Double Blind. Hannah Alexander

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СКАЧАТЬ soft touch became a sharp tap on his shoulder, and the tender glance disappeared. “I told you the reasons. You don’t seem to listen.”

      He raised his hands. “Okay, that’s fine, I realize this isn’t all about me, but I just don’t think you’ve been completely forthcoming. If even part of the reason you’re doing this is to escape me, there are many safer ways than hauling yourself alone across country to a desolate—”

      She raised a hand. “Finish that sentence, and you’ll be forking over your Jeep for my trip.”

      “Sorry.” He forced a smile. “Of course, my Jeep has air-conditioning, and yours doesn’t. You probably should use mine.”

      “Who needs air-conditioning? It’s barely May.”

      “You know how hot it gets out there in the summer? May becomes June becomes July, and you don’t know how long you’ll be there.”

      She slid a folded sheet of paper from the pocket of her tiger-print scrubs, her slender hands graceful as she unfolded and scanned the letter.

      Preston studied her face as she read. He knew the contents of the letter, of course. She’d shown it to him Saturday after she found it on her father’s desk in his home office.

      Buster Metcalf was an agricultural engineer who had moved with his family to the Navajo reservation in Arizona when Sheila was five. Five years later, when Sheila was ten, her mother had died suddenly, mysteriously. And that was all Preston had learned in the year he had known Sheila. He’d marveled at the lack of information he’d been able to get out of her about Evelyn Metcalf.

      Sheila looked up and caught him watching her. “What?”

      “Since we’re not arguing now, I’m just asking a question for the sake of information, but I don’t want you to bite my head off.”

      Her eyes narrowed once more.

      “Honestly,” he said, holding up his palms. “I’m just curious. How close were you to the victims of that fire?”

      “Those victims have names. Tad and Wendy Hunt.”

      “Right. It’s just that I’ve heard you speak in glowing terms about your other friends, but Tad and Wendy never came up.” Though Sheila’s father had kept in touch with some old friends from the reservation from time to time, Sheila hadn’t seen anyone from her past in all these years, but now that the school’s clinic suddenly needed emergency staffing, she was ready to drop everything and hurry to be of help?

      Granted, selflessness was a part of her character, but Preston thought that she was also responsible to a fault. And right now, her own life was in such flux, she couldn’t afford the time or the emotional energy.

      “I had a lot of friends.” She returned her attention to the letter.

      Besides Tad and Wendy Hunt, who had returned to their alma mater to work and serve after college, someone else had died—Bob Jaffrey, the principal of the school. He had contracted and succumbed to an aggressive illness only days before the fire that took the other lives.

      Sheila looked up at Preston again. “Canaan needs help in the worst way, not only because he had to step into Bob’s shoes, but there’s no one to take Wendy’s place as office assistant. I’m free.”

      Preston had heard enough about Sheila’s treasured memories of her friend Canaan York to provide enough misgivings about her trip back to the school all by themselves.

      “I thought Canaan was the school’s doctor,” he said. “Why is he suddenly filling in as principal? Can’t a teacher do it?”

      “Good question. I’ll ask when I get there.”

      Preston tamped down his frustration. “Have you even checked to see if they’ll accept you?”

      “I called and spoke with Johnny Jacobs yesterday evening.”

      Preston nearly groaned out loud. Johnny Jacobs was Canaan’s grandfather, the man who owned the school.

      Preston could no more help his strong distrust of this situation than he could help his growing madness over this bullheaded woman to whom he’d had the questionable pleasure of giving his heart.

      How, for instance, did Johnny Jacobs found a religious school, pay the staff himself and not give in to the temptation to direct the curriculum with his personal biases about God? He did accept donations for the school, as well, but what kind of overseers kept track of his actions? He could be one of those control freaks with his own religion, a cultist.

      How could Preston stand by and watch the woman he loved involve herself in this situation?

      And yet, far from influencing her, he knew if he said any more about it now, he would only lose what little favor he had left with her.

      He felt more than helpless. More than frustrated.

      Sometimes she just didn’t make sense to him.

      “It was home for five years. I can’t ignore it,” she said, looking up at Preston.

      “I don’t understand why anyone would have sent your father the news, anyway. He isn’t a doctor. After all these years—”

      “But Mom was a nurse, and she worked with the kids. She knew everyone.”

      Preston stared at her, and he knew the puzzlement he felt was plain in his expression.

      She closed her eyes, and he heard her soft intake of breath.

      He waited, staring at the dark fan of her eyelashes against her pale skin, then felt his heart squeeze, falling head over heels once again as she opened her eyes and looked up at him.

      “What?” he asked softly.

      “I think Johnny Jacobs always suspected that my mother’s death wasn’t from natural causes.”

      “Did he ever say that?”

      “He would never have said anything like that to me.”

      “But after all this time—”

      “I can’t tell for sure, but when I spoke with him, I got the impression that he suspects…I don’t know…something odd about these recent deaths. Maybe I’m jumping to conclusions, but I had the impression that he feels Mom’s death and these recent ones might be connected somehow.”

      Preston held his tongue between his teeth. Even more reason for her to not go out there!

      She read his expression once again. “Yes, I know my mother’s death was a long time—”

      “And no reason to suspect that—”

      “But if Johnny feels there’s a connection—”

      “You don’t know that for a fact.”

      “Not in so many words.”

      What Preston thought was that Johnny Jacobs was eager to get Sheila out there СКАЧАТЬ