took hold of his arms, squeezing hard. “Are you all right?”
He reassured her, bringing her briefly up to speed. Stephanie shook her head. “Drive-by shooting? Gang related, maybe?”
He shrugged, and he read in her face that she didn’t believe it was a random shooting any more than he did. He glanced over at Brooke.
Brooke nodded at some question from the officer and looked as though she might cry.
Was this related to the phone call? Or was this a random shooting? He should help her figure it out, dive into the situation with all the zeal he possessed, isolate the problem, cure the ailment.
He looked again at Brooke as the officer led her to a chair. “It was the woman…the woman I thought was following me back in San Diego.”
The same woman?
She avoided looking at him.
It was just as well.
Brooke needed help, but he was not the man to give it to her, or to anyone else.
* * *
Brooke had to force herself to remain in the chair. She had the insane desire to run, to plow through the ruined front doors and sprint all the way back to San Diego to her father. She’d heard the front desk man say something about gangs and drive-by shootings but she knew in her soul, deep down in the instinctive part, that the bullet had been intended for her, not the black-haired lady who had been wheeled out on a stretcher to the waiting ambulance. She could tell by the expression on Victor’s face when the medics arrived that the lady would not survive. Had the woman been trying to help her? To warn her? Of what? Of whom? Brooke’s head spun.
After an hour of questioning, waiting and more questioning, she was spent. Blinking back tears, she pulled the phone out of her purse and dialed. It rang once, twice, until someone picked up.
“Dad,” she breathed, trying to keep her voice steady.
A woman’s voice answered. “Brooke, it’s Denise. Your father’s taking a nap. Are you okay? You sound funny.”
Brooke relayed the events as simply as she could to her father’s cousin.
Denise gasped into the phone. “What? Are you hurt? Who was shot?”
Brooke reassured her, “A lady I don’t know was killed. I wasn’t hurt, thanks to—” she shot a look at Victor, who had closed his eyes and leaned his head against the wall behind him “—the man I was meeting, to look into the situation. He kept me out of the line of fire.”
“Brooke, this is crazy. You need to come home right now. Tell that man you don’t care about the painting anymore and head home before something worse happens.”
She sighed. “He didn’t take the case anyway.”
Denise exhaled loudly. “Then you’ve got no reason to stay. Come home where you’ll be safe.”
Brooke glanced at Victor, who was now gazing at her with haunted eyes. She wondered for a moment what it would be like to bring someone back from the brink of death. Or fail to. She blinked away the thoughts. “I’m going to stay the night, try to plead my case with Dean Lock myself.”
“It’s a lost cause. You know that. Way too much past history there.”
“I know but I’ve got to try. How’s…how’s Dad?”
“It was a good day. He was very together. We finished up another chapter and he even remembered where he’d put some of the notes he took from our trip to Cambria.”
Brooke smiled, remembering how excited her father had been, researching Tarkenton’s time in Cambria. It was there, six months ago, that he had purchased the unsigned painting at an estate sale, a painting he was absolutely convinced was the work of Tarkenton. For months he’d been studying it, fussing over it, she thought uncomfortably. She sighed, wondering for a moment if it wouldn’t have been better for him never to have discovered the thing. It seemed to be the root of the strange trouble she found herself in now.
But recalling the sheer joy on his face when he showed it to her, the clarity of his mind as he took her through each aspect of the painting, the application of color, the emotionally controlled realism, the perfect execution only possible from a master. She would not trade those moments for anything. She tuned back in.
“Brooke,” Denise was saying, “your father would not want you to put yourself in danger to find out what happened to his painting. You’re more valuable to him that any work of art.”
“I know, and I’m just going to give it one more try and then I’m on my way home. Don’t tell Dad about the shooting, please. It will just upset him.”
“I don’t like keeping things from your father. He’s not a child, Brooke.”
I know that, she wanted to snap. He’s my father, isn’t he? Instead she bit back the frustration. Donald Ramsey was not a child; he was a man of ferocious intellect and voracious curiosity, but more and more the genetic condition was turning him into someone she didn’t know. Each day brought him deeper into that mental fog from which someday he would not be able to escape.
Denise was helping, too, keeping his mind active, engaging him in finishing his book, making sure he had contact with Tad. Patience, Brooke. “I understand. Maybe you could not mention it unless he asks about me.” She paused. “Has he? Asked about me?”
She could sense Denise struggling with the truth. “Well…we’ve been really busy here, honey. We visited Tad today, and you know that’s hard on your father.”
Brooke blinked hard at a sudden wash of tears. It’s hard on everyone. “No problem. I’ll call you soon.”
She hung up before the emotion got the best of her. Phone gripped in her hand, she tried to take some calming breaths.
Gotta help Dad. Gotta make things right. Time is running out.
Victor’s voice made her jump.
“Are you okay?”
There was sympathy in his face, probably the kind he gave to any crazy person he came across. “Yes. Okay. Thank you for…what you did.”
He didn’t respond, just looked at her with those piercing green-gold eyes until she couldn’t stand it anymore. She walked to the nearest officer, feeling as though she’d been in that lobby for a lifetime instead of an hour and a half. “Can I go now?”
He asked her a few more questions, got her cell phone number and the name of her hotel and offered to call her a taxi.
“I’ll drive her.”
Brooke was startled to find Victor standing at her elbow. “I can take a taxi.”
“My car is around back.”
Stephanie walked over. “Stay here,” she said to Victor. “We’ve got some things to look into.”
“No, Steph. I’ll be back soon. I need to take Brooke to her hotel.”
