Unbelievable (14 page)

“Booker! What’s wrong?” Booker came staggering into my office at three in the morning. His face glowed white, damp with sweat despite the negative two degree temperature outside. His eyes were ringed in dark circles, and his blanched lips were clamped tight.

“I think I’m having a heart
attack. I can’t breathe. I’m all sweaty; my heart’s pounding.” He collapsed onto the corner of my desk, not bothering to clear a spot, sending a file sideways and spilling onto the floor.

“Why didn’t you go directly to the ER instead of my office?” I grabbed his wrist to check his pulse. It was indeed racing. “Are you having pain in your arms, specifically the left?” He shook
his head. “Do you feel pain or pressure on your chest or upper back?” Again, a no. “What were you doing when this started?” I asked after listening to his heart with a stethoscope.

“Seth and I were following a suspected drug dealer, trying to find out where he live
d. He must have realized we were there because suddenly gun fire broke out. I thought they shot Seth. He dropped out of sight. I couldn’t go looking for him until backup arrived.”

“Was he shot?” I asked in alarm.

“No, he’d gone around to the front of the building in case the gun ran. After we finished up the paperwork, I dropped him off at his house. That’s when the pain started. I got home and barely made it into the bathroom before I started throwing up. My head and heart are still pounding.” He mopped his brow with the sleeve of his shirt.

Panic attack. I was pretty sure. He’d been stressing about Maggie’s safety for a few months, and it seemed to
be escalating. “Book, where’s Maggie?”

“Home. I didn’t want to wake her, but don’t worry, I triple checked my security system. She’s safe.”

“You thought you were having a heart attack, so you drove yourself to the hospital?” Surely he could see the absurdity in that.

“She’s safer there than out here unprotected.” He looked at me incredulously.

“Booker, I think what’s happening to you is a panic attack. When was the last time you slept through the night?” He practically jumped off my desk, as if on fire.

“Panic attack? How do you know? You haven’t run any tests yet,” he spit out.

To appease him, and just to be sure, we ran several tests. They were all negative with the exception of his racing heart. I set him up with a counselor and she gave him some techniques to use whenever it started happening. So far, he’d been doing better. The counselor suggested Maggie move out. Book fought her big time on it, until I stepped in. I took Maggie and we both moved in with Seth.

“Doc? Earth to Doc.”

“Sorry, have a lot on my mind tonight.”

“Probably thinking up a new way to perform a heart transplant,” Booker teased. “I asked how Tess was working out.”

“Tess Bennett? She’s doing well, though she’s still quite shy.”

“Always has been,” Booker said. “I’ve stopped by records at least a dozen times for different assignments, and no matter how many times I tried to strike up a conversation, she’s barely said
a word. I don’t think she’s even looked me in the face. I can’t even tell you what color her eyes are. Didn’t she start working at the hospital around the time of the Dreser disaster?”

“About six months later, I believe. She does her work
and leaves. I think she lives in Lilah’s apartment complex. I’ll talk to Lilah about her,” I offered. “Maybe she could use a friend.”

“Oh, yeah, Lilah.” His Cheshire cat grin lit up his face. “So, tell me about your new girlfriend.” Booker hunkered down on the bottom step. Obviously he didn’t plan on moving until I’d been thoroughly harassed.

“First of all, she’s
not
my girlfriend.” I stepped closer to the window for a breath of humid, non-stinky air. “I think she’s only nineteen,” I added.

“Well, Magpie was only seventeen when Seth went gaga for her. What did I used to call her? Jailbait, right?” he teased. A burgundy couch pillow went flying across the room and nailed Booker in the face.

“She was eighteen, and yes, you still called her jailbait even though she wasn’t,” Seth corrected.

“Are you sure?” Booker narrowed his eyes.

Seth ignored him and turned to me. “What was it Lilah said about you while helping Maggie with her hair? I believe the word was
hot
,” Seth teased. I planted my face in my hands.

“Hot?
” Booker questioned. “I guess she likes a man in uniform, or should I say scrubs. Has she ever seen you in anything else? In fact, has anyone seen you in anything aside from scrubs?”

“Booker, you’re just jealous because no one finds you ‘hot’,” Seth said, making quote marks in the air.

“I could have a harem if I wanted, but I’m saving myself for marriage.” Seth and I laughed at Booker’s comment. He’d been married—a complete disaster. And he’d been engaged twice. He might’ve had the Midas touch when it came to making money, but he was an utter disaster in the love department.

Booker lobbed the pillow back at Seth. He grimaced, holding it out at arm’s length while spraying it generously with Febreze
.

“I’d better get going.” Booker stood and snagged another apple on his way to the door. “Cole, if you find yourself in trouble with your jailbait girlfriend, give me a call. I am a full-fledge lawyer now.” He grinned widely.

“Wait. You passed?” Seth walked over, stopping short when Booker’s scent hit him again.

“Yup. Got the results this afternoon.”

“Congrats! We need to celebrate. When do you want to get together?” Seth took a pad of paper and pen from the desk in the kitchen.

“Let me finish up on this case first. It’s a big one. We’re almost there, I can feel it. Maybe we can have a barbeque or something.”

“Deal.” Seth took a deep breath, held it, stepped up to Booker, and gave him a quick hug, slapping on the back.

I stepped forward to do the same, but the smell was too much. “What he said,” I laughed, as Booker
made his way to the door. Seth set the alarm system behind him.

“Does Lilah’s age really bother you that much?” Seth asked heading for the stairs. He stopped and turned. “Or maybe it’s your mother’s little voice rattling off statistics again.”

“Maybe,” I admitted. “Seth, if you knew the odds of a relationship between someone her age and someone my age being successful, you’d be concerned also. If she’s twenty-seven, even twenty-six, it’d improve our chances of survival significantly. I don’t want to fail.”

“Cole, I love your mother, and I know that before she retired she was a highly regarded statistician, but
love
isn’t about numbers, my friend, it’s about the heart. If you figured the odds of Maggie and I staying happily married, I’m sure it’d depress me. But you can’t calculate intangibles like determination and hard work. Mags and I
will
live happily ever after, and as cheesy as that sounds, it’s the truth. We simply refuse to give up on each other.”

He walked over next to me and put his hand on my shoulder. “Remember what a mess Maggie was that first year after her mother died?”

I nodded. Calling her a mess was being kind. She was a disaster. Laughing one minute, crying the next. Her emotions went from disgust and anger, bordering on hate, to love and empathy within seconds, and it was all aimed at her mother. She had a year of intense, one-on-one therapy that Seth credited for getting her emotionally back on her feet again. I thought he deserved at least half the credit. He was her rock.

“Never once did I consider throwing in the towel on her. It wasn’t an option. I love her, all of her.” He squeezed my shoulder. “Cole, I’m not saying Lilah’s the one, I’m just saying whoever it is, only you two will determine if you will succeed or fail. So bag the stats, stop rationalizing your love life to death already
, and think with your heart.” He smacked me playfully on the head the back of my head and went upstairs.

“Statistics are statistics for a reason, Seth,” I called after him.

He waved a hand. “Love trumps statistics,” he said without looking back.

I rinsed off the few dishes in the sink before loading them in the dishwasher, all the while thinking about Lilah. I
bored her. I guess my worry about the whole age difference was a waste of time if that’s what she thought about me.

I certainly couldn’t call her boring. She made me laugh, and her energy and excitement over the smallest things w
as infectious. Nothing like boring old Opie. I slammed the dishwasher shut and pressed start.

“I’m not boring. Seth’s right, I just need a hobby. The only reason I’m injury prone is because I’m concentrating on my work. If I put that same concentration into
a hobby, I probably won’t get hurt,” I reasoned. My mind rummaged through a few scenarios, trying to think of something fun to do that didn’t require a lot of concentration since I’d have to train my brain to stay in the moment. I slipped out of my clogs and started for the stairs, stopping dead.

“Bike riding. I can bike ride.”

“Who you talking you to?” I looked up to see Seth standing on the top stair looking down on me.

“Myself,” I said, embarrassed.

“Well, whisper to yourself then. You know how Maggie gets when she doesn’t get enough sleep.”

“Sorry. ’Night.”

“’Night.”

I went straight to my room to lay
out my clothes for the next day, stopping halfway to the closet. “Why are you doing this, Mr. Boring?” I whispered to myself. “You wear the same thing every day. Why do you need to lay it out?” I didn’t. I shut the closet door.

Biking could work. Riding is pretty simple
, I assured myself a few minutes later as I lay in bed. A few disastrous situations played out in my head, one being me flying headlong into a tree. I decided I’d better find a place without a lot of trees.

“Good luck with that one, Mr. Boring. You live in upstate New York. Trees are abundant.” I rolled over and shut my eyes to all the possible injuries I could suffer ramming into a tree.

Chapter 12

L
ilah

“Go left,” I explained as we drove down Main Street. “There on the right.
Spokes
.” We turned into the bike shop’s small parking lot. Cole surprised me when he called this morning, announcing he decided to take up a hobby. I wanted to ask if it were stamp collecting, but sensing the whole hobby thing was brought on by my mistaking his car for that of a senior citizen, I kept my mouth shut.

“I’ve never noticed this shop before,” Cole said as he opened the door for me. The store seemed small from
the outside. The inside, however, was another story. To the left sat a showroom of shiny and expensive bikes. On the opposite side lay a repair area.

“Hello, Molly Harper’s the name.” A tall blond
e woman with a large bust line greeted us. She sported pink spandex biking shorts along with a pink and purple tube top. “What can I do you for today?”

“We’
d like to rent a couple bikes for the afternoon,” Cole explained as the bodacious woman pumped his arm in a handshake. “We’re not sure what kind of bikes, though.”

“Which trail do you want to try?” She twisted around to a map on the wall. Cole and I stepped beside her. The smell of sweat poured off the woman’s body, and I moved back a few inches. The map showed several trails outlined
in red marker. Some were in the local hills; some were simple, easy trails around the city. Each had a rating between one and five, with one being the easiest.

Cole
pointed to a small, wimpy trail. “I say we go here.” He singled out a paved trail along the Erie Canal with a one rating.