Page 87 of Moving to Love
Tommy cleared his throat. “You have security video here in the shop, don’t you, bro?”
Jeremiah slowly nodded his head. “I can take you to my office and show you the backup.”
Numb was the only word Jeremiah could come up with to explain his feelings right now. It had to have been LuAnn. No one else there hated Joci. LuAnn wouldn’t have known that Joci was pregnant. No one suspected except his parents, Jackie, Joci, and himself.
Tommy, Jeremiah, and one of the officers walked into Jeremiah’s office. He unlocked the closet where the computer system was housed and showed it to them.
The officer whistled. “Wow, you have a great system here.”
“My brother Dayton is a computer geek. He set me up with this system a couple of years ago. An employee was stealing from me. It backs up to the cloud, so I don’t have to change tapes. It saves perpetually.”
Jeremiah walked over to his computer, booted it up, and logged onto the Internet, then called up his cloud surveillance backup for the past week. Based on Gunnar and Ryder’s conversation earlier, Jeremiah pulled up the backup video beginning with last Thursday. They all sat and watched in silence. Jeremiah focused on Joci’s bike.
Based on the time stamp, it had been around 8:30 in the morning when Gunnar had taken off on the bike to test it. He and Ryder then looked at it. Ryder took off the belt cover and loosened up the tension bolts on the back tire, then adjusted the tension on the belt. He tightened the bolts on the back tire and put the belt cover back on. Ryder left the shop on the bike. When he returned, they set the bike over to the side. Around eleven thirty, the guys in the shop all went to lunch.
At eleven fifty-one, LuAnn walked up to the bike. She looked around, leaned in with a knife, and sliced the lines. She stood up with a smirk on her face and walked away.
Jeremiah sucked in a breath. “Goddammit, I’ll kill that fucking bitch.”
Tommy put a hand on Jeremiah’s shoulder. “Easy, bro, don’t make threats.”
They went back and re-watched the recording. The officer wrote down the times on the video.
“We’ll need access to this video,” he said.
Jeremiah nodded. He couldn’t look away. That smirk on LuAnn’s face enraged him. How fucking dare she? She hurt the one person in the world he loved the most. She had hurt Joci time and again. Why couldn’t he have seen it? Now, he might lose his baby—their baby—because of that fucking bitch.
Tommy put his hand on Jeremiah’s shoulder. “Watching it over and over isn’t going to help, Jeremiah.”
Jeremiah scrubbed his face with his hands. He stood up and paced around the room a few times.
“How could I not see her escalating to this point? Jesus, I’m just as guilty for allowing that bitch to be within a thousand feet of Joci. God, I should have seen it.”
Jeremiah broke down. He had been holding back for so many hours. He was worried about Joci and the baby. He was worried about everything. He dropped into a chair, put his head in his hands, and cried.
Tommy walked over to Jeremiah and put his hand on his shoulders.
“It’s not your fault, Jeremiah. You can’t think you’re responsible for the actions of anyone else. LuAnn is responsible for herself.”
The other officer got on his phone and called the station. “Is LuAnn Mason still in custody? Then we’ll need a warrant for her arrest. I have a video of her cutting the brake lines on Joci James’ bike, which resulted in Ms. James being injured in an accident earlier today.”
Chapter 37
Joci laid back in her hospital bed. Everyone had left a couple of hours ago. According to the clock on the wall, it was near two in the morning. A nurse had just left her room and would be coming back with pain medication.
Her shoulder and arm hurt. The throbbing wouldn’t stop, and she couldn’t sleep with the pain. She didn’t want to put the baby in any more danger than she already had. The nurse told her that if she couldn’t get any rest because of the pain, that was worse for the baby than taking a mild pain reliever. After that, she finally agreed to take something.
She hadn’t heard from Jeremiah since he left the hospital hours ago. Her heart hurt more than her arm and shoulder. On top of that, she might lose the baby. She broke down in a hard cry. It hurt, but then, everything hurt right now.
“Hey. Aww, baby, don’t cry. I’m here now,” Jeremiah’s voice cracked.
She looked up at him and tried to compose herself. “I don’t want to lose the baby. I don’t.”
“I know you don’t, honey. Please don’t cry.”
He leaned down and laid his forehead against hers. He placed his hand on her belly and lightly rubbed back and forth, then leaned down and kissed the place where his baby rested, fighting to live. Joci sobbed.
The nurse walked in with a syringe and injected something into Joci’s IV line. In a calm voice, she said, “Okay, sweetheart, you have to settle down. This should help calm you. I promise it won’t hurt the baby. You’re doing well, you know. It’s been several hours now, and you’re still pregnant. Every hour that passes means a better chance for your baby. Try and stay positive; okay, honey?”
