Page 97 of Hero Unbound

“Dr. Mackay—I won’t demean you by calling you Dr. Annie—I’m in the medical profession myself and—” Gareth started.

“It’s not demeaning,” Annie interrupted him. “I realize you’re younger and from a larger city, but people call me Dr. Annie in Oak Creek because I’ve been practicing medicine here for over thirty years. I’m not trying to put distance between myself and them, so I don’t mind their using my first name.”

Theo wanted to applaud. Annie obviously wasn’t as overwhelmed by Gareth’s charm as most of the people in town seemed to have been.

“My mistake.” Gareth was quick to pivot. “As you said, I come from a different generation and place. But that doesn’t change that I want what’s best for Eva.”

“Eva left him,” Theo said again. It was the only thing he was completely sure of.

“I’m still her emergency contact.”

Annie cleared her throat. “Dr. Metter, you and I both know people are not always quick to update their emergency contacts, so unfortunately, that is not going to be enough for me to allow you to see Eva.”

His jaw twitched again, but he didn’t argue. “Can you at least tell me if she’s all right?”

Annie moved around behind her desk and took a seat. She gestured for them to take the chairs across from her. Gareth took one, but Theo remained standing near the rear wall. “She has a mild concussion and the nausea that comes with it. She is, in fact, confused about what happened, although she is not talking very much at all.”

“Eva sometimes gets confused about many things.”

That, Theo couldn’t argue with. The real question was why was she confused, and how much of that was Gareth responsible for.

“I was hoping once she’s around someone who knows her better, she would be more likely to talk about what happened. She seems coherent and able to speak, she just doesn’t want to talk about what happened. Which, granted, is not uncommon after an incident of this sort.”

“I’m happy to be the person she talks to,” Gareth said.

“No.” Theo pushed away from the wall. That wasn’t happening.

“Mr. Lindstrom is insinuating, as he did yesterday before throwing me up against a wall, that I was abusive to Eva during our relationship. Nothing is further from the truth. Even if she no longer wants to be romantically involved with me, I just want what’s best for her.”

He sounded so goddamned reasonable. Affable, even. Theo was afraid Gareth was about to get whatever he wanted.

Annie sat back in her chair. “Eva’s mother Marilyn saved my life the day before my wedding many years ago. So the Dempsey family is important to me, even though we’re not necessarily close.”

Gareth let out a long-suffering sigh. “Eva cut off contact with her family a couple of years ago. I keep trying to get her to talk with them, but she won’t. She needs help. I’m not the bad guy here, Dr. Mackay, despite how that might make our relationship an easier story for Eva to tell. She’s emotionally unstable. I have examples and reports of things she’s done in the past if you’d like to see them.”

Annie looked like she was considering it. Theo wasn’t sure how he would combat that.

There was a knock at the door. Annie nodded at him to open it.

One of the nurses entered. “Miss Dempsey is more coherent now, Dr. Mackay. And talking.”

Gareth stood. “I really would like to see her, Doctor.”

“She’s saying that she didn’t fall,” the nurse continued. “She’s saying someone grabbed her and pulled her down from the ladder. Someone named Gareth.”

30

They moved Eva into a private room, less for medical reasons and more because of all the people who were coming in to talk to her. Everyone had questions. Since working up the courage to tell a nurse that she was sure Gareth had been the one to pull her off the ladder, Eva had done nothing but talk to people.

First, she’d told her story to Dr. Annie. Then she’d told it to the hospital security team, and now she was talking to Sheriff Webb.

“So you climbed up the ladder to put away the box for Mr. Collier, and then you heard Gareth say something to you from down at the ground level?”

“Yes.” She nodded then winced when it hurt her head. “He said something about how he and I should be together. Just a sentence or two.”

Sheriff Webb typed all that into his small computer tablet. “Okay. Did you see him when he said this?”

“No. As a matter of fact, I thought maybe I was imagining the whole thing. So much fog and spooky weather.”

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