Make Time For Me

“That branch, it wasn’t there when we came. But now it was. I thought it was odd, but there have been branches in places and it could’ve been before something fell off during clean-up, or maybe it hadn’t broken completely during the hurricane and they missed it while trimming the trees. Anyway, it didn’t look that heavy, so I got out and dragged it out of the way. I dropped my notepad and bent down to get it, and that’s when I heard it. I got up, saw it, and I just froze for a second. It felt like forever, but it was probably just a couple of seconds. If they’d really wanted to hit me, I’m sure they could’ve shot then. But they didn’t. I ran to the Jeep and crouched there, and finally I managed to get the nerve to reach for the handle and open it and get inside. My phone was inside. And then I called you.”

She managed to say that, succinctly and clearly, and then she burst into tears.

“Just the shock, Olivia. It’s all right. Come here, I’ve got you. It’s all right, you’re all right. I promise, you’re all right. It will be fine. We’ll get to the bottom of this. I promise, we’ll get to the bottom of this.

And he meant it.

The evening had been a nightmare. He’d left the car parked on the side of the road – he couldn’t have cared less about it – and driven Olivia to the sheriff’s office. She was brave, the bravest woman he’d ever known. She’d cried in his arms for a few minutes and then valiantly gotten herself under control and reported what had happened to the sheriff in her own words.

He had taken photos of the scene before taking the arrow out. He gave that to the sheriff, as well. It was wooden, and homemade, from the looks of it. It was a solid lead, at any rate.

He would find whoever had done that. He would find whoever had terrorized her. Whoever had made the woman he loved, the woman who would be his, cry like that in his arms. He would never let her be hurt like that again.

Never.

Once he made up his mind to do something, Jason got to it quickly. It had been like that when he had decided that he would be a doctor. He had changed his coursework to make him pre-med very quickly, and his parents hadn’t had much to say about it.

But that didn’t mean that he wasn’t good at other things. He was the heir to a tech empire, after all, and he had almost been ready to take over when the time came. He might no longer plan to do that, but those skills hadn’t left him.

For instance, he was very good at hacking. Most systems and servers didn’t have the kind of security that could stop him. Hospitals might have better security than home computers, but knowing the hospital where he worked, he didn’t think that was that likely. He knew how to get in, and he knew how to get what he found.

It wasn’t as if Jason didn’t have ethics. He did, he had plenty of ethics and morals. He was just also quite pragmatic. He knew when something had to be done. Right at that moment, Olivia was depending on him.

So he would do whatever he could.

He could narrow it down. It was somebody on the island. It was somebody who had been in the hospital that day. And it was somebody who had access to Olivia, who was close enough to watch her, because he no longer thought that the night she had been spooked in the woods had been her imagination. Somebody had set their eyes on her as soon as she’d come to the island, just as he had.

But unlike him, they wished her harm.

He would not allow that.

So he got to work, to protect the woman he loved.

Did they think that that had been an attempt on Olivia’s life? People could be so stupid, even Olivia. No, no, not Olivia. Olivia was lovely. She had just been scared. That was a pity. Regret – was that what this feeling was? It was rather novel. Regret, because Olivia had looked so scared, her eyes had been so wide. She had looked so small. Olivia had been losing weight.

Yes, that was definitely regret. Maybe shooting that arrow so close to Olivia had been a mistake. The intention had never been to make her afraid for her life. Just to make her step back and reassess her priorities and her friendships a little bit more.

Everybody made mistakes. That was fine.

But Jason had ruined it. He had been the one she’d called. He’d come to the rescue.

That had not been the plan.

A crash, and a bowl shattered against the wall.

That had NOT been the plan.