Chapter 14

Chapter

Fourteen

December 17 th

7:44 P.M.

It wasn't until he heard the screams that he realized something was wrong.

Donovan had been so engrossed in his game of snowballs with Freddie that he hadn't been thinking of anything else.

They were at a crowded theme park, what could possibly happen?

Wasn't like the stalker was going to walk through a crowd of happy families and attack him or Jessica and Freddie.

Would he?

Terror clawed at his insides as he instinctively reached for Freddie and pulled the little boy close. The same thing most parents seemed to be doing as the shrill scream sounded again.

“Where’s my mom?” Freddie asked, looking over to where Jessica had been just moments ago.

Now the spot was empty.

“Lissy?” a woman shouted out, and he could see a couple with two small boys running toward a little girl who was the one doing the screaming.

Because Jessica was gone, he picked up Freddie and followed the couple. Something was wrong, and it had to do with this little girl, he knew it.

“Don’t you ever wander off again, you hear me?” the woman was saying as he approached. She’d dragged the sobbing little girl into her arms and was trying her best to calm the distraught child.

“The police lady gotted hurt,” Lissy was babbling through her tears.

Police lady?

Jessica?

“Sorry to interrupt,” he said, approaching cautiously, not wanting to upset the family but needing to know what was going on. Obviously assuming it was nothing more than a child who’d temporarily gotten lost most other people had resumed their playing, but Donovan couldn’t shake the feeling there was more to it than that and the little girl’s words confirmed it.

“Yes?” the father said, moving to stand between him and his family.

“My girlfriend is missing, she’s a police officer,” he explained.

“The police lady fell down,” the little girl said again.

“May I?” he asked the parents, stepping closer when they nodded. “You're Lissy?”

“Yeah.”

“I'm Donovan, and this is Freddie. Did you get lost?”

“There were too many snows balls, and I couldn’t see Mommy. Then the police lady was there, and she said she’d help me. But when we went looking, someone hit her, and she fell down,” Lissy told him.

“Was the police lady’s name Jessica?” he asked, already knowing the answer.

“Yes,” the child whispered.

“Please call the cops,” he said to the family as he debated leaving Freddie with them while he went looking for Jessica. As much as he didn't want the child out of his sight, he also didn't want him to see his mother hurt, or possibly worse.

It was the worse that had him in a near panic.

The stalker’s threat echoed in his mind .

“I’ll go with you, I'm a doctor,” the father said. “Your boy can stay with my wife while we go check on his mom.”

“I want to stay with you,” Freddie said, his thin arms tightening their grip around Donovan’s neck until it was almost strangling him.

“I want you to stay with me, too, buddy, but I think your mom would prefer you wait here with Lissy and her mom. I’ll come right back to you as soon as we make sure your mom is okay. All right?”

Freddie sniffed but nodded, and he set the little boy down, then leaned in to give him one more hug.

With the other man on his heels, he took off toward the tree line where the little girl had come running from. What was he going to find when he got there? Had Jessica just been injured or was she dead or dying right this very second?

As soon as he got close enough, he spotted the bright blue coat she’d been wearing.

It was lying in the snow, unmoving, and the closer he got, he could see that the snow around her head was stained red.

How had he ever thought the color was his favorite?

Now red would forever remind him of this moment, of the woman he was falling for lying motionless in the snow, blood oozing out from a head wound.

Dropping to his knees beside her, he barely felt the cold from the snow seeping into his jeans. He had to know.

Dead or alive.

Had he already lost her before he’d even really had a chance to be with her?

Had his interest in a woman cost a little boy his mother, the only parent he had?

Ripping off his gloves, he touched his fingers to her neck and sagged in relief when he felt it.

A pulse.

Alive.

Not gone.

“She’s got a pulse,” Donovan told the other man.

“Looks like she was hit over the head with this.” The doctor pointed to a branch lying discarded by Jessica’s side, then knelt beside her and began to examine the wound. As he probed it Jessica groaned, her eyelashes fluttering against her pale cheeks.

“Jessica? Can you hear me, sweetheart? It’s Donovan.” Carefully as he could, he brushed his knuckles across her cheek, terrified of doing anything to hurt her.

She mumbled something incoherent.

“Jess?” He tried again. “Answer me, baby.”

“Freddie?”

“He’s okay,” he assured her.

“The little girl … Lissy …?”

“Is okay, too. It’s you we’re worried about right now.”

“Head hurts,” she mumbled, still fighting to open her eyes.

“It’s going to be okay, ma’am,” the doctor told her. “An ambulance is coming, we’ll get you to the hospital. Likely concussion, possible hypothermia,” the doctor said to him.

All things considered, Donovan knew they were lucky and knew things could have been a lot worse. If the stalker was out for blood, a girlfriend for a wife, then he could be looking down at her dead body right now. Whether this was all the stalker had intended to do, or if Lissy’s screams had deterred him from doing more, Donovan would never know, and it terrified him.

This time they’d been lucky, but what about next time?