Page 40 of Sachie's Hero

She sighed. “You’re right. Project your desired outcome and follow through. That’s how I made it through college after all that happened to me.” She squared her shoulders and sat up straighter. “We’re going to find who’s stalking me, put him away and get on with my plan to own a house with a yard and a puppy.”

“That’s my girl,” Teller said with a grin. “Badass to the core.”

“That’s me,” she said, feeling anything but badass. “A firm believer in faking it until you feel it.”

Forty minutes later, as the airplane left the runway and flew out over the open ocean, Sachie gladly accepted Teller’s hand to squeeze throughout the flight and the landing at the Honolulu International Airport. As the plane taxied to a stop, she released her death grip on his fingers and breathed for the first time in what felt like an eternity.

She’d survived the flight from the Big Island to Oahu, placing her one step closer to finding the man who was responsible for smashing the windshield on the SUV her friend had loaned her, breaking into her cottage and burning down her office. Suddenly, the flight over seemed to be the easiest part of her quest. Maybe she’d be better off staying on the plane for the return flight to the Big Island.

As the aircraft came to a halt, she reminded herselfshe was worthy and didn’t deserve to be terrorized by anyone. Not her father and not some cowardly stalker. It was time to take charge of her own outcome.

First stop...her old office. A patient in those files had to leap out as a potential suspect, and she was going to find him.

Okay, so the first stop wasn’t her old office. It was the car rental counter. They had to get around while they were in Honolulu. Teller rented a nondescript silver four-door sedan and helped her into the passenger seat. He then folded his tall frame behind the steering wheel and adjusted the seat backward to allow his legs to fit comfortably in the confined space.

Sachie called her old boss, Dr. Janek, letting him know they were on their way. He assured them he was at the office and would be happy to let her “look over his shoulder” at the online files once she got there. His receptionist was out sick, so it would be just him.

Sachie arrived fifteen minutes later and spent thirty minutes with Dr. Janek scrolling through the files listed on the computer, asking if this patient rang any bells or that patient had anger issues, while Teller waited in the lobby. She’d have him stop, open a file to allow her to read notes to help her remember what had happened during their sessions. They’d onlymade it through a third of the folders before Dr. Janek had a patient consultation and had to leave. Once the doctor left to meet with his patient in the consultation room, Sachie went back to work, reviewing patient records. She focused on those she’d spent more time with than Dr. Janek had. Since he hadn’t been followed, attacked or had his office burned to the ground, Sachie had to believe she was the sole target.

Teller entered the office and stood near the door. “How’s it going?”

“Slow,” Sachie admitted. “Nothing is jumping out or screaming, this is the one.”

“Keep looking, you could be close.”

She nodded and kept going, working through the folders as fast as she dared while the psychologist was otherwise occupied with his patient.

Sachie had made it to the records of patients whose last names began with the letter S before she found the fairly recent case of Lily Franklin, a seven-year-old girl she’d removed from a home where the mother’s boyfriend had abused the child. He’d used his cigarettes to burn the girl’s torso and back, not once or twice, but a dozen times, while her mother was passed out on methamphetamines. A discerning teacher who’d had playground duty noticed the burns when the child had hung upside down on the monkeybars. She’d immediately rushed the girl to the nurse’s office and called the police.

Sachie had been called in on the case to formally recommend the girl be removed from the home and placed in foster care, her mother, Candice Franklin, charged with neglect and the boyfriend with assault.

The mother had screamed at the police officers as they’d arrested the boyfriend and taken him to jail. She’d screamed at Sachie when she’d led the little girl away, threatening to kill her for ruining her life, never mind that the daughter’s life would be forever scarred, both physically and emotionally.

Sachie grabbed a pad of paper and a pen from the doctor’s desk and jotted down the patient’s name, the mother’s address and phone number, and the name and number of the child protective services representative who’d taken the child.

She moved on to the next file and then the next. When she reached Luke Stevenson’s file, her hand shook on the mouse as she stared at the screen. For a long moment, her hand froze. She couldn’t bring herself to open it.

Suddenly, Sachie was standing there again, frozen in horror. After Luke had pulled the trigger, everything had blurred in her memory. She didn’t remember calling the police, though she had. Her memories were chaotic, with the blast of the fatal shotstill ringing in her ears as first responders converged on the office. She’d been led out into the parking lot where colored lights strobed in the darkening sky, making her head spin.

As she stood over the monitor, her hand on the mouse, her ears rang and her head spun much like they had that day. Her vision blurred, darkening.

“Sachie?” a voice said close to her ear, penetrating the ringing sound. A hand cupped her elbow. “Are you okay?”

She looked up into Teller’s handsome, stoic face as he pressed her gently onto the desk chair.

“Do you want me to take that?” he asked, indicating the mouse.

After a moment, grounding herself in his gaze, she shook her head. “No. I’m all right.” Slowly, she clicked on the file icon and the folder opened, displaying information about Luke Stevenson, listing the dates he’d met with her over the past months. The final entry bore Dr. Janek’s initials. He must have made the entries when Sachie hadn’t been able to bring herself to return to the office, and there was an attachment on that entry. She opened the attachment to find a photocopy of a death certificate dated that day that had changed her life. To her, it was proof positive that Luke was truly dead. The faces she’d seen on the crowded streets of Honolulu and the one in thewindow of her cottage on the Big Island couldn’t possibly have been Luke Stevenson. He was dead.

Teller rested a hand on her shoulder. “Do you know if his foster family blamed you for his death?” he asked.

Sachie lifted her shoulders and let them drop. Hell, she blamed herself for his death. Why wouldn’t they?

His hand squeezed her shoulder lightly. “Do you have their names and address in his file?”

She nodded and clicked on the screen with Luke’s personal information.

Teller took the pen from the desk and scrawled the information on the pad beneath Lily’s data. “Do you need anything else from this file? Are there notes indicating the name of the police officer who responded to your call? Maybe he remembers something you might not have noticed.”

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