damn his ex-wife, Naomi, and damn his hard heart, anyway. It wasn’t Jessica’s fault Naomi had done everything within her power to prove that it was Stone’s job as a cop that had ruined their marriage and not Naomi’s own lack of understanding or willingness to accept him for who and what he was.

Jessica glanced at the clock. Almost six-thirty. Long past quitting time. She hammered on the keyboard with renewed intensity, determined to get through with the payroll before she left.

Her brief affair with Stone had ended without anyone, and that included Brenda, ever knowing it had happened. Stone had refused to trust another woman enough to give their future a chance, and Jessica hadn’t been willing to settle for being a cop’s sexual outlet.

She’d told herself then and she still thought it now—the best and worst thing that ever happened to her was loving Stone Richardson. Coming back to Grand Springs had been Jessica’s way of proving to herself that she was over him. And although she’d been back for two months now, she had yet to see him face-to-face. When that happened, then she would know if her two-year, self-imposed exile had worked.

Her fingers flew as she entered data into the computer, while her mind was stuck in the past. Laughter from the gathering guests was faint, but she heard it all the same. She rolled her eyes and frowned. If she could have seen herself, it would have lightened her mood. She looked more like a pouting child who’d been put in a corner for something she hadn’t done, than the consummate professional she considered herself to be.

A sudden clap of thunder made her jump, and when the lights flickered, she paused, her fingers poised above the keys as the battery backup to her uninterrupted power supply beeped a quick, nervous warning. The storm was getting stronger by the hour. Thunder, lightning, torrential rain—and it didn’t look as if it was going to stop any time soon. Grand Springs was in for a rough night.

“No, no, no,” she begged, staring at the flickering screen. When the power held, she sighed in relief and returned to her task. Just a few more cards and she would be finished.

Cool air circulated within her small, self-contained office as, moments later, she hit the save key. It was done! A smile of satisfaction crossed her face.

Jessica leaned back in the chair, stretching as she listened to the contented purr of her computer’s hard drive. Her shoulders ached and her neck was tired, and out of habit, she reached up and pulled out the pins holding her hairdo in place. It rolled from the topknot and onto her shoulders without so much as a tangle. Since it wouldn’t hold a curl, it only stood to reason it wouldn’t hold a knot, either.

Her hair was thick and straight and a color her sister, Brenda, called dishwater blond. She’d been told all of her life that she looked a bit like a young Goldie Hawn, minus the giggles, of course. It hadn’t helped Jessica’s opinion of herself at all. She didn’t want to be minus anything. She wanted…

Before she could finish the thought, the room went dark, lit only by the screen of the computer still in operation. The backup battery began beeping a frantic warning for her to shut the system down before all was lost.

Frantically, Jessica exited the program, breathing a quiet sigh of relief when she switched off the computer. She hadn’t had time to print out the checks, but payroll had been saved. However, now that the screen was dark, she couldn’t see a thing. Outside her office, she heard the sound of a folding chair tumbling to the floor, and then an unnatural silence.

“Perfect. Just perfect,” she muttered, and wearily laid her head down on the desk to wait for the power to resume.

A man’s muffled voice sounded as he ran past the outer door to her office, and Jessica thought he said something about fuses and flashlights. Flashlights! There was one in the file cabinets by the door. Although good sense told her to stay put until the power returned, she pushed her chair back from the desk and then stood. It was her first mistake.

The absence of light was disconcerting. It made the air seem thicker, her balance less sure. Circling her desk with hands outstretched, she was forced to orient herself by touch alone. When she bumped the edge of the desk with her knee, she winced. Even though she was wearing pants, the fabric wasn’t heavy enough to prevent the bruise that was bound to appear.

“Fish guts,” she muttered, rubbing at the ache in her knee.

When she could bend it without further pain, she moved again, still aiming for the file cabinets by the door. Once more, the absence of light threw her off balance and she staggered, this time stumbling backward. Her sleeve caught on something sharp, and when she heard fabric rip, she groaned. That had been her favorite blouse.

Another ripple of thunder sounded overhead as something thumped against the outside of her door. A muffled curse and then a slight moan drifted beneath the crack. It gave her a modicum of satisfaction to know she wasn’t the only one fumbling around in the dark. Still fuming over the tear she’d put in her blouse, she started forward. It was to be her second mistake.

The office that had been her refuge now seemed close and confining, and in a panic, she hastened her steps. Seconds later, something hard and round rolled beneath her shoe, and in dismay, Jessica remembered the umbrella she’d tossed on top of a cabinet hours earlier. Even as she’d been walking toward her desk, she’d heard it roll off and onto the floor. She’d meant to go back and pick it up, but the phone had rung. And then she’d sat down and started to work and thought nothing more of it…until now.

The sensation of moving through space without seeing where she was going was frightening. All she knew was that her feet were no longer on the floor and she was on the way down. And then pain shattered her consciousness. She’d found the file cabinets…the hard way.

* * *

Lamplight flickered in a corner of the room.

Jessica groaned and clutched at her head as she rolled toward the glow, but the act of moving had not been wise. Her stomach lurched and she gritted her teeth. With a moan, she closed her eyes as she grabbed at the floor, waiting for the world to quit bucking.

She took a deep breath and, choosing one of her more colorful epithets to express her dismay, dug her fingers into the carpet’s pile and muttered.

“Rat feet. Rat feet. Dirty little rat feet.”

Quick bursts of bright colored lights went off behind her eyelids as she rolled into a sitting position and covered her face with her hands. When her fingers came away damp and sticky and she discovered part of her hair was stuck to her forehead, she began to shake.

Testing the place where her head hurt the worst, she was horrified to feel a large gash and a steady stream of blood flowing out and down. Her head was throbbing. The room wouldn’t stop spinning. And she needed help. She closed her eyelids, gritted her teeth and took a slow, deep breath.

When agony had subsided to a dull, pounding ache, she opened her eyes again, this time focusing on the lamp and the soft, yellow glow across the room, and she wondered if she would be able to move. When someone suddenly walked between Jessica and the light, her first thought was that help had arrived. But the woman by the desk didn’t look up.

“Help me,” Jessica said, but the woman didn’t move. In fact, Jessica could have been invisible for all the reaction her plea evoked.

She blinked slowly, trying to coordinate the action between a fresh surge of pain. The woman’s image kept wavering in and out of her consciousness, and she knew she was going to pass out again. Frantic for help, Jessica lifted her arm, waving in the woman’s direction as she tried once more to gain her attention.

“Help me. Please, help me.”

And then the woman turned and walked to the end of the desk, revealing her identity. Jessica went weak with relief.

“Olivia! Thank God it’s you.”

It didn’t seem odd to Jessica that Olivia Stuart, the mayor of Grand Springs, would be here at the lodge. After all, she was the mother of the groom who was about to be married. Where else might she have been? But Jessica didn’t think to wonder what Olivia would be doing in her office, smiling when she had so obviously been injured. All she knew was she was no longer alone.

Once again, Jessica tried to stand and got no further than her knees before the room began to spin. She paused on all fours with her head down and her arms trembling from the effort of trying to hold herself up, then slumped back to the floor with a moan.

“Olivia, I can’t do it alone. You’re going to have to help me.”

To Jessica’s disbelief, Olivia kept smiling. Then, out of the shadows, a second figure suddenly emerged. Jessica instinctively shrank back against the wall as someone grabbed Olivia from behind. A hand was clamped roughly over Olivia’s mouth, and then Olivia was shoved forward by the momentum of the attack, pinned against the end of the desk and the attacker’s body. Jessica gasped. Some stranger…a tall, powerful woman…was trying to hurt the mayor!

The struggle between the two women was horrifying. Olivia’s arms flailed helplessly as the assailant’s grip seemed to tighten. Jessica watched as Olivia struggled, trying to pull free of the woman’s clutches.

And then it seemed as if everything began to happen in slow motion. Something glittered in the assailant’s upraised hand. Jessica moaned and covered her mouth, suddenly aware that she could very likely be the woman’s next victim.

Dear God, she thought. It’s a needle! A hypodermic needle! A vein throbbed horribly at the back of Jessica’s neck, blinding her to everything but the motion of the needle as it was plunged into the back of Olivia Stuart’s leg.

Moments later, when Olivia crumpled to the floor, Jessica began to scream. Led by the sounds of her distress, Jessica’s co-workers soon found her—alone and unconscious—and bleeding profusely from a wound to the head.

* * *

Vanderbilt Memorial Hospital was a beacon in the darkness that had fallen upon Grand Springs. Operating on backup generators, faint light spilled out of the windows and doorways and into the streets beyond. Ambulance sirens screamed a warning as the first of the victims to fall prey to the blackout began to arrive.

Stone Richardson had been thrust into the ongoing scene at the hospital, almost from the onset of the blackout. After transporting an accident victim to the hospital in his own car, he found himself caught up in the turmoil going on inside. Although he was a detective on the Grand Springs police force, every able-bodied officer was working where they were most needed. And judging from the chaos in the emergency room, this seemed to be a good place to start. Caught between people in need of assistance and those who’d accompanied the injured to the hospital, he found himself in the role of referee. Twice in the last few minutes, he’d been forced to get between a doctor working on a patient and the person who’d brought in the injured person. Panic was rampant.

“Hey! Back off and let the doctor do her job!” Stone ordered, yelling to make himself heard above an angry biker’s shout. When the biker, who called himself Red, took a swing at him, Stone shoved him up against a wall.

Nearby, Amanda Jennings, one of the doctors on duty, did what she could to staunch the flow of blood spilling down the other biker’s face. Red grabbed at Stone’s arm in frustration.

“But that’s my buddy she’s—”

Stone glanced at the hand locked around his wrist, and then looked back up at the biker as his voice lowered to a menacing growl.

“I don’t care if he’s your fairy godfather. Either you sit down and shut up, or you’re going to spend the night in jail for assault.”

At that point, Red might have recognized more than the voice of authority. The gleam in Stone’s eyes was warning enough for him.

“Fine with me,” Red muttered, and glared at the doctor before slinking off to the waiting room.

Without taking her eyes from her patient and the stitches she was putting in the side of his face, Amanda Jennings muttered a quick, fervent thanks.

“Glad you were here,” she said shortly.

Stone nodded. Dr. Amanda Jennings was all business, even though her size belied her strength. She was only a couple of inches over five feet tall, but her skill more than compensated for her lack of height.

“Glad I could help,” he answered, and headed back into the hallway where humanity streamed by at a steady, frantic pace.

An ambulance slid to a halt just outside the door, and Stone stepped aside as paramedics came running into the building with a patient strapped fast to a blood-splattered gurney. From where he was standing, he got a quick glimpse of the woman beneath the sheets. She was young and slender, her long blond hair steadily staining with a blood flow the paramedics had been unable to staunch. He winced. Another person had fallen victim to the Grand Springs blackout.

As the gurney moved past him, Stone’s heart, quite literally, stopped. It was only for a moment, but the skipped beat was evidence of the shock of his recognition. He knew that upturned nose. He’d seen that mouth many times before. He’d kissed it more times than he could count. And he still remembered the shock he’d felt upon learning that Jessica Hanson had left Grand Springs without so much as a goodbye.

He hadn’t known until she was gone how much he’d cared for her, but even then it hadn’t been enough to make him go after her. Stone wasn’t stupid. He’d learned the hard way that being a cop and being married weren’t always synonymous, at least not for him. He’d cared for Jessie. He’d loved making love with her. But he wasn’t going to ruin another woman’s life and dig his own hole in the world any deeper by repeating his mistakes.

By the time he got the impetus to follow the paramedics down the hall, they had disappeared into a trauma room. While he was struggling with the fact that Jessie was back in Grand Springs and he hadn’t known it, never mind how she had come to be covered in blood, another altercation began to take place between two sets of desperate parents who were vying for a doctor’s attention. He moved toward them with fixed intent.

* * *

Jessica didn’t remember the ride to the hospital, or of being wheeled into ER amid a flurry of shouts and activity. When she did begin to come around, she opened her eyes and screamed, reacting instinctively to the sight of a portable X-ray machine being lowered into place above her. Someone grabbed at her hands, then spoke. The woman’s voice was calm, the tone reassuring.

“Take it easy, dear. You’re in a hospital.”

Jessica shuddered and moaned, then tried to relax, unaware that she was already crying. From the other side of the curtain, a child began to shriek, and in the opposite corner of the room Jessica could hear someone groaning. Pain shattered her cognizance.

Hospital? Why am I in a hospital?

Minutes passed, but to Jessica, they could have been hours. Perspective and time had no meaning. There was only the pain and confusion holding her fast to the bed.

Sometime later, she woke up again to find herself on a gurney in a hallway. Disoriented by painkillers and a headache of mammoth proportions, she knew little about what was going on around her until someone touched her arm.

“Take it easy, Jessie. You’re going to be all right.”

Jessica blinked and then groaned. That voice and those wide, imposing shoulders were all too familiar. She looked up into stormy gray eyes and let her gaze wander to that stubborn square jaw before she looked away.

Stone knew she had no idea he had followed her as she’d been moved from the trauma room, or that she’d been parked in the hallway, waiting to be taken upstairs. She also had no way of knowing, nor did Stone think she would have believed, that he’d refused to budge from her side until someone came to get her.

“Bat barf,” she muttered, and missed seeing his grin.

If it hadn’t hurt so bad, Jessica would have glared.

“I’m bleeding,” she muttered inanely, and reached toward her head.

Stone’s expression gentled as he caught her hand. “Not anymore, Jessie. You’re going to be all right.”

“Not in this lifetime,” she muttered.

Stone frowned but didn’t have time to answer, as the long-awaited orderly finally appeared, moving Stone aside as he grabbed at the foot of Jessica’s bed.

“Sorry, sir, but they’re admitting her. You can see her tomorrow during visiting hours.”

Stone turned Jessie’s hand loose and felt a sense of panic as the orderly wheeled her away. The need to say something more was choking him, but all he could manage was, “Hey, honey, take care of yourself, okay?”

Jessica felt him patting her knee as she was wheeled away.

“I am not your ‘honey,’” she mumbled, before falling back asleep.

* * *

Someone yanked at the sheet beneath Jessica’s right leg and then rolled her onto her side. With an audible groan, she opened her eyes and grabbed for the bed rail. A pair of nurses-in-training were changing the linens on her bed.

“We’re sorry, Miss Hanson, but this won’t take long, and you’ll feel so much better with clean sheets on your bed.”

Jessica looked at the name tags on their uniforms, then gritted her teeth and hung on. She could have used a painkiller, and she was fairly certain that the clean sheets A. Wren and S. Dexter were determined to give her wouldn’t do a thing for the throb in her temples.

Wren rattled the ice in Jessica’s pitcher and then set it down, satisfied that there was an ample supply.

“Isn’t that a shame about Mrs. Stuart,” she said.

Jessica’s heart kicked out of rhythm as Dexter tucked the corners of her sheet tightly into place. Memory was coming back in swift and sudden flashes. Olivia had been attacked right in front of her eyes! Guilt flooded her conscience. How could she have been so crass as to forget such a thing?

Dexter nodded. “It’s so sad for her son, Hal, too. Imagine having your own mother suffer a heart attack on the day of your wedding!”

Jessica frowned. They had it all wrong. It wasn’t a heart attack. Someone had stabbed Olivia. She’d seen it happen. She touched Wren’s arm and started to argue.

“But, I saw…”

Wren, not to be outdone, patted Jessica’s arm and continued with the story as if Jessica hadn’t uttered a word.

“They said someone found her on the floor by her kitchen table. When they brought her in last night, she was all dressed for the wedding.”

Jessica closed her eyes. Teal. The dress was a teal-colored silk. Her head was swimming. None of this was making a bit of sense.

“It wasn’t by her table, it was by my…”

For all the good it did to say it, the two women were still ignoring the fact that Jessica was trying to speak.

Dexter thrust her arm beneath Jessica’s neck, then slid a fresh pillow beneath her head.

“Here you go. Easy does it.”

Wren poked a thermometer in Jessica’s mouth and began to take her pulse. Once again, Jessica found herself unable to say what was on her mind.

Dexter picked the bloodstained sheets from the floor where they’d been tossed and waited while Wren yanked the thermometer out of Jessica’s mouth and made the necessary notations on the patient’s chart.

“Have you seen where the Stuarts live?” Dexter asked. “I swear, some people have all the luck. That house is fantastic. I always wanted one like that.”

Wren stuck her pen back in her pocket and patted Jessica’s arm. “Yes, well, that house won’t do Olivia Stuart any good anymore. You can’t take it with you, you know.”

Jessica was too shocked by what she was hearing to respond. How could they have found Olivia in her house? She was in my office, I saw her!

Dexter’s voice lowered to a theatrical whisper. “They said Dr. Jennings and Dr. Howell worked on her forever and it was just no use.”

Jessica gasped, and this time when she grabbed at Wren’s arm, she got their attention.

“She’s dead? Olivia Stuart is dead?”

Wren and Dexter glanced nervously at each other, suddenly realizing they’d been gossiping about hospital business in front of a patient.

“Are you a member of the family?” Wren asked.

“No, but—”

Relief spread over both of their faces. “Just rest. It’s the best medicine for what ails you.”

Having dispensed their opinions, Dexter and Wren quickly disappeared, leaving Jessica in a state of confusion. Olivia wasn’t in her kitchen. She was in my office, and she didn’t have a heart attack. Someone tried to kill her. Then she gasped. Someone hadn’t tried to kill her. If Olivia was dead, then the attack had been successful.

But the more Jessica thought about it, the more confused she became. The nurses would have no reason to lie, and it didn’t make sense that someone could attack Olivia in one place and then move her body clear across town and dump it in another place without being seen. Granted, there was a blackout, but the lodge had been crawling with guests.

A fresh wave of pain moved from Jessica’s head to her neck and shoulders. She bit her lip to keep from crying out and closed her eyes. And the longer she lay there alone, the more convinced she became that the blow to her head must have caused her to suffer hallucinations. It was the only explanation that made sense.

She refused to let herself examine the fact that about the same time she was having the hallucination, Olivia Stuart was suffering a heart attack on the other side of town. The coincidence of it all was mind-boggling, but she hurt too much to sort it all out.

Settling back against the pillow, she took a slow, deep breath, trying to convince herself it was going to be all right. In the midst of her thoughts, the door to her room flew open, banging against a nearby chair. She opened her eyes and stifled a groan.

In all her tall, blond beauty, Brenda Hanson burst into the room carrying an armful of wilting flowers. “Jessie, darling! Are you all right?”

Jessica had no time to answer before her sister leaned across the bed and gave her a kiss, unintentionally squishing the IV fastened to the back of her hand and poking the stem of a gladiola up her nose.

“Ouch,” Jessica muttered.

“Ooh, sorry,” Brenda said, frowning as she straightened, then staring at the apparatus they’d stuck in her baby sister’s body. The frown deepened as her gaze moved from Jessica’s hand to her head.

“Ooh, yuck, they shaved off part of your hair, didn’t they.”

Jessica’s hand flew upward in a fit of panic. Slipping her fingers beneath the edge of the bandage, she felt bare skin, then groaned and let her hand fall to the bed with a thump.

“Dog fleas. As if I’m not invisible enough already.”

Brenda sighed. She loved her younger sister dearly, but was of the same opinion their parents had been before their untimely death some years earlier. With regards to looks, fashion sense and her worth on the open market with men, Jessica was clueless. Brenda was all for subtlety herself, but not at the expense of style and looks.

Brenda poked her finger near the edge of the bandage with a sympathetic tap. “I’m sure it will grow back in no time.”

Jessica’s chin quivered. “With my luck, that’s not necessarily a given.”

Brenda ignored her remark and moved on to a different topic, waving the drooping flowers under her sister’s nose. “They’re a little wilted, but you must remember it’s the thought that counts. The power is still off, and Marcel’s Bouquet was letting everything go at half price.”

In spite of her misery, Jessica had to grin. Leave it up to Brenda to find a bargain in a blackout. She brushed her fingertips across limp lavender petals.

“They’re very pretty, but I don’t have anything to put them in.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Brenda said. “Grand Springs is on water rationing until the blackout is over.”

Jessica snorted softly. “It’s been raining for days and we’re now short of drinking water?”

Brenda laughed and waved her hand above her head with a flirty flip. “You know the old saying, ‘Water, water everywhere, but not a drop to drink.’”

Jessica closed her eyes as a fresh wave of pain rolled up her back to the top of her head.

Brenda’s lighthearted expression faded as she stared at the stark white bandage on her little sister’s head. She set the wilting flowers aside and brushed a hand lightly across Jessica’s forehead.

“What happened, sweetie? About an hour ago I got a call from someone telling me you’d had an accident. When I found out you’ve been here since last night, I started to pitch a fit. But I suppose with all that’s been going on, we’re lucky they called at all.”

Brenda’s sympathy was too much to handle. Tears trickled from the corner of Jessica’s eyes as Brenda patted at her arm.

“I fell in my office. Against the file cabinet, I think.”

Brenda glanced at Jessica’s head again and winced. “Poor dear.”

Jessica had the distinct impression that Brenda’s concern was more for her missing hair than the wound she’d suffered.

“Oh, did you hear the news about Olivia Stuart?” Brenda said, suddenly changing the subject.

The room started to turn, and Jessica was thrust into the past with a swiftness she wouldn’t have believed. She was only vaguely aware of her sister’s voice droning on somewhere in the background, as her attention had become focused on an entirely different scene.

Rationally, she knew she was in the hospital, but her mind seemed removed from her body. The room went dark, and, unable to fight the overwhelming sense of being out of control, once again she found herself witnessing Olivia Stuart’s attack. And then the image disappeared as quickly as it came, leaving Jessica weak and shaking and gasping for air.

Concerned for Jessica’s sudden pallor, Brenda grabbed her sister’s hand. “Are you all right? Should I call a doctor?”

Jessica closed her eyes and tried to calm her racing heart. “No, whatever it was is gone.”

“Still,” Brenda muttered, “I think I should let them know that you’re not quite up to par.”

Jessica tried not to glare and wondered what it would be like to be beautiful and dense, then decided it wouldn’t be a good trade-off. She liked being able to balance a checkbook, as well as a job and a life. She rolled her eyes at Brenda’s inane remark.

“Of course I’m not up to par. I have stitches where my hair used to be.”

Brenda’s laugh tinkled like crystal chimes in a gentle breeze. Jessica snorted softly in response and both sisters smiled at each other. There was some truth in the old saying that blood was thicker than water.