by Jordan Dane
Angel knew what he wanted. He would have her stand where he’d shot Bryce. Crime scene investigators would assume from the trajectory that she’d been the one to kill Bryce, and in turn Bryce had returned fire and shot her dead. Joaquin would shoot Gabe where he lay, whether he was conscious or not.
Well, screw that. She wasn’t about to make it easy on the son of a bitch.
She sat on the edge of the sofa and felt the Sig P239 near her toe. With Joaquin’s eyes on her, she didn’t have much of a play that wouldn’t result in the bastard getting off a shot. She still wore her Kevlar, but Gabe didn’t. From the corner of her eye, she saw that her partner still hadn’t moved. Her heart hammered her chest as she tensed her body.
Don’t die. You’re the one going home.
Angel repeated those words in her mind. She didn’t know if she’d meant them more for her or for Gabe.
Chapter 20
Cronan felt nauseous, and everything had slowed to a crawl. When he’d cracked his eyelids open, his vision had blurred, and he couldn’t focus. After he finally got a good look at the bastard who’d ambushed him—Joaquin Salazar—the asshole had a gun aimed at Angel. That pissed him off. He felt the weight of the Glock 19 in his hand, the one that Angel had slipped him.
Ignore the pain. She needs you.
He knew his partner. She’d drawn Salazar’s attention so she’d become his first target, leaving him to make an expected kill shot, but Cronan had no intention of letting her make that play.
Angel had to be the one walking away from this.
“I said, come to me…or I’ll shoot you where you stand.” Joaquin raised his gun and pointed it at Angel’s face.
His partner sat on the couch and glared at the man as if she didn’t care. Cronan didn’t know what she’d do. He only knew she wanted to kill the son of a bitch.
Don’t do it, Angel.
It took all his strength to push off the floor and raise the Glock. Salazar wore Kevlar. He had to make a head shot. Cronan didn’t hesitate, not even when the room spiraled, and Salazar split apart like a kaleidoscope of fragments. He picked a target and squeezed the trigger.
Cronan kept firing, even after he felt a hot punch to his chest.
He saw Angel move in a blur. She had a gun in her hand. He heard the blast of her weapon and watched as Salazar’s body jerked like a grotesque puppet.
Cronan stopped shooting. He collapsed onto his back and fought for every breath. He wanted to see Angel one last time, but when that didn’t happen, he shut his eyes and let go.
***
Angel clenched her jaw as she fired into Joaquin Salazar’s body. Gabe had struck him in the neck. Arterial spray pulsed into the air as he dropped, but she made sure he wouldn’t get up. With her heart pumping hard, she shook all over as she finally lowered her Sig Sauer.
Joaquin Salazar’s face was barely recognizable. His eyes were open. As blood seeped from his wounds, it spilled into his eyes and into his gaping mouth. She stood over him trembling.
In the chaos of the moment, she knew Gabe had saved her life. He’d taken the first shot. That had given her time to grab her gun and make the kill, but when she looked at her partner, she saw the blood and realized he’d been hit.
“No!” she cried.
Angel ran to Gabe and collapsed to her knees. After she pulled up his T-shirt to see the damage, she stripped off her outer shirt and pressed it to the hole in his chest. She checked for his pulse, but her fingers were shaking.
“Come on. You’re a fighter, Gabe. Stay with me.”
His breathing sounded uneven, and blood frothed from the bullet hole. A sucking chest wound.
“I can’t lose you. Not now.”
Angel ran for a phone and called 9-1-1. With her body on auto-pilot, she called for an ambulance and police back up before she tore through the kitchen pantry. She grabbed a fistful of sandwich bags and a roll of duct tape and yanked a small comforter off a chair as she ran back to Gabe.
Kneeling next to him, she placed a sandwich bag over the bullet hole and secured pieces of duct tape around three sides of his wound. It was the best she could do before EMTs arrived. The open side would allow air to escape, but the plastic over the gunshot wound would stop his lung from collapsing and doing greater damage.
When he breathed easier, she did too. She put steady pressure back on the wound to control the bleeding and covered him with the blanket. He looked ghostly pale and had lost a lot of blood. The way his body shivered, she knew he was in shock. His body was shutting down to keep his vital organs going. He needed doctors and a hospital—fast.
As the sound of a distant siren grew louder, she prayed it would be enough. Tears filled her eyes when she leaned close to him and kissed his cheek.
“Don’t leave me, Gabriel.”
She reached for his hand and clutched his cold fingers to her chest.
This can’t be happening. Not again. Please, God. Not Gabriel.
Chapter 21
It killed Angel to stay behind at the crime scene and not ride with her partner in the ambulance. She had a job to finish, and the local PD had questions that needed answering. In a numb stupor, she had stood over Gabe and watched as EMTs worked to stabilize him with an endotracheal tube to help him breathe and IV fluids for the emergency trip to the ER.
Gabe hadn’t opened his eyes. His skin looked gray and clammy—and he’d lost so much blood.
“Is he gonna be okay?” she had asked.
One EMT shrugged and said, “What you did with the sandwich bag was pretty inventive. It kept his lung from collapsing. The rest is in God’s hands.”
Angel felt her body shake, but she did her best not to let it show. It would take time for crime scene investigators to work the scene, take photos, and gather evidence. She’d stay only for as long as they had questions.
After the ambulance took Gabe away, she stared at the bodies of Bryce Peterson and Joaquin Salazar. Even now, images of their deaths haunted her. She winced when she remembered how they died and echoes of gunfire still rang in her head. Local detectives had plenty to ask about the case, especially after they found two local cops wounded in their squad car. They’d been shot. One was in critical condition. That’s why they hadn’t answered her call for back up.
She prayed for them…and for Gabriel.
Gabe had tried to protect her. If he died now, she knew he’d given up his life to save her. She replaced the horror with memories of the devilish twinkle in his eyes or the way he made her laugh with his irreverent humor. She thought about his unorthodox method of working a case and the way he had loved her husband, Manny, as if they were brothers. Most of all, she thought about how her feelings for him had changed.
She couldn’t lose him now.
Fresh tears welled up and spilled down her cheeks, but when she saw Ethan being led downstairs by a cop in uniform, she had to intervene.
“He had nothing to do with this. He was handcuffed upstairs the whole time…for his own safety,” she told the cop. “Please…can someone take him home?”
The part about the cuffs being for his safety had raised the cop’s eyebrow, but she didn’t explain. She’d have the details in her report.
“Angelica, are you okay?” Ethan’s voice cut through the haze.
She reached for his hand and squeezed it.
“Gabriel is seriously hurt. Two other cops, too.” She told him what happened, but not why. “If I had known Joaquin would…do this, I never would’ve brought you. I thought…”
She didn’t finish. She couldn’t.
“You thought I was part of this. Didn’t you?” he asked.
Ethan’s handsome face had always been a mirror to what he felt inside. Now was no exception. The strained look on his face told her all she needed to know about what he thought.
“I’m a cop. Being cynical is a job requirement. I’m sorry, Ethan. I truly am.”
“I am, too.”
Ethan left without saying another word. After
he went out the door, escorted by the cop who’d take him home, she turned to one of the detectives.
“Can someone give me a ride to the hospital where they took my partner?” she asked. “Anything you need to ask, you can find me there.”
Angel couldn’t get Gabriel’s blanched face out of her head. She never thought she’d see him so vulnerable. He looked dead. She’d seen that disturbing pallor before. Manny had slipped away from her, despite her desperate prayers.
If it were possible, she would’ve traded places with Gabriel.
***
By the time Angel got dropped off at the Northwest Community Hospital where her partner had been taken, Gabriel was in emergency surgery. They had to remove the bullet and repair the damage. She paced the floor of the waiting area—with no word on his condition—until her legs felt numb and ached. Drinking crappy coffee out of a vending machine had made her jumpy, and she had no idea what time it was.
For her, the world had stopped.
She hated hospitals. Too many bad memories of the days she spent watching Manny die. Gabe had been with her through the worst of it. Now she prayed for him to pull through. She found her mind drifting to terrible thoughts that came too easy.
If Gabe dies, would I feel it…and ache down to my soul the way I did with Manny? I can’t bury Gabriel. I know what it’s like to put someone I love in the ground. I can’t do it.
Alone to endure the vigil, Angel finally slumped into a chair. She’d gotten calls and text messages from other CPD cops, but she didn’t have the strength to answer their questions. She only wanted to see Gabe. He was all she thought about.
When Angel saw the flash of a white uniform, she heard a nurse ask, “Do you know his next of kin? Anyone we can contact?”
In a strange disembodied voice, she said, “No. He’s got no one. Not anymore.” Except me, she wanted to say. Talking about next of kin notifications only reminded her that Gabriel could die.
Angel’s mind fought the thought of living her future without him. The burn of tears stung her eyes. Gabriel had risked everything. He took a bullet meant for her. In that moment she realized how much she loved him. She didn’t know when those feelings had started. It didn’t matter if he felt the same.
Damn it. She couldn’t lose him.
In the cold stillness of the early morning hospital waiting room, she heard a faint whisper and realized she was praying. The cup of cold coffee in her hand shook as she sank into a dismal exhaustion.
Please, God. Stay with him. He’s a good man. Don’t take him from me.
Making a connection to God should have brought her comfort, but an unsettling feeling kept her in doubt. She felt the sheer panic of trying to outrun a fast-moving train. Her lips moved faster, and she shut her eyes tight.
Please don’t take him.
When she heard the hiss of the surgery unit door slide open, she looked up to see a dour faced doctor dressed in green scrubs coming toward her. He didn’t look like a man with good news.
Her heart hammered in her chest until she heard it thump in her ears.
No. I can’t do this again.
The words repeated in her head as her body tensed. Angel knew she couldn’t stand. If she tried, she’d collapse. It was the only thing she was sure of.
Chapter 22
Northwest Community Hospital
Intensive Care Unit
A flood of memories bombarded Angel as she walked down the sterile corridor of the ICU. Trauma care units had a smell that shoved her back to when Manny had been ill. She knew what it meant for the families of loved ones to sit long hours, desperate for good news. She avoided a curious glance into open doorways as she walked by them.
When she stood at the threshold of Gabriel's room, Angel shuddered, and a faint gasp left her lips. Tubes and machinery kept him breathing. He looked gaunt, and his skin had turned pale from blood loss. It was as if the muscles of his body atrophied overnight. With his beautiful blue eyes closed, he looked like a corpse. It broke her heart to see him like this. She touched his cold cheek with her fingertips and leaned closer to kiss him.
“It’s me. Angel. I’m here, Gabriel,” she whispered.
His surgeon had warned her about what she’d see. After his surgery, Gabe would be put on a respirator overnight. He had a plastic tube inserted in his chest that was attached to a suction device that would clear any residual blood and body fluids from his chest cavity and help to inflate his lungs. Once his lungs healed and stayed inflated on their own—in a few days if he was lucky—the tube could be removed. Extended use of a chest tube carried a danger to gunshot victims. Complications like pneumonia could set in within days, and clots in his leg veins could break free and travel to his lungs. She’d seen it happen.
Gabe wasn’t out of the woods yet.
“Please fight this. Stay with me.”
She listened to the sound of his heart monitor and took comfort as she pulled up a chair to sit with him. The steady beat reminded her that he was still on the right side of the dirt.
“I love you, Gabriel.”
Saying the words aloud finally made it real for her. She knew her feelings came from a very precious place in her heart that had always been meant for him, but he never opened his eyes.
***
A day later
Cronan cracked his eyes open, and a bright light blinded him. It made his eyes water and sting. His head throbbed, and his throat felt burned and raw. He had no sense of his body or any desire to move as he listened to a steady and hypnotic beep somewhere over his head.
When he attempted to clear his throat, he only gasped for air and choked. Moving sent a jarring pain through his chest.
“Are you okay?”
A voice reached him through the haze and anchored him. He wanted to see who had spoken, but the room drifted in a blur. When he opened his mouth to speak, his lips stuck together and nothing came out.
“Gabriel? Are you awake?”
The voice whispered near his ear this time, and a shadow moved closer to block the light. When a familiar scent wafted over him, he knew Angel was with him.
“Are you warm enough?”
He didn’t have time to answer before a warm blanket got tossed over his body, and her gentle hands tucked him in.
“You took a bullet to the chest. You’re lucky to be alive. Do you remember what happened?”
Cronan wanted to speak, but couldn’t. He only shook his head.
“It’ll come. Give your memory time. You bought a ticket on the happy train. They’ve got you on pain meds.”
When he choked out the name, Joaquin, she grabbed his hand.
“He’s the one who shot you, but he’s dead now.” Angel cradled his face in both her hands. “You saved my life, partner. I owe you.”
“A-Angel, I…” He couldn’t finish. His raw throat kept him from telling her how he felt—that he would’ve done anything to protect her—but he never got a chance to say it.
She brushed her fingers through his hair and down his cheek. The intimacy of her touch sent a warm rush through him as she came into focus. When he looked into her eyes, this time he saw something he hadn’t seen before.
“I love you, Gabriel.” A tear slid down her beautiful face. “It doesn’t matter if you don’t feel the same. I had to let you know how I feel. Life’s too short, you know?”
Angel kissed him. Her lips felt velvet smooth, and her skin smelled warm and sweet. He breathed her in and kissed her back. When he closed his eyes, he drifted into darkness with the memory of Angel’s kiss on his lips.
Despite being shot—even though he’d almost died—he felt like a lucky man.
***
Days later
Cronan looked worse than he felt—at least that’s what he wanted to believe. He had to sign the hospital’s Against Medical Advice waiver when he decided enough was enough. After five days of lying on his back and feeling like a useless slug, he needed a familiar change of scenery to truly heal. H
ospital staff wanted him to stay a week, but he didn’t see the point to feeling like crap in an expensive hospital room when he could feel that way at home.
Besides, One-eyed Jack would be worried.
Doctors gave him plenty of antibiotics and pain meds, but the pills meant to dull the hurt only caused him to have fitful nights where he relived the terror of the shooting. Only, in his fevered dreams, he was too late to save her. He wasn’t sure how long he could stay on the pain medication if they conjured his worst nightmare.
“Are you okay, Detective?” A nurse by the name of Claire had come into his room. He’d been wrapped in his thoughts of Angel and staring out the window.
“Yeah. Fine.” He narrowed his eyes. “Are you sure about this? Don’t you have better things to do?”
After he’d signed the hospital waiver, the older woman had insisted on hospital policy to make him ride in a wheelchair out the door.
“Surprise me with your complete cooperation, Detective.” The woman didn’t crack a smile when she patted the back of the chair. “Go ahead. Make my day.”
“Who are you…Dirty Harriet?”
Cronan rolled his eyes and didn’t make a fuss. Short of breath and feeling weak, he conceded his fate and collapsed into the chair, letting the nurse help him with the foot rests. It hurt like a mother to lift his legs, and he ached all over, but he wasn’t about to tell her that.
The nurse reminded him of his training officer.
No matter what bonehead thing Cronan did or said as a rookie cop, his T.O. never cracked a smile, but when Angel stepped into his hospital room, he did. Even though Cronan knew Angel hadn’t slept much—because she’d spent most of her waking hours with him—she looked beautiful.
Cronan breathed in the scent of her skin and hair as she entered the room. He couldn’t take his eyes off her. He wanted to touch her—kiss her—but he wasn’t sure that he should in public. They were partners.
“You ready to go?” Angel asked. “My car is parked outside the ER entrance.”
“What do you say, Goose? Is my wingman ready to haul my ass to the curb?” He looked over his shoulder at the nurse who stood behind him.