"Except he's big and blond and has these really creepy eyebrows." She brought her hands to her forehead and wiggled her fingers. "Like that cartoon cat."
"Garfield?"
"Yeah."
Cute, but not helpful.
"And I think he's a fixer man."
Paige straightened at what promised to be much more significant than Garfield eyebrows.
"A what?"
"A fixer-upper man. Um, you know. Somebody who fixes things like when the dishwasher broke and that worker came with his big tool belt."
"A repairman?"
"Yes. The stranger was always wearing those clothes the other times I talked to him."
Other times? Ohmigod. "How often have you spoken to him?"
Kirstie's gaze skittered away.
Paige tipped her daughter's chin. "I'm not mad, but this is important. I need to be able to trust you."
Kirstie fidgeted under her covers before meeting her mother's gaze again. "The first time, I saw him at the air show when I went out the back of the moonwalk."
Paige squelched a shiver at how close danger had been. She'd feared that, but having it confirmed scared the spit out of her.
"And then at the school playground he had on his fixer-man clothes and a visitor's pass shaped like an apple so I really thought it was okay if he pushed me on the swing for a while."
This went beyond scary shivers. Her stomach pitched, but she couldn't frighten Kirstie by throwing up. She swallowed back bile.
"And then I saw him again at church."
Think. Think, damn it. She needed answers from Kirstie now while the conversation was flowing. "What did you talk about?"
"Just stuff, like what he and Daddy did when they were kids. He asked me if my daddy made up fairy tales like they used to do as kids, but I didn't want to talk about that. It made me too sad." Her brow furrowed with concentration. "Oh, and he usually asked about everybody here to make sure we're doing okay."
Alarms went off in Paige's head on a number of counts. Could this man have broken into the clinic, using Kirstie to track everyone's whereabouts? She wanted to believe it was still nothing more than a drug-related incident, but she couldn't ignore the possibility that they were being targeted because of Kurt. And how strange was it that somebody wanted to know about the very fairy tales Kurt had mentioned in his letters? This was too weird.
So many questions without answers.
However, one thing was certain. She wouldn't be leaving her daughter again, which meant an end to fantasies about sneaking away with Bo. Her daughter needed to be her first priority.
Leaning, Paige pressed a kiss against the baby-soft skin of her daughter's cheek. "You did a great job remembering everything. I'm proud of you for being honest."
Tiny arms wrapped around her neck while the sweet scent of strawberry shampoo and healthy little girl swelled her heart. She would die to protect this child, and make sure anyone who hurt her baby suffered the agonies of the damned along the way.
"Time for you to get some sleep, punkin." Pulling away, Paige clicked off the bedside lamp, night-light plug-in glowing from across the room.
"What did it look like back there?"
Kirstie's question stopped Paige halfway off the bed. "Back where?"
"At home."
A year in North Dakota and Kirstie still didn't call it home. Had it been wrong to leave her daughter behind for the trip? She'd just wanted her child safe and protected, yet somehow things went to hell no matter what decision she chose. "It looked almost exactly the same as when we were there. A new family lives in our old house, and they planted the same kind of flowers we did."