Page 73 of Mistaken Identity
I didn’t know if he blamed me for what happened to his daughter—and let’s be honest here, I blamed myself—but I needed to get my head out of my ass and talk to him.
It was the only way that we were going to go the distance, because I knew that her dad only had her left, and would fight tooth and nail for her.
The drive to Week’s place was all of two minutes.
He lived in the same neighborhood as my dad, and I had to pass his house to get to Week’s.
Coming to a stop in front of his place, I got off and yanked off my helmet.
I eyed the house—it hadn’t changed much since we were kids—and noticed that all the flowers Joy had planted were still there, just a little worse for wear.
I took in the front door, then slammed my helmet down on the seat before marching up the front walk.
I’d come up these steps a hundred thousand times over the years, but this time was by far the worst feeling.
I’d just made it up to his front porch and was standing between the gladiolas that his wife had planted sometime in our junior year, when my phone rang.
“Apollo,” I said as I answered the phone on speaker. “What’d you find?”
I hadn’t liked the look in the good ol’ doctor’s eyes when I’d asked him to stay away from my girl.
He’d been just a little bit too fake that I knew that he thought he had the upper hand.
He didn’t, and I wanted to make sure he knew that.
“Even more than I’m thinking you thought I’d get.” He sounded surprised, even to himself. “So looks like the good doctor has a few sexual harassment charges swept under the rug. He knows a lot of people in high places, so he’s able to get these charges cleared and anything that follows his brothers that work at DPD clear it up. He also has a fairly good computer guru sister who helps him clear that up, too, if anything decides to stick. Which nothing has, yet. But there was virtually no record of anything at first glance. So I’m thinking she’s done some cleaning up for him. But she’s not that good. I was able to find everything, it just took a little deeper digging than I usually have to do.”
He drew a deep breath and kept going.
“This is the most fun I’ve had in ages. She’s pretty damn good, but not good enough. I uncovered all of those charges. Every last one of them. He has eight, by the way. I then went ahead and sent a copy of said charges to the medical board, since I was sure that they didn’t have them.” He chuckled. “Man, this guy is a fuckin’ nut job. After a deep dive, it looks like the women come to him to share their worst, darkest experiences and the doctor plays the good guy act with them. He freaks them the fuck out, so they try to leave. Then he starts stalking them. Showing up at their homes. Their places of work. Their kids’ schools if they have any. The women file police reports which go nowhere. Then he continues to stalk them until the next fun plaything comes along and he loses interest. That, or they move away. He’s not interested in moving because of his support system here.”
“Two other things,” Apollo said. “Did you see him on the flight y’all were on three days ago?”
My brows slammed down. “No. He was on it?”
“Sure was. First class even.”
That flight had been brutal.
She’d had so much to tell me, and my mind had been on her, not on the people that were on the plane with us.
That wouldn’t be happening again.
“I have something set up that’ll alert me when he tries that one again,” Apollo said. “I’m pretty sure you being on that flight surprised him. He was probably on his best behavior when he saw you there.”
The motherfucker.
“Anything else?” I asked.
“I dug all through his life, man. And I’m not saying this makes it okay, but it looks like he’s only into the psychological torture of his patients when it’s convenient for him. If she’s out of his reach, he moves on to his next victim. So far, nothing in his past shows that he’s a violent person. I’m not saying stalking is all right, but at least he’s not going to go and kill her since you took away his toy. He’ll just go look for another toy.”
I guess that was something.
But the way my luck went, I’d have to deal with him getting pissed that I warned him off.
“I’m going to stick with him, though. Don’t worry.” He paused. “One other thing.”
I groaned. “What?”
