Judith Bowen - The Doctor's Daughter

He frowned slightly as he examined the facts on Virginia’s resumé. Thirty, diploma in office management and legal research, past experience... He ran his eye quickly down the list and frowned again. It seemed she’d had an awful lot of short-term jobs in a lot of different towns. He glanced at her cover letter.

Then his eye stopped. His heart stopped. She had a child. A boy, five years old.

Lucas pushed back his chair and put his feet up on the desk, hands behind his head. He stared out the window.

Single. With a child. Coming back to Glory. What had happened in Virginia Lake’s life?

Lucas told himself he’d do everything right. He’d let Pete handle it; otherwise, she might remember that prom date and the night they’d spent together and maybe change her mind. When he saw her, in person, it would be different. There’d be no embarrassment on either side. She’d know he cared. The way he always had. She’d know he’d never do anything to hurt her. She’d know she’d come to the right place. If he could help her, he would.

Yes, he’d let Pete take care of things. Lucas couldn’t afford to blow it. He’d been waiting for Virginia for a very long time.

CHAPTER TWO

Six years earlier

VIRGINIA PAUSED at the spring-loaded door to the Bragg Creek Grocery with an odd feeling that something was wrong.

What could be wrong?

It was a glorious morning, the trees were in full leaf and the wild roses were in bud. She’d just heard good news about a summer job at the Banff Springs Hotel and now she had a place to live, too, at the Prescotts’ summer cabin just down the road. She didn’t have to go home to Glory, didn’t have to deal with her parents, after all. She could take care of herself.

Virginia frowned. Maybe the feeling had something to do with the shiny late-model Jeep that stood outside the store with its engine running. In winter, yes, people sometimes left their cars and pickups running, but on a beautiful May morning? She pushed open the door and stepped into the gloom of the old store.

“Well, well.”

“Johnny!”

“Will you lookee who’s here?”

Virginia was tongue-tied. She hadn’t seen Johnny Gagnon since the summer her father had packed her off to Mount Allison University in Sackville, New Brunswick, four thousand miles away.

“Haven’t seen you in a while, babe. Man, what a sight for sore eyes!”

She’d have recognized him anywhere. Handsome as ever, maybe even more so now that he was a man, fully grown. He wore a mustache, which suited him, and his hair was fashionably long. His teeth flashed white in his swarthy face when he grinned at her, and, as always, she found it hard not to grin back.

Johnny Bandito.

But what was he doing here?

Then she noticed his right hand stuffed awkwardly in his jacket pocket and, slung over his shoulder, a stained and worn canvas cash bag that was stenciled faintly with “Bragg Creek Grocery.” He was sweating profusely and his dark eyes were all over her and all over the store at the same time. Where was Mr. Gibbon? Where were the other customers? The old guys who gathered every morning in the country store to shoot the breeze with the proprietor?

Virginia heard a muffled thump from behind the high wooden counter. That was when she noticed the wall phone was off the hook and the connection had been ripped out.

Her eyes shot to Johnny’s. “What are you doing here?”

“C’mon, babe,” he shot back, winking at her. “Lighten up, eh? Just a little grubstake, that’s all.” He pulled his hand out of his pocket, leaving a bulky-looking object behind. A gun. He had a gun in his pocket.

He grabbed her arm. “Come with me, sweetheart. I could use a good-looking hostage.” He grinned again, but this time Virginia felt no inclination to smile back. Her insides were frozen. He was robbing this store. She’d walked into the middle of a robbery.

“Where’s Mr. Gibbon?” she demanded, wrenching her arm away from the man who’d been her first lover and, once, her closest friend.

“Aw, he’s fine. Tied him up with a little of his own stock. Panty hose.” Johnny nodded in the direction of the counter. “Little trick I learned in the pen. You know I’d never hurt anybody, Ginny,” he said irritably.

Virginia stepped closer, trying to peer behind the counter. “My God!” She turned to rush to the aid of the three people on the floor-one of whom was Mr. Gibbon—gagged and bound together by the feet. But Johnny grabbed her arm again.

This time it hurt. This time she knew he meant it. He was going to take her with him, just as he’d said.

“Look, they’re fine. I tied ‘em up so I could put a few miles between me and this dump before they called the cops. And I ripped out the wires just to give ’em a little more challenge, eh?” He winked at her, then reached out and scooped up half-a-dozen beef jerky and pepperoni packages from the display on the counter. “Come on, Ginny. Let’s get out of here.”

He stuffed the jerky and pepperoni in the cash bag and gripped her arm. Virginia cursed herself for not doing something when he’d let her go. Why hadn’t she run out of there screaming? She ought to be able to raise the alarm herself even now—run, get help at the nearest occupied cabin. Where was that at this time of year? Not many Calgary people spent more than weekends at their Bragg Creek cabins this early in the season.

It was too late. He had her arm in a viselike grip and he wasn’t letting go. Maybe she should play along. Maybe she could talk him out of this, talk him into giving himself up. Convince him that this kind of stupid crime was no way to have a life.

Johnny doused the lights with his free hand, twisted the doorknob lock and flipped the plastic sign hanging on the window beside the door to Closed. The lock wasn’t secure, but it would halt most people, though they might wonder why Mr. Gibbon hadn’t opened up yet.

Then, holding her tightly, he turned and yelled back into the silent store, “Remember, old man. I got a gun and a hostage—just stay where you are and don’t do nothin’ and nobody’ll get hurt!”

He slammed the door shut, then frog-marched her to the driver’s side of the running Jeep. “Get in, Ginny, and don’t try nothin’ funny. We got a lot of catching up to do.”

Virginia clambered across the driver’s bucket seat and the gearshift into the passenger seat. By the time she was reaching for her seat belt—a matter of habit—Johnny had thrown the Jeep into gear and popped the clutch. He left the small parking lot in a spray of gravel and grinned at her as she jammed her seat belt lever home. “Just like the old days, eh? You and me? Bonnie and Clyde—”

“This is nuts, Johnny. You’ll never get away with this.”

His eyes narrowed. “Who says, babe?”

“Me. You can’t do this.” She made a wild gesture at him, at the vehicle, at the blur of trees lining the roadside. “Whose Jeep is this, anyway?”

“Friend of a friend, you might say. Just borrowed it.” He winked at her again. She noticed then that there was no key in the ignition. He’d hot-wired it. That was why he’d left it running.

Johnny tossed her the cash bag with one hand as he pulled out to pass a gleaming stainless-steel dairy tanker. “Dig in there and throw me a chunk of that pepperoni, will you?”

Obediently Virginia rummaged in the bag. There wasn’t much cash. Probably just Mr. Gibbon’s float for the day. Or maybe his receipts over the weekend. She was disgusted. Imagine robbing a store for a couple hundred bucks or less. Then she caught herself—stealing was stealing, no matter what the amount. She’d just finished her second year of law school and she knew where this kind of thing led.

She’d have had more respect for her former lover if he’d planned and carried out something big. This nickel-and-dime stuff, this hot-wiring and stealing cars—all it did was add up to a ruined life and a string of jail terms. Not that robbing a bank and going to jail for twenty years in a federal penitentiary wouldn’t ruin a person’s life. But at least it took some brains. She tossed Johnny a bag of pepperoni strips, which he caught with his free hand.

“Thanks, babe. So—” he tore the bag open with his teeth “—what’ve you been up to since the last time I saw you? Four, five years ago now?”

“More than that.” She paused. She didn’t feel like filling Johnny in on her life over the past six years. This was no social picnic or school reunion. She was in the middle of a crime that was still taking place. He had called her his hostage. Armed robbery. She hadn’t guessed wrong; he’d told Mr. Gibbon and the others that he had a gun. Car theft. Now kidnapping. Did he mean it? Or was he going to drop her off somewhere, maybe in the next town or on one of these back roads, and ask her not to go to the police?

She wasn’t sure where they were headed, except that they were traveling west. The Rockies loomed, snowcapped and gleaming in the sunshine, in the near distance. Bragg Creek was in the wooded foothills twenty miles west of Calgary. To the southeast was the Stoney Reserve and, south of that, ranch country. Longview, Priddis, Black Diamond, Turner Valley, Millarville, Glory. If they stopped in one of those towns, she could jump out. Then what? She supposed she’d have to turn Johnny in and even testify against him when the time came. She didn’t want to be involved. She wished she hadn’t decided to walk to the store for a cellophane-wrapped Danish for breakfast this morning. She wished she’d settled for the dry cereal her first check of the Prescotts’ cupboards had yielded.

What luck. And Mr. Gibbon’s stock of bakery goods would likely have been a week old, anyway.

“Where are you taking me?” she asked finally.

Johnny swallowed the mouthful of pepperoni he’d been chewing and turned to her. “Place I know. Nice little cabin up here off the Powderface Trail. Give us a chance to visit. Nobody to disturb us, if you know what I mean.” He laughed and bit off another chunk of the pepperoni.

Virginia relaxed slightly. He couldn’t intend her any harm if he’d told her where they were going. He must plan to let her go soon, maybe after this “visit.” Oddly, even with the gun she knew he had, she wasn’t particularly worried. She wished he’d just let her go now. She had nothing to talk about with him. They had nothing in common anymore, probably hadn’t since high school. She’d gone to her prom with that half-Indian guy she’d always secretly admired, Lucas Yellowfly. Johnny had been in jail. It had been the last in a string of disappointments with Johnny Gagnon, and in a way she was relieved when her father, furious that she’d dated Yellowfly, had packed her up and sent her to university in New Brunswick.

She’d stayed with her aunt Sadie and attended Mount Allison for four years, long enough to get her bachelor of arts, and then she’d applied for law school in Edmonton and Calgary. Edmonton had accepted her. She’d wanted to come back to Alberta. Maybe not to Glory with her parents, but she’d missed the mountains and the wide-open spaces. She’d missed home.

But she hadn’t missed Johnny Gagnon, although she hadn’t forgotten him, either. You never forgot the first man you’d been with. You never forgot someone who’d been a good friend, someone who’d grown up with you and who’d once shared all the secrets of your teenage heart.

“What’ve you been doing, Johnny?” she ventured. Might as well play the game. For now, at least.

“You mean besides robbing dumpy little highway grocery stores?” He grinned at her and ripped open a bag of peanuts that had been lying on the dash. “Oh, this and that.” He stuffed a few peanuts in his mouth. “Got married.”