Frankie Jones became the worst kind of recalcitrant patient – a medical doctor forced to become dependent on others.
Slater insisted she recuperate with him at his ranch home at the foot of the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Tending Cole Hansen as he gradually mended filled the short, winter days.
Cruz visited Frankie nearly every day – she insisted he kept her sane.
He insisted Dr. Frankie Jones was distracting. Very distracting.
“I’m thinking about moving back into my father’s house,” Frankie declared one day when the snow fell lightly on the distant mountains. “Do you think I should?”
Cruz thought she looked lovely in the early evening light, in spite of the weight she’d lost. “Would you feel safe there, after what’s happened?”
She shrugged and abandoned the topic. “What’s going to happen to Cole now that he’s nearly well? Will he be safe out there?” She gestured vaguely in a southward direction.
“As much as anywhere,” Cruz answered. “He can’t hide out at Slater’s house forever. I’m working on finding him a transitional house, and Slater has a job lined up for him.”
“Good.”
His glance dropped to her mouth. He was thinking about kisses – getting distracted again.
“I’ve given notice at Pelican Bay,” Frankie continued. “Put the Crescent City house up for sale.”
“Oh?”
“I can’t go back there,” she insisted. “There’s too much of the story that hasn’t been written yet, and I – well, I want to be near my father.”
Frankie wasn’t ready to reveal her father’s connection to the man his gang members called the Professor, but she wanted to be honest with Cruz. “I need to find out what really happened when my mother died.”
She had shared what little she knew of her mother’s death, her father’s conviction for her murder, and his sentence of fifteen-to-life for second-degree murder. Cruz tried to imagine the strain of that event on a seventeen-year-old girl, but he couldn’t. “Where did you go after it happened?”
“My mother’s sister – Aunt Elaine,” she replied shortly. “Of course, she was completely convinced – still is – that Dad killed Mom. She didn’t make life easy for me.” She turned away from his steady, dark eyes and gazed out the window to the lightly snow-dusted trees surrounding Slater’s property.
Cruz got up to make cups of hot cocoa. When they’d settled down again, he asked thoughtfully, “Do you think Stark had anything to do with your mother’s death? Is that even possible?”
“I don’t know. It happened so long ago. What reason would Stark have to harm her? It doesn’t make any sense.”
“Maybe not to you when you were seventeen, but we might be able to uncover reasons from an adult perspective,” Cruz argued.
Frankie leaned forward and took one of his hands in both hers. She liked his saying “we,” as if they were a team. “We’ve got more – more pressing concerns.”
He returned the pressure, bumped knees with her. He enjoyed the contact, however slight.
So far there had been no more deaths in Bigler County or the surrounding ones.
She shook her head thoughtfully. “They’re pinning everything on Jeffrey Rawley, but I keep thinking about those organs. The skill and precision it took to remove them. I can’t see Rawley doing that.”
“We’ve got our killer,” Cruz assured her. “We know Rawley killed Dickey Hinchey because we have physical evidence from his apartment. Angie ID’ed him as her kidnapper.”
However, Frankie was convinced Jeffrey Rawley hadn’t committed all three murders. Maybe he was responsible for the kidnapping of Angie Hunt and the death of Dickey Hinchey, but she didn’t believe he killed the Hightower girl or the Sacramento woman.
“The District Attorney isn’t going to pursue another line of investigation,” Cruz continued. “He doesn’t want to damage the case against Rawley.”
“So any further work on the case will have to be done by the three of us,” she declared.
He laughed. “Good luck with getting Slater on board. Rogue agents in a civilian capacity?” He rose, took Frankie by one hand and tugged her to her feet. “Let’s take a walk.”
They wrapped themselves in coats and scarves, even though the temperature was mild despite the snowfall. They followed a well-trodden path into the woods, Cruz still holding her hand. He wasn’t going to let go.
Not right away. Not any time soon.
“I need to feel settled somewhere – not here,” Frankie confessed. “Here I feel so ... unanchored.” She ran her fingers through her loose hair. “I can’t let Anson Stark control my entire life. I don’t want to be looking over my shoulder, afraid all the time.”
“You know, Slater would be all right with you staying here indefinitely.”
“I know, but I – ”