Timber Creek

“Really?” she asked, a little abashed. “I didn’t know anyone noticed that stuff.”



They lay belly-to-belly on the bed, and when she looked up at him, he saw this strong woman’s eyes cloud with emotion. For once, she was letting herself be vulnerable, and it was for him. A tidal wave of affection swept him. Swamped him.



He cupped her head, pulling her close to kiss her forehead. “I noticed. I noticed you from the get-go—all the way back on that first day in kindergarten.”



She laughed, wiping the corner of her eye. “No, you didn’t.”



“All right. Maybe it took me till first grade. But you get my gist.” He rained kisses along her face. “Plus you’re beautiful. You’re so beautiful, like an angel. Like a painting.” He had too much to say…he didn’t know what to express first.



She giggled and poked him in the ribs. “Like a painting of an angel?”



“Hey, I’m new at this.”



“Eddie Jessup, new at women? I don’t think so.”



“All right, yeah, I know how to pay a compliment. I can appreciate a pretty face. But I’ve never been floored by one, and Laura, you floor me.”



She grew serious. “You floor me, too, Eddie. I…You’ve blown me away. I had no idea, you, this…”



She ran out of words, but it was okay. It was enough. He was a patient man.



The ringing phone startled them.



He frowned. “Who the hell is that?”



“Can you let it go?” she asked, but the look they shared said they knew he couldn’t. Late-night phone calls were too unusual—and too alarming—to send to voice mail.



He scampered naked to the living room, where he’d dropped his cell on the table with his keys and wallet. He checked, and the Caller ID was a weird one. It couldn’t be a telemarketer at ten P.M., could it? “Hello?”



“Is this Jessup Brothers Construction?”



“Yeah,” he said warily, peering at the clock on the microwave. “It’s way after hours, though.”



He strolled back into the bedroom and gave Laura a look that said they were far from done.



“Apologies for the late hour, but I’m calling from Indian Rock, from the urgent care clinic here?”



She’d said it like a question, so he said, “Yeah,” even though he wasn’t entirely sure of the place. He’d been to Indian Rock a few times through the years, but those late-night clinics all looked the same. Single story, lights on late, sign with a red cross out front.



Laura gave him a questioning look, mouthing, Who is it? and he could only shrug.



“We weren’t sure who to call,” the woman said, and by the time she finished telling him her reasons, he’d dashed outside, grabbed their clothes from beside the hot tub, and begun tugging on his jeans.



“So who was it?” The question burst from Laura the moment he clicked off. She was sitting up in bed, holding the sheet to her chest, where she’d been avidly watching his every move.



“Some clinic in Indian Rock. They’ve got an anonymous girl there, unconscious.” He pulled on a clean shirt. “I’m heading over.”



“Right now?”



“She’s just a little thing. They think she’s from Sierra Falls.”



She hopped out of bed, dressing quickly. “Why’d they call you?”



“They think I might know her. She’s wearing a shirt with a Jessup Brothers logo. A soccer shirt,” he recalled. They’d donated money for the peewee jerseys last year.



It wasn’t even a question that she go with him, and he loved the feel of that. Like they were a team. “I told you we’d be a duo,” he said as they hit the road.



“You were right.” She’d put her hand on his thigh the moment they’d gotten in his truck, and she gave it a squeeze. “Do you think they called Billy, too?”



“I assume the sheriff was the first person they called. I didn’t think to ask.”



“We’ll see when we get there, I guess.”



He filled her in on the remaining details. A girl, approximately six to eight years old, was sitting poolside at the Indian Rock Casino when she began to have trouble breathing. “The hotel called 911,” he finished, “and you know the rest.”



“Who could it be?”



“I don’t know. I can’t think of anyone who’d vacation there.”



“Not from here,” she said, and he had to agree. Indian Rock was kind of threadbare. And where were her parents?



Laura used the GPS on her phone to navigate, and with the late hour, they made good time. They ran inside, though the scene was far from urgent when they arrived.



A tired-looking nurse greeted them when they arrived. She’d minimized her computer window, but not before Eddie spotted a solitaire game. She asked, “You’re here for Ellie?”



Laura blurted, “Ellie…Haskell?”



At the nurse’s nod, she didn’t wait for an invitation, she simply stormed through the waiting room door into the back, and Eddie followed.



The clinic was a small one, with just a tiny kitchenette, two patient rooms, and a bathroom in the back. The doctor didn’t even have his own office, just a niche in the hallway bearing an ancient-looking PC with a stack of files beside it.



They saw Ellie right away, and Laura went to her, sweeping the sleeping girl into her arms. “What the heck is she doing here?” she demanded in a whisper.



“She said her father brought her for ice cream,” the nurse said, standing in the doorway to join them. She was shaking her head like it was something she saw everyday, and after spending time with his Reno kids, Eddie imagined it was possible she did.



Laura mouthed over the girl’s head, I’ll kill him.



Though he’d never seen this side to Laura, he didn’t doubt she would.



As Ellie snuggled into her, she asked, “Did you call Helen? Her mom?”



“The mother reported the girl missing to the sheriff’s office not two minutes ago—about the same time Ellie woke up enough to tell us who she is.”



At the mention of Helen, Ellie roused. “Is Mommy here?”



“We’ll take you home, honey.” Laura rocked her. “Your mom is waiting for you there. She’ll be so happy to see you.” She turned to the nurse. “Helen is my employee at the lodge and tavern in Sierra Falls.”



“Can we take her?” he asked. “We’re close with the family.”



“We’ll have to contact Mrs. Haskell,” the nurse said. “But you’ve got such a big head start on her, I can’t imagine she’d mind.”



The doctor appeared at the door. “Denise will finish up the paperwork. If it’s okay with the girl’s mother, it shouldn’t be a problem to discharge her into your care.”



Eddie put one hand on Laura’s shoulder and the other on Ellie’s forehead. “Is she okay to leave? You don’t need to do any tests or anything?” The kid actually didn’t look that bad. Her breathing was loud and her cheeks a bit flushed, but otherwise she seemed fine.



“She’s all set,” the doctor told them. “I imagine she’ll sleep well the rest of the night. It’s how croup is. The child appears normal, with just a minor cold, until the laryngeal muscles spasm. Does Ellie have asthma?” He signed off on the paperwork, then handed the clipboard to the nurse. “When she’s better, she should be tested. To be on the safe side, we put her on the nebulizer—some extra oxygen and a little Albuterol fixed her right up.”



Laura gathered her more tightly in her arms. “We’ll get you home, honey.”



They settled back in the car, and by the time Laura phoned what seemed like pretty much everybody in Sierra Falls, Ellie was fast asleep in the backseat of the truck.



“Poor Helen,” Laura whispered. She turned in her seat, craning to check on the sleeping girl one more time. “I’m going to kill Rob. I knew something was up with him, but bringing his kid so he can meet his mistress? I can’t…it’s just beyond the pale.”



“His mistress?” Eddie had other suspicions. “I have a feeling his mistress just might be a stack of chips.”



Thirty-one



Helen was beat. She was on for the lunch shift, but all she wanted to do was curl onto the couch with Ellie and zone out in front of as many stupid kid movies as her girl wanted to watch. She’d gather her boys on the couch, too. They’d have themselves what she called one of their desert-island days, when they spent the day in their jammies, eating whatever was in the cupboards.



She sighed. She might’ve been beat, but it was nothing compared to the whupping last night’s bill gave her. Late-night visits to urgent care clinics didn’t run cheap, and even with insurance, emergency co-pays were nuts.



Her damned husband.



He’d acted all penitent that morning and offered to watch Ellie—had seemed desperate to watch her—but she wasn’t about to let her girl leave her side. Her baby currently sat in one of the tavern’s corner booths, listlessly coloring the back of a children’s menu.



Helen watched as Laura brought Ellie a ginger ale. She braced herself for some lecture on how she shouldn’t be bringing a sick child to work, or maybe about how she’d had to drive to Indian Rock in the middle of the night, interrupting whatever it was she’d been doing with Eddie Jessup, and didn’t Helen just wonder about that development.



She spoke before her boss had a chance to lay into her. “Sorry about Ellie. I can’t leave her alone.”



But Laura surprised her with a vehement and instant reply. “Of course you can’t.” The significant nod that followed was a knife in the gut—her sympathetic expression said it’d be a given that she couldn’t leave Rob at home with the girl. And then Laura shocked her even more when she said, “That’s why you should go home. Hope’s in the kitchen doing lunch prep. We’re all set to cover your shift.”