I glanced over my shoulder and barely saw Charlotte’s silver sedan peeking out from behind the bushes. “How did you know?”
He smiled. “I know everything.”
“Right,” I said and jogged back to the others, grabbing Veronica’s hand. “Roni and I will catch a ride with Freddie. West, can you take Mason wherever he needs to go?”
“With pleasure.” West grinned.
Mason’s brows dipped. “Are you sure I shouldn’t stay?”
“I’ve got her covered.” West tapped the top of the hood. “I’ve been protecting her for more than a year since you screwed up.”
“Play nice,” I hollered over my shoulder as Roni and I headed up the drive.
For the first time in a long time, I sat in the back seat and enjoyed the silence and watched the scenery of the town I loved as it passed by. There were no ghosts vying for my attention, no mysteries left to solve. I rested my hand on my stomach. Well, technically, there was one mystery left. Was I or wasn’t I pregnant? I made it a mission right then that, as soon as I got home, I’d take the pregnancy test I’d bought last week and know for sure. He had a right to know if I was, and if we weren’t, well…maybe someday the test would be positive. I was warming to the idea.
We arrived back at the Lady Blue. All of the lights in the house were off except the porch light. Freddie was the first in the door, turning on lights as he walked. Freddie and Charlotte headed for the kitchen. The grumble of their stomachs in the car had been loud enough to wake the dead, and God knows, I didn’t need any more dead visitors tonight. I went up the stairs with Veronica on my heels. She stopped me before I walked into my room.
“Thank you for earlier.”
“You should have just asked if you could go to dinner with Dante. We could have worked it out.”
“I know,” she whispered. “And thank you for taking me in. If it wasn’t for you, I wouldn’t have met him in the first place. He’s a good guy. I really like him.”
“I could tell.” I took her hand and squeezed. “Good ones are hard to find, but promise me you’ll be careful.”
“I will.” She smiled and hugged me in a way that warmed my soul.
She walked off to her room, and I opened my door and flicked on the light. I grabbed some clothes from my dresser and the pregnancy test from my drawer and headed into the bathroom. After taking a shower, I peed on the stick and got dressed. Knots wound in my stomach with each passing second. Those little lines could mean the end of using Insight, not to mention having any more sleep-filled nights.
“I need my watch.” I opened the bedroom with stick in hand and paused in my tracks.
A man stood by the bed with a gun plastered against Veronica’s head. “So you’re the one who did this to me?”
“You did this to yourself,” Veronica spat.
The man cocked the trigger, and Veronica pressed her lips together tightly as tears streamed down her face.
“Listen, I don’t know who you are, but I can guarantee if you pull that trigger, you’ll be dead before you get to the door.”
“Your boyfriend didn’t tell you who I was?” He huffed. “He threatened to kill me, busted my nose, and shot up my fucking house and truck.”
“He’s my ex,” Veronica said. “The one I broke up with the first day I was here. He was hiding in my room with a gun.”
I slowly nodded. “You’re the dirtbag.”
One step was all I needed to get the gun I had hidden behind the picture on my dresser. One step and this guy wouldn’t even see it coming.
I stepped when the guy tightened his hold on Veronica’s throat and aimed the gun at me. “Not another step or you’ll die first.”
I froze on the spot. The pregnancy test dropped from my hands. The color from Veronica’s face was draining, her eyes turning unfocused. “She can’t breathe.”
His lips turned up in the corner, making my heart race out of control. He was going to kill her. My last living relative was going to die right before my eyes.
I was out of options. Veronica slumped in his arms, and in that split second, he glanced away from me. I lunged for the gun and had it trained at his head as Veronica fell to the floor. He pulled the trigger at the same time I did.
The bullet pierced through my side like a hot iron prodding my bones. I dropped to my knees, and the gun slipped from my hands as I watched the intruder fall dead to the floor.
“Veronica,” I whispered. No response. My eyes started to roll, and I grabbed my gun and emptied the clip into the ceiling to alert Freddie if he hadn’t heard the other shots.
The gun slipped from my grip as I was pulled into a state of total darkness.
Chapter 21
West walked in the door as the sound of gunshots came from above. Freddie came flying around the corner on West’s heels, taking the stairs two at a time. Both he and Freddie had their guns drawn. West pointed toward Victoria’s door, and he took the one to his and Cree’s bedroom. He turned the knob and opened the door.
Blood, people on the floor. His gaze fell to the man he recognized. Veronica’s damn boyfriend. “Freddie, call 911 and get your ass in here.”
West kicked the gun out of the way and rested his fingers on Veronica’s neck. “She’s not breathing.”
“Who…” Freddie asked with the phone to his ear. He punched a button, putting it on speaker, and dropped to his knees. “I’ll start CPR. You check Cree.”
This wasn’t happening. He rested his finger on her neck. Thump. Thump. Thank you God. She was alive but barely. “Her pulse is weak.”
He pulled the shirt over his head ignoring the anger and fear raging through his body. He held it to her wound. “Stay with me, Cree.”
“911, what’s your emergency?” a lady asked through the speaker.
“A shooting at the Lady Blue Plantation on Old Butler Road. One dead, one I’m doing CPR on, and one in critical condition with a gunshot wound.”
“I’m dispatching emergency vehicles. Is the assailant in the house?”
“He’s the dead one. Send the chief and ambulance,” West yelled.
Charlotte appeared in the doorway. A gasp left her lips as she fell to her knees. “Please tell me she’s alive.”
“Charlotte. Go direct the ambulance when they get here.”
She nodded but didn’t move.
“Charlotte. Cree and Roni need you to show the ambulance where to go, honey,” Freddie said between counting his thrusts.
She nodded again and rose to her feet, disappearing out of sight.
West leaned down to whisper in Cree’s ear. “Don’t you die on me. Do you hear me?”
No response. Freddie continued CPR while West held the shirt to Cree’s wound. Blood was soaking through the white cotton. Her face was pale. “I love you. Stay with me, Blue.”
It seemed like an eternity before the sound of sirens penetrated through the walls. “Upstairs,” Charlotte yelled from below. “Hurry. Please.”
Ambulance personnel pushed through the door first, and both Freddie and West backed off.
“I just got her pulse back,” Freddie said. “She wasn’t breathing, but I don’t know for how long.”
“We’ll take it from here,” one of the paramedics announced, and they all got to work.
West watched helplessly as they checked Cree over while the first gurney whisked Veronica out the door.
The chief hurried in. At least it wasn’t any other man in uniform. “What the hell happened?”
“I just walked in the front door to the sound of gunshots, and Freddie and I ran upstairs, into this.”
The chief glanced at the dead man on the floor. “Who is he?”
“Veronica’s old boyfriend,” Freddie answered. “The first day we brought her home, she snuck out to meet him to break things off.”
“Normal people don’t try to kill their ex’s.”
West exchanged a look with Freddie and neither of the spoke about the busted nose or the bullets Freddie
had fired.
Another uniform walked in and whispered into the chief’s ear. “Veronica has large fingerprints around her neck.”
“He was probably choking her, and Cree tried to stop him.” West ran to the closet as another gurney appeared. He grabbed a shirt and slid it over his head as the uniformed officers started to collect evidence.
“Boss, we have a pregnancy test,” one called out, sliding it into an evidence bag.
The chief glanced at West as Cree’s gurney cleared the door. “Which one was pregnant?”
“Cree may have been. I don’t know about Veronica.”
“Go warn EMS to take precautions.”
West nodded and jogged out of the room and down the stairs to the waiting ambulance just as one of the paramedics was about to shut the door. “There’s a chance she’s pregnant.”
“Are you the father?”
West would have shot him if he hadn’t been so worried. “She’s my fiancée.”
“Come on.” He held out his hand and pulled him into the ambulance. “You can come with us.”
West gave what information he had to the nurses when they arrived, trying his best not to be agitated by their questions. Was she allergic to anything? Did she have insurance? When was her last period? All of these questions he should have been able to answer, but he hadn’t a clue. They hadn’t left him alone until he signed the paperwork to cover the expenses.
He’d been placed in a waiting room and told Cree was going straight into surgery, and here he paced. After thirty minutes, Charlotte showed up, rushing into the room.
“How is she?”
“She’s in surgery. Where’s Freddie?”
“I left him to deal with the police. What are they saying? Have you heard anything about Veronica?”
“Nothing yet.”
Charlotte took West’s hand and squeezed. “Cree’s a fighter. She’ll come out of this.”
He slowly nodded. “She might be pregnant.”
Her brows dipped. “Really? She didn’t mention it to me.”
Ten minutes later, Moreno, Grace, and Dante hurried into the waiting room. “Freddie called.”
“Where’s Veronica?” Dante asked.
I shrugged. “She was in the first ambulance. They aren’t telling me anything. From what we think, her ex tried to strangler her, and then he and Cree engaged in a shootout.”
“I’ll kill him,” Moreno said.
“You don’t have to. We think Cree did,” West answered.
Moreno nodded. “Good.” He pulled out his phone and rested his hand on Dante’s shoulder. “Relax, kid. I’m going to call in some favors and get you some answers.” He glanced up at West. “Both of you.”
West ran his hand over his head while Grace hugged her son. This should have never happened. West should have been there. Hell, he should have killed that punk when he’d had the chance.
Moreno came walking back into the room ten minutes later. “Veronica is breathing on her own, but they’re monitoring her vitals. She’s in room 310. She hasn’t regained consciousness yet, but they suspect she will.”
“Can I see her?” Dante asked.
“Yeah, they’ll let us into the room as long as we stay out of their way.”
Dante turned to Charlotte. “Will you keep us posted on Cree?”
“Sure. I’ll find you and check on Veronica when the doctor gives us an update. If Veronica wakes up, keep her calm, and whatever you do, don’t tell her about Cree until we know her condition.”
He nodded. “310.”
Charlotte nodded and took a seat, patting the one next to her. “Sit down, West.”
“I can’t sit,” he said, turning to face her.
“Is there anyone I can call for you?”
West sat down and pulled out his phone. He hadn’t texted his royal friends since California. He sent a text anyway to let them know what was going on.
When they replied immediately with a phone call, he got the answer he’d yet to ask. Even with time apart from them and being several thousand miles away, they were still concerned.
He spent the next ten minutes talking to them, ignoring the pain in his gut. What if she didn’t pull out of this? What if she was pregnant? The what-if’s were going to drive him insane.
Charlotte smacked his arm and gestured to the doctor walking their way. West got off the phone, slipped it into his pocket, and rose from his seat.
“You’re here for Cree Blue?”
“How is she?” he asked, afraid of hearing any answer that he wasn’t prepared to handle.
“The bullet went all the way through. No major damage to any arteries. She’s going to be fine. We’ve put her in recovery.”
West breathed his first sigh of relief as Charlotte grabbed his neck and hugged him tightly.
“And the baby?” he asked.
“She’s not pregnant.”
The joy he’d momentarily felt was mixed with disappointment that she wasn’t. He’d never thought about kids before this, but if he ever had them, he’d want them with Cree. “When can I see her?”
“As soon as she wakes up from the anesthesia. We’ll put her in a room and send a nurse to get you.”
West held out his hand. “Thank you, Doctor.”
“You’re welcome.”
Charlotte squeezed West’s arm. “I’m going to call Freddie and let the others know.”
West nodded and waited for Charlotte to run off before he plopped down into one of the chairs. Tears filled his eyes, and he covered his face. He’d almost lost her.
Chapter 22
I slipped the sunglasses over the top of my head. Florida was freakin’ hot this time of year. I ignored the pull of my skin. The scar from the gunshot wound barely agitated me anymore. It was just a painful memory I’d like to forget. I rapped my knuckles on the door.
“Hang on. I’m coming,” Faraday called out from the other side. A smile split my lips from just the sound of his grumpy voice.
Faraday yanked the door open. “Who….” His annoyed tone turned to confusion. “Cree, what are you doing here?”
“I have a story to tell you and thought I should deliver it in person so you won’t have the opportunity to hang up on me.”
He pulled me into a hug and kissed the side of my head like he’d done all these years. “If it’s about my brother, you’ve wasted a trip. I already got a call from Director Reed. I know my brother was CIA.”
“Well, it’s nice to know the truth finally came out, but that’s not why I’m here.
Faraday ushered me into the house. “Just visiting then?”
“It’s about your nephew,” I said, walking into the small retirement home.
“I don’t have a nephew,” he said.
“Actually you do,” I answered, turning to face him. “His name is Dante, and he’s a great kid.”
For a second I thought Faraday was going to have a heart attack the way he clutched his fist to his chest.
“I’m hoping you’ll meet him.”
“Is he here?” Faraday glanced over his shoulder.
“No.” I smiled sweetly. “But you’ll meet him at the wedding.”
“You’re getting married? West finally wore you down, huh?”
“He’s persistent like that.” I smiled big and flashed him my new ring. “But I have a favor to ask.”
“You’re just full of surprises. What’s the favor?”
“You’ve always been a second father to me.” I grinned. “Well, when you weren’t trying to shoot me.”
“I only tried to scare you to keep from getting hurt. Hell, even that didn’t work.”
“That’s my point. I have a dangerous mission I need your help with.”
“Cree.” He gave me that stern fatherly face.
“Walk me down the aisle.”
His lips twitched into the biggest smile I think I’d ever seen on his face. “You want me?”
“There’s no one I want more.”
“Of course. I’d be honored.” He hugged me tight as his shoulders shook with a silent sob.
“Moreno will be there,” I whispered into his ear.
“I’ll bring my gun.”
I chuckled.
“Your dad would be so proud of you.” A tear slipped free from the old man’s eyes.
“He’s proud of you too,” I said, glancing over his shoulder where my father and mother stood alongside Thomas Faraday.
The funny thing about near-death experiences is that no one ever comes back quite the same way as before it happened. Some come out believing in heaven and hell. I found love in the moments I almost died. His name was West Archer, and I had every intention of making him mine.
“Pack your bag, old man. I’m bringing you home.”
John grinned. “Yeah, this place is too sunny for an old guy like me. The tan lines are hell if you have wrinkles. I look like a damn zebra.”
I chuckled and took a seat on the couch as Faraday headed for his room. “Oh and one more thing.”
“What’s that?”
“There’s a new Blue on the property.”
“What? I haven’t been gone nine months.”
“My cousin, Veronica. She’s only eighteen, but she’s going to need help navigating the police force since she’s going to start using Insight.”
He paused in the doorway. “She’s got your ability?”
“Every last annoying Blue trait. God bless her heart.”
“Oh good Lord. Two of you? No wonder you want me to come back. I’m sure West and Freddie have their hands full.”
“Funny.” Not. “Actually, I was hoping between you and Freddie, that you guys will be in charge of security at the wedding. Not that I expect anything to happen, but Lord knows it’s going to be a cluster if West’s royal friends decided to show, Moreno is there, and people from the police department.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll keep everyone in line.”
I smiled. “Oh, I forgot. I’ve got something for you from your brother.”
He sighed. “I can only imagine.”
I handed him a copy of the file on the serial killer cop, along with the picture of Jones in handcuffs. “Thomas solved your last case.”
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