Millie Dean’s front door was open.
Not by a whole lot but by too much for a house in the dark.
That had been enough for him.
He had reached into his back seat, grabbed what his former partner in Seattle had dubbed the Just in Case. He’d been haphazardly handling it as he’d hurried out of the truck and down the sidewalk toward the front porch.
Then the gunshot had helped him become something he hadn’t in a long while.
He’d become calm.
Absolutely and 100 percent calm.
From drawing his gun, to Millie appearing wide-eyed in front of him, Foster had left his sense of urgency and found the only thing that would help him and Millie.
Focus.
So, as his gut let him know he should have realized Millie had still been in danger sooner, his head had taken over.
He’d moved Millie out of the way and pulled the trigger so the man couldn’t.
But he had.
Foster’s focus had gone and his gut and his head had quieted as the world went dark.
CHAPTER SIX
The rain finally came.
It hit the tin roof and sounded like hail instead of water droplets. Then he could hear the water spreading over the grass behind him. It was soothing, in a way. White noise attached to the irreplaceable scent of rain.
Then there was something else.
Strawberries?
Foster opened his eyes.
Light poured around dark, wild hair and the body of a woman leaning over him. For a moment, Foster forgot where he was, and it was just him looking into the amber eyes of someone concerned.
But then the pain in his ribs said, “How do you do?” and the memory of the gunman poured in faster than the rain falling around them.
“Is he down?” Foster grunted as he tried to sit up. “Wa-was he alone?”
Millie had a phone to her ear and, despite her darker complexion, looked pale. She also looked relieved.
“He’s dead,” she told him. Then into the phone, “No! Detective Foster isn’t dead. He’s awake now.” He could hear someone on the other end of the phone call talking quickly. Millie nodded then handed over the phone. She helped him sit up as he grunted out his name, his position and the bare-bone facts to a dispatcher.
He’d shot and killed a man who had the intent to shoot Millie in her own home. He’d taken a bullet after giving out his own.
Normally Foster would have stayed on the phone, but he wanted answers. And he suspected the second that Sheriff Chamblin found out what happened, he would be shooing Foster to the hospital for a checkup.
Foster wanted to take advantage of his alone time with Millie before that.
He ended the call with an apology and a promise not to leave.
Millie didn’t seem to approve. She’d run a gauntlet of expressions while watching him talk. From concerned to lost to an impassiveness that smoothed her face and downturned her lips. She took her phone, the same one she’d run back inside to get once the detective had fallen, back from him but her gaze had fallen to his chest.
“The man. He shot you.” Her voice softened tenfold. “I thought you were dead.”
She reached out but didn’t touch where the bullet had hit.
Which was good because it hurt like hell.
If Foster didn’t have a set of bruised ribs, then he certainly had some cracked ones. Not to mention the throbbing pain at the back of his head, letting him know that he definitely had hit the floor after being knocked out by the impact of the shot.
Still, he’d been lucky as hell.
“And that’s why I always keep Just in Case in my vehicle.” He ran his hand over his bulletproof vest, grateful that he’d thrown it on when he did. Millie didn’t look as appreciative. She eyed his side where the straps weren’t fastened.
“It’s not all the way on. You could have been killed.”
Foster put his hands against the wood floor of the porch and pushed himself up. Millie stood with him, helping him to steady.
“There wasn’t enough time.”
Millie didn’t seem to like that answer. He heard his own voice soften this time. “And his bullet hit exactly where it needed to, okay? I’ll be all right, just sore.”
The woman nodded.
“Now, what about you?” he asked, looking her up and down. As far as he could tell, she wasn’t injured but, then again, she also had a robe on that covered most of her body. “Did he hurt you?”
She was quick to shake her head.
“No. But I hurt him.”
Millie stepped him through the story of what happened from the time she got out of bed until she made it out onto the front porch. In between her recounting of the events and walk-through of the house, Foster made sure to keep himself between her and the man’s body, shielding her from seeing him any more than she already had.
Much like the attacker, Foster’s bullet had found the man’s chest. However, unlike Foster, he hadn’t had a vest to protect him.
Now he was bleeding across Millie Dean’s hardwood and pink-and-blue rug, looking as out of place in the otherwise cheery home as the gun he’d discarded.
It was only when they were back on the front porch, the man’s gun now in Foster’s hand, that Millie underlined her biggest takeaway from what had happened.
“He was looking for Fallon,” she said. “That was the only thing he was interested in. Fallon.”
Her voice had gone small, nearly getting lost in the rain. Foster didn’t like how it made him feel to hear it. Just like he was in no way a fan of the still-there anger for her attacker sitting against his chest.
“Is this the first time anyone has ever come to you looking for him?” he asked. “Any friends, enemies, or family?”
He could tell Millie was trying not to look back into her house. To the body on the floor.
“No. He had a few friends here before Annie McHale went missing. After that, like a lot of people, they ended up moving. I reached out to them when he first disappeared, but none have responded. As for enemies? Well, there’s a town full of people who think he’s an attention-seeking, self-involved guy with nothing better to do than waste everyone’s time.” Her words had a sharp edge to them. She caught herself and spoke more evenly when she continued. “And family? That’s me. Just me.”
For the first time since he’d met Millie Dean, Foster realized he didn’t know if she had her own family aside from Fallon. Were there wedding pictures hanging on the walls that he’d missed? An engagement ring in a dish next to her bed? A boyfriend who she was hoping to call the second she could?
Surely a woman as beautiful as Millie had someone who would want to know she was okay.
Foster cleared his throat.
“Do you need to call someone? To let them know you’re okay before this hits the news and gossip mill?”
Millie shook her head. The movement was as small as her voice.
“Normally I would have called Fallon.”
Foster reached out and gently touched her shoulder. Pain at the move radiated up his side, but he held his expression firm.
“Well, I’m here,” he said. “And we’ll get to the bottom of this, okay?”
Dark eyes, searching and hard, traced his face. Whatever Millie Dean was looking for in him, he didn’t know but she did nod.
“Okay.”
* * *
THE SUNRISE CRESTED over Haven Hospital’s well-kept but extremely small building hours later. The hospital was nestled between a flat park with a couple of benches and one grill and a town limits sign that had seen better days. However, the private hospital was pristine.
It had been created by the McHale family back in the eighties and had been one of the many gems they were proud to have their wealthy names on. But once their daughter had gone
missing and then everything had gone from bad to worse to unfathomable, the McHale family had sold their shares in it.
Foster hadn’t been to Haven since he was a teen. If the change in majority ownership had resulted in a remodel, he’d been gone too long to recognize any big changes.
All he knew was that while the sun was rising over the hospital, the morgue in the basement looked almost identical to every morgue he’d seen throughout his career.
Concrete. Cold. Weirdly bright.
Then there was the coroner. She was less standard with her blue-streaked black hair, bejeweled lab coat, and gum that she was smacking on as she introduced herself as Amanda Alvarez.
She pointed to the man on the metal table between them. His clothes were gone, in their place a white sheet that was giving off a powerful disinfectant spray smell. The doctor, who Foster didn’t know much about other than she was a new hire after The Flood and that she was in her midthirties, motioned to Coveralls.
“So Sheriff Chamblin said he wanted me to call you if anything weird pops while I’m dealing with this one.”
“Yeah, I’m working the case,” Foster said. “But I’ll admit, I didn’t think you’d call me in here this quickly, especially since we know what killed him.”
Dr. Alvarez’s dark eyebrow rose.
“And I didn’t expect for you to get here this quick. What were you doing? Sitting in the parking lot waiting?”
Foster sighed. The pain in his side moved with it.
“The sheriff finally convinced me to get examined. I was upstairs finishing the paperwork when you called.” Alvarez still had her eyebrow raised in question. Foster motioned to the man between them. “He shot me.”
The doctor looked him up and down.
“I’ve seen a lot of gunshot victims, and I have to say you should get a gold star for how you’ve fared.”
Foster snorted. “I was wearing a vest.”
She made an “ah” noise and pointed to the man.
“Well, our John Doe decidedly was not. You’re the one who shot him, I’m guessing?”
Foster nodded.
He felt no joy or pride in taking a man’s life, but he was confident that he’d made the right call. Especially after a search of his belongings showed plastic zip ties, a knife and a baggie of white pills in his deep pockets. The pills were being examined at the moment, but the zip ties alone had shown concerning intentions that the man had been harboring for Millie.
“Was that all you did?” Dr. Alvarez added. “Shoot him, I mean. Did you physically lay hands on him at all or any other contact?”
Foster shook his head. “No, but he was struck with a lamp, a book and was thrown into a wall by a woman holding a bag of laundry.”
Dr. Alvarez tilted her head a little at the information. She didn’t seem satisfied with it.
“First of all, I would love to hear that story in more detail. Second, that might explain his busted lip but a bag of laundry definitely didn’t do this.”
She moved the sheet down, revealing Coveralls’ bare upper body. He’d been cleaned, but the bullet hole was still an angry red against his pale skin.
It wasn’t the only thing.
Foster took a step closer and shook his head.
“Definitely not a lamp or book either.”
Coveralls’ torso had a smattering of black, blue and purple bruises across it. He looked like he’d been someone’s personal punching bag. Foster pointed to his upper arm where Millie had claimed to hit him with the bat to get away in the woods. The spot had also bruised.
“He was hit with a bat in self-defense last night, hours before the second attack. But only on the arm and only once. I have no idea about the rest of these bruises.”
Dr. Alvarez reached out with her gloved hands and hovered above the main cluster.
“Okay, so the arm bruising and the busted lip fits that timeline,” she said. “But these, these have already been healing.”
“Which means Millie had nothing to do with them.”
“Not likely. That’s why I called you in.” She shrugged. “I can’t tell you why it happened or who or what did it yet, but I can confidently tell you that probably around two days ago this man took one heck of a beating.”
* * *
THE HEAT OF midday warmed the back of Millie’s shirt and exercise pants. She was tired, hungry and nervous all at once, standing there in front of the door to her home.
She wanted to go inside and, at the same time, she wanted to do anything but.
If Detective Lovett hadn’t been with her, she might have gone to work despite her boss telling her to take the day off. She might have also said yes to Larissa’s offer of taking refuge at her home. She might have just stood there, staring on the front porch.
Frozen.
But the detective was there, and he’d already promised he wasn’t leaving her just yet.
“I know you’re probably ready to finally get some sleep, but I’d personally feel better if I could clear the house before I go to my own,” he said. “If that’s okay with you.”
It was more than okay to Millie, but she didn’t say it in that way. She didn’t admit she’d been afraid and anxious just thinking about being alone in her house.
Instead, she unlocked the door and stepped aside to let him in.
“Thank you,” she said to him as he passed.
He waved her off, his detective’s badge around his neck swaying at the movement.
“It’s the neighborly thing to do.”
Millie stood in the entryway as Foster checked every room, window and lock. He looked good for a man running on no sleep, even better for a man who had been shot no less than a handful of hours ago.
Then again, he’d already managed to save her twice.
Twice on the same day that she’d dismissed him to his face.
Millie ran a hand across the back of her neck. Tendrils of exhaustion felt like they were coming up through the floorboards, wrapping around her body and pulling down.
That tug became more powerful when her gaze swept to the one spot she’d been hoping to avoid.
A man had died in her home.
Bled out in her living room.
Now the man was gone, but the blood that had seeped into the rug was still there.
A stain.
A reminder.
One that made her stomach tight and already-fried nerves almost painful. Her discomfort must have shown. When the detective came back into the room with an all clear, he pointedly looked at the rug.
“There’s not a thing you can do to save it, I hate to say. No amount of carpet cleaner or stain remover is going to get it looking like new. But we can try if you want.”
That surprised Millie. Not that the rug was ruined but the implication that he’d help her try to clean it.
She shook her head.
“Even if we could get it looking like new, I don’t think I could ever not see him there when I looked.”
Detective Lovett didn’t fault her for the truth.
Instead, he surprised her again.
He took off his holster, his badge, rolled up his sleeves and picked up her coffee table like it was as light as a toothpick. He placed it on the bare hardwood floor next to the rug, then turned his sights on the couch.
“You don’t have to do that,” Millie said. “I can clean all this up.”
He winced but shook his head.
“You’ve already seen a lot that you shouldn’t have had to see. But me? I’ve been around things like this before. You deserve a break and I don’t mind giving you one.” The couch wasn’t by any means a heavy item, but it was still impressive to watch the man push it out of the way like it too was weightless.
The detective might not have had muscles bulging through his clothes, but there was no d
enying that there was strength in him.
“Trash pickup doesn’t come until Friday, but I can take care of it before then.”
Millie watched as the man who had been told he had bruised ribs and a slight concussion by the ER doctor hours before single-handedly rearranged her living-room furniture, rolled up a bloodstained rug and then dragged it outside and into the bed of his pickup in the driveway next to hers. All without complaining one single bit.
His act of kindness, more than realizing he’d taken a bullet meant for her, did something to Millie.
When he came back in and asked where her floor cleaner was and then shooed her while he went back to the spot and cleaned it, that something turned into something more.
Despite that something, though, Millie couldn’t help but ask the one question that had embedded itself in the back of her mind the moment the man in coveralls had appeared in the hallway.
“Do you think Fallon disappearing was because of that man? Or do you think I’m lying for my brother?”
They were back out on the front porch, the sun shining against the wet grass in front of them, the house smelling of Lysol behind them.
Detective Lovett’s green, green eyes met hers.
He didn’t look away as he answered.
“I don’t think for one bit that you’re lying, Miss Dean. Just like I don’t think your brother left town for attention.” He smiled. It was brief but helped her all the same. “And I’m going to do my damnedest to prove both.”
That was it.
That was enough.
Millie closed the space between them with an embrace she hadn’t expected to give.
The man was hard and warm against her body. His hands were soft, though, as one skimmed across her back.
“Thank you, Detective,” she said into his shoulder. “Thank you.”
She couldn’t see his expression when he responded, but his tone was different. She just didn’t know why.
And she didn’t care.
Not right then.
Not when someone finally believed her.
His words rumbled from his chest into hers, melting away the layer of anxiety that had built up in the last day.
“Call me Foster.”
Harlequin Intrigue July 2021--Box Set 2 of 2 Page 24