Chapter 14

Red laquered nails holding a 8X10 picture of a young, handsome Mexican man in a gilded frame.

A finger runs down the side of the face in the picture.

A tear drops onto the glass covering.

The hand tightens until the knuckles turn white.

The picture is dropped onto an unmade bed.

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Friday, May 28, 1999
6:00 PM

"Cass?" Tom said quietly as he entered her hospital room. Despite the early evening hour the room was bathed in darkness and Cassy was curled up facing away from the door. If she was sleeping he didn't want to wake her, but Harry was forcing him to leave under guard and he wanted to say goodnight. As he got closer he saw the bandage on her left temple and his heart constricted. Gently he stroked back her hair and saw that her eyes were open.

"Cass?" he said again, concerned when she didn't respond to him. "I wanted to say goodnight. Harry is a bit freaked out after today and he wants me under lock and key until he finds out how many accomplices they guy the picked has. He should calm down by tomorrow and realize there probably is only the two you think you...heard."

Tom stopped as he realized that maybe bringing up that incident wasn't the best idea. He also began to wonder whether there was another accomplice, someone who carried out the Texas murder? They really didn't know. 'Would Cassy be safe here without me?'

"Don't come back."

"What?" Tom thought he misheard her whisper.

As he stood over her he saw her eyes close, but she didn't answer him. Concerned and frustrated he moved to the other side of the room so that he could look at her face. When she didn't open her eyes he kneeled down to her eye level.

"Why?" he asked her again.

When her blue eyes opened he barely bit back a gasp at the pain he saw in them.

"Stay away from me I'll just get you killed." Despite her effort at control he saw a tear slide down her cheek.

Tom's thumb caught the tear before it fell to her pillow. When she didn't flinch away as he had expected he spread his hand over her cheek. "I'm not going anywhere. I'm staying here with you and our son," he vowed.

"I can't even protect our baby," her eyes closed and more tears slid down her cheeks, some of them wetting his hand.

"You had a bad dream." He wasn't going to leave her tonight. He was going to keep her and his baby safe from Cassy herself and the faceless predator that was out to harm them."I'll be right back," he whispered as if she hadn't told him not to return.

>>>>>>

"I want you safe, the guards can watch Cassy. We don't know if one or both of you were the target," Harry swore at him over the phone.

"I'm not leaving her." Tom didn't bother to engage Harry in a battle of logic.

"She's not going to be better off if they decide to come after you and she's in the line of fire or you get killed trying to protect her," Harry gave a last ditch effort at convincing his officer to leave the hospital. He knew he could have given an order, but he also knew that Tom would disobey it and where would they be then? He wouldn't have left Frannie's side in a similar situation and had been surprised when Ryan had agreed, albeit reluctantly, to leave earlier. He had been waiting for this call.

"Fine, I can't talk you out of it. Be careful. We've identified the driver as Paoulo Verne. Originally from Pensacola, Florida. Lastly from Abilene before Palm Beach from what we can tell. He has a record, which isn't too surprising. Assault, robbery, bar fights, nothing to indicate he's a hired killer, but definitely a thug. He's on parole and shouldn't be out of Texas. The Austin police are informing his parole officer and want to question him about their case," Harry changed the subject.

"Has he spoken yet?" Tom's fingers tightened around his cell phone.

"Not a word. We had to bring in counsel and get the system working. For attempted murder of four police officers and fleeing Texas while on parole the judge won't let him out. If he wants to see daylight either here or in Texas he's going to have to speak," Harry tried to soothe the angry copy.

Tom's face was a mask of frustration as he wished himself in two places at once. If he was there that son-of-a-bitch would be begging to speak!

"Tom!" Harry had clearly been trying to get his attention. "I asked you how Cassy is."

"Physically everything seems to be all right, other than severe bruising and the concussion. Emotionally...she's hanging on. She's blaming herself," Tom sighed.

"No surprise. I don't know that any of us would be sane right now," Harry's voice was grim. "I'm sending Frannie over in the morning to see her."

"Is that safe?" Tom asked.

"Under guard. I doubt anyone would mistake her for an old flame of Cassy's, if that's even the M.O.," Harry said.

"Why would anyone do this to her? I've run through our past cases and I can't think of anyone who would...unless what's going on here isn't related to Texas," Tom postulated.

"And the flowers were just from an admirer showing support?" Harry followed through with the thought. "I'll have some old case files pulled."

"Some? It's been a decade," Tom said with a touch of wonder in his voice. Intellectually he knew it had been ten years, give or take a few months, but just thinking about how high the pile of case folders would be on both of their desks made it real. 'We've made it together, for better and worse, for ten years. Why not forever?'

"Tom, are you still with me?" Harry sounded annoyed.

"Yeah, just trying to figure out how many of those reports Cassy finished because I wasn't doing it right." Tom's smile lit the room as he remembered different scenes with the same theme - Tom laboring over a report, Cassy sighing, pulling it from his hand and finishing it herself. Two halves of a whole.

"I'll talk with you tomorrow morning. Send Cassy my love. Help her through this Tom," Harry ordered tenderly.

"I will," Tom vowed as he shut off his phone and headed back towards Cassy's room.

>>>>>>
Homicide Division
Palm Beach PD

"I want to find out who this guy is working with. We need to cross check anyone this guy has been in contact with, old jobs and prison, with anyone in Palm Beach or connected with a case in this division for the past ten years, particularly cases where St. John was lead," Harry barked out orders to his team. Just hen Sterling came walking into the bullpen.

"Any match on those hairs?" Harry asked the Department's lead forensic specialist.

"There's a match with hairs found at the Jensen scene, but we don't have an identification. Nothing in CODIS and nothing in either ours our Austin's databases. Everything at Cassy's house confirms that there was just the two perps that she reported - a man and a woman and it seems to be the same at the Austin scene. Fingerprints might have been more helpful but they were either very careful or wearing gloves. The most we could discern from the DNA is that the woman is probably Mexican, the man European. Sorry I haven't found anything else. Nothing special about the cloth or the chloroform. No fibers under Cassy's fingernails." Sterling was just as frustrated as Harry looked.

"Gloves. They were too sloppy to have planned this well. Somehow this all ties to Texas. I'm still going to have their old case files checked, but this looks like it has something to do with Cassy and Texas. This Wilker was someone she met on a flight back from Texas, but it was Houston. Jensen was someone she knew back in high school in Del Rios. Texas again. Wilker's murder occurred after Cassy went to Texas," Harry was thinking out loud, trying to put the few pieces of the puzzle they had together.

"Sounds like Cassy is the key here and the only common denominator between the murders," Sterling pointed out the obvious.

"We've thought that from the beginning," Harry agreed. "I was wondering whether the flowers were a coincidence, but if they're not Cassy said something about Jensen giving her yellow lilies at their prom."

"A rejected date seeking revenge? Her competition for homecoming queen?" Sterling joked.

"You might be onto something," Harry was completely serious.

"Sounds like Cassy is the person you need to interview," Sterling commented.

"She is, but we can't tonight, she's in no shape for questioning," Harry sighed.

"Then maybe you should go home to your wife and get a good night's sleep," Sterling suggested to his haggard looking friend.

"Are you suggesting I need beauty rest Morton?" Harry asked with raised eyebrows, it was an old joke between the long-time colleagues.

"Didn't think I was suggesting," Sterling shot back with a smile. "Tom and Cassy will be fine. I know it. And so will the baby."

"Don't tell me that's already making the rounds," Harry sighed.

"No, Tom told me earlier," Sterling assured him.

"Good. Those two have enough problems without having to worry about gossip and speculation," Harry said dryly.

"Amen," Sterling agreed.

>>>>>>>>
Palm Beach Memorial Hospital
9:30pm

Tom watched as Cassy slept. Finally. If she wasn't in too much pain to do so, he was sure she would have been tossing and turning for the past two hours. He certainly hadn't been fooled by her pretense at sleeping so that she could avoid talking to him that she had adopted once it became clear that he wasn't leaving even after she had eaten dinner as he had falsely promised at the time.

With a weary sigh Tom stood up and went into the waiting room, greeting Cassy's uniformed guard on his way out of her room. Pulling out his phone Tom confirmed that there was enough charge in it to last the night. Easing his sore body onto the vinyl couch he proceeded to dial.

"Hello?"

"Dad, it's me," Tom greeted his father.

"Tom! We've been trying to call you all day. How has your return to work been?" Lyam asked.

"Uh, well..." Tom paused trying to decide where to begin.

"Tom what's going on? Are people giving you a hard time about...things?" Lyam asked worriedly.

Tom took a moment to chuckle, he could hardly imagine worrying about that now.

"Tom, what's happening?" Lyam sounded more worried now.

"Sorry, I was trying to figure out just where to begin. I guess that's up to you. Do you want the good news or the bad news first?" Tom asked.

"Last call was good news, let's hear the bad news first," Lyam's enthusiasm was obviously forced.

"Some people broke into Cassy's house Monday night and tried to, we're not sure what they were trying. Cassy's gun went off and they were scared away, but not before they knocked her out with chloroform and dumped her in her bed with a dead body," Tom revealed.

"Oh my God, is she all right?" Lyam was concerned.

"Physically she recovered fine from that. Emotionally...Do you remember I told you that she had found out that her high school boyfriend was killed after the hearing? It's connected and body in her bed was a man she had sat with on her flight back from Houston last week. Then someone tried to run off us the road today." Tom had promised his father full disclosure after the events in recent months, but he found it very uncomfortable.

"I presume you're all right..." Lyam tried to lead his son.

"I'm fine, sore, but fine. Cassy was a bit banged up, she's staying in the hospital tonight. If everything is all right she'll be out tomorrow afternoon."

"Send her and your mother's love. What's the good news?"

"Cassy's pregnant." Tom's face relaxed into a goofy grin.

There was silence at the other end.

"My baby, she's pregnant with my baby," Tom clarified with a laugh. For a moment he had forgotten he and Cassy weren't married anymore and weren't even an item!

"We're going to be grandparents? Congratulations! The baby is all right?" Lyam rattled off questions, much like his son had when he found out. "Tom, when did this happen?"

"Before Cassy left for Houston, it was a...something that happened," Tom said uncomfortably. He hadn't thought about the timing of all this. What were they going to tell their son?

"Tom, your mother is already planning the baby shower, so you'd better protect...the mother of your child." There was a moment of silence. "Tom, what are you and Cassy planning to do?"

"Things are a bit too crazy right now to make any definitive plans, but we're in this together though," Tom told him.

"Thank you for telling me everything."

Tom nodded and said his goodbyes.

End Chapter 14