by B. J Daniels
As their six daughters joined them, the cheering grew even louder. All she could do was smile and wave to the crowd, more grateful than any of them could ever know. Buck turned to her, pulling her close to kiss her quickly on the mouth, before letting her hand go. The crowd loved it. The crowd loved them.
Sarah gave a final wave and left Buck to do his thing as she ushered the girls back toward the warmth of the stage room where they would watch the rest of the ceremony.
Behind them, Buck said, “Fellow Americans. Fellow Montanans!” His voice boomed out over the hundreds of people who had gathered in the cold to celebrate this moment.
Sarah and her daughters had almost reached the other end of the platform when Ainsley stopped, stumbling as if catching her heel. Sarah grabbed her arm to steady her—and saw the ghost from her past as Joe Landon raised the odd-looking weapon. Their gazes met and locked for that split second before she saw him pull the trigger.
* * *
SAWYER HAD FELT too trapped at the back of the platform. As hard as it was to get around on the crutches, he knew he had to be down with the crowd. He worked his way along the side of the raised platform that had been built for this event.
The place was crawling with security. That should have made him feel relieved, but he knew Sheriff Frank Curry too well. Frank wouldn’t be worried unless there was good reason to be.
He reached a spot where he could see Ainsley with her family. She was so beautiful. He ran his tongue lightly over his lower lip, remembering the kiss. It gave him hope—just as her last words to him. Once this was over—
Sarah and her daughters had left Buckmaster and were headed back when he saw Ainsley stumble. He saw the expression on her face as she staggered to a stop and felt his heart drop. She was looking down at someone in the crowd. Her mother had grabbed her arm to steady her.
Sawyer pushed his way through the crowd toward the spot where Ainsley was staring as quickly as he could, but it was nearly impossible with the damned crutches. Finally, he dropped one and used the other to force his way through the crowd.
His leg protested the moment he put weight on it, but he ignored the pain. Something was wrong. Very wrong.
He was almost to the spot when he saw the man holding what looked like some kind of homemade weapon. He lunged for him, but his bad leg slowed him down. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Ainsley push her mother aside and dive off the platform toward the man with the gun.
The pop of the gunshot was so faint no one seemed to have heard it as Ainsley crashed into the man, driving him to the ground. Sawyer stumbled and dropped beside her. If only he had been just seconds faster. If only... He had her in his arms.
“She’s hit!” he cried, looking around for an agent and seeing Kitzie pushing her way through the crowd toward him. “Get an ambulance! Hurry! Ainsley, can you hear me? Stay with me, sweetheart.”
“Sawyer?” Kitzie’s voice so close to his ear made him look over at her. She had the man with the gun down. What he saw turned his blood to ice. Under the priest’s robes were enough explosives to level everything for a half mile.
He swept Ainsley up into his arms. Her eyes fluttered open. She blinked, but then her lids dropped down again. He began to force his way through the crowd, his leg screaming with each step as he headed for one of the waiting ambulances.
* * *
KITZIE TRIED NOT to panic as she stared down at the priest, shocked that the bomb hadn’t gone off when Ainsley had taken the man down. She quickly ordered several of the National Guardsmen to move the crowd back. So far, no one seemed to have seen the explosives.
Buckmaster was in the middle of his acceptance speech, most of the crowd unaware of what was going on at the side of the stage.
She quickly tried to assess the situation. There was a lot of blood. At first she’d thought it was Ainsley’s, since she’d seen her take the bullet.
But as she looked further, she found that the priest appeared to have been wounded. Now he lay barely breathing, as if Ainsley had knocked out what little life had been left in him.
But Kitzie didn’t take any chances. She removed the weapon from his hand, grabbed both of his wrists at once and rolled him to his side just enough that she could snap on the cuffs behind his back. Now she had to deal with the bomb. The National Guard had moved the crowd back, but short of clearing the fairgrounds and the area for a mile... She knew that would only cause a panic. “I need your help,” she said into her phone and gave her location. “Alert the bomb squad.”
A few moments later, Pete joined her. He dropped down beside her, frowning. “What—”
She pulled back the priest’s robes so he could see enough of the explosives to understand what they were up against.
Pete let out a curse. “We need to clear the area, wait for the bomb squad—”
“What if there isn’t time? Not to mention what panic would do to this crowd.”
He looked down at the dying priest. “Is there a timer on it?”
She’d had some training. “Not that I could see.”
“Then he would have had a detonating device,” Pete said. “Why don’t you let me—”
“No,” she said quickly. “I have it. Just block the crowd with your coat so they don’t see what’s going on.”
She took a steadying breath and very carefully began to search the man for anything that could be used as a detonating devise. As it turned out, it was a cell phone.
* * *
WITH AINSLEY IN his arms, Sawyer made it on his bad leg as far as one of the ambulances parked at the back of the fairgrounds before he collapsed. Two EMTs quickly took Ainsley. A third came back for him.
“No, I need to go back—”
“I’m sorry, but you’re going with us,” the EMT said when Sawyer attempted to get up and couldn’t.
He looked back toward the platform where Buckmaster was winding up his speech to the roar of the crowd. He knew the EMT was right. Anyway, the bomb was in good hands, he told himself, praying it was true as he let himself be loaded into the ambulance.
Two of the EMTs were working on Ainsley.
“Is she going to make it?” he asked.
Neither answered as he heard the ambulance engine roar to life. He reached over to take Ainsley’s hand as he laid back and closed his eyes against the pain both in his leg and his heart. He couldn’t lose her. Not after everything they’d been through. She had to make it.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
“HOW LONG HAS he been here?” Kitzie asked her partner when she reached the hospital room. Sawyer was sound asleep in a chair next to Ainsley’s hospital bed.
“He’s refused to leave her side,” Pete said. “I’ve brought him food, but he hasn’t been hungry. The doctor said he should be in a hospital bed himself, but you know how stubborn he can be.”
She nodded. “I know.”
“This is the first sleep he’s gotten.”
They left Sawyer and Ainsley and walked down the hallway to a waiting room. Pete got them each a cup of coffee from the pot in the corner before they sat down.
“How are you doing?” Pete asked.
Kitzie nodded. “Okay.”
“You saved the day. It’s all over the news.”
She’d thought this was the kind of praise that she’d always wanted. Her boss had even shaken her hand and said, “Good job, McCormick. I believe you will be getting a commendation from the president himself once he takes office.”
“Not a great way to start your presidency, with someone trying to kill you at your acceptance speech and instead hitting one of your daughters,” Pete said.
“She knew him.”
“What? Who?”
Kitzie looked up to meet her partner’s eyes. “The First Lady, Sarah Hamilton, she knew the priest
.” They’d all been surprised to learn that he really had been a priest and wasn’t just in a disguise.
“Why would you say that?” Pete asked, looking around to be sure no one could hear them.
“I heard her say his name. Joe.”
“Joe? Over that roaring crowd, you heard her say Joe?”
“She’d fallen when her daughter had pushed her aside. She was on her hands and knees just inches from me when I reached the priest. I heard her say ‘No, oh, no, Joe.’ Believe me, she knew him.”
Pete shook his head. “If you’re suggesting—”
“I’m not suggesting anything,” she said quickly. “It was just...odd.”
“Yeah, I’d say. You didn’t mention this to—”
“You’re the only person I’ve told. Like you said, I might be mistaken.” She wasn’t, and now they both knew it. If the priest hadn’t died, she wondered what story he would have told.
“It is...odd, as you say, since I saw some of the witness statements that were taken. They all said he wasn’t pointing the gun at the president elect.”
Kitzie shook her head. “He was pointing it at the president’s wife. If Ainsley hadn’t pushed her mother aside and stepped into the line of fire, Sarah would have been killed.” She let out a laugh. “Maybe Ainsley and Sawyer do belong together.”
“How are you feeling physically?” Pete asked, as if not wanting to get into the Sawyer discussion with her.
“I’ve been better. Once the ribs have healed, I’ll be able to breathe again.”
“Well, the boss loves you,” Pete said.
Had he not brought Molly Griffin into the bust, Kitzie would have been overjoyed by the news. “Too bad he didn’t have more faith in me on the jewelry-heists bust.”
“He will next time,” Pete said.
Next time. She finished her coffee and stood. “I’m going to go see how Ainsley is doing.”
Pete shook his head. “You’re really going to wake Nash?”
She waved his question off as she left the waiting room to walk down the hall to Ainsley’s room. So much had happened, she was still trying to digest it.
She’d never wanted anything but to be an FBI agent, and yet she hadn’t risen in the ranks like she’d thought she would. Or should have. Nor had she received the credit she thought she deserved. Until now. So why didn’t it make her happier? Isn’t this what she’d always wanted?
As she stepped into the room, Sawyer opened his eyes from where he’d been sleeping beside Ainsley’s bed and sat up. He looked like hell, and she felt a deep ache of regret rise from her conscience.
It took him a moment to focus on her. While this probably wasn’t the best time—
He motioned for her to leave, that he would follow her out of the room. She watched as he grabbed his crutches and got to his feet, the effort clearly painful to his wounded leg.
“I thought you were supposed to stay off that leg?” she said, breaking the ice as he closed Ainsley’s hospital room door behind him.
“And I thought you wouldn’t have the nerve to come here,” he said.
“Nerve has never been my problem,” she said and rushed on before he could stop her. “I’m sorry.”
“You already said that when you called using Pete’s phone.”
“Only because I knew you wouldn’t talk to me otherwise.”
“I wasn’t really in the mood to talk about it then, and I’m still not.” He started to turn back to Ainsley’s hospital room.
Kitzie touched his arm. “If I could take it all back—”
“But you can’t.” He swung on her. “You can’t just play with people’s lives to suit yourself.”
“I’ll never do anything like that again.”
“I wish that was true, for your next former boyfriend’s sake. It wasn’t even about me. You just don’t like to lose. Everything is a contest with you. The minute I told you why I was on that production site, you went after Ainsley when there wasn’t even a contest.”
She hated hearing the words, worse, the truth of them. “I loved you.”
He shook his head. “That’s your defense? Love? All’s fair in love and war?”
“All right, it wasn’t about love. It was about taking something from you since you took something from me.”
He stared at her. “You do realize how crazy that sounds, don’t you? What did I take from you?”
“My idea of a perfect life. Both of us agents. Both of us working together. I wanted that, and you took it away when you broke up with me. Now nothing seems...right.”
“Even though you’re an American hero?”
“It wasn’t like I defused the bomb.”
Sawyer looked as if he didn’t know what to say for a moment, and then he laughed, surprising her. “Something’s missing in your life, right? It isn’t me, Kitzie. You and I barely had a relationship. Work was the only thing we had in common. Are you so blind that you don’t see what is right in front of your face?”
It was her turn to stare in confusion.
“Pete. He’s been in love with you since his first day.” He shook his head again and turned back toward Ainsley’s door. “Get a clue, Kitzie. Work will never fill that hole in our lives. I’ve only recently learned that.” With that he reentered the hospital room, leaving her standing out in the hall.
Pete?
* * *
AINSLEY OPENED HER eyes and blinked a couple of times before the room came into focus. Hospital room?
She turned her head to find Sawyer sound asleep in the chair next to her. She held her breath, not wanting to wake him. There was a few days’ growth of beard on his jawline and dark circles under his eyes. His Stetson balanced on one knee. She watched the slow, steady rise and fall of his chest and listened to his soft breaths, transfixed.
What was he doing here? Everything came back like a movie on fast forward. The last thing she remembered was being in his arms.
He stirred, groaning slightly as he shifted his bad leg. She saw the crutches leaning against the wall and thought of him at the fairgrounds election night. He shouldn’t have been there and yet—
He opened his eyes slowly as if he knew when he did that she would be looking at him. His smile was heart-melting. “You’re awake,” he said quietly. “Do you need anything?”
She shook her head. She had everything she’d ever wanted right here. “How long have you been here?”
“Not long.” It wasn’t true and she knew it. “I’m just so glad you’re going to be all right. Are you in much pain?”
Again, she shook her head. “What happened to the man who—”
“He won’t be hurting you again.”
“He wasn’t trying to hurt me. It was my mother...” She frowned, wondering if she’d remembered it wrong.
“You saved her life.”
Ainsley leaned back against the pillow, processing what he’d said and trying to match it to the flashes of memory. “So he’s dead?”
He nodded.
“What was his name?” She could tell he didn’t want to talk about the shooter. “I need to know.”
“Joe Landon, but he had a handful of aliases. One of them was as a priest named John David Williams.”
“Joe. Oh, no, Joe!” That was what her mother had called out. She hadn’t imagined it. He was the man she’d seen her mother fighting with all those years ago. Not a stable hand, as she’d said.
“He was the leader of an anarchist group called—”
“The Prophecy.”
He looked at her in surprise. “How did you know that?”
She shook her head. “Maybe someone mentioned it here at the hospital.” She could tell by his skeptical expression that he doubted that was the case.
He reached f
or her hand. “Don’t worry about any of that. You’re safe. Your family is safe. It’s all over.”
She nodded, not feeling safe this close to Sawyer. Her heart rate had kicked up, and she felt flushed. “You saved me again. Aren’t you getting tired of it?”
“Never! If my leg hadn’t betrayed me, I would have saved you a bullet. I’m sorry.”
She shook her head, unable not to smile at him. “You were there when I needed you most.”
“Actually, you’re the one who saved me.” His gaze locked with hers. “I didn’t know what my life was missing until I met you.”
She looked into his eyes and knew she couldn’t fight it anymore. She’d fallen for this man. This complicated man with a complicated past, she reminded herself. “I thought I heard Kitzie’s voice earlier.”
“Kitzie was here. She was worried about you.”
“She didn’t come to see me. It was you she was looking for. She’s certainly determined.”
He laughed and shook his head. “She and Pete are an item now. Or at least they will be soon.”
“How do you know that?” she asked amused.
“I’m smarter than I look.” He smiled, then sobered. “She pulled all those tricks on you to get back at me. I’m sorry about that. But she didn’t really think that I would fall in love with you.”
Her smile broadened. “But she does now?”
He nodded, smiling. “She knows that I’m crazy about you.”
“What about the next damsel you have to rescue?” she asked.
“Only as part of my job.” He made a cross over his heart. “Kitzie and I weren’t right for each other. I just realized it before she did. I’ve never met anyone I wanted to marry before. Now that I have... Ainsley, I want to marry you.” He held up his hand to keep her from speaking, even though she was too surprised to say a word. “I want the old Ainsley, the new Ainsley, whatever Ainsley might be around in the future. I want you.”
She swallowed. “Sawyer, we hardly know each other.”
“That’s why we can’t waste a minute. We need to start the moment we both get out of this hospital. I love you, Ainsley. So, what do you say?”