by Diana Layne
MJ knew the chances of a wild shot going through the apartment building and hurting someone innocent was remote. The shooter was obviously a professional. Still she was glad Angel was in the back bedroom in case the shooter turned his attention to her apartment.
Damn Ben for bringing trouble to town. And damn Jeff for sending him. And damn Tasha for killing those old coot senators—whether they needed killing or not. Damn them all.
Grimly, MJ held the curtain away just enough to peek out. Ben was safe...phone at his ear. “Texas When I Die” began to play from the diaper bag by the door. She dug out her phone, not even wondering how he had her unlisted number.
“I need cover.”
“Got it.” She cracked open the window enough to fit the gun barrel through.
“You see the target?”
“No one specific, just the direction.”
“I’m gonna make a run for the front door. Don’t shoot unless you see someone moving on me, don’t want to attract attention.”
“I need a high-powered rifle for that distance anyway. You okay?”
“I’m hit, but I’ll live.”
The situation was grim, deadly even, but calm slipped over her like old, comfortable coveralls, helping her keep a level head. “Wait. You don’t need to be out in the open. Get in your truck, drive–”
“Drive? The truck’s gotta flat.”
“It’ll still drive, and you’re just going around the corner to the garage entrance. The code is 321.”
Ben nodded, then crawled back into his vehicle. Before he started the engine, he took a moment to wrap something around his hand and punched out some of the windshield glass. Obviously the safety glass was too riddled to see clearly. The process only took an extra few seconds, but still she held her breath until he drove slowly out of sight crouched low behind the steering wheel. Now, she breathed. It was best to get his truck off the street anyway—that busted windshield and flat was bound to raise questions if anyone saw it.
She watched, but no more shots went flying in Ben’s direction. And no one had seemed to notice—hello, what was this? Just what they didn’t need, one of the local cops turned onto the street. And stopped a block down to talk to some man, who came out of the shadows of a store front awning where the local AA held their meetings. The man took a puff on a cigarette as he approached the squad car.
So was the cop offering encouragement to a recovering alcoholic, or had the man seen something and couldn’t wait to blab?
She hoped she didn’t have to add dealing with cops to the growing list of tonight’s frustrations. Small town cops tended to be full of themselves, so she made a point to avoid them as much as possible.
And she definitely didn’t want to answer any cop’s questions about gunshots and an injured man she barely knew. She had a carefully crafted image she wanted to maintain to help with Angelina’s adoption.
Damn! The man with the cigarette was pointing toward her apartment building. And the cop was driving this way. Great. Terrific. But no help for it. She had things to do. If the policeman got nosy, she’d have to deal with it. Right now, she had to take care of an injured man.
She grabbed her medical kit, tucked it under her arm, then snatched a clean towel and tossed it over her shoulder—she didn’t know how badly Ben was injured or what he’d need in the way of care. Before she headed back to the door, she swung by her bedroom and checked on Angelina, found her still sound asleep. Thank goodness babies had the ability to conk out and sleep through anything.
MJ laid the medical kit on the end table before she opened the front door. With her P220 held ready, she scanned the hallway. All clear, she waited in the doorway while the clock ticked. Time slowed down for her in tense situations, so she made herself count out the seconds to keep her nerves steady.
Two minutes later, she heard slow, steady footsteps on the stairway. She hid her gun behind her in case it was some innocent passerby, but stayed ready to pull it into place on a moment’s notice.
Ben staggered on the top step, looked up, saw her and crumpled to the ground.
“What the fuck? I thought you said you weren’t badly hurt.” She dashed forward, hauled him back to his feet.
“Bad is subjective.” He leaned heavily on her as they made the last few steps to her apartment.
“Who the hell is shooting at you?”
“Don’t know.”
She pulled the towel from her shoulder. “Hold this in place. I don’t want blood all over the carpet.”
“Sorry.”
She led him to the kitchen and sized him up. A neat hole through the top of the jacket’s left arm and blood saturated the sleeve.
“Gotta get this coat off you.”
He gritted his teeth and helped. She let the jacket drop to the linoleum floor.
MJ ripped the sleeve of his shirt, examined the wound, high on his left bicep. “The bullet’s still in there.”
He shivered. Possibly shock setting in. “I thought so.”
She wiped the blood to see the wound. “Good thing you still have muscles or it might’ve broken your arm. A little higher it would’ve hit your neck, possibly your carotid artery—a little higher your head.”
“No, it doesn’t hurt all that much, thanks. And think nothing of all the blood I’m losing. I’m sure I have plenty to spare.”
She stopped her monologue, looked him in the eye and said, “Don’t be such a baby. You’re lucky it wasn’t a hollow point bullet,” and then continued with what she had been saying.
“From the angle the bullet went in, you were standing perpendicular to the shooter. But why your arm, why not go for a head shot? Much bigger target anyway.”
He snorted. At least he got her humor.
She pressed the towel back against the wound. “You know if the shooter had wanted you dead, you’d be dead. You were wide open out there.”
“Yeah, that’s me. Lucky. Luck just follows me like the smell of cow shit on a boot.”
“Excuse me?” Not only did he get her humor but could toss out his own, and in pain. Attractive. But of no consequence to her. She pulled her mind back to focus. “Hold the towel and wait here. I’ll get my medical supplies.”
He leaned on the counter.
She grabbed her kit from the living room only pausing long enough to grab a chair from the dining table and drag it back with her into the kitchen.
“What about that cop that was turning onto the street.” Ben asked. “Did he stop?”
“Yep. Talked to a man outside one of the buildings. Last I saw, the man was pointing this way.”
Ben sank heavily into the chair. “Terrific. You think the guy saw something?”
“Seems likely. An AA group meets over there and the guy had come outside to smoke.”
“Damn drunks. Determined to kill themselves. If not with alcohol then with tobacco.”
She shot him a glance. “That’s pretty harsh. You speak from experience?”
He didn’t answer. Instead he told her, “Go check on the cop, see what he’s doing. Maybe he blew off the drunk.”
She went back to the window in time to see the policeman pull up in front of her building. “No such luck.” Jenkins. Damn. Didn’t he have coffee to drink or something? “He’s stopped here now, and looking at the glass on the road.” Mentally she sighed. “No help for it. I’ll deal with it if he gets too nosy.”
She returned to the kitchen, washed her hands in the sink, and took latex gloves from her medical kit, snapped them on.
“Worried about the yokels?” he asked as she removed the towel from his arm.
“Hardly. But I know that one. He gave me this black eye.”
“Really? Beat you, did he?”
She scoffed. “Not likely. It was a lucky hit before I took his ass down. He’s tried, but he hasn’t won a round yet.”
“So you’re good buddies,” Ben said sarcastically.
She matched his tone. “Practically lovers. He’s probably ready t
o propose.”
“Propose murder?”
“You got it.” She pulled his t-shirt out of the waistband of his jeans. “I’m going to cut off your shirt.”
“Couldn’t wait to get my clothes off, could you?” He tried to smile. It looked more like a grimace. Still, he managed a sexy tone when he added, “You’ve just been playing hard to get.”
She snorted. “Be still my heart.” And then she silently commanded her fast-beating heart to slow as she reached for the scissors and started cutting his shirt. Oh, yeah, there was a nice looking chest there, ridged with muscles, a light smattering of dark hair between flat brown nipples.
“What’s this really about?” she asked, bringing her mind back around to the reason she was cutting off his shirt in the first place. Conscious that dear Officer Jenkins would likely conduct a door to door question and answer session with the apartment residents. There weren’t that many residents, just four other apartments besides hers.
“I’m clueless. Jeff forgot to mention someone would shoot at me.”
“Not like Jeff to forget to mention a minor detail like that.” MJ wiped away the blood and examined the wound again. The hole was neat, considering a bullet had ripped through flesh. It didn’t appear to be too deep. She probed the wound with her gloved finger.
“Ouch. You can stop that anytime.”
“Shut up, you bitch just like a man.” His growl-like sound didn’t stop her examination, and she probed deeper. “I can just see the edge of the bullet.”
“Can you get it?”
“I don’t have a lot of equipment here, nothing to deaden the pain. It’s going to hurt like hell, and I’ll have to listen to you whine some more.”
“Poor little you.”
She ignored his sarcasm.
“Got some whiskey?”
“No, I don’t. Wuss.”
Men never made good patients, but she wasn’t a particularly experienced doctor either. “It’d be better to go to a hospital,” she supplied, knowing before the words were completely out of her mouth, a hospital wasn’t seriously an option.
“Yeah, that’s a good idea. We can tell them we got too rough with the sex.”
MJ rolled her eyes. “You’re not hurting enough if you can be a smart ass.”
“I’m sure you’ll take care of the hurting part.” He appealed to her with his big brown eyes. “Will it do any good to ask you to be gentle?”
Shaking her head, she said, “You can shut up now.” She took a breath and broke their gaze. She had field medic training, but it didn’t mean this was going to be easy. “Want me to go find a stick for you to bite on?”
“Ha, ha. Funny.”
“Who’s joking?” She pulled out a long pair of tweezers, started probing the wound. He clenched his teeth and made an admirable effort not to yell again.
“Probably better if we talk,” she said. “Keep your mind off what I’m doing.”
“I’d rather you keep your mind on what you’re doing, thanks,” he choked out. “If you don’t mind.”
“Women multi-task well. Just say something.”
“Want to talk about how you can’t wait to get me into your bed?”
Her response was to jab the tweezers in a bit harder. She should have resisted, but she didn’t.
“Ouch, damn it. What’d you do that for?”
“Boring subject. Let’s talk about why you were shot instead. That’s more fascinating.”
He caught her gaze again, challenged her. “Liar.”
For a moment she couldn’t look away. He was right, thoughts of him in bed had flickered through her brain at least once. Maybe twice. How’d he do that? She’d been alone since Keith, and she intended to stay that way. But she did miss being held and hot sweaty sex. Not that he needed to know it.
She blinked to break the trance he seemed to have her in. “You don’t want to call someone digging in your arm with long pointy things a liar.”
“Chicken.”
“That bullet looks deeper than I thought,” she warned.
“Okay, okay, no more jabbing. Why was I shot? Wrong place, wrong time?”
“Unlikely.”
“So what’s your theory, Sherlock?”
“First. The shooter meant to warn you off and he’s a damn good shot. Or second. He meant to kill you, missed and you’re a lucky bastard.”
“Luck hasn’t really been on my side lately. Probably meant to warn me. But for what?”
“Okay, a warning. What good is shooting you going to do?”
“Other than giving you a chance to see my body? Ouch. Goddamn it, if you don’t stop that, I’m going to take those things away and use them on you.”
She twisted her lips, raised her left eyebrow, and said mockingly, “Ooh, kinky.” Not allowing him a chance to respond, she dragged them back to the subject. “Tasha’s bound to realize they’re going to send someone after me. More than likely it was her warning me off. Or someone she sent, if she’s still out killing these senators. Anyone helping her?”
“No evidence of someone else,” Ben grunted. He was sweating now.
“So in all likelihood it was Tasha.”
“And if she can scare you off, then chances of Vista finding her drops considerably.”
MJ’s thoughts caught a snag. No one could scare her off and Tasha would know that. The warning meant something else.
She caught hold of the bullet, gave a good yank. “Got it.” She held the gold bullet with the flattened point in her tweezers. “Looks like a .22 Hornet.”
“Shee-it,” Ben said, his body stiffened before slumping forward in the chair. “Yeah, it stung like a hornet too.”
“Sorry. Told you it would hurt.” As she held up the bullet, she realized what Tasha’s message meant. Come alone.
Unfortunately, Ben realized something similar moments later. “However,” he gasped, still in obvious pain, sweat running down his face, “Anyone who knows you, knows you wouldn’t scare off.”
“I’m surprised you have the brainpower to think—you’re supposed to be writhing in pain.” MJ didn’t acknowledge he was on the same track as her.
“No thanks to you.”
“I tried.” MJ gave him a grim smile. “But I will not sew you up. You better hope this bandage will hold that wound together.”
The wound, which had almost stopped bleeding, started oozing again once she pulled the bullet free. She pushed fresh gauze against it, hoping it would be sufficient and she wouldn’t be forced to take a needle and thread to him after all.
“So what makes you say anyone who knows me?” she asked, continuing with the previous conversation. “What’s in that dossier Jeff gave you? They aren’t detailed enough for you to draw that kind of conclusion.”
“Your legend precedes you.”
She snorted. “You give credence to rumors?”
He shifted his gaze from hers, and looked at her stove. “You tell me. You going to back off? Or are you going after Tasha?”
“It’s possible Tasha thinks you’ve been sent to take her out.”
“Get to me before I get to her?”
She opened the tube of antibiotic cream, smeared some on fresh gauze and asked, “You aren’t supposed to take her out, are you?” before she slapped it against the wound, ignoring his expected protest.
A loud suck of breath was the only protest. “Vigilante justice?”
“It’s what Vista does.”
“With its own operatives?”
“When necessary.”
“If you’re thinking of you shooting Keith, that was self-defense. I haven’t heard of it being done before.”
She ignored the reference to Keith. “You wouldn’t hear—who would want to work for a place like that? But if she’s stepping on enough toes….”
“Yes, I suppose it’s possible.”
“Either way I’m being manipulated and I don’t like that one damn bit.” MJ clenched her teeth, ripped open the bandage wrapping. “If I st
ay, I lose Angel, and if I go, then someone with a rifle, as well as Vista, will succeed in sending me after Tasha. For all I know, Vista sent that sniper.”
“You think I’m expendable? What if I’d been killed?”
MJ crisscrossed medical tape on top of the bandage and admitted the thought of Ben dying would be a loss to mankind—or womankind rather. No need to let him know that though.
“Face it, Ben, if you’re telling the truth, and you haven’t been sent to take out Tasha, then this isn’t a first class assignment. I have no idea what you did to get something this shitty, but I’ve been on top assignments and this isn’t one.”
“So you think Vista’s trying to get rid of me?” He looked at his arm. “That’s the worst looking field dressing I’ve ever seen.”
She frowned. “You don’t shut up, and I’m going to forget I’m trying to help you. Besides me, have you gotten on anyone’s bad side at Vista lately?”
“You mean like sleeping with Jeff’s wife?” His gaze bore into her.
He looked so serious MJ couldn’t keep herself from asking, “You didn’t?”
A mischievous grin twitched his lips. “I don’t kiss and tell. Sorry. Ouch! What the hell’d you do that for?”
“The tape didn’t look secure enough.” She tossed the strip of tape she’d ripped off his arm into the trash. Tore off another piece from the roll, smacked it into place.
“No one can accuse you of having a gentle touch.”
“Can’t say anyone ever has.” She gathered her supplies. “There is another possibility.”
“Possibility about what?”
“About why you were shot. Keep up.”
“Sorry, in too much pain from your tender care.”
She advanced on him again. He held up his hands. “Okay, okay, what’s your theory?”
“Perhaps this assignment is more important than we know.”
“Nah, you think?”
“Smart ass.”
“Sorry, couldn’t resist. But you do have a good point, and there’s only one way to find out. When will you be ready to leave?” he asked.
“Half an hour.” Only you aren’t going with me, she thought. “Wait here, I’ll get you some pain meds.”