by Julie Miller
She scrambled to her feet, hating that any man thought he had to save her.
“He’s got a gun!” Gabe shouted.
Ah, hell. She saw it, too. “Move!”
Adrenaline or stubbornness kept him from obeying her command. With his forearm wedged against the other man’s throat, Gabriel grabbed her attacker’s wrist and slammed it against the wall. Once. Twice. The small Saturday night special popped free and skittered across the floor. The pesky reporter was taller and broader than the other man, blocking out any chance to get a good read on the perp beyond faded jeans and the sweatshirt. Olivia picked the snub-nosed semiautomatic up by the barrel and tucked it into the back of her belt.
She was about to put her shoulder into the reporter’s ribs and knock him away from the perp when she saw the flash of steel arcing between the two men. “Knife!” She raised her gun again. “Drop it!”
Gabe Knight cursed as the smaller man shoved him into Olivia, knocking them both against the rack of folding chairs. The storage rack shifted and they wound up tangled on the floor beneath an avalanche of more chairs. The attacker flung the door open and charged into the alley behind the building before she could push Gabe off her and roll to her feet. “Get out of my way!”
“Damn it. Olivia!”
She left Gabe’s outstretched fingers behind and flew out the door after the man with the knife. “Police. Stop!”
Why was it that skinny guys could always fly?
She shifted into high gear, her boots crunching gravel and debris against the asphalt. But it was no good. Even running at full tilt, he easily widened the gap between them. And she couldn’t fire off even a warning shot without a clear line of sight to the cars driving past on the street beyond and whoever might be walking along the sidewalk and accidentally step into her line of fire. In a matter of seconds, like a shadow swallowed up by the bright afternoon sunlight, the perp shot around the corner and was gone.
Olivia lowered her gun, skidding to a halt as she reached the sidewalk. She glanced up and down and across the street through the beginnings of rush-hour traffic. “You lousy, lucky chameleon.”
He’d either ducked inside a nearby shop or had a ride waiting for him. At the very least, he’d dropped the hood and merged with the crowd of pedestrians crossing the street as the light turned green. Since she hadn’t seen his face, she had no way to identify him—not even by hair color.
“Damn you, Gabriel Knight.” Breathing deeply from the wind sprint, her voice was barely a whisper. But the gun and the badge made shocked and curious passersby walk a wide berth around her. She put up her hand to reassure them she meant them no harm and holstered her gun.
But the would-be rescuer who’d gotten in the way of her doing her job was another story. Olivia raked her bangs off her forehead, blew out a heated breath and decided to tell Gabe Knight exactly where he could stick his machismo. Maybe she’d even take him in for interfering with a police officer and allowing the person she wanted to question escape.
With a decisive nod, she spun around...and plowed into the middle of Gabriel Knight’s chest. There was a brief bombardment of sensations—soft corduroy and unyielding muscle; long, sinewed fingers; the faint scents of coffee and soap; heated skin beneath starched cotton—before she jerked back into her own space and shored up her defenses with the frustration and annoyance still sparking through her. Olivia planted her hands at her hips and tipped her face to his. “You followed me?”
“Are you hurt?” Gabe asked, dropping his hands from her shoulders, ignoring the accusation.
“Am I—” His nostrils flared with what must have been a fast run for him, too. The lines beside his eyes etched with concern as that piercing blue gaze swept over her. But her irritation with the man dissipated when she saw the blood dripping from his sleeve onto the asphalt at his feet. Shaking her head at the injury that could have been avoided if he’d just done what she’d said, she moved to his side to inspect the clean slice through the sleeves of his coat and shirt. “He cut you.”
“I’m fine.”
She’d tended enough scrapes with her three older brothers growing up that she knew that was a lie. “Let me see.” She put his hand up so gravity would help control the blood flow, and peeled back the shirt cuff that was no longer white. Although the perp hadn’t nicked the main vein or artery, the three-inch gash across Gabe’s forearm was deep enough to need stitches. “I don’t suppose your chivalry extends to carrying a handkerchief, does it?”
He smirked, reaching behind him to pull a palmful of folded white cotton from the rear pocket of his jeans. Gabe shook it open and pressed it against the wound with a wince. “You’re welcome.”
“For what?” Olivia took over rolling up the handkerchief and wrapping it around his forearm. “I’m going to have bruises on my tailbone and elbows, thanks to you.”
“Me?” he scoffed. “That guy attacked you. He had a gun. You didn’t have any backup.”
“I didn’t need any backup.” She’d been half joking when she’d asked for the hanky. The old-fashioned habit of carrying one reminded Olivia of her Grandpa Seamus, touching a mushy place inside her...for about two seconds. Gabriel Knight was certainly no sweet, old grandfather. With a determined shrug of her shoulders, Olivia denied any softening in the animosity she felt toward this man and pulled the knot tight, drawing the skin on either side of the cut together and stemming the ooze of blood. “He was running, not fighting. I had him.”
“You were on the floor.”
Unlike her vocal brothers, a tightening of his lips was the only complaint Gabe made about her nursing technique. As soon as he started to lower his arm, Olivia pushed it back up. “I had the vantage point to retrieve my weapon. But you got in the way and I couldn’t use my gun. Now a potential killer, or a possible witness, at the very least, is on the loose and we’ve got no way to track him.”
“That was no innocent bystander.” Gabe curled his fingers into a claw in front of her face. “My hand was on the knife with his. I’ve got his DNA under my nails.”
Olivia released him and backed away a step. “Is that why you jumped into a situation I had under control? Just so you could swipe some DNA from a suspect?”
“Call a CSI and find out if he’s in the system. At the very least, I can give a description. White male. Late twenties, early thirties. About five-nine, wiry build, receding hairline.” The intensity around those cobalt eyes relaxed and he grinned at her dubious glare. “I’m a professional observer. I’ve got an excellent eye for detail.”
The leather of her jacket creaked as she crossed her arms in front of her. He thought he’d one-upped her? Solving crimes was her job, not his. And she was damn good at it. “Yeah, well did your eye for detail notice the perp didn’t have any blood on him until you got cut? Bashing in somebody’s head creates a lot of spatter. If he killed Ron Kober upstairs, then he changed his clothes and stashed them somewhere. That’s probably why he was opening and closing doors.” Olivia’s gaze dropped to the buttons on Gabriel Knight’s shirt as her thoughts took a left turn into facts that made less sense. “Why club the victim over the head when he already had two weapons on him?”
Although it had been a rhetorical question, Mr. Thought-he-knew-better-than-she-did answered, “Weap-on of opportunity? Were there signs of a struggle up there?”
More like signs of a good clean-up job. Not exactly the kind of painstaking task she’d associate with their panicked, high-speed attacker. Olivia pulled her phone from her pocket. “I’m calling Detective Kincaid to give him a description of the intruder, and let him know to search the building and vehicles in the area for soiled clothes.”
Fully in detective mode now, Olivia glanced around the alley, poking inside trash bags and around a stack of discarded office furniture while she reported the incident to Sawyer Kincaid. Once she hung up, she went to the nearby
Dumpster to look inside. But Gabriel Knight had eavesdropped on every word; his eyes had watched every move. Now he came up beside her, lifting the lid from her hand and holding it open while she searched.
“This is a police investigation, Mr. Knight. Your services are not needed, nor are they welcome.” She pointed to the stain on his coat. “You’d better go have a doctor look at that.”
“If solving Kober’s murder leads me to solving Danielle’s, I’m not going anywhere.”
A drop of blood fell from the crimson moisture soaking his sleeve into the stinky remnants of office lunches and cleaning supplies. Groaning in resignation, she palmed his shoulder and pushed him back, catching the lid and closing it.
“You’re contaminating another potential crime scene.” She moved between him and the Dumpster, forcing him to retreat one more step. “Along with any DNA you might have picked up from your attacker.”
“Your attacker, too.”
Shaking her head, Olivia pulled her radio off her belt and made another call to Sawyer Kincaid and the other officers in and around the building. “This is Detective Watson. I was searching the trash in the alley behind the building. But I’ve got an injured civilian in need of medical attention I have to see to. I’ll leave the gun the perp dropped with one of the CSI’s out front, but you’ll have to get somebody else to comb the area back here.” She shivered beneath the unblinking intensity of Mr. Knight’s piercing blue eyes. Didn’t the man have business of his own to tend to besides insinuating himself into hers? “By the way, your eye for detail missed the jimmy marks on the door. That’s why he had the knife, and most likely how he got inside. Still can’t explain the gun, though. What I saw upstairs was a crime of passion, of opportunity. Why get your hands dirty when you can kill someone from a distance?” That probing gaze never wavered from her face, even when she drifted into her thoughts and back again. “What, you’ve got nothing to say for once?”
“You’re not getting rid of me, Olivia.” He leaned in, refusing to back down. “Either I’m part of this investigation, or I’m a long, tall shadow dogging your every move.”
Feeling the chill of his real shadow falling over her upturned face, a proximity alert went off inside her. An unexpected urge tingled through the tips of her fingers. Shaking her head, Olivia stepped to the side before she forgot she was a cop and did something stupid like slap that arrogant taunt off his face...or touch his chest to see if his heart was thumping as wildly against his rib cage as hers suddenly was.
Every self-preserving instinct she had warned her to leave Gabriel Knight and those annoying shivers he triggered right here in the alley. But Olivia had a badge and responsibilities and a hardwired sense of right and wrong she had to answer to that made her feel obligated to drive him to the ER to get his wound stitched up. “Come on. My car’s out front. Keep it elevated.” She took his elbow and pushed his injured forearm up and helped him hold it above the tempting location of his heart. “I’ll take you to the hospital.”
Chapter Three
Olivia sat on a metal stool outside the curtain of one of the ER bays at the Truman Medical Center and texted a preliminary report about the events that had transpired in the stairwell and back alley of Ron Kober’s office building to her work email while the facts were still clear in her head. Although her shift was officially over, the long hours had become a habit. She’d be in before roll call meeting in the morning, too, to type her notes into a formal report for the case file.
Annoying reporter trespassed on crime scene and interfered with officer in pursuit of suspect. Recommend citing him for being a PITA.
She listened in on the more professional exchange of medical information from the other side of the curtain.
“That should do it, Mr. Knight,” the lady doctor who’d introduced herself as Emilia Rodriguez-Grant intoned in a soft but succinct voice. Olivia breathed in, waiting for the words of dismissal that would signify an end to this obligation to the man who’d gotten hurt while in her custody. She heard the clank of a medical instrument being set onto a metal tray as Dr. Rodriguez-Grant continued. “Try not to get it wet for twenty-four hours. It’ll leave a scar, but the stitches will keep the mark thin and less noticeable—and certainly reduce your chances of the wound becoming infected.”
“Thanks, Doctor,” Gabe’s deep voice replied.
Scar? Wound? Olivia’s lungs emptied out with a sigh of guilty resignation. She was well-trained and fully capable of defending herself against a violent suspect. But she’d only seen the folding chair and the gun. Chances were, that knife would have sliced through her skin if Gabriel Knight hadn’t intervened.
She deleted the last two sentences from the text and replaced them with a more accurate, less petulant account.
Reporter Gabe Knight injured in assistance of officer on scene. Recommend follow-up on allegations of ties twixt Ron Kober’s death and murder of Dani Reese.
After sending the text to her computer, Olivia stood, smoothing out the wrinkles in her jeans and stretching to ease the kinks in her neck and back. Her new partner, Jim Parker, was right. She’d let her emotions interfere with the calm, logical pursuit of the facts and her duty to a citizen she’d sworn to protect and serve.
Common sense meant she couldn’t just dump Gabe Knight off at the hospital. As much as he’d butted heads and gotten in her way, she still needed an official witness statement from him, in case the man who’d escaped did have some bearing on Kober’s murder—or the death of Gabe’s fiancée. The DNA the tech from the crime lab had scraped from beneath his nails might provide a vital clue to identify the killer of one or both victims, so it had been necessary to keep him with her to maintain the chain of custody of that potential evidence. Besides, with his penchant for taking the police department to task for its shortcomings, Gabriel Knight was the last man she could risk abandoning. If he was injured worse than anything a few stitches could fix, or he blamed her for getting cut in the first place, then abandoning him at the hospital might put the department in danger of some kind of lawsuit. He’d probably make her front-page news on a dereliction of duty accusation.
Before a renewed wave of guilt and irritation could sideline her thoughts again, Olivia pulled aside the privacy curtain. “How much longer do you think you’ll be...?”
Olivia’s brain blanked for a split second when she saw Gabe Knight stripped to the trim waist of his blue jeans. She winced at the bruising he’d earned from his struggle with the perp, and suspected she had many similar marks herself.
But it wasn’t pain—or even empathy—that quickened her pulse. Focus on the woman in the green hospital scrubs and lab coat. Ignore the tapering T-shaped back of the man sitting on the stool beside the examination table. So much smooth, tanned skin. She’d bet it was warm skin, too, since there was nary a goose bump, in spite of the chill from the hospital’s air conditioning. Olivia Mary Watson!
Obeying her own mental reprimand, Olivia tore her gaze from the long stretch of Gabe Knight’s bare back, forcing her attention to the petite brunette doctor. “Um, are you about done, Dr. Grant?”
The wide shoulders shrugged and Gabe rose and turned to face her. “Kept you waiting too long, Detective?”
“Hold on, Mr. Knight.” Olivia’s wayward eyes got some naked chest time, too, before Dr. Rodriguez-Grant tugged Gabe’s arm back across the table to wrap a long piece of self-sticking gauze around his forearm. She cut the piece off the roll and patted the protective bandage into place before releasing him. “Now you’re done. We just need to finish the paperwork.”
Stop ogling! What was she, in junior high? Olivia raked her fingers through her hair, using the movement to distract her. She hardly qualified as a gawking innocent. It wasn’t as if she’d never seen a man’s naked chest before. She’d grown up with three brothers, a dad and a grandpa in the house, after all. And she’d been with Marcus for almost
seven months before that relationship had blown up in her face. But Gabe Knight was taller, leaner than Marcus. His black hair was a smoky dust across some nicely honed pecs that indicated he got more exercise than sitting behind a desk all day, writing crime reports and editorials critical of KCPD.
And though she prided herself on her eye for detail, those were not the details she was supposed to be paying attention to. She needed to get away from this man and get a good night’s sleep to recharge her energy and ability to concentrate.
“No rush. I just need to call my partner and let him know my status if I’m going to be much longer.” That part was true. Jim had already texted her twice, asking if she was still with the reporter and if everything was okay. He’d gone house hunting after work with his wife, but would be there pronto if she needed him. He’d also pulled up Danielle Reese’s case file and wanted to get her up to speed on the dead-end investigation. “I can go outside to make my call.”
But the ER doctor stopped her before she reached the hallway. “Hang on a sec. I have some information for you, too, Detective Watson.” Olivia stepped back into the treatment bay and made a point of watching Dr. Rodriguez-Grant roll the tray table out of her way and cross to a stainless steel counter to retrieve a prescription pad. “Are you up to date on your tetanus shot, Mr. Knight?”
Gabe nodded. “My work takes me out of the country sometimes, so I’m current.”
“Good.” The petite doctor jotted a note on the prescription pad and tore off the top sheet. “Take the full round of antibiotics and see your doctor in about ten days to remove the stitches. Of course, if it shows any signs of swelling or infection in the meantime, come back and see me.”
He took the prescription note the doctor handed him and stuffed it into the front pocket of his jeans. “Thanks.”
The doctor tucked her short, dark brown hair behind each ear and peeled off her sterile gloves before addressing Olivia. “If you need an official statement from me, Detective Watson, that was definitely a defensive knife wound. Something with a short, thin blade—or else we’d be in surgery reattaching tendons and ligaments instead of mending skin and muscle. I can send the official medical report for your files if you need them.”