And Mel, smiling like the crazy psychotic bitch she was. Approval for his assault radiated from her. “Zander, sweetie, I didn’t know you had it in you.”
Zander’s boneless hands dropped the bat, the clattering echoing off the high ceiling, and he staggered past Quint and into the kitchen. “Oh God,” he muttered. “Oh God, oh God, I can’t believe—I didn’t—”
He turned his distraught gaze on JJ. “I was aiming for his arm. I didn’t expect him to move. I didn’t mean—”
He stumbled around the island, jerked open the utility closet door and emptied his stomach in the trash can there. With a put-upon sigh and a roll of her eyes, Mel reached for the gun. “An accident. Of course he doesn’t have it in him.”
Her gaze still locked on Quint, half-coherent prayers churning in her mind, JJ reacted instinctively. She grabbed Mel’s hair in both hands and slammed her face onto the island, then, ignoring her scream, she brought her knee up into the other’s woman’s midsection before shoving her to the floor.
Mel hit the stone hard enough to slide a few feet, blood streaming from her nose. She touched her hand to it, turned pale at the sight of her own blood and shrieked, “Zander, get the damn gun!”
She tried to scramble to her feet, but before she made it halfway, JJ punched her, square on her already-injured nose, and was rewarded with Mel falling back and the bellow of an enraged animal in pain. JJ’s hand hurt like hell, and she suspected her own blood was mingling with Mel’s, but damn, it was a good hurt.
“Call nine-one-one, Zander,” she commanded. His retching had stopped, but hers felt as if it was about to start. For a few minutes, adrenaline had made her forget that she’d taken a knock to the head, too, but pain flooded back, intensified. Her skull throbbed, her vision went blurry again, her stomach was heaving and that damn muscle in her back was twinging hard.
Her family joked about how hardheaded she was, but right now she felt shaky and weak. She wanted nothing more than to curl up in Quint’s arms and let him make everything all right.
She needed nothing more than to hold him in her arms and make his everything all right, too.
Holding on to the island with her scraped hand, she took a careful step toward the hallway. In her peripheral vision, she could see Mel, in the fetal position, wailing and swearing. On the opposite side, Zander was still hunched over the trash can. “Zander!” she snapped. “Nine-one-one now, or Zoey’s gonna kick your ass.” And when his sister was done with him, JJ would put on her pointiest-toed boots and do it again.
He straightened, focused vaguely on her, then Quint. “My dad’s gonna kill me,” he muttered. “My mom’s gonna kill me. Oh God—”
Abruptly he shot off. JJ hadn’t spent enough time in the house to have noticed the louvered door between cabinets in the corner that connected to the dining room. Zander’s boots thudded through the rooms, then he came into sight again in the foyer. Instead of leaving, though, he ran upstairs first. He returned in seconds with two backpacks, fully stuffed, grabbed his helmet and ran out the front door.
Glad to be rid of him, JJ pushed Mel’s purse aside to find her gun, but it wasn’t underneath. She dumped the oversize bag and found a lot of stuff, but no gun, no cell phone. When Mel had yelled at Zander to get the gun, he must have taken it. Thank God, he hadn’t been enough under her sway to use it. JJ didn’t have it to use, but neither did Mel.
JJ inched along the counter, moving cautiously to keep the spasming back muscle as still as she could, to keep as still as possible her brain that was punishing her with every pain receptor in her body. When she reached the island’s end, she took one step and swayed to one side, took another and tilted to the other side.
Making it to Quint was an exercise in pure stubbornness. He needed her, and she would slide on her belly if that was necessary. She tried to kneel beside him, but her balance deserted her, and she sank to the floor instead, gathering her clumsy limbs to reach the pocket where he kept his cell. Focusing on the numbers and guiding her useless fingers to the proper numbers took an eternity, and the Send button wavered, watery, when she reached for it.
Thank God, a familiar voice came on the line. “Nine-one-one. Do you need police, fire—”
“Morwenna, it’s JJ. Quint’s hurt...ambulance... Madison house.” She drew a breath, and it turned into a sob. “Please hurry.”
“Oh my God. Hold on, sweetie.”
JJ sagged against the wall, head back, eyes closed. She couldn’t rest, not yet, not with Mel still conscious and ranting in the other room. She needed to get back on her feet, to take Quint’s weapon and—
“You ruined everything, you bitch.” Mel stood in the doorway, her pricey dress stained with blood, her nose swollen to twice its size. She had one hand on the door frame, and her other hand was empty. No sign of JJ’s gun or her Taser. But a weapon lay nearby, within inches of her expensively shod feet. Before JJ could do more than register its presence, Mel swooped down, grabbed the baseball bat and ran her hand lovingly over the wood.
As the phone slid from JJ’s hand, she heard Morwenna’s voice, distant and worried. “JJ? Help’s on the way. JJ? Can you hear me?”
“This is my lucky bat. It’s what I used on Maura. Stupid woman. One thing. That’s all I asked her to do. Get more money from the old man. She wouldn’t even try. Idiot.”
“You would have killed her anyway. No matter how much she gave you, it never would have been enough.”
“That’s probably true. But I would have let her live longer.” Mel shifted her gaze to JJ’s face, her expression dreamy and ghastly and chilling. “If you had left me alone, I would have let you live.”
“I’m not dead yet, bitch,” JJ muttered. It wasn’t the right answer.
Mel swung the bat with surprising force, not at JJ, but at Quint. At the last instant, she drew it aside, letting it crash into the floor a few inches away. Vibration traveled through the wood and into her arms and must have hurt like hell, but JJ suspected she wasn’t feeling anything beyond rage that her plan had gone so wrong and pleasure that she got to punish the people responsible.
“You will be.” Her smile was so perfect, so practiced, and made her look so much like Maura that JJ shuddered. “You’re going to die, pretty Officer Foster’s going to die, and then I’m disappearing. I’m very good at disappearing. I’ll change my name, my hair, my voice, everything. I did it before, when all I had to work with was my brains. Now I have a lovely pile of money and a million dollars’ worth of jewels. It’ll be so easy.”
She moved a few steps closer, bat raised over her head, and JJ launched herself at her. Mel crashed to the floor with a grunt, trying to kick free, but JJ held on tightly, an armlock around her knees. She loosed one hand to jerk a thousand-dollar shoe off Mel’s foot, then jabbed the narrow heel over and over into the hand that still clenched the bat. After too many times to count, Mel let go of the bat and wrapped her fingers tightly around JJ’s hair again.
Damn, this was why she hated girl fights.
Eyes watering, strength flagging, JJ dug her nails into Mel’s wrist, then forcefully pulled the psycho’s fingers from her hair. Two of them made loud popping noises, and JJ viciously hoped they’d broken. She wanted Mel to live a long time with a constant reminder that she’d been beaten by a woman half again her age.
Not true.
She wanted Mel to die.
As soon as she peeled away the last finger, she drew back her fist and was ready to try her best at seriously hurting the bitch when a quiet, intense voice came behind her.
“JJ, it’s okay.” It was Sam, his face grim, his gun drawn.
She focused on him, shaking her head to clear her confused brain. She hadn’t heard sirens, cars, voices, footsteps—nothing at all to indicate that backup had arrived. When she looked back at Mel, Ben Little Bear and Daniel Harper flanked her from behind, their guns also drawn. Had they g
one around her, passed within inches of her, without her noticing? She preferred to think they’d known about the dining room door Zander had used, and not that her entire being had blindly concentrated on hurting—killing—Mel.
Sighing heavily—sure, it was a sigh and not a groan—she sank back, then crawled over to Quint again. This time when she touched him, he wasn’t motionless and lifeless. He opened one eye, squinted, then pulled her closer.
Everything else became background. She let herself slide to the floor, then laid her head on his shoulder. He wrapped his arms so tightly around her that she could take only shallow breaths, but that was all right. Sometimes, like when she hurt like the devil, being light-headed wasn’t a bad thing.
“You’re okay,” she whispered, patting his chest.
“So are you.” He laughed, then winced at the action. “Chaos on two feet.”
She lifted her brows in question, but he just smiled faintly and brushed a kiss to her forehead. “It’s a long story.”
“I’ve got a long time to hear it.”
“Here with me. Or there with you.”
She assumed he was referring to their homes a thousand miles apart, but it didn’t matter. The only thing that mattered was that they were alive, and together. “I’m not picky.”
With that, and the sounds of sirens outside that promised imminent medical attention, JJ closed her eyes, pressed her cheek to his chest and peacefully smiled.
* * *
It would take a two-by-four to knock some sense into his kids, Quint’s father had once declared. He idly wondered if a baseball bat counted, because even though everything else had gone wonky for a while after Zander’s home run hit, one thing had become heart-achingly clear.
He wanted JJ in his life. Now. Forever.
Even though he hadn’t known her long.
Even though she lived half a country away.
Even though he’d thought he would spend the rest of his life grieving for Linny. And his family didn’t know JJ. And the doctors had urged him to not make any significant decisions until his brain had had time to heal.
He wanted her. She was beautiful and sweet. She made him smile. Hell, she’d made him laugh while lying in a puddle of his own blood. She might talk tough, but she had a soft spot for the vulnerable, the needy, the hungry, the sad. She stayed to fight when no one would have blamed her for leaving him behind. She’d saved his life.
She hadn’t given up on him.
She wouldn’t ever give up on him.
Time is fleeting. Life is short. Such clichés. But true. He’d thought he had forever with Linny, but it had lasted only twelve years. He could wait with JJ. He could let her go home without saying anything. They could spend the next six or twelve or twenty-four months traveling back and forth between Oklahoma and South Carolina.
And the next time she needed backup on a call, it might not arrive in time. She could be killed in an ambush. She could get shot making an arrest. She could die in a car chase, or fall down the stairs, or get struck by lightning, have a heart attack, slip in the bathtub or drown.
She could die any day by a million means, natural, accidental or homicidal.
And so could he.
He wanted to spend whatever days they had together.
At his feet, Chica, who’d stopped patiently when he did, had had enough. She began walking, tugging lightly on the leash to get him moving again, then suddenly lunging ahead. It pulled him off balance, rattled his head a little, but he followed. “Okay, Chica, I’m coming.”
It was Saturday evening. The sun was low on the horizon, a blazing crimson ball just above the tree line, and the colors edging out from it included every shade of the rainbow. The air was warm and still and smelled sweetly of mown grass. Who’d known all it would take was a concussion to get his dad and brother to mow his yard?
It had been a busy couple days. Quint and JJ had been confined in the hospital Thursday night while Sam oversaw the crime scene. He wondered how long it had taken the nursing staff to discover that JJ had escaped her room and crawled into his bed. The most memorable hospital stay he’d ever had.
Mel had been hospitalized, too, under constant guard. Her nose was spectacularly broken, the doctor had said, making JJ preen, as were three fingers on her right hand. All of them had concussions, Mel had a broken tooth caused by the application of fist to face, and JJ had bruised and tender knuckles caused by that same application.
Now Mel was in jail. Sam and the department were still looking for Zander. Turned out those backpacks he’d taken with him had contained only the essentials: a few changes of clothes, toiletries and as much cash as he could stuff in there. Hank and Marisa had come to the house last night, and Hank had apologized a dozen times. Marisa had hung her head, a lost, bewildered look in her eyes, and said nothing.
Chica found an interesting clump of something. Maybe weeds missed by the mower, but more likely the daffodils, limp now that their blooms had faded. She sniffed, circled and sniffed more before raising her leg. Finished, she turned, directing her steady stare behind Quint for a long moment, then lifted her chin and walked away.
“If she thinks she’s going to be the alpha bitch in this house, she’s sadly mistaken,” JJ said.
Quint watched her carefully cross the grass. Her color was better, and she lacked that head-about-to-explode fragility that had plagued them both most of yesterday. Muscle relaxers and a session with a physical therapist wielding acupuncture needles had given her enormous relief on the muscle strain, and her hand was sore but manageable. That left her only one injury to complain about.
“My scalp hurts,” she said as she reached his side. She’d said it too many times to count.
“I know.” He’d been sympathetic too many times to count.
“My grandmother Raynelle used to threaten to snatch us bald if we were really bad. I always thought it was such an odd threat, but now I know. Are you sure all my hair is still there?”
He pretended to look. “More or less.”
“What?” She raised both hands to the top of her head, then winced.
Quint pulled her hands down, slid his free arm around her and kissed her forehead. “It’s all there.” Minus the eight strands they found clenched in Mel’s hand at the ER.
JJ’s scowl was fierce. “I hate girl fights.”
“Next time I’ll take the girl, okay?”
Just like that, the scowl turned into a sweet smile. She didn’t say anything. She didn’t need to. There would be next times for them, for anything and everything.
Well, maybe not facing another murdering psychotic bitch, but then again, who knew?
Chica reached the length of her leash, but instead of returning to them, she dug in her paws and forged ahead. JJ slipped away from his hug and claimed his hand in hers so they could follow the princess. “You know, if Mel had done only two things differently, she would have gotten away with this,” she said ruefully. “If she’d controlled her greed, remembered she was playing the long game and been satisfied with the hundred grand a month... It was more money than she’d seen in a lifetime, and she should have been happy with that until the fraud eventually paid off.”
But greed had been her driving force. It had been beyond her control.
“And if she’d treated Mr. Winchester like a person, like the godfather Maura had loved, instead of a servant beneath her notice,” he finished for her. Then Winchester wouldn’t have gotten worried, he wouldn’t have asked for help from the police and JJ wouldn’t have been sent to check up on Maura.
Quint’s world would have been so much bleaker than it was now.
JJ’s fingers tightened around his. “He’ll be all right. Him and his wife.”
“Eventually.”
Sam had visited them at the hospital Thursday evening and told them he would break the news to the lawyer. The te
nsion in her had visibly eased. I never do death notifications, she’d said, because they freaked her out. She must have been truly dreading telling Mr. Winchester, whom she respected, that his goddaughter had been beaten to death with a baseball bat and buried on the creek bank like so much nothing.
Poor Maura. All she’d wanted was a friend, but instead she’d invited her killer right into her home.
Quint lifted his gaze to the western sky. A few swaths of color remained, but mostly it was a soft, dark blue. The first time he’d looked at this property, he’d stood right here, watched the sun go down and absorbed the peace and stillness around him. Sometimes he thought he’d bought it more for that than the house or its location. While he liked the house, it was just a place. This spot right here, it was a feeling.
JJ gazed up, too. “I got a text from Chadwick after you two came out here. He wants me back at work on Tuesday.”
He studied her, keeping his own expression bland, and waited.
“I told him I wasn’t coming back. At least, not to work.” Insecurity flickered across her face. “I told him to consider the text my notice. I quit.”
Tension Quint hadn’t known he had disappeared, making a big imaginary whoosh as it left his body. He felt ten pounds lighter and twenty years younger. Relieved, easy, hopeful. “Even though quitting means he wins?”
She shook her head, grimacing at the movement. “I don’t know how I ever convinced myself that letting him abuse and misuse me for however many years until he dies or retires means winning. He gets to be a prick, and I get to tolerate it. I’m a good cop, and I deserve better than that.”
He couldn’t help it. She was so serious, so sincere, that he laughed. Before she could voice her insult, he laid his hand to her cheek. “I’ve known you deserved better from the moment I heard about Chadwick. I’m glad you see it now, too.”
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