Under The Cover Of Love

by Carolyn Faulkner

  He didn't threaten or rail against the hold the other man had on Jenna, although everything in him wanted to rip him apart, and he realized just how hypocritical that was of him, considering how they had started. But he wasn't going to let himself get all riled and emotional – that was never good in a situation like this.

  "Put the gun down, Carmolli."

  Jenna heard him laugh loudly, right in her ear, his bad breath puffing over her and making her want to vomit. "And why would I do that, Merck, you motherfucking, cocksucking traitor, when I've got this hot pussy right here, who you've probably been dipping your wick into the entire time? You should learn to share. You're not going to shoot me with her so close – the bullet might nick her fair skin."

  Merck laughed, but there was no humor in it. "Don't you know me well enough by now that I prefer brunettes? And besides, I already took care of Polcaro. It'll be an easy enough to put a bullet in you."

  Although neither of them had fired their weapon, they all heard the shot. Seconds later, the man behind her crumpled to the ground, clutching his stomach, where a large splotch of deep red wetness was beginning to spread.

  Merck ran towards him, not trusting him in the least, kicking the gun out of his hand and well out of his reach before hauling Jenna to him as his eyes continued to scan the woods that surrounded them until a familiar face appeared.

  "Here comes the cavalry!" she heralded her own triumphant arrival. "I got him, didn't I?"

  If he hadn't been so frightened, he would have smiled back at Andie's self-satisfied grin and asked her what took her so fucking long, but he was too busy trying to assure himself that Jenna was all right. She looked terribly pale, but then she'd probably just gone through the fright of her life.

  "How are you, baby?" he murmured against her temple. She felt unusually cold and that worried him a bit, but he was probably just being overprotective, he knew. "You okay?"

  Jenna couldn't seem to focus, figuring it was the remnants of the adrenaline in her system or something, but she felt a nagging sting in her –

  She slumped against him, and at first Merck thought she had fainted – until he lifted the hand he'd had on her back and saw it covered in blood, as well as a big splotch at the back of her top. Not really wanting to see it but needing to confirm it anyway, he lifted the hem of her shirt to see a nasty looking bullet hole, alarmingly near her spine. He moved her quickly and efficiently to check her stomach – no exit wound.

  Not good. Not good at all.

  "Call for an ambulance, Andie!" he screamed, resisting the powerful urge to hold her in his lap but, instead, remembering his first responder training. He attempted to stem the flow of the blood, covering her in his clothes and asking for Andie's in order to help keep her from going into shock. Raising her feet higher than her heart to that end, also, and then, finally, when he'd done everything he could think of to help her, he did hold her tight, praying for the first time he could remember since he was a kid that he wouldn't lose her.

  * * *

  Almost a day later, exhausted and somewhat numb but not in the right way, he stood in the biggest hospital in Portland, Maine – in the only level one trauma center in the God forsaken state – at the end of her bed. The wait for the Life Flight helicopter had been horribly long – although in truth it was only probably about ten minutes – surprisingly there was a landing pad right around the corner from her and the local ambulance crew – such as it was – made it there even before that. Some smart cookie he would love to thank in person called them when they heard the shot. He insisted on accompanying her on the chopper, even though they did not usually allow passengers. He made such a stink that, in the end, they said yes just to shut him up, and he kept himself the hell out of their way the entire time, happy to have their focus on Jenna, where it belonged.

  They ended up flying her out again, here from the smaller regional hospital they had originally brought her to, which was not equipped to do the delicate surgery the doctors deemed necessary. The bullet had passed through Carmolli and had lodged near Jenna's spine. It had been touch and go there for quite a while, but she had pulled through. The surgeon thought there probably wouldn't be any permanent damage, although she'd have to spend a certain amount of time in physical therapy to get her back on her feet and strengthen the damaged muscles.

  Now that she was out of the woods, he was free to kick himself even more than he already had been, before this further debacle had happened. He stared down at how wan and pale she looked, how helpless and vulnerable he knew she was, and although he knew she would rail against the characterization, she had always been.

  Andie came in and touched his arm, and he knew he had to go. It was still the best thing he could do for her, since things were not settled and would not be until he had spent enough time hiding out in safe houses and gathering the evidence he needed to take down his boss, once and for all, and he had no idea how long that was going to take. That was no life for her.

  His life – even at its best – was no life for her.

  The proof of that was lying right there in front of him.

  Merck stepped up to the head of her bed to lean down and kiss her on the forehead, cupping her cheek one last time, then stalking out of the room and refusing to look back.

  * * *

  Jenna clutched her personal effects to her chest as she left the hospital in a wheelchair, almost three months later. Between the recovery, the infection that set in, the multiple surgeries and then the stay in physical rehab to help her get back on her feet, she was heartily sick of anything that smacked of a hospital.

  The medical staff was loathe to let her go and had actually kept her an extra couple of days to make sure she was ready, since they knew that no one was going to be there to keep an eye on her when they finally released her.

  At least, she had been able to do the rehab closer to home – although she certainly didn't want to see that ambulance transportation bill – so that she had been able to ask her neighbor, Penny, who had seemed only too eager to help, to come and get her and bring her to her house.

  She shuddered to think what kind of condition it was in with no one living in it for so long. She was sure the mice, which probably set up shop in her foodstuffs, were going to be the least of her problems. As they were fond of saying in Game of Thrones and any areas that got serious snows as they did, "Winter is coming." She had firewood and supplies to lay in before it began to blow.

  Penny's pickup truck wasn't waiting for her when she got out. Lovely, Jenna thought. She was late.

  "Jenna McInnis. I'm Andie Kelly. I'm here to pick you up."

  The woman who stepped up to her looked vaguely familiar, but she couldn't place where she'd seen her. "I don't think so," Jenna answered as politely as possible, considering that she already felt like crap.

  But that didn't stop the amazingly tall woman from walking up to her wheelchair and lifting her out of it to tuck her into the passenger's seat of a truly enormous SUV, going so far as to latch her seatbelt for her as Jenna tried to protest.

  "Wait – but Penny Keefe's coming to pick me up. I don't even know you!"

  Somehow, she recognized that smile.

  "Yes, you do. I was the one who shot you," she said breezily, as if that answered everything, when all it did was conjure a million questions to her mind.

  She proceeded to heft Jenna's rather heavy valises into the back seat without so much as a heavy breath, and then took her position in the driver's seat, turning towards her to say, "You just relax. I'll take care of everything. The seat reclines, if that's more comfortable for you or you feel like napping. Are you thirsty or hungry?" she asked. Jenna just shook her head, amazed at the way this Amazon just seemed to take over. "Got a bazillion questions for me?" she teased with a smile.

  "Well, yes."

  "Good," Andie said. "It'll give us something to talk about on the way."

  When she'd gone through a McDonald's drive through and had eaten a truly prodigiou
s amount of food – all of which she offered to Jenna first – they set out on the road back towards her house.

  "Okay, shoot," she said, then giggled at her own joke.

  "Well...uh, what are you doing here?"

  "Taking care of you." That didn't really answer her question, and Andie could see the confusion on her face so she elaborated, "I'm doing what he can't. I'm retired, my life is my own, and what I'm doing is easing my guilty conscience and my mind, as well as someone else's."

  "You don't owe me anything, really," she said automatically. "I understand what you did." But really, she had latched onto that last reference, her heart in her throat, turning her body carefully towards Andie and searching the other woman's face eagerly. "Then he's all right?"

  "Yes and no," was the cryptic answer.

  "What do you mean?"

  Andie took a swig of her soda. "He's fine, physically."

  She digested that and decided not to pursue it at the moment. "Has the situation that got him shot in the first place been resolved, or is he still in hiding?"

  "It's very close to the end, but he's still not able to take his rightful place on the squad. That'll all happen very soon now."

  Jenna was at once elated for him and sorry for herself, although she tried not to show the latter, but she was afraid it showed in her lackluster tone. "Good, good. He'll be happy once he can get back to work."

  "He will – he does love being a cop, that one. But then, so do I. Guess it runs in the family."

  Jenna was floored, then realized she should have known it all along. "You're related?"

  Andie looked as confused as she felt. "I'm his step-sister. Did he not tell you that I was the one he was desperate to call?"

  "I thought he was calling Andy – a guy. I just never put two and two together before."

  "Before I shot you. Very sorry, by the way. Terrible accident. I should have been much more careful, but Carmolli was known for being quite unstable, and I was terrified that he might just pull the trigger." She patted Jenna's leg. "No offense, but, of the two of you, I was much more worried about him, not knowing about your relationship at all, really." She sighed heavily. "Someone read me the riot act the entire time he was in the hospital with you."

  "He was there with me?"

  The other woman – a redhead – nodded. "Oh, God, yes. He bullied the chopper's paramedics to let him go, and then he practically bullied the surgeon into fixing you, both on penalty of death. He stayed through the whole operation and as long afterwards as he could – much longer than he should have, way longer than he would have let me, for sure."

  "Yeah, he is a bossy son-of-a-bitch, isn't he?"

  "Oh, man, you don't know the half of it!" There was a bit of a pause before she added, "But I love the bastard, anyway."

  Another longer pause and Jenna confessed quietly, "So do I." It was the first time she'd said it aloud, certainly to anyone else, but she could find no amount of shame or worry in having done so.

  It felt right, and when she looked up, ready to be embarrassed by his sister's reaction, she found, instead, the very same annoyingly self-satisfied grin on her face that she'd seen a hundred times on his.

  She made Andie tell her everything she could think of about Merck, until her eyelids began to droop, and she knew she was going to fall asleep. The woman produced and threw a soft, warm blanket over her, and she didn't hear or feel another thing until she awoke with a start, but in her own room.

  Her own room!

  Jenna practically cackled with glee. No more nosy nurses waking her at oh-dark-thirty to check her vitals. A thermostat that she could actually set to less than hotter than the hammers of hell. No physical torturists force-marching her up and down the halls, and no nutritionists nagging at her that she wasn't eating enough of their atrocious, stomach turning food.

  And the house was in gorgeous condition. From what she could gather from Andie, she'd been staying in town and keeping an eye on the place and had taken a page from her brother's book before she came home, breaking in to do some real, deep cleaning before Jenna was released from rehab.

  Jenna could hardly argue with the results.

  "Are you awake, sleepyhead?" Andie inquired from where she was comfortably ensconced in the same recliner that she had used when Merck had been sick.

  And as nice as the older woman was, Jenna was about to come face to face with the fact that she was entirely too much like her brother. Despite how she had joined in, disparaging him with her on the ride home, she turned out to be just as dominant, autocratic and stubborn, especially when it came to her health and recovery.

  If she wasn't such good company otherwise and an excellent cook, she would have made Jenna pine for the physical rehab facility, and seriously consider throwing her out – although she didn't know whose army was going to accomplish that, certainly not her, in her depleted condition. Andie essentially moved in, and as soon as Jenna was home for a few days, she knew that – as much of an annoying pain in the ass as she could be, it was a damned good thing she had!

  She found herself put on a sort of a schedule. Up at seven, breakfast already waiting for her, in bed at first, but then out on the deck to catch the last few warm days before the brisk winds of fall set in or in the living room, watching whatever DVDs Andie had been able to coax out of the Red Box the day before. They took a walk together every morning that weather permitted, short distances at first, but lengthened regularly to help her regain her natural strength. One time, they had overdone it a bit. Andie didn't hesitate to do exactly what her brother would have done, which was to scoop her up and carry her home without so much as a by your leave. She tucked her into bed and hovered over her the rest of the day, the schedule thrown to the winds for once, bringing her treats to tempt her appetite and rigging the TV up in the bedroom. They could watch stuff in there until she fell asleep in the middle of a show, and Andie could just pause until she was rested and ready to watch again.

  Food was a bone of contention they both had with her, saying she didn't eat nearly enough. Unfortunately, Andie had read her discharge papers in case there was anything she needed to know, and the dieticians at the hospital had agreed with them.

  So she set about fattening her up, but in a good, healthy way – although Jenna did find the occasional homemade treat, if she'd eaten all of her dinner.

  It was in the midst of a Homeland marathon that the phone rang. Andie fetched it from her nightstand and handed it to her, making her remember when her brother had done just that.

  "Hello?"

  There was a long pause before a male voice she couldn't help but recognize asked stiltedly, "May I speak to Andie, please?"

  There was no, "Hi, Jenna." Not even the ever appropriate, "How are you?" And certainly no, "I've missed you terribly, I'm coming up there on the first plane I can get on, and when I get there, I'm going to ravage you until neither of us can move any longer. Then we're going to get married and live happily ever after."

  Nothing. Not so much as an acknowledgement of what had been between them in the inflection of his voice. She might as well have been an answering machine.

  Jenna rose slowly – but much more quickly than she had been, thanks to his sister's tender care – and handed the phone to Andie, barely managing to get out, in a strangled, stricken voice, "It's for you." She headed for the bedroom, not wanting the other woman to see her sobbing.

  Chapter 9

  Things were different for Jenna after that. She was...unusually, unnaturally subdued. She didn't argue about eating, she just ate what Andie put in front of her. She didn't whine about exercising, she just did it. She didn't tell Andie what to look for when she rented a DVD, she watched what was chosen with no comment and little reaction, even when comedies became the main fair in her friend's attempt to cheer her up.

  And it wasn't as if Andie herself wasn't on her side. She most clearly and definitely was. Jenna had heard the very heated last part of her conversation with her brother, althou
gh she did her best not to eavesdrop and try to make out specific words, but their meaning was clear.

  She was taking him to task for how he had treated her.

  Minutes after the house had gone silent, she heard a soft tapping at her door, and she desperately wanted to tell Andie to go away, but she didn't want to be impolite. "Come."

  She stormed in as if she'd expected that Jenna would have put up much more of a fight than she did, coming to stand by her bed, looking nervous and upset.

  "I'm sorry my brother is such an ass."

  A good thing to lead with, one she was sure to find agreement on.

  "It's not your fault," Jenna soothed tonelessly.

  Andie leaned a hip on the edge of the mattress. "I wish I could claim that, but I'm a lot older than he is, and I had an active hand in raising him. But I do lay the blame for his 'work is more important than love' idea directly at our father's feet. He was the same way, so he comes by it naturally, not that he shouldn't have already outgrown it. Especially, considering how obnoxiously miserable he's been for the past months without you, which means he must've been in paradise with you."

  Pretty close, Jenna had thought, at least on her end, although if he could cut her off so easily, right to her face – or her ear – then she was obviously the only one who felt that way.

  * * *

  Andie felt as if she was on the horns of a dilemma. Jenna was at the point where she didn't really need her any more. She was strong enough to do what she needed to do to survive out here alone, and Andie had done as much extra as she could manage, even down to stacking firewood on the pallets that were already lying between the two conveniently placed old oak trees about thirty feet from the house.