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It was about thirty minutes later when Daniel came in. “Any news?” he asked as he sat down in the chair next to Jacque.

“Not yet,” Jacque replied. “Can you tell me exactly what happened?”

“Somebody tried to beat the hell out of her.”

All of Jacque’s muscles tightened once again, and he felt sick to his stomach. She had been beaten? “How bad?”

Daniel frowned. “Hard to tell. According to her, most of the blows were to her body. You have any idea who might have done this to her?”

“None. What the hell was she doing outside her shanty at that time of night? Did she say?” Jacque asked.

“Yeah, she said somebody knocked on her door. When she went to answer nobody was there, but there was a small box on her porch. She bent down to pick it up, and that’s when somebody in dark clothes and a ski mask slammed into her hard enough to knock her off the porch and to the ground.”

“Do her sisters know about this?”

“I haven’t told them yet. Angelique knew I got an emergency call, but she didn’t know it was at Monique’s shanty. I wanted to sort through all the details before telling them.” Daniel shifted in the chair. “I found the box she talked about at the scene, and I opened it. I figured it was probably empty, but there was a note inside. It said I warned you. Do you know what that’s all about?”

Jacque was torn between the need to tell Daniel the truth and Monique’s desire to keep it a secret. “You’ll have to ask Monique about that,” he finally said. “Was she able to give you any kind of a description of the person who attacked her?”

“No, as I said before, the person was dressed all in black and wore a mask. Monique said everything happened so fast she had no idea as to height or weight.”

“It’s too bad she couldn’t give you something to go on,” Jacque replied, his stomach still aching for her.

“Yeah, that seems to be the story of my cases right now,” Daniel replied with obvious frustration.

At that moment Dr. Gregory Harmon walked out to greet them. Jacque had seen the older doctor a couple of times in the past four years for a variety of ailments, so he knew who he was.

Both Jacque and Daniel stood as he approached them. “She’s going to be okay,” Dr. Harmon said. “Although in the next couple of days and weeks, she’s going to hurt.” He looked from Jacque to Daniel. “She has two fractured ribs and various bruises. I had every intention of keeping her here for the rest of the night, but she insists she wants to go home. She should be out here in just a few minutes. I’ve given her a week’s worth of pain meds. Unfortunately, there isn’t much that can be done for cracked ribs. What she really needs is plenty of rest and to give herself time to heal”

“Thank you, Doctor,” Daniel said. As Dr. Harmon left them, he commented, “I was going to question Monique a little more, but it can wait until tomorrow.”

“You go ahead and take off and do whatever you need to do, I’ll take Monique home,” Jacque said.

“There’s really nothing left to do. We searched all around the porch area and where we believed the attack took place, but we didn’t find anything that might help identify the assailant. We’ll take up the investigation again tomorrow morning in the light of day.”

Minutes later Jacque was once again alone in the waiting room. He wasn’t sure how long it was before Monique walked out.

She was wearing a bright pink nightshirt with a blue-flowered hospital gown over the top. She walked gingerly, as if every step was sheer torture. She had a blossoming bruise on the side of her chin. The minute she saw him, she burst into tears.

If any woman ever needed to be held, it was her. He tentatively pulled her into his arms, not wanting to hurt her further.

She buried her face in the front of his shirt as she continued to cry.

“Hey, hey…crying is only going to make you hurt more,” he said softly.

She continued to weep for several more minutes, and then her sobs slowly subsided, but she continued to linger in his arms for a long moment. Finally, she raised her head and stepped back from him. “Oh, Jacque, it was so terrible. I thought I was going to be beaten to death.”

He hated to see her tearstained face and he wanted to grab her back into his arms and hold her tight. He needed to make sure that nobody would ever hurt her again. These thoughts stirred up old, raw memories inside him that made him unsettled, but he shoved them away.

“Can you take me home?” she asked.

“That’s what I intend to do,” he replied. “Are you ready to go now?”

“More than ready,” she said with a nod.

He grabbed one of her arms to steady her as they headed slowly to the exit. It didn’t take long to get her in his car and then he headed back to the swamp.

For several minutes she didn’t speak, and he remained silent, giving her space to remain quiet if that was what she needed.