by Julie Miller
“Move in! Move in!” She was hearing real voices now, echoing the shouts in her ear.
Lucy was on her feet first, but she stumbled over Diana’s body before she could get away. Mickey’s feet were surer, his stride longer. He latched onto a handful of her hair and jerked her back. A million pinpricks burned like fire across her scalp. That knife was so very close, and help was so very far away.
Lucy heard three loud bangs.
Mickey’s grip on her hair went slack, and she dropped to her knees. His dark eyes glanced up to some unseen point behind her. Three spots of crimson bloomed at the front of his jacket, and he fell to the ground, dead.
Lucy scooted away before he landed on her and turned to see Niall holding a gun not ten feet away. His feet were braced apart on the pavement. A wisp of smoke spiraled from the end of the barrel, and she looked beyond the weapon to his steely blue glare.
She’d defy anyone to spy one trace of the nerdy scientist now.
But the heroic impression was fleeting. Niall was already holstering his gun and kicking Mickey Staab’s knife away from the dead man’s hand as Keir and several other police officers swarmed in.
He didn’t say a word but knelt beside her, switching from cop to doctor mode before she could utter a thank-you or ask why he wasn’t back in the van where he was supposed to be. He checked her eyes and ran his hands up and down her arms. She winced when he touched the bruise on her shoulder, but the sharp pain woke her from her stupor. “I’m okay.” She turned his hands to Diana. “Help her.”
“I need a med kit!” Niall yelled the moment he rolled Diana onto her back. She was bleeding from the cut across her belly that Mickey had no doubt inflicted upon her. “Diana?” He peeled off his ME jacket and wadded it up against the gaping wound. “Diana. I’m a doctor. Open your eyes.”
Lucy crawled to the other side of her and took her hand, squeezing it between both of hers. “Diana, please, sweetie. It’s Lucy. Listen to Niall. Open your eyes if you can.”
Diana groaned and blinked her eyes open. But they were dull and unfocused. “Luce?” she slurred through a split lip.
“Yes. It’s me. You’re safe now. You’re safe.”
“Tell me...about...my baby.” Her breath railed in her chest. “Mickey...he can’t end up like Mickey.”
Lucy glanced over at Niall, who was doing his best to stanch the wound. When he shook his head, the first tear squeezed between her eyelashes.
She kissed her foster daughter’s hand. “He won’t. Tommy’s fine. Dorian, I mean. He’s such a good little boy. Such a healthy eater. And loud. But he’s safe. You did it, Diana. You protected your little boy. You kept him safe.”
Diana’s eyes drifted shut again. But her swollen lip curved into a smile. “Tommy’s a good name. Tell him how much I loved him.”
“Diana—”
“Tell him.”
“I will, sweetie. I will. I promise that he will always know what you did for him.”
“I knew you’d have my back.” Diana’s hand grew heavy in Lucy’s grasp. “He couldn’t have a better mother than you. Because you were always a mother to me.”
“Diana?”
Lucy knew the moment she lost Diana forever. She gently set Diana’s hand on her still chest and brushed the dark hair off her forehead to press a kiss there. The rest of the world blurred through her tears—the police, the EMTs on the scene taking over for Niall in a futile effort to revive the dead woman, the cars, everything. A merciless fist squeezed the air out of her chest, and then she was sobbing.
A soothing, deep-pitched voice reached her ears. “Sweetheart, stop.”
She knew very little of what happened over the next few minutes, only that Niall’s arms were around her. She didn’t care about the blood on his hands that were now in her hair. She didn’t care about the weeping spectacle she was making of herself. The only thing that mattered was that Niall was here.
Lucy McKane could deal with anything. But not this. Without Niall, she knew she absolutely couldn’t deal with this.
* * *
LUCY CRIED A lot over the next few days, a sight that tore Niall up inside every time he saw those red-rimmed eyes and felt the sobs shaking her body.
She’d lost someone she considered a daughter. She’d relived the nightmare that could have been her a decade ago if she hadn’t fought and scrapped and kept moving forward with her life. Lucy talked about feeling guilty for losing touch with someone she’d once been so close to and how angry she was that she hadn’t been able to find Diana in time to save her.
But Lucy McKane was a kind of strong that Niall had never known before. Yes, she cried. But she also teased his brothers and had long talks with Millie and traded hugs with his father. She was even finding things in common with Niall’s sister, now that Liv and Gabe were home from their honeymoon. She laughed with Tommy when he was awake and hummed with contentment when he fell asleep in her arms.
It was an emotional roller-coaster ride that Niall wasn’t sure how to help with. But he could offer practical assistance and muscle. He’d stood by her side at Diana’s funeral, and now he was helping her move Tommy and her stuff back to her apartment.
He’d almost been too late that afternoon when she’d faced down a killer. He’d felt too far away watching her on a TV screen from a distant van. And though firing his weapon wasn’t his first duty as a cop, it had been the only duty that day that had mattered. Mickey Staab was hurting the woman who was more important to him than any other since his mother had died. When he’d raised that knife to gut Lucy the way he had Diana Kozlow, Niall had quickly taken aim and stopped him.
And now, as he set down the bassinet in her bedroom, Niall felt as if time was ticking away from him again, as if living just across the hall from Lucy and Tommy would be too far away. And if he didn’t do something about it now, he might lose them forever.
He turned to watch Lucy leaning over the changing table to rub noses with Tommy. She smiled and the baby laughed. After tossing the soiled diaper she’d changed into the disposal bin, she carried him to the bassinet and laid him inside with one of his stuffed toys.
Why did having his own space back, and getting his world back to its predictable routine, feel as though Lucy was leaving him? And why did an irrational thought like that make his chest ache?
He was memorizing the curve of her backside in a pair of jeans when she straightened and faced him. “You’re staring again, Niall.”
“Am I?” His gaze dropped to the rich green color of her eyes. There was still sadness there, but a shining light, as well, that he couldn’t look away from.
“You don’t know when you’re doing that?” She nudged him out into the hallway and closed the door behind them so Tommy could nap. “I feel like a specimen under a microscope.”
“Sorry. I guess I’m a little brainless when I’m around you.”
“Brainless? You? Never.”
He followed her out to the living room. “There’s no logic to it. I can’t think straight. I’m disorganized. I can’t focus on my work. All I do is react and feel.”
“Feeling isn’t a bad thing, Niall. What do you feel?”
He raked his fingers through his hair and shook his head, searching for the definitive answer. “Off-kilter. Out of sorts. Like I never want to let either of you out of my arms or out of my sight. I think about you when we’re apart. I anticipate when I’ll see you again. I’m thinking of Tommy’s future and whether or not he’ll go to college and how he shouldn’t grow up without a mother. I worry that you’re not safe or that you’re talking some other man’s ear off or—”
Lucy shushed him with her finger over his lips and offered him the sweetest smile he’d seen in days. “I love you, too.”
“Yeah.” He nodded as his heart cracked open inside him and understanding dawned.
“Yes. I love you.” He tunneled his fingers into her hair and tipped her head back to capture her beautiful mouth in a kiss. Her arms circled his waist, and he pulled her body into his as that eager awareness ignited between them.
Sometime later, when she was curled up in his lap on her couch and he could think clearly again, Niall spoke the new discoveries in his heart. “Lucy McKane, I have a question for you.”
She brushed aside the hair that stuck out over his forehead. “You know I love to listen to you talk.”
“I’m a patient man, and I’ll give you all the time you need.”
“To do what?”
“Will you marry me? Can we adopt Tommy together after the six-month waiting period? Can we be a family?”
She grinned. “That’s three questions, Dr. Watson.”
“See? Completely brainless. I’m new at all this touchy-feely stuff, so be kind. Don’t make me beg for an answer.”
She tilted her mouth to meet his kiss. “Yes. Yes. And yes.”
Epilogue
The unhappy man skimmed through the article he’d already read a dozen times before folding the newspaper and setting it on the corner of his desk. “The Journal says that Niall Watson was involved with a shooting outside Saint Luke’s Hospital. Internal Affairs vindicated it as necessary force to protect the intended victim. It’s not front-page news, but the story is long enough to mention his grandfather being well enough to leave the hospital and move home to continue his recovery.”
The man sitting across from him refused to apologize if that was what this late-night meeting was about. “I did what you asked. I ruined the wedding. I got those Watson boys and their daddy all up in arms without any clue about what’s going on. And there’s no way they can trace anything about that shooting back to you. For all they know, some crazy guy went off his rocker.”
“Seamus Watson is supposed to be dead.” He pulled open the top right drawer of his desk and fingered the loaded gun he kept there. “When I hire you to do a job, I can’t afford to have you fail.”
“Then tell me what I can do to make things right. Reputation is everything in my business. The next job will be on the house.”
Satisfied, for the moment, with that arrangement, the man pushed the drawer shut. His employee could live for another day.
The Watson family might not be so lucky.
* * * * *
Keep an eye out for Keir’s story when the next
thrilling installment in Julie Miller’s
THE PRECINCT: BACHELORS IN BLUE
miniseries becomes available.
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Keep reading for an excerpt from ARMORED ATTRACTION by Janie Crouch.
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Armored Attraction
by Janie Crouch
Chapter One
A leisurely walk along the beach in the evening was a chance for many people to ponder the meaning of life. Not for Vanessa Epperson. She rarely had time to walk along the beach at all anymore, much less waste that valuable time pondering.
She was way too busy to ponder. But, ahh, how she loved the feel of the sand on her toes.
She should have as much time as anyone to walk along the beach: her career as a social worker for a private organization—The Bridgespan Team—was technically nine to five, Monday through Friday. But in reality it rarely worked out that way. A call from a woman needing housing immediately because she’d finally gotten the courage to leave her abusive husband didn’t always come during normal business hours. Nor did a call from someone who had his first critical job interview in weeks and needed a ride at 7:00 a.m. because his car had broken down.
Both of those scenarios had happened to Vanessa in the past forty-eight hours.
Her coworkers told her she got too involved, that she needed to keep more of a professional distance between herself and her clients. Vanessa just shrugged her colleagues off. Sometimes people needed help beyond what was required from the job. When she could help, she did. Because there were far too many times when there was just nothing she could do.
If they knew about it, she guessed most people would say she could dip into the five million dollars her parents had made readily available to her. But Vanessa couldn’t do that. Wouldn’t do that. She didn’t plan to ever touch that money.
She pushed all thoughts of her family away as she walked along the sands of the Roanoke Sound of the Outer Banks of North Carolina. She wouldn’t let them intrude on her rare moments of solitude and quiet.
But this sand—this particular sand—in her toes renewed her. Helped her to remember that everything would be okay. Helped her to clear her mind and leave the problems she couldn’t solve somewhere else for a little while.
It was the beginning of October. The sun had set a few minutes ago, casting the beach in a purple hue. It was empty. With summer gone, most of the tourists had long since left the Outer Banks; they would’ve been on the ocean side anyway, rather than the more boring sound side. Most locals weren’t out, either, having made their way to their homes or wherever they spent their evenings. Everyone was settling in.
Vanessa would need to do the same soon, too. Tomorrow’s alarm at five thirty in the morning would come all too soon. She needed her sleep to fortify her for whatever the day would bring.
But since the beach was so quiet, the sand so nice and cool in her toes, the breeze so gentle in the ever-darkening sky, she decided to keep walking. She would just walk up to the beached log she could barely make out a couple hundred feet ahead, then turn around and go back to her car.
As with her family, she would categorically not think about other times she had walked along this very beach and whom she had walked along with. Thinking about it never led to anything but sadness anyway. Vanessa refused to be sad all the time. Life was too short.
Before she knew it she had made it to the log and was about to turn to walk back—until the log groaned and began to move.
Vanessa shrieked before she could help herself and jumped back. It was a person.
She looked around for any other people—aware after the past few years at her job that danger could be found in the most innocent-l
ooking places—and grabbed her pepper spray from her bag. A gun would’ve been better—she was licensed to carry a concealed weapon in North Carolina—but hers was back at her car.
The log moaned again.
Vanessa worked her way closer, cautiously, running scenarios in her head. It could be a drunk person who had passed out on the beach. Didn’t usually happen here, but it was possible. It could be someone who had fallen asleep.
It could be someone waiting to ambush her, although a mugging on the beach in October at this time of night was not very likely. Still, Vanessa kept her pepper spray close.
“Excuse me, are you okay?” When there was no answer she took a step closer. “Hello?”
Maybe it was someone hurt. She didn’t let her guard down, but walked a few steps closer. Now she could see more of the person’s shape.
If this person meant Vanessa harm, he or she must have a weapon. Now that Vanessa could see more clearly, she realized how small the person really was. Couldn’t be much taller than Vanessa’s own five feet two inches.
“Are you okay? Hello?”
Vanessa walked the rest of the way to the form. It was a female. She was lying unconscious on her stomach, long brown hair strung down her back, wet and full of sand and seaweed.
Vanessa reached down and pressed gently on the woman’s shoulder. Her skin was icy to the touch.
Whoever this was needed help.
“Hello? Can you wake up?”
She could possibly have a head or spinal injury. Vanessa didn’t want to move her. She cursed the fact that her cell phone was back in her car, although even if it was here, she probably wouldn’t get a signal.
Vanessa rubbed up and down on the woman’s arm. “Hello? Can you hear me?”