Gingerbread Man

hurt by all of this."
    "I’ll have further tests run," Doc said. "We'll need fresh samples from the two women. We'll get this confirmed and—" He was turning as he spoke, walking quickly, but he stopped all at once, braced a hand on the wall to keep him upright. His head dropped forward.
    Vince quickly gripped his arm. "Whoa, hold on."
    The doctor hung there a moment, closed his eyes. "My God, O'Mally, what if I took part in keeping a secret that should never have been kept? What if I'm partly to blame for what that family went through?" He opened his eyes, and they were wet. "I thought I was saving her. Not hiding her from a loving family! I swear I did."
    The man looked stricken. And Vince felt sorry for him. He could imagine making the same choices, if he'd believed what they had that night. "Look, you did what you thought you had to do. And who the hell knows, maybe you did save her. You said yourself, she told you and Reggie her daddy had been the one who hurt her."
    Lifting his brows and his head at once, Doc paled. "You think Holly's father—then, what about her? What about Holly?"
    "I don't know," Vince admitted. But it galled him to think she may have been a victim of the same thing.
    "No. No, Vince, it wasn't him," Dr. Graycloud said. "I knew the man. And, besides, if it were him, that would mean he was the one who took Bethany. And those children in Syracuse, he would have done that as well. But he couldn't have. He's dead. He's been dead for seven years."
    "Let's not get carried away. Maybe this really was just a mistake in the hospital lab."
    Doc nodded. "We'd better get those samples from Holly and Amanda."
    Vince headed for the elevator, and thought about Holly. About Amanda. He kept putting their faces side by side in his mind, and seeing similarities. Or was that wishful thinking? Why hadn't he noticed before if there was a resemblance?
    * * *
    DORIS NEWMAN STOPPED walking when she heard the two men arguing outside Mr. D'.Voe's room. She'd been on her way to look in on him, since she couldn't sleep anyway. He seemed like such a kind man, and she honestly hoped he was going to be all right
    But the words of the two men brought her up short.
    "Look, I'm sorry I got you into trouble," one man was saying. "I shouldn't have done that. I just don't want to wait until morning to question this guy."
    "I know," the younger man said. He was the one who seemed to be guarding the door. "The idea of protecting a child killer makes me sick. But are you sure he's the one?"
    "As sure as I need to be. He took that kid last night. Near as we can figure he's been killing little girls for eighteen years. Maybe longer. There's a guy in prison right now for one of those deaths."
    The guard sighed deeply. "Still, we'd better stick with procedure."
    "We will kid. I'll question him in the morning, with the doctor standing there protecting him. The piece of shit."
    Doris's eyes were frozen wide open, and her heart was skipping beats and swelling. Reginald D'Voe? A killer? Was it possible? Was
he
the man who had murdered her precious little girl? She felt herself sinking to her knees, one hand pressed to the wall, the other to her heart.
    "Ma'am? Are you all right ma'am?" someone asked.
    She ignored her. Ignored the hands pulling her to her feet, the chair she was eased into. Someone looked at her wristband, and said, "Mrs. Newman? Doris, can you hear me? Honey, what are you doing down here? You belong up on the third floor."
    She blinked, lifted her head, and tried to see through swimming eyes. But she couldn't. "I was just going to look in on Mr. D'Voe," she said. "He's a neighbor of mine."
    A neighbor. A neighbor, who had stolen her baby. Who'd killed her, and nearly driven Holly insane with grief and guilt. Him. He'd done it. But why? She'd never even met D'Voe until she and Holly had moved here. She'd known of him, even driven the girls past his house a few times when they visited every summer. But D'Voe had always summered elsewhere. The Keys, she'd once heard someone say. He'd never even been in town when she and the girls had been here. Why had he targeted her Ivy? Why?
    They pushed her chair into an elevator. She was shaking. Too much, it was too much to feel all at once.
    The doors opened, and the nurse pushed her back toward her room, as one of the nurses at the desk came forward to take over. "What happened? Doris? I thought you were doing better?" the nurse said. "I'll take it from here," she told the other