by Joyce Lamb
The shoe was on the other foot, and it pinched.
Deciding not to hover, at least until she’d talked it over with Jane, she carried her coffee to the table and stared down at the bold newspaper headline that had her heart pounding double-time all over again.
Mac’s Brother Arrested in Career-Ending Attack.
Apparently, there was no bigger news happening in Kendall Falls.
She thought of Chase, so determined to pin the attack on Quinn. He had nothing else to go on, no other evidence, so he went gung-ho after her brother. How could she make him understand that Quinn hadn’t hurt her? She would have known.
Meanwhile, Chase seemed just as driven to pick at her. Like he had something to prove. Like he thought he could back her against the wall and kiss the past away and none of it would matter.
But it did matter. It did. He replaced her in a heartbeat. Less than a heartbeat. True love shouldn’t be so easy to discard. She certainly hadn’t been able to. If she had, she wouldn’t be resigned to an eternity alone and unloved. She’d have fallen for Dr. Wade Bell, like a normal woman. Yet, she’d botched that, and every other relationship attempt over the years.
She’d thought she’d done everything right with Wade, until the day he looked her in the eye and said, “You’re here, but you’re not here.”
And instead of trying to fix it, of trying to be here, she’d let him walk away.
The story of her life.
And then there was Chase.
I’m going to enjoy the hell out of watching you come apart in my arms.
Just thinking about him saying that, his voice low and sexy as he held her so close that his heat surrounded her, made her shudder.
The phone rang, startling her, and she picked it up off the table and walked into the living room for a change of scenery. The caller ID didn’t look familiar, and she hoped like hell it wasn’t another reporter. She’d have preferred to silence the ringer last night but had feared she’d miss a call from Quinn.
“Hello?”
“Hi. It’s T.J.”
Shoulders relaxing, she turned toward the bay window and, for the first time since the cop car had parked in the driveway, she didn’t feel like scowling, or hiding, when she saw it. Maybe T.J. was calling to ask for some extra tennis-court time. That’d be a welcome distraction. “Hey, T.J.”
“I need to talk to you. I . . . I’m . . . I need to talk to you.”
At the anxiety in his voice, she stiffened again. She’d never heard him sound so distressed. “What’s wrong? Are you all right?”
“I think I’m in big trouble.”
“Where are you?”
“Will you . . . I need . . .” His voice wavered as he trailed off.
“Let’s start with where you are, T.J. I’ll be right there.”
“Will you meet me at the health club?”
“You’re at the health club?”
“No, I’m at home, but I—”
“I’ll come there then. Just give me your address.”
“No!” He sounded panicked. Worse, he sniffled, like he’d been crying. “I’m . . . fine. I just . . . I just want to . . . I have to tell you something, okay? At the health club.”
“You’re not all right, T.J. I can tell.”
“Can you be there in an hour and forty-five minutes?”
She knew it took him an hour to get to the club by bus. The extra forty-five minutes must take into account the bus schedule. “Let me pick you up.”
“Just, please, can you meet me there? Okay? Is that okay?”
“Sure, of course. In an hour and forty-five minutes.”
He released a sigh. “Thank you.”
“Whatever’s going on, it’s going to be okay, all right? I’ll help you figure it out.”
He sniffled again, and when he said, “Okay,” it sounded choked. “Bye.”
The line clicked in her ear.
CHASE STOOD ON KYLIE’S FRONT PORCH AND RANG the bell. Last time he’d done this, they’d ended up pressed against the wall, about to board the F Train to paradise. He figured the only train they’d board this time would be the Go-to-Hell Train, and he’d be riding it solo.
When Kylie pulled open the door and cocked her dark head, Chase immediately noticed the flat expression and bored eyes. The game face in all its maddening glory. Yet it didn’t distract from how sexy she looked in bare feet and a black, form-fitting T-shirt that didn’t reach past the waistband of her faded jeans. She had her long hair pulled back in a Tennis Pony, and other than tired, she looked . . . God, she just looked good.
“Is this stopping-by-unannounced thing going to become a habit?” she asked.
He didn’t waste time with a comeback. He had a job to do. “I need the address of your student, T.J. Ritchie.”
Her eyes flickered with something—surprise, yes, and something else—but her full, tempting lips remained set in a straight, uncompromising line. “Why?”
“I need to ask him some questions.”
“What kind of questions?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
She folded her arms under her breasts. “Then I’m not at liberty to give you his address.”
“It’s police business, Kylie.”
“What business could the police possibly have with a fourteen-year-old?”
“That isn’t for me to tell you.”
“Well, you’re going to have to if you want information about him from me.”
“Damn it, Kylie—”
“Why don’t you just get what you want from some police database?”
“His correct address isn’t in the database.”
“Hmm, well, that’s too bad for you, then, isn’t it?”
Okay, if that’s the way she wanted to play it. “We got a hit on fingerprints found on the bat used to break your windshield. They belong to T.J.”
Shock parted her lips, and her eyes went wide. “That’s not possible.”
“Fingerprints don’t lie. So if you don’t mind, I’ll take that address now.”
She straightened her shoulders, lifted her chin. “I don’t have it.”
“Kylie—”
“I can’t give it to you if I don’t have it.”
She was lying. He couldn’t see any clues, but he knew she was organized and methodical. She’d have records on all of her students, especially her favorite. “This isn’t the time to be stubborn.”
“If you’d like, I can make one up.” She smiled, but it didn’t come close to reaching her still eyes.
He tried another tack. “What about a phone number?”
“I’m sorry, but no.”
“How do you reach him when you have to cancel a tennis lesson?”
“I’ve never canceled a lesson.”
He almost groaned aloud. “Of course you haven’t.”
“Is there anything else? I have a lot on my plate today, what with my brother going to jail yesterday and all.”
“Ky, come on. You know I had no—”
“Nothing else then? Great. You have a nice day screwing over someone else’s innocent brother.”
She slammed the door in his face.
KYLIE LEANED BACK AGAINST THE DOOR, HER HEART racing. T.J. had shattered her windshield? She couldn’t—wouldn’t—believe it. Something big was going on with him, and no way was she letting someone who didn’t care about him have first crack at questioning him about it. But she didn’t want to wait until meeting him at the club. She needed to talk to him now, before Chase tracked him down.
She checked the window to make sure Chase had left. He stood beside the police cruiser in her driveway, chatting away with the officer inside. Terrific. How the hell was she supposed to get to T.J.’s without either one, or both, following her?
First things first. She dug her BlackBerry out of her bag and retrieved T.J.’s phone number from her contacts list. When she called, though, she discovered the line had been disconnected. So she retrieved his address and went o
nline to get directions. As she jotted them down, she decided she could slip out the back, hike up the beach a ways and call a cab to pick her up at the first access road.
If she was lucky, she could catch T.J. at home before he left to catch the bus.
25
WITHIN HALF AN HOUR, KYLIE WAS SEEING WHERE T.J. lived for the first time. She’d cut it close on the timing, but she’d spotted the bus stop only a few blocks away. A few people waited, but T.J. hadn’t been among them.
As she walked up the sidewalk, she took in the rundown house, weedy yard and rusted metal lawn furniture on the sagging front porch. The smell of fried food seemed to add weight to the moisture-laden air. There was no doorbell or screen door, so she rapped her knuckles on the door and listened for movement behind it.
Nothing.
Had she missed him?
Turning to survey the neighborhood, she tried to decide what to do.
Sirens shrieked in the distance, and an argument in the front lawn of a house two doors down was growing more heated. Somewhere nearby, she heard glass breaking. A shudder went through her. This was T.J.’s home. She didn’t feel safe here, yet this is where he lived.
Another scent filled the humid air, growing steadily stronger. It reminded her at first of roasted marshmallows on a campfire but quickly turned acrid.
Something was burning.
Turning back to the door, she raised her hand to knock again. That’s when she saw the flicker through the narrow, rectangular window in the door.
Flames.
And something else: T.J.
Sprawled on the floor next to a sofa that looked like it’d been rescued from the curb on trash day.
“T.J.!” Kylie started pounding on the door. “T.J.!”
No movement. She couldn’t tell through that tiny little window whether he was breathing, but the flickering was getting worse, and she saw flames licking up a wall far to the left of where the teen lay.
Frantic, she tried the doorknob. Locked.
Fumbling out her cell phone, she thumbed 911 as she raced around the side of the house toward the back. When the emergency operator answered, she rattled off the address, already coughing from the smoke billowing through a broken window.
The back door was unlocked, and she swung it open before jerking the hem of her T-shirt up to cover her nose and mouth and plunging into roiling, black smoke. “T.J.!”
She couldn’t see jack through her stinging, watering eyes. Too much smoke. Couldn’t see. Couldn’t breathe. Where was the living room? She couldn’t even tell where she was. Kitchen? Family room? All she knew was that she was surrounded by smoke, and there was tile underfoot. Must be the kitchen.
“T.J.!” She kept calling his name, hoping to rouse him. If anything, the sound of his voice could lead her to him.
She heard sirens and thought, thank God, help. But she didn’t have time to wait. She had to move fast, before the whole house went up in flames. The smoke was getting thicker, searing her throat, burning her lungs. She moved blindly forward, toward the front of the house, running her hand along a wall, seeking an opening that would lead to the living room and T.J.
Focus, McKay. Find T.J. Get out. Much easier than winning in the final of the Australian Open.
The wall under her hand disappeared. The door.
She stumbled forward, dizzy and disoriented, felt the heat of flames nearby and recoiled. She tried to call T.J.’s name, but the only sound that came from her throat was a desperate wheezing. She started to cough harder.
Fear built when she saw the flames consuming the wall at the other end of the room, rolling and tumbling toward the ceiling like waves on a beach. Based on what she saw earlier, this had to be the living room.
She dropped to her knees, wincing at the sharp pain that flared through the right one, and crawled forward, sweeping the floor with her hands to feel her way through the smoke. Her fingertips grazed something . . . a shoe, and she surged forward. “T.J.?”
Please, please, please.
Soft, warm, slight. Yes.
She leaned over him, close to his face, felt his breath against her cheek, and shook him. “T.J., wake up.”
He didn’t stir.
She moved behind him and shoved him up into a floppy, sitting position. The kid couldn’t weigh much more than a hundred pounds, but she could barely budge his dead weight.
Hooking her arms under his armpits, she locked her hands across his chest and heaved him backward, across the carpet, toward the kitchen and the way out. Skin-melting heat seemed to surround her, and the back door was miles away.
She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t . . . breathe.
Without warning, her legs buckled, and she went down, the world swirling with black and red spots as she struggled to get air between the strangled coughs.
A loud crash came from somewhere, the sound of wood cracking and splintering. Oh, God, the ceiling. It was going to come down on their heads.
She fought to get her legs under her, dizzy and lightheaded, no longer aware of which way was up or down. All she knew was that she had to get T.J. out now.
Eye on the ball, McKay. Get your eye on the ball.
She used the last of her strength to haul the boy through the kitchen door. When his dragging butt hit the tile, his body slid faster than she’d expected, and she tumbled backward, ending up with his limp form draped across her legs.
Coughing, tears streaming, she wriggled out from under him, grabbed one of his wrists and towed him the rest of the way across the kitchen to the back door. She shoved through, out into what should have been fresh air, except it was thick with smoke, too. Staggering down the two porch steps, conscious that poor T.J.’s body bounced down behind her, she collapsed onto her hands and knees in the grass, the spinning world darkening around her.
She sensed rather than saw a bulky shape rush forward but didn’t have the strength to panic before she recognized him as a firefighter in full fire gear. When he grabbed her arm and tried to help her to her feet, she waved him away. “No! Get T.J. first. He’s—”
“My buddy’s getting him,” he shouted.
The fireman hooked one of her arms around his neck and hauled her to her feet. She stumbled along beside him, conscious that he was doing most of the work but not caring. She’d done what she needed to do. T.J. was out.
The fireman lowered her to the grass, well away from the burning house, where a paramedic ran over to meet them and slipped an oxygen mask over her head. As cool, fresh air filled her lungs, making her cough even more, she kept an eye on T.J. stretched out on the grass nearby, looking pale and small with a female paramedic hunkered over him. The woman wasn’t frantic as she checked his vitals. A good sign.
Feeling a hand on her wrist, she turned her head to see the paramedic tending her wrapping a blood-pressure cuff around her arm.
“He’s going to be okay,” he told her, nodding toward T.J. “You got him out in time.”
Grateful and relieved, she dropped her head forward and coughed until every muscle ached.
26
CHASE BARRELED INTO THE ER LIKE A FREIGHT train, nothing in his head but white noise and the stomach-turning refrain: Kylie had been in a fire. The fellow officer who’d called to give him the heads up said she was okay, but he wouldn’t believe it until he saw her with his own eyes, whole and breathing and unharmed.
Sam followed close behind. “Burnett said she must have slipped out the back. He didn’t even know she was gone.”
Chase didn’t respond. He didn’t give a shit how she ditched the cop in her driveway. He just wanted to see her.
“While you find Kylie,” Sam called from behind him, “I’ll get some info from the guys on the scene.”
Chase blew by the information desk. He knew this ER, knew the doctors and nurses and orderlies, so he shoved right through the double swinging doors into the treatment area. A doctor, chart and pen in hand, intercepted him before he’d taken three steps.
“D
etective Manning, hello. How can I help you?”
“Kylie McKay,” he croaked. “Where is she?”
“She’s in trauma one. I’m—”
He didn’t hear anything beyond that. Trauma one? That was the area reserved for critical patients. Which meant she wasn’t okay. She couldn’t be okay and be in trauma one.
Heart jolting, he just about ran over a nurse on the way and, mumbling a “sorry,” pushed by her despite the big smile that curved her lips. “Chase, hi. Long time no—”
He plowed through the door into trauma one and stopped dead just as Kylie jumped to her feet, a hand at her throat and her eyes wide.
He’d startled her, and now he felt like an oaf, a relieved-beyond-belief oaf, because she did indeed look unharmed. Another body occupied the gurney, an oxygen mask obscuring the face. Still, he gave her a thorough once-over just to be sure. Her rosy cheeks made her eyes more blue than gray, and soot marked every inch of exposed skin—arms, hands, face, neck.
The acrid odor of smoke clung to her, but even in dirty jeans and an ash-smudged black T-shirt, dark hair tumbling around her shoulders in disheveled waves, she’d never looked more beautiful. It took all his strength not to grab her to him and hug her close.
Instead, he stayed where he was and tried to act normal. Nothing to see here. No one coming unraveled at the thought of losing the woman he’d already lost once. Not that she was his to lose, but still.
He cleared the lump out of his throat. “You okay?”
She nodded. “Mostly.” Her already-low voice sounded like she’d gargled with gravel, and there was a faint wheeze when she breathed.
Thinking she probably should go back to sitting down, he indicated the chair she’d occupied. She lowered herself to it without comment, her movements as careful as someone who’d had too much to drink. Her fingers lightly but briefly massaged her right knee but stopped when she saw him watching.
He glanced at the gurney and took in the thin arm bearing an IV.
“It’s T.J.,” she said softly.
His gut flinched at the exhaustion underlying the words. “What happened?”