The Stranger's Sin. Darlene Gardner

turn to ask the questions. “You said you met her at a coffee shop in upstate New York. Where exactly?”

      She didn’t answer immediately. “Schenectady.”

      “When was this?”

      “Last Saturday,” she said. “Like I told you, it was crowded. There was an empty seat at my table, and she asked if she could take it.”

      “What did you talk about?”

      “Nothing important. She seemed…frazzled. Nervous. She made a remark about not liking Schenectady any more than Indigo Springs. I got the impression she was passing through town.”

       Passing through. It was the same expression Kelly had used to explain what she was doing in Indigo Springs, which brought them to the most far-fetched part of her story. It had nagged at Chase all afternoon, because it just didn’t compute.

      “That’s quite a coincidence that you ended up in Indigo Springs a week later,” he said. “How did you happen to be in Pennsylvania?”

      Another hesitation. “I was visiting friends. In Scranton.” The geography only made a vague sense, which she seemed to realize. “I decided to take a detour.”

      Chase mentally reviewed her story. She was hundreds of miles from home, showing around a sketch of a woman who was essentially a stranger to return a necklace that wasn’t worth much more than a hundred dollars.

      Although she’d answered all his questions, there had been long pauses before some of her replies as though she was thinking about what to say.

      Chase wasn’t buying her story, but he couldn’t think of a single reason for her to lie. Before the night was over, he intended to unravel the puzzle.

      The heavy sound of footsteps interrupted his thoughts. His father stumbled into the family room, his face gray, clutching at his chest.

      “I put Toby…in his crib,” he said haltingly.

      Chase forgot about Kelly Delaney and her lies and sprang to his feet. He crossed the room to his father’s side, his own chest seizing with worry. “Dad? What’s wrong?”

      “I think…I’m having…a heart attack.”

       CHAPTER FOUR

       C HASE HAD ALWAYS BEEN GOOD in a crisis, but his mind rebelled. This couldn’t be happening to his father, who always seemed so hale and hearty. So invincible. Yet his father’s eyes were shut in obvious pain, his hand covering his heart, his face contorted with fear.

      The same way Chase’s mother had looked before she died.

      Chase’s mind flashed back nine months to the visit he’d paid to his parents while he was training to be a conservation officer. His father had gone to the grocery store to pick up milk. His mother had seemed overly quiet as she and Chase watched a Seinfeld rerun. She’d complained of not feeling well, then collapsed in the armchair, the canned laughter on television an incongruous backdrop.

       No! his mind screamed. He couldn’t lose his father that way, too.

      He should have seen the warning signs. Earlier today his father had dismissed his back pain as a by-product of too much yard work. He hadn’t mentioned his chest, but his discomfort had been obvious. Why hadn’t Chase put it together?

      “I’ll call 911 and get them to send an ambulance.” Kelly’s voice, full of authority.

      “No!” Chase stopped her before she reached a phone. He’d summoned an ambulance during his mother’s attack, and she’d died before the EMTs had reached the house. “There’s no time. I can get him to a hospital quicker myself.”

      He put his arm around his staggering father to support him, trying to figure out how best to get him into his Jeep. He’d left the vehicle in the garage, the door to which was off the kitchen.

      “Where are your car keys?” Kelly asked.

      It took him a moment to retrieve the information from his scrambled brain. “Hanging from a hook on the side of the refrigerator.”

      She rushed toward the kitchen, calling over her shoulder. “Do you have any aspirin?”

      Of course. Aspirin thinned the blood, lessening the size of blood clots. He should have thought of that.

      “In the long, thin cabinet on the left.”

      Chase’s father was breathing laboriously, leaning heavily on him as they continued walking toward the kitchen.

      “Chest hurts,” he choked out.

      “Hang in there, Dad,” Chase said, fighting rising panic.

      But then Kelly was there, meeting them with a glass of water in one hand, a single aspirin in the other, ordering his father to chew instead of swallowing because she’d read somewhere that chewing got the aspirin into the blood stream faster.

      She stood by while his father crunched the aspirin, then guided the glass to his lips with a sure, steady hand. “Don’t drink too much. Great. That’s great.”

      She was on the move again, opening the door that led from the house to the garage, handing Chase his keys, flipping the switch that operated the automatic garage door, helping Chase situate his father in the Jeep.

      Acting as if she was part of the family instead of a relative stranger.

      Toby, he thought.

      He couldn’t leave Toby with a woman he’d just met. A woman he’d convinced himself not ten minutes ago was lying.

      “I need to take Toby with me,” he said.

      “Don’t worry about Toby,” she said. “I’ll stay here with him.”

      “But—”

      “Listen to me,” she interrupted in that same calm, authoritative voice. “You need to get your father to a hospital. I promise I’ll take good care of your son.”

      Her eyes bored into his, clear and convincing. His father groaned, the sound causing pain to Chase’s own heart.

      “If it’ll ease your mind, call a neighbor while you’re on your way,” she suggested. “But you need to go. Right now!”

      She was right. It was vital to get a heart-attack victim to a hospital as quickly as possible. Doctors could administer drugs that broke up clots, stopping the heart attack in progress and limiting damage. Chase made a snap decision, the only one he could make.

      “Okay, I’m going.” He rushed around to the driver’s side of the Jeep and got in.

      His father was slumped in the seat, secured by the seat belt that Kelly had already fastened.

      “Kelly’s a good woman,” his father muttered out the side of his mouth. “Toby’ll be fine.”

      The fate of his father was less certain. His face was frighteningly pale. Chase turned the key in the ignition, mentally reviewing the winding route to the nearest hospital, figuring out how fast he dared drive to give doctors the best chance to save his father.

      The trip passed in a blur, with Chase dividing his attention between the road and his father. It seemed an eternity before he pulled up to the emergency room.

      Incredibly his father was able to walk into the hospital under his own power, with minimal help from Chase. The E.R. staff didn’t take any chances when Chase reported his father was suffering from chest pain. The nurses hustled him into a wheelchair and transported him into an examining room.

      Somebody asked Chase to move his pickup from the emergency-room entrance. When he returned to the waiting room, an admissions clerk summoned him to her cubicle and instructed him to fill out paperwork.

      Only then did Chase have time to phone Judy Allen, the mother of three who lived a few doors down, to ask her to check on Toby and Kelly. He got a