Take and Give Read online

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Epilogue

  Acknowledgments

  Now unto the King

  eternal,

  immortal,

  invisible,

  the only wise God,

  be honour and glory

  forever and ever.

  Amen.

  1 Timothy 1:17, King James Version

  [ · · · ]

  Whereas the behemoth of federal power has forgotten the responsibility that it carries to protect the liberties and autonomy of every citizen;

  Whereas a corrupt federal government, drunk on control, has invaded our state, our police, and our people’s last refuge of liberty—the freedom of thought in their own minds;

  [ · · · ]

  Whereas these actions constitute a direct attack on the sovereignty of our state and of our people;

  Therefore, let it be known that we, the State of Texas, hereby reject the power of the Federal State and will henceforth no longer be subject to the authority of the United States of America;

  Therefore, let it be known that we, the State of Texas, hereby re-establish our independence as the Sovereign State of the Republic of Texas.

  [excerpts, Republic of Texas, Declaration of Sovereignty]

  1

  The footsteps behind her made no attempt at stealth. Lee picked up her pace across the parking garage. Don’t look back. Get to your car. Her left hand renewed its grip on her purse, her right on the slim Mace dispenser.

  “Can you help me?”

  The voice behind her was male and, of course, sounded desperate. She lengthened her strides. His kept pace. Her pulse pounded in her head. If she ran, would he chase? Would he grab her hair, her jacket, yank her head back …?

  She raised her right arm to level the Mace and pivoted to face her pursuer.

  The man halted and raised one hand in the universal sign of surrender. He held a girl, six or seven years old, perched on his arm. Both her hands pressed a blood-soaked towel to her forehead, and the collar of her white polo bore a stain.

  “Please,” the man said.

  Lee lowered her arm but kept the Mace in hand. A quick glance around the garage revealed no one else, but he could have a partner lying in wait somewhere. Except that the blood on the towel was real. The girl was bleeding.

  Untrimmed hair screened the man’s green eyes. “You’re a nurse? I saw your scrubs and I thought … I mean, I hoped …”

  She exhaled the last of the adrenaline and slid the Mace back into her purse. “The emergency entrance isn’t far.”

  He shook his head. “We can’t go to the hospital.”

  “If you don’t have insurance, there are—”

  “No, it’s not that, it’s—”

  “Dad? My hand’s getting tired.” No whine in that small, high voice. Not even a plea, simply a statement of fact. The girl glanced from her father to Lee with wide brown eyes.

  “May I take a look?” Lee motioned to the girl, and she lowered the towel.

  Blood filled the inch-long laceration over her right eyebrow. In the second Lee stepped closer, a drop trickled toward the girl’s eye. She swiped it away.

  “How long ago did this happen?” Lee set her thumb and forefinger on either side of the gash. It was gaping.

  “About an hour ago.” The wobble in the man’s voice echoed off their concrete surroundings. “I tried to take care of it, but it keeps on bleeding.”

  “She needs stitches.”

  His pallor grew sharper than his daughter’s. If they had insurance, then what …? Certainty bloomed in Lee’s mind, one sluggish petal at a time. She should have realized immediately.

  “The paperwork would be problematic,” she said.

  The man took a step back, then another. As if an added foot of distance would save him, should Lee choose to take out her cell phone and call the Constabulary.

  “You’re a Christian.”

  His daughter’s hand slipped on the towel. He pressed his free hand to her head. “Her mother could take her in and sign the paperwork, but she’s not home, and … I can’t.”

  Interesting marriage they must have. Raised in such a home, the girl had probably heard the tales of Jesus Christ alongside those of some other religion. Or had her parents agreed that faith was a forbidden topic? Not that it mattered.

  “All right,” she said.

  “You can help? I thought maybe a nurse would have … I don’t know, bandages? In your car, for emergencies?”

  The conversation couldn’t continue here. Lee wasn’t the only nurse getting off shift right now. The girl shivered and leaned against her father’s shoulder, a heat-seeking reflex against the October chill. He must have forgotten her jacket.

  Lee stripped off her own jacket and draped it around the girl. “I can help you, but there are stipulations.”

  The man nodded. “I brought three hundred dollars. Cash.”

  “I can’t do the procedure here. You’ll have to come with me and not ask questions.”

  His mouth drew down, and he shifted his daughter’s weight to his other arm. “Follow you, you mean?”

  “No.”

  Sam would have to drive them all. They could blindfold the man to protect their route. Still … he’d see too much. Figuring out Lee’s “person of interest” status wouldn’t be difficult.

  Too much risk.

  But so was driving them in her car.

  “I’ll drive,” she said. “You’ll be blindfolded.”

  “Blindfolded?”

  Seconds ticked down to a detonation, the moment someone who knew her—or even someone who didn’t—exited that elevator and noticed them, the parent of a bleeding child arguing with a woman in scrubs. They would be memorable.

  “It’s necessary.”

  “I don’t even know you, and you want me to leave my car here and—”

  “You know I’m a medical professional who hasn’t called the Constabulary, even though you confessed to a philosophical misdemeanor. You’ll be returned to your car.”

  “I …”

  “Make a decision,” she said.

  Tears flooded his eyes. Please remain calm.

  His free hand swiped at his face. “Okay, we’ll come with you. God answered my pr
ayer, so I won’t question His answer.”

  She was the answer to no one’s prayers. But debating the point would be counterproductive, so she led the man to her car. She unlocked her car and motioned them both into the backseat.

  “Sit on the floor.”

  Now she needed a blindfold. She grabbed a spare scrub top from her trunk and folded it into a long strip, tucking in the short sleeves.

  On the far side of the garage, an elevator chimed and opened. Lee ducked her head into the car and held out the scrub top. He tied it over his eyes.

  She always parked in the security camera’s blind spot, not that it constituted hiding. Agent Mayweather could and likely did send a Constabulary car through the garage once a day to note her presence. Until now, her tiny parking rebellion had been futile.

  The man’s voice came up from the floor behind her as she backed out of the parking space. “My name’s Gary. My daughter is Piper.”

  “I can’t tell you my name.”

  “I understand that. And I’m thankful it was you who came out of that elevator.”

  Lee swiped her ID card at the exit and pulled out into traffic. Oh. Sam. She dug her phone from her purse and sent a text.

  Off hook tonight, ttyl.

  She had never canceled his driving her to the clinic before. Hopefully, he would understand and not show up at their meeting place a block from the hospital. The only part of her text he’d be familiar with was ttyl, their code for “no trouble.”

  Quiet infused the car. Lee drove west to the highway, then north. “Piper, how old are you?”

  “Seven.”

  “How are you feeling?”

  “My head hurts.”

  “Are you dizzy?”

  “No.”

  Excellent sign. Lee eased her grip on the wheel. “How did you hurt your head?”

  An extra second of silence. Unusual. Children her age enjoyed recounting drama.

  “We were at the park, and she fell off the monkey bars,” Gary said.

  Lee glanced reflexively in the rearview mirror, which showed her only an empty backseat. Something in his voice made her wish she could see his face.

  “Would it be okay for me to call you a name?” Piper’s voice lowered. “I mean, a pretend name, since it’s not okay to know your real name.”

  “Of course.”

  “Okay. Nurse Rebecca.”

  “Fine.”

  “Did I guess right?”

  Ah, a strategy. And so subtle. Lee’s mouth twitched. “No.”

  “Then … Nurse Taylor.”

  “Piper,” Gary said.

  “It’s fine.” Lee dipped a nod, though they couldn’t see her. “If you guess correctly, you’ll have earned the knowledge.”

  “So you’ll tell me? If I’m right?”

  “I will.”

  Piper lobbed names for the rest of the thirty-five-minute drive, which would have been twenty-five minutes without Lee’s backtracking to avoid a tail. Not that she ever sensed one, but with a passenger in the car who would, if questioned, admit to his Christian faith—normal caution wasn’t enough. Piper’s voice remained coherent, so the blood loss wasn’t becoming dangerous, and worse injuries than hers frequently waited longer in the ER waiting room.

  When random name guesses failed her, Piper tried alphabetical order. Amy. Brittany. Cassie. Dora. Emily. At L, Lee tensed, but Piper said “Laura.”

  Lee pulled onto Indian Trail as Piper guessed “Wendy.” The car’s right front tire bumped over an eroded hole in the dirt road. Too many of them to evade. Piper didn’t yelp, though, simply said, “Ow.”

  Lee pulled up the gravel driveway then behind the dilapidated house—dilapidated from the outside, anyway. She parked in the pole barn alongside Violet’s little blue Ford, though behind the house might have been hidden enough.

  “Gary, I’ll ask you to keep the blindfold on for another minute.”

  “Whatever you want.”

  Lee rounded the car to help both of them. When she lifted Piper, a drop of blood ran down the girl’s face from under the saturated towel. Lee set her on her feet.

  “Still not dizzy?”

  “No, but it hurts, though.”

  The simplest way to guide Gary to the back door was to set his hand on her arm. She tried to picture him as a patient, blind and feeble. The image eased the stiffness from her back as he lightly held her elbow. They made their way over the uneven lawn with Piper a few steps ahead of them.

  Lee opened the door, motioned Piper inside, brought Gary in, and shut it again. Warmth wrapped around her.

  “All right, Gary,” she said.

  He pulled the scrub top down so that it hung around his neck. His eyes roamed every visible corner, and a breath of satisfaction seeped into Lee. No one who drove past the rundown, vacant home would speculate it housed a black-market medical practice. The interior layout betrayed itself as a house, but with the three white-sheeted beds and the counter against the far wall bearing rows of instruments, it must look like a field hospital. Normally, walk-in clinic described it better. Lee would replace the carpets with tile, maybe remodel in other ways as well, if she could risk hiring a … contractor.

  Thought trails always betrayed her. She truncated this one and motioned Piper toward the nearest patient bed. “Sit, please. I’ll be right back.”

  Gary nodded, continuing to absorb his surroundings. His mouth still crimped with worry for his child but now interest widened his eyes.

  Please refrain from touching anything.

  Lee hurried down the hallway, toward the kitchen-turned-pharmacy and the sound of running water. “Violet?”

  “Hey, back here. Belinda brought me over a little early. She had some weaving class or something. I’m going to change the Cidex, and I think we need to order some—”

  “I have a patient.”

  Violet’s blonde head turned from the sink. “Mr. Donnelly? He’s early.”

  “She’s seven years old, gaping forehead wound. I need to stitch her.”

  “But how did Sam know about her?” Violet’s gaze darted over Lee’s shoulder. “Wait a minute.”

  “Sam hadn’t arrived yet.”

  “You didn’t drive your car, your actual car.”

  “There wasn’t an alternative.”

  “You brought a patient? In your car?”

  “Violet.”

  “You know this kid?”

  “No.”

  Violet slammed off the faucet. “Good grief, Lee.”

  Lee unslung her purse from her shoulder and set it on the counter. She grabbed her keys and found the one for the cabinet locks. Being robbed by a roving junkie was hardly likely out here, where corn and soybean fields spread out on the other side of the dirt road. No sense in taking chances, though.

  She took a packaged PC needle and suture thread from the lower shelf, a syringe from the upper. “If you’d like to assist me, you can draw up the Lidocaine and epinephrine.”

  Violet blinked, reached for the towel. “If?”

  Lee gathered the items and returned to her patient. Her tone had been too barbed. But Violet had no right to question Lee’s decisions.

  “I think it’s bleeding a little less,” Gary said as Lee entered the living-room-turned-treatment-room. He held the towel to Piper’s head, and she braced her chin with one hand.

  From over Lee’s shoulder, Violet’s voice came with a smile. “Hi, I’m the medical assistant.”

  Piper’s wilting posture straightened, and her eyes brightened. “Hi. What’s your name?”

  “Um …”

  “No guessing this time,” Gary said.

  Violet handed Lee the syringe. “Lidocaine and epinephrine.”

  Her hand closed around the tool of her trade. She would make this child well. “Thank y
ou.”

  A shudder ran down Piper’s body. Gary’s hand shifted on the towel, and he met Lee’s eyes over the top of Piper’s head. “Needles scare her a little, but she’s pretty brave about it.”

  Lee nodded. “I’m sure she is.”

  “And I tell her, needles are even less scary when you’re older.”

  Not for everyone.

  This memory was a fist that knocked the breath from her chest. He was there. Standing right in front of her. Callused hands and brown eyes, shoulders straining T-shirt seams, unflinching in the face of anything except needles. Knocking on her door and dripping blood through her hallway to the bathroom first-aid kit.

  “No hospital. Just tape it up.”

  Lee blinked, and the room refocused. Gary’s smile was beginning to flatten into uncertainty. Only a moment could have passed.

  “That is often the case,” Lee said.

  “I hope so.” Piper gave a long sigh.

  Lee’s fingers had spasmed around the syringe. She willed them to loosen and removed the towel from Piper’s head. She funneled her thoughts, focused them. Procedure. Simple interrupted sutures.

  Piper cried at the local injection, but she didn’t fight or scream. Lee irrigated the wound with saline and opened the PC needle, already threaded. She’d used several of these in the last week or so, more than usual. She’d have to add them to the supply order.

  As always, suturing calmed her. The care in each stitch, the resistance and then give in the skin, the needle pushing through and pulled out.

  Violet gauzed away the blood and smiled at Piper. “So, what’s your favorite subject in school?”

  “Reading. And science.”

  “Yeah? I like science, too. Especially the ocean.”

  Piper’s eyes followed Violet’s hands as they gauzed more blood, but she didn’t fidget. Soon Lee was tying off the last stitch then stepping back from her work.

  “The scarring should be minimal.”

  “It’s all done?” Piper’s voice quavered.

  “It is, and you were brave. Keep it dry, all right?”

  “I promise.”

  The rattle of a doorknob froze all of them. Who …?

  That was a key in the lock. Sam. His deep voice drifted down the hallway, toward the treatment room. A slow drip of steel infused Lee’s spine. She would not debate with him. If she did, she would win.