Behind the Badge, page 24
He took her hands. His were large and rough, warm and strong. “I want to earn more than your trust. I’ve fallen in love with you, Crys. I want to make you happy.”
Luke’s chiseled features were blurry through her tears. “You’ve already made me happy, Luke. I know with you, love is worth the risk.” She rose up on her toes and pressed her lips to his.
* * * * *
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Chapter 1
It was blustery and cold when Ava Colton got out of her car and hurried toward the Baldwin Memorial Hospital. The white stone-and-concrete building was large and housed multiple wings. It was one of the top teaching hospitals in the state. Didn’t matter that she’d been listening to beach music and dreaming of a getaway to anywhere sunny and warm. Winter always hit her extra hard in February.
She liked it in January, when the first snowfalls of winter meant she could spend time snowshoeing and cross-country skiing. But come February…things got tougher. Which really wasn’t all that bad considering her latest patient’s recent experiences. Fern Hensley had been rescued from a makeshift cabin after being roughed up and drugged, and now the woman was struggling to deal with the trauma of being kidnapped and left in that cabin for dead.
As a psychologist, Ava was working with Fern trying to help the other woman process everything that had happened to her. Not that it was ever easy to move on from trauma. Something Ava was intimately familiar with. She’d been stalked by an ex-boyfriend in college, and while she’d never been kidnapped or beaten, she knew what it was like to lose her sense of safety.
Walking in through the main atrium, Ava always found herself admiring the large rock formations that were designed as seating for hospital visitors and the abundance of Native American sculptures and art decorating the space. Her cousin Sassy probably knew most of the artists by name.
She smiled her hellos to the staff on duty as she walked into the hospital and down the corridor that led to her office. The doctor who’d been seeing Fern usually left some notes on her current condition. The woman had been in the hospital for four days. Her recovery was no doubt hampered by fear and uncertainty.
It was hard not to let rage build if she thought too long about what had been done to Fern, her protective instincts flaring. Instead of giving into her rage she focused all of her energy on helping Fern heal. That was her mission—to give Fern the tools she needed to heal mentally from everything that had happened to her.
“Morning, Ava,” Darla said. The other woman was in her mid-thirties, with short blond hair. She had a rounded face and easy smile.
Darla was her rock. She ran the psychiatric department and had been here for almost fifteen years. She was very organized but also a good listener. Currently they were both binge-watching a current reality television show where ordinary people are taken out of their everyday lives to compete with each other. As a psychologist she loved watching the way people reacted to everything and how the slightest change in behavior often made everyone suspicious of them in the castle.
“Did you watch our show last night?” Darla asked.
“No. Went to my parents’ for dinner. I’ll catch up at lunch so we can dish later,” Ava said. She planned to keep her office door firmly closed when she was in it, which meant she’d stream the episode on her phone. Chay Benally a tall Navajo man with dark brown eyes and black hair kept stopping by her office trying to get her to give him information from Fern. She had nothing to tell him that wasn’t in the police report. Her patient either didn’t remember or simply didn’t want to talk about what had happened to her.
“Looking forward to it,” Darla said as her phone rang.
Ava went into her office, closing the door behind her. Shrugging out of her coat, she hung it on the hook on the back of the door and then walked around to her desk to turn on her laptop. She saw the photo of her and her cousins that had been taken last summer and smiled as she always did. Their family was large and the faces were all smiling a mix of Caucasian and Navajo. Thanks to her Aunt Bly.
Fern didn’t smile, exactly, when Ava walked into her room, but the other woman did nod at her. She was starting her recovery, but it was going to be a long trip. Ava always let her patients set the tone for the sessions. It helped to build rapport.
“How are you doing today?” Ava asked.
Fern was twenty-five and had long brown hair, which she’d braided and left to lie against the hospital bedsheets. Her hazel eyes were direct, but her smile never reached her eyes. From her records Ava knew she was a medical coder, so she had to have some knowledge of what was going on with her situation.
She never discussed it. In fact, she really hadn’t discussed much yet. She answered questions in short answers—mainly yes or no. But Ava was determined to get her talking…she might not be chatty, but the other woman had been found near the edge of the Navajo Nation. After a fire broke out in the makeshift cabin where she’d been held by two men who’d kidnapped her while she’d been walking to her car in downtown Oso a few blocks from the doctor’s office where she’d worked.
Oso was a town more than one hundred miles from Dark Canyon. Fern had been given injections of a drug that kept her knocked out while she was held captive. The men had been coming daily to feed her and take care of the generator but then suddenly stopped coming.
“Feeling a bit better,” she admitted. But her leg had been severely broken—her physical recovery was going to be just as serious as her mental one.
“Being somewhere safe will do that for you,” Ava said. Remembering when she’d been stalked by a guy she’d been casually dating. There was nothing like that feeling of insecurity to really wreak havoc on every detail of daily life.
“Yeah.”
“So, we left off on when you woke up alone in the cabin…”
“Yup.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“Not really,” she said.
“What would you like to discuss?” Ava asked her.
Fern shrugged.
“The cops were in here with a baby…I think they thought she was mine,” Fern offered. She looked fragile and like her spirit had been broken.
“Do you have a child?” Ava asked.
“No,” Fern said, shaking her head. “Definitely not. I can’t take care of me…”
“I get that,” Ava said. “Do you want to talk about the baby?”
“Not really. I mean, I probably should say yes then we could talk about that…but no.”
“It’s okay. You’re in control here—we can talk about anything.”
“Anything?” Fern asked.
“Sure. Like, how do you feel about cowboys? I like a man who knows how to wear a pair of jeans.”
Fern relaxed against the pillows of her hospital bed. Moving to cross her arms over her body before realizing that she was connected to the IV. “I do too. Can’t help that.”
Ave stayed with Fern for another twenty minutes until she faked falling asleep. Ava sighed quietly and left. Having struggled with grief after the death of her fiancé, she was very aware of the different techniques that could be used to get people to leave you alone. So, she didn’t press Fern. Her patient needed time, and Ava understood that better than anyone.
As Ava was heading back to her office, Marg Lesser stopped her. “Hey, Ava, are you available to foster for a few days? We have a baby girl—still trying to figure out who she is exactly.”
“Yes. I can take her,” Ava said. She’d been fostering for the last year or so. At twenty-nine, she was settled in a way that she hadn’t anticipated. But her life was good. She liked her house and her job and her family. Her community needed her, and her work was fulfilling. But she had always dreamed of being a mom, something that she wasn’t too sure was still in the cards for her after Greg’s death. Fostering satisfied that need in her, and the children and babies she fostered needed to be loved. And Ava had a lot of love to give.
“I’ll stop by your office after my shift,” Ava said.
“Thanks.”
* * *
Chayton Benally didn’t really love coming into Dark Canyon. He had enough work to keep him busy on the Navajo Nation as a Tribal Police officer. He’d been an officer for almost five years. He’d gone to Salt Lake when he was eighteen just to get away and joined the police department there. But he’d missed home, and his grandmother wanted him to move back. So he’d applied at the tribal police…and he found he was more content.
His usual routine of patrolling and filing reports had been interrupted by the discovery of a woman near the border of the Navajo Nation. Ava Colton’s younger brother Ryan had been on duty and was the firefighter who rescued Fern.
The fact that she was so close to the Nation raised a few questions for Chay. However, he hadn’t wanted to add to the trauma the woman had already experienced, so when he came to the hospital, he’d tried to speak to the psychologist who was working with her. Ava Colton.
Damn if she wasn’t one of the stubbornest women he’d ever crossed paths with. Stonewalling every question he asked and now dodging him while he waited outside her office for her return.
He caught a glimpse of the tall, athletic woman at the same moment that she spotted him. Ava did a one-eighty—heading back into a corridor of the hospital he wasn’t allowed to enter. Her assistant, frustratingly, hadn’t been cooperative, either. Sighing, Chay asked Darla to inform Ava he’d stopped by—again—and headed out to the parking lot to figure out his next move.
He’d already spoken to Ryan Colton, the firefighter who’d rescued Fern, but he had no leads on the men who’d taken Fern or any idea if either of them were Navajo.
Spotting a familiar tall redhead leaving the hospital, he had an idea. Granted, not a great one, but it was an idea. And he wanted to put to rest that niggling thought that this might be connected to someone on the Navajo Nation.
So he followed Ava as she drove to the grocery store, where she quickly spotted him. He smiled and waved at her, getting out of his Chevy Tahoe.
“Hiya.”
“Hi. What are you doing?”
“Trying to talk to you,” he said. “I left a message with Darla. Did you get it?”
A flash of annoyance passed over her face quickly. “I did. As I told you yesterday, there’s nothing new to report. Fern is still recovering and hasn’t shared any new information with anyone.”
“Do you think I could question her?”
Ava crossed her arms under her breasts and stared down her nose at him. She had to be close to five-nine, and with the hiking boots she was even taller. A lesser man might have been intimated.
“Is that supposed to be an answer?” he asked when it was apparent she wasn’t going to say anything else.
“I was hoping you’d back down,” she said. “I’m not sure if she’d answer your questions. At our next session I can mention you want to talk to her. Or you could try going through her attending physician.”
“I’d appreciate that if you think it will work?” he asked, glad for the information she’d provided but more interested in the barrier she’d clearly tried to wedge between them.
“Yeah, I can ask,” she said with a shrug. “If that’s all, I need to get moving. I’m on my lunch break.”
“Thanks for asking Fern. I’ll stop by tomorrow to find out what she said.”
“No need. You left your number with Darla, no doubt. I’ll just send you a text.” Ava turned, walking into the grocery store.
He watched her for longer than he wanted to admit. He was intrigued by her on a personal level, which he wanted to ignore,
Chay’s peace of mind and the safety of the women on the Navajo Nation and surrounding Dark Canyon depended on it. That area was too wild and untamed. A place where it was too easy to snatch and hide women.
While it had happened before, Chay wanted to make sure it didn’t happen again. Too many missing and murdered relations in the Navajo Nation weighed on him. It was a constant worry for his people, his friends and neighbors.
It was a crisis that was affecting many reservations and the number of missing indigenous women had been ignored for too long. There was a movement where a red hand was painted over the mouth to bring attention to the fact that so few of the missing received large scale media attention. Chay couldn’t change what the rest of the country did, but he was damned sure going to protect and find those missing here.
And he needed to know that none of his people were involved in criminal activity.
His phone pinged with a text from his grandmother reminding him he was coming to dinner that evening and informing him that she expected him to be on time. Chay smiled to himself. Two sassy women in one day.
In a way Ava reminded him of his grandmother. She didn’t take any crap, either.
* * *
She felt like someone was watching her as she got out of her Chevy Trax, heading back into the hospital. A light snow was falling, and she slipped on a patch of ice as she looked around to see if anyone was in the parking lot with her. She noticed a Chevy Tahoe leaving. Chay.
That man was determined to get his questions answered. Actually, everyone was. Poor Fern needed time to recover, but Ava knew that the trail could grow cold unless police moved quickly on following up any leads.
But that was tomorrow’s problem. Right now she was going to collect the baby who had been named Gracie at the fire station where she was found and take the nine-month-old home. She hadn’t had a baby to foster before. She’d had two brothers, one six and one four, last summer. They’d been a lot of fun, and they still video chatted with her once a month.
Dr. Meadows waited for Ava in her office. Though they both worked at the hospital, their paths didn’t cross that often. She’d been the attending physician for the boys and now Gracie.
“Hi, Hannah,” Ava said as she entered the other woman’s office.
“Good to see you. Did you have any trouble with the items I suggested?” Hannah asked.
“None. Pretty easy to find. My parents still had a crib and high chair, so Dad brought those over this afternoon.”
“Must be nice being related to half the town,” Hannah said with a smile.
“It is,” Ava admitted. She sort of took it for granted that she could pick up the phone and call her parents. They always were there for her. Sometimes they could be a bit much—whose parents weren’t? But they were there when she needed them. “Mom sent some blankets as well.”
“The baby was wrapped in one. It’s a Diné design,” Hannah said.
“Good. Is she Native American?”
“We’re not sure. I’m running a DNA test, and we’ll know more soon. Want to come and meet her?”
“Yes.” Ava followed the other woman down to the nursery, where Gracie was cooing softly in her crib. The little girl looked up at Ava, their eyes meeting, and she made another gurgling sound.
The little baby was being treated with antibiotics, and Ava would have to administer other meds. But she had no signs of abuse or broken bones, which was a good thing.
She glanced at Hannah. “Okay to pick her up?”
“Yes, of course. You’ve signed all the paperwork and she’s yours to take home,” Hannah said.
Ava carefully lifted the little girl out of the crib, supporting her back and head the way she’d been taught in the infant first aid course she’d taken. Gracie reached out her pudgy hand and grabbed a chunk of Ava’s hair, tugging with a lot of strength.
Ava laughed and untangled the baby’s hand, cradling her to her chest as she turned to face Hannah.
“Looks like she’s taken with you,” Hannah said. “I’ll get her discharge papers signed and be back in a few minutes so you two can leave. Her bag is packed over there. I’ll bring her prescriptions back with me, too.”
“Thanks. Where’s her blanket?”
“It’s in the bag over there.”
Hannah left, and Ava was alone with Gracie.
“Hi there. I’m Ava. I’m going to be taking care of you,” she said.
The little girl didn’t seem fussed about that. She continued cooing, her eyes wide as she watched Ava. There were times when she rethought her decision to stay single and not have kids of her own…this was one of them. Overpowering emotions flooded her as she rocked the baby back and forth.
It was something she craved. But she also guarded her heart when it came to relationships. Losing her fiancé had taken her a long time to recover from. It was only through her biweekly therapy sessions that she’d been able to start moving on. But he had been the love of her life…there wasn’t going to be another one.
Growing up with parents who adored each other, Ava wouldn’t marry someone she didn’t love or who she was just really good friends with. She had friends—she could hook up if she wanted to, her life was good as it was. There was no missing spot to be filled by a partner or husband.
Greg was still alive in her heart. He’d been a kind and caring man. The perfect boyfriend after the controlling and abusive man she’d dated before him.
Shaking her head, she went to get the baby bag. Inside was a snowsuit, which would keep the baby toasty and warm when they stepped outside. Ava laughed to herself as she struggled to get Gracie into it.
The little scamp liked to kick her legs when she was on her back, but eventually Ava got her zipped in just as Hannah returned with the discharge papers. Ava zipped up her own coat, picked up Gracie and shouldered the bag to leave.
“If you need anything, call me. My cell is on the discharge papers,” Hannah said.
“Thanks,” Ava said. She didn’t anticipate calling anyone. Mainly because she really liked to figure things out on her own. She and Gracie would be good.
