Or was it another voice yelling, "Face down! Hands behind your head!"
She blinked at the blue uniformed State cop standing inside her open back door.
"Lower your gun, Andi," another voice said from the vicinity of the front door.
But that was impossible. The front door was locked. She turned her head toward the front of the cabin.
A uniformed Tom Maki stood there, gun in hand, but barrel angled at the floor. He said something. But this time she couldn't make it out. It was like everyone was talking—moving in slow motion.
She saw the cop look down her arm at the gun in her hand. She saw the pleading in his eyes when they came back to hers. Slowly, she raised her hands in the air, the pistol loose in her hand.
Tommy holstered his gun, approached her, each step seeming to take an eternity while years of their history passed from his eyes. He stopped in front of her and eased the gun from her hand.
He said something to her. But it was as if someone had stuffed cotton in her ears and she couldn't hear—couldn't move.
He reached up, took her wrist in his hand, and brought her arm down, "You can lower your arms now."
She heard him this time.
"You're in shock, Andi." Chair legs scraped across the floor. "Sit down."
"But Cole," she said, her own voice sounding far off. "I have to help Cole."
"He's okay."
Her head seemed to turn like it was controlled by a gear that moved it one tooth at a time toward where Cole and Harley had been fighting on the floor. Harley was the only one still on the floor, aside from Fedora Guy, his hands cuffed behind his back.
Only then did she realize the cabin was full of people, most in uniform. Both bad guys cuffed and contained.
She scanned the back corner of the room and found Cole sitting on the desk chair surrounded by a trio of ATF agents, a towel pressed to his head, a trickle of blood standing out against his ashen cheek.
She started to rise. Tommy pressed her back into her seat and squatted in front of her. "He's okay. He's with his people."
His people.
"They need to debrief him and he'll probably need some stitches." He handed her a glass of water. "Drink this."
By rote, she did as he told her. Whatever had passed between her and the boy Tommy seemed to melt into the past. The man draping a blanket around her shoulders was a far cry from the kid who used to make fun of her.
"You okay?" he asked.
"I will be," she said, quietly, feeling less apart from it all and more in the middle of it.
He patted her shoulder. "The EMTs will check you out. If you feel faint, put your head between your knees."
EMTs?
She scanned the scene playing out around her. A pair of EMTs were tending Fedora Guy's shoulder wound. Two more entered from the front, a DNR officer standing by the splintered doorframe where her deadbolt should have been pointing toward Cole in the back corner.
That splintered door casing explained how everyone got past her bolted front door. It also explained why the shot she'd thought had come from either Cole's or Harley's gun had sounded overly loud. It would have taken a shotgun to blast that bolt loose.
But how could all these cops have crept up on the cabin without Tuff sounding the alert?
Tuff. The last she'd heard from the dog was a short bark before she opened the back door.
Tommy and another cop lifted Harley to his feet and headed for the front door. She rose as they approached, the blanket sliding from her shoulders, the water glass slipping from her fingers.
She stepped into their path, grabbed Harley by the shirtfront, and growled into his face, "What did you do to my dog to shut her up? Did you hurt her?"
Harley, eyes wide, sputtered, "I just tossed a couple pounds of ground meat at her."
"Was it poisoned?"
The cop she didn't know started to order her out of the way. Tommy waved him off. Harley shook his head. "I wouldn't never hurt no dog."
She let them pass, staring after them as they walked through her gaping doorway. A couple pounds of meat would occupy Tuff only a few minutes. What had kept her silent when this army of law enforcement arrived?
She took a step toward the door, hesitated and looked back at Cole torn between the man and the dog, both of whom she loved. The EMTs had stopped the blood from the split on Cole's head where Harley had hit him with his gun and were bandaging him up.
Cole was okay. He'd be fine. He didn't need her anymore.
He had a wife.
She turned for the door and was met by Kelly.
"I have someone in my truck I think you'd like to see. I know she's desperate to see you."
Andi followed Kelly out to her truck where Tuff Stuff clawed frantically at the passenger-side window. Andi opened the door and the dog launched herself at Andi, flattening Andi to the ground on her back.
Tuff licked Andi's face. Andi hugged Tuff's neck.
"She came to me as soon as she saw me," Kelly said. "Then puked all over my boots. Looked like about a pound of raw meat."
Andi eased Tuff off her and rose without breaking contact with her pet. "Harley said he gave her hamburger to distract her. But I couldn't figure out how she didn't give away the arrival of"— Andi glanced around, realizing a half dozen or more vehicles lined her driveway and the shoulder of the highway—"the arrival of everyone else."
"Tom was the first on the scene, had the situation assessed before I got here and had called for reinforcements. He had Tuff in the back of his patrol car when I arrived. Of course she went nuts when she saw me. So I took her out to calm her down."
"Is that when she puked on you?"
"Yeah. After which Tom wasn't too keen on putting her back in his patrol car, so I put her in my truck."
"That was brave of you," Kelly said, ruffling Tuff's head as the big dog leaned into her.
Kelly shrugged. "I figured she'd emptied out."
Andi squatted next to Tuff, arms wrapped around her neck, hanging onto her as she stared at her cabin with its gaping front door. "So you all slipped in here, no sirens, no lights."
"It's called a silent approach."
If only they'd used such an approach two years ago when…
What she was thinking must have shown on her face, as Kelly said, "We learn from our mistakes."
Andi drew a deep breath. "And you surrounded the cabin."
"Yeah. Command had a plan."
Andi snorted. "You took long enough before executing it."
"Plan A was to take out the assailants. But we needed you and Cole clear before we could act on that plan."
"He shoved me to the floor. Didn't that give you guys clears shots?"
Kelly nodded. "Preferably command would have liked to take out both assailants at the same time. But we had only one sharpshooter and we'd pegged Taggert as the bigger threat—the first target."
"Taggert? Fedora Hat Guy?"
"Yeah. We got confirmation of his identity soon after arriving on scene. But when he shoved you to the floor, he stepped forward, which put Harley between him and our sharpshooter, putting you two back in harm's way. Plan B, we stormed the place."
Andi nodded.
"Sorry about the shotgun blast to your door," Kelly said.
"Don't be," Andi murmured.
Kelly put her hand on her shoulder. "Hey, no one got killed here today. That's good."
Andi hugged Tuff tighter and nodded. "I know." But I'm about to lose the man I love.
"What happens now?" Andi asked.
Nodding toward the cruiser where Harley sat in the back seat, a state cop standing guard, Kelly said, "That one will be booked and questioned. His partner will be booked and questioned after surgery."
An ambulance driver backed his rig down the drive, deftly maneuvering past the parked vehicles. Flanked by a couple officers, a pair of EMTs rolled Taggert out on a gurney, loaded him, and took off with one cop inside the truck and another following in his squad car.
<
br /> Cole stepped out of the cabin with two of the ATF guys. Her heart skipped a beat and her fingers tightened on Tuff's scruff, the latter almost more to anchor herself in place. Much as she wanted to go to him, she was afraid he would no longer accept her now that he knew he had a wife waiting for him.
He stopped on the far side of the driveway and looked at her. Of course he wanted to talk to her. They had unfinished business. But the business he was likely thinking of wasn't what was on Andi's mind.
"Would you hang onto her?" she asked Kelly, already striding off toward Cole and his people.
She stopped in front of Cole, barely able to meet his gaze in the diminishing evening light.
One of the agents stepped forward, would probably have stepped between them had there been room. "You two shouldn't talk until you've each given your statement."
"I have something of Cole's he should take with him," she said to the agent as much as to Cole. "Give me half a minute."
She dashed into the cabin—into the bedroom and opened the drawer holding her socks. Her hand closed around one pair of rolled up socks, her fingers registering the lump of metal tucked inside it. Even if he hadn't remembered everything by now, he at least knew he had a wife, maybe even a family. In any case, he was lost to her. It was time to give him the one piece of the puzzle she'd held back from him.
Wrong. Giving him the ring was past due. And if it could ease his guilt at having slept with another woman, better that he hate her for seducing him when she knew better than for him to carry any of the guilt himself. She knew what guilt could do to a person.
Outside, she took his hand in hers and dumped the chain and ring into his palm. "You were wearing this the day I brought you home. I should have given it to you right away. But I didn't and then…"
She swallowed hard, her voice tight around the lump in her throat. "I'm sorry, Cole."
She sprinted back to where Tuff and Kelly stood. The dog reared up on her hind legs as she approached, her front paws coming down on her shoulders. She hugged the big dog, clung to her as she heard the engine of an SUV roar to life and pull away.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
The EMTs who'd worked on Cole had checked Andi's vitals and decreed her fine other than her slightly elevated blood pressure. They'd left it was up to her if she wanted to be further checked out at the hospital. She'd declined.
Kelly had offered to take her and Tuff back to her place for the night since a crew was still processing the crime scene in her cabin. But she'd declined that offer as well, insisting the bedroom was outside the crime scene—that she and Tuff could hide away in there, though she hadn't used the word hide with Kelly.
But that's what she was essentially doing. Hiding away.
Then Tom had said she needed to come into the station and give her statement, something she couldn't decline. But even Tom seemed to understand her reluctance to leave the cabin and had opted for taking her statement at her kitchen table.
Having dozed off and on through the night and next day, huddled on the bed with her arms wrapped around Tuff's neck, Andi thought about her friends. And she did have friends in spite of a lifetime of believing she didn't. She could thank Cole for giving her mindset a nudge into a more open direction or she'd never have realized Kelly really was a friend or have accepted Tom's actions as those of a friend.
Then there'd been John Joki who'd come by this morning and repaired her doorframe and patched her door up enough it would hold until she got a replacement. At lunchtime, Mrs. Niemi had brought her homemade potato leek soup. Even Art Pakaala from the lumberyard had called to tell her he'd heard about her door and that he had one the right size he'd be willing to trade to her if she'd put him on her monthly pastie list.
Yeah. In a small community, everybody knew everybody's business. She'd spent a lifetime living down her family's business. But maybe people saw her beyond what her family's reputation had been. She wouldn't even have considered that…if not for Cole calling her on prejudging and pushing people away.
Cole, who was now lost to her. And not just because he had a wife somewhere. She'd betrayed him by not giving him the ring sooner—by not giving him every opportunity to remember his past.
She'd betrayed him by seducing him when she knew he could very well belong to another—betrayed him by making a guilty man of him.
She buried her face in Tuff's coat letting it absorb this latest batch of tears. The man she loved had never been hers to have. Story of her life.
A knock sounded on the front door. She wanted to ignore it, but Tuff bailed off the bed and ran from the room, tail wagging. It had to be someone she knew.
Andi wiped the remnants of her tears from her eyes and followed. Somewhere along the line, someone had removed the curtain rod and she could see Kelly through the window.
Andi forced a smile and opened the door. Kelly held up a foil-covered plate and stepped inside.
"Mom made up a plate for you from last night's dinner," she said, veering into the kitchen area. "Beef roast, oven roasted potatoes, and carrots."
"Sounds delicious," Andi said even though she hadn't even had the appetite to eat more than a couple spoons of Mrs. Niemi's soup at lunch."
Kelly set the plate on the counter next to the stove and harrumphed. "She even packaged up the last piece of her triple layer chocolate cake." Facing Andi, she added good-naturedly, "I had my eye on it."
"Then sit down and share it with me," Andi said, not sure why she was inviting Kelly to linger when she wanted to be alone to wallow in her grief. Maybe she was beginning to get into this friend thing.
"Sounds like a deal," Kelly said, straightening the kitchen table, which still sat cockeyed from Cole's and Harley's rolling around the floor.
"I haven't set things straight, yet," Andi said, taking a couple forks from the silverware drawer.
They sat kitty-corner from each other, Tuff Stuff between them. Kelly dug into the slice of cake. Andi picked at it.
"You and Dane living with your parents?" Andi asked before Kelly took conversation to a more sensitive place.
"Angel and I are. Dane's off on his next movie shoot. I'll find us a place of our own before he comes back."
"He really makes you happy, doesn't he?"
"Yeah. He makes me happy. Very happy." She looked at Andi long and hard. "You got something going with Cole?"
Tears scratched at Andi's eyes. So much for avoiding touchy subjects.
She shrugged. "We had a great fling."
"That's all I thought it was with Dane, too," Kelly said. "Until he came back."
But Dane didn't have a wife waiting for him.
Even if she'd forged some sort of relationship with Cole, he wouldn't—couldn't come back.
#
After Kelly left, Andi decided she'd better scrub the bloodstains from her floor before they were indelibly set-in, if they weren't already. She was on her hands and knees scrubbing when the front door opened.
She looked up and found Cole standing just inside her door, not smiling.
Tuff popped up from her nap by the fireplace and all but skidded into him. He closed the door behind him and rubbed Tuff absently between the ears. Slowly, Andi rose to her feet.
"I didn't think I'd see you again," she said, her voice thin, frail-sounding in the otherwise silent room.
His eyebrows pulled together. "Why would you think that?"
She forced herself to maintain eye contact. She deserved whatever blame he threw her way. "Because I held back the ring from you."
He sucked a breath, his chin coming up and his eyes lifting toward the ceiling. "Yeah. You should have shared that with me sooner."
"I told you I wasn't a good girl."
His gaze snapped to her, his tone almost harsh. "You are good, Andi."
He came at her, his strides long, purposeful. She dropped her scrub-brush. He grabbed her by the upper arms.
"How many times am I going to have to tell you you're a good person before you get it
through that thick skull of yours?"
She lifted tear-glazed eyes at him. "But I tricked you. I seduced you knowing you were married. I made you commit adultery."
He sighed and shook his head. "Andi, the ring was on a chain around my neck. You're a smart girl. What did you think that meant?"
"That you were hiding that you married."
He gave her shake. "Your first impression. What was it?"
"You're not going to let me off that easy. You can't."
"Why? Because you're so attached to the label of Bad Girl?" His fingers bit into her skin. "I haven't known you long. But I'll bet my last dollar I know what your first impression was of that ring being on a chain around my neck instead of on my finger."
She closed her eyes. "Okay, I thought you wore it on a chain because you were no longer married."
"Aha."
She looked at him. "But you were still emotionally attached to your wife."
He released her and settled back on his heels. "You hit it right on the nose."
She wasn't as reassured as she thought she should be by the news he and his wife were no longer a couple. "So, have you remembered your whole past?"
"Taggert's comment about my wife and our coverage in the Chicago news cracked open the gate. With more information from my boss, a lot more came back to me. There're still some holes."
She nodded, that he admitted still being emotionally attached to his wife gnawing at her. "So, what happens now?"
He cocked his head at her. "Don't you want to know about Susan and me?"
"Susan?"
"My wife."
She swallowed her pain. "Sure."
"That news coverage Taggert referred to… About a year ago, Susan and I were on our way out to dinner when we were ambushed. My cover had been blown and the head of the gang I'd just busted up ordered a hit on me."
Andi winced.
Cole grimaced. "I was good at my job."
He snagged one of Andi's hands, sandwiched it between both of his. "The trigger guy got me in the shoulder. Susan… He got her in the head. She didn't survive."
"Oh, Cole. I'm so sorry."
"So you see, that's why I was so good at recognizing how you took on the guilt for your brother's death—why I was so adept at talking you out of your guilt."
Saving Andi: St. John Sibling Series: FRIENDS Page 15