Extreme Measures

by Rachel Carrington

  “Doesn’t matter. I’ll still be here.”

  “What about your job?”

  “Jacob knows where I am. I just helped nab an escaped convict. I’m entitled to some leave time to recuperate.” He grinned at her. “Besides that, I’m on medical leave anyway until my arm’s out of this cast. It’s either that or desk duty.”

  “And I remember how much you love desk duty.”

  “Highlight of my career.” He lifted their hands together, threaded his fingers through hers. “You think you’ll stay here in Charleston now?”

  Erin hadn’t expected the question. Hadn’t they agreed to wait until after she was released from the hospital? “I don’t know. I still have the coffee shop, but…” She broke off with a shudder.

  Could she still pour cups of coffee every day, knowing how close she’d come to death? Wasn’t there supposed to more to life than the mundane tasks of existence? How could she stand behind that counter without thinking about Matt walking through those doors? Without remembering the mention of Stuart’s name for the first time in four years?

  “Never mind. You didn’t want to talk here. Guess my impatience is showing.” With a smile, he released her hand and picked up the cup of coffee. “I should let you get some sleep.”

  He sounded like he was pulling away, moving out of her reach and not just physically. Had he expected her to tell him she wasn’t staying, that she was going back to New York? Back to him?

  “I’ve slept enough for the past three days.” She placed her hand on the steel bar of the hospital bed, giving him the option to take it again, but he took a backwards step.

  “I need to check in with the office. I’ll stop back by to check on you shortly.”

  “Stop back by? The nurse said you’ve been sleeping here.” Erin trained her gaze on the recliner before directing it toward his face again. What in the hell was she missing? Had her inability to give him a direct answer angered him?

  Regardless, her own temper started to climb. How could he want an immediate decision after she’d spent seventy-two hours unconscious?

  “I haven’t talked to Jacob in over a day.” Matt had his cell phone in his hand.

  “You’re right. You should go. I am feeling a little tired.” When he didn’t respond, she rolled over onto her side, turning away from him. She listened for several seconds, hearing his unsteady breaths. Then the creak of the door as it opened and closed behind him.

  Without knowing what had just happened, Erin’s thoughts ran rampant. More hurt than confused, she curled into a ball and cried for several minutes. Then anger chased away the pain, and she sat up in the bed.

  She couldn’t let him walk out of her life again. The thought had her wincing. Matt didn’t walk out of her life four years ago; she’d pushed him out, had made the foolish mistake of closing the door on the one person who’d meant the world to her.

  Granted, the pain had been deep, lacerating her to the core, and she hadn’t been thinking rationally, but she hadn’t given Matt the choice to stay and fight for their marriage. She’d had him served with the separation paperwork while he was at work and had hidden herself away in a hotel until he’d gotten his things out of the house.

  Pushing herself up out of the bed, she tested her legs. They seemed steady enough, and her head felt clear. She pulled the nasal cannula out and tossed it onto the sheets. The IV was a bit trickier, and it set the alarm off. Hopefully, it would take the nurse a few minutes to notice it.

  Making sure the hospital gown she wore covered her as much as possible, she trekked out of the room in search of Matt. She didn’t have far to go. He stood just outside the door, his hands in the pockets of his black slacks.

  “Matt?”

  He whipped around to see her. “What in the hell are you doing out of bed?” Without giving her a chance to respond, he scooped her up into his arms and carried her back into the room, lowering her to the bed so carefully she might have been a barrel of C-4.

  “You walked out.” She didn’t even try to keep the accusation out of her voice.

  “I told you where I was going.”

  “And yet, I found you outside my door in the hallway. Didn’t look like you were making a phone call to me.”

  Matt looked away from her unwavering gaze. “I just hadn’t made it to the elevator yet.”

  “No wonder you never played poker. You suck at bluffing.” Erin scooted back on the bed, tossing the discarded IV needle over the side.

  “Only when it’s you.” He smiled, and the sight kicked her heart into overdrive. “I’ve never been able to lie to you.”

  “Why did you leave?” She had to know. If this was her only chance to tell him how wrong she was four years ago, she’d take it. But first she needed to know if she was the only one who wanted to fan the embers of their love.

  He sighed and turned his back on her, running one hand through his hair. The movement drew her gaze to the thick, black strands, reminding her of the times when it was her fingers sifting through them.

  “You weren’t ready to talk, and I wasn’t sure what else to do. I’ve been sitting across from you for three nights, and all I’ve wanted to do was hear your voice.” He turned, his lips still curved upwards in a smile. “But it’s not about what I want. I figured you needed some space.”

  Her hand shook a little when she pressed it over her heart. “You don’t think the six hundred or so miles we’ve had between us for the past few years was enough space?”

  His eyes darkened, and for the first time in as long as she could remember, Matt looked uncertain. “You’re going to have to spell this out for me, Erin, because I’m running on coffee and adrenaline. So my brain might not be working at full speed.”

  Nerves made her hesitate. What if she laid everything on the table only to discover Matt didn’t want to rekindle what they’d had? Had she imagined what was behind his kiss?

  “Erin?” Matt took a step toward her.

  Now wasn’t the time to back down. The hellacious past few days had proven that life really was as short as she’d always believed. She didn’t know how much longer she had to live, but whatever days lay ahead, she wanted to spend them with Matt.

  Her hands curled into fists, and she took the plunge. “I love you. I told you that when I was in the cab, but I wasn’t sure if you heard. I’ve never stopped loving you. I pushed you away because I didn’t know how to deal with my pain. It was wrong. I should have turned to you, let you be a part of what was going on inside of me, but I didn’t know how to handle that much grief.”

  She took a breath and rattled on. “The day our divorce was final, I thought I was never going to be able to breathe again. It was my fault, and I couldn’t fix it.” Tears began to leak from her eyes. “I didn’t know how to fix it.” She covered her face with her hands.

  Matt had moved to her side, and his hands took hold of her wrists, lowering them. “You don’t have to explain any more. I know.” He leaned in and kissed her, his lips just as warm and inviting as the first time they’d kissed. “And I still love you.” His forehead bumped hers. “I never stopped, either.”

  As Erin began to cry in full force, screams erupted from outside the hospital room.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Gunfire, the sound like a livewire snapping against concrete, echoed through the halls. Matt counted six rounds before he made it to the door of Erin’s room. He edged opened the door, but the overhead lights had gone down, casting the corridor in shades of gray.

  He figured he was wasting his breath, but he had to say it anyway. “Stay here.”

  “Matt! Don’t go out there!” Erin scrambled from the bed, but he held up one finger to stop her progress.

  “Don’t,”

  “Where, oh, where, can my little sister be?”

  Erin’s eyes widened as all the blood drained from her face. “How…that’s Stuart. But…but…how could he escape again?”

  That wasn’t a question Matt could answer, but it didn’t ma
tter. Not only had he escaped, but Stuart was armed again. And hundreds of innocent lives were in danger. “Erin, I need you to stay here, please. Don’t come out of this room.”

  She hurried towards him anyway, and he turned to catch her in his arms as she launched her body at him. “You can’t go out there. He’s going to kill you. Please stay here. You can call for back-up. Let SWAT take care of it. That’s what they do.” She spoke in hushed tones, her voice breaking.

  Matt touched a finger to her lips. “If I wait, he could start shooting again, and this time, he could kill someone else.” Another scream, high and piercing, jerked his attention back to the door. He gently pried Erin’s arms from around his neck. “Remember. Stay here. No matter what you hear out there.”

  “You coming out, Erin, or am I gonna have to kill this pretty little nurse I’ve got here with me?” Stuart’s voice held all the swagger of a man in control.

  Removing his cell phone from the clip at his waist, he tossed it to Erin. “Call 911. Tell them I’m on scene and where we are. They’ve probably already been notified, but you can give them more details.” He put his hand on the door knob. “I love you.”

  Erin’s quiet, “I love you” followed him out into the hallway.

  Matt edged along the wall in the direction of the nurses’ station. Stuart would take the middle ground when he had hostages, claiming the center of the room like a king on his throne. As long as he had bodies to shield him, he thought himself bulletproof.

  A few more steps provided Matt with a slight view of the circular desk, but it was enough to see the drab brown prison clothing Stuart wore. He had his arm around the neck of a petite, blonde nurse and was circling inside the station with slow, methodical steps.

  Matt closed one eye, judging the distance. He could take Stuart out, but the risk for additional casualties was too high. So he went for the surprise factor.

  “Stuart, didn’t we just put you away?”

  Stuart whirled around, his eyes wild, but he quickly compensated for the loss of guard by a sneer. “Matt. I might have known you’d be here. Still hoping for a reconciliation with my sister? Can’t take no for an answer?”

  “I tell you what. How about you put that gun down and we can talk?”

  “Nothing doing, brother. I ain’t going back to that cell. To any cell.”

  He was probably right about that. Matt had already figured this was Stuart’s last stand. He didn’t have any intentions of walking away from this, even though, in the back of his mind, he had to know how this was going to end.

  “All right. Then let’s start with letting a few of these innocent people go.” Matt didn’t move any further. Without a vest, he was an open target, and he didn’t know how good of a shot Stuart was.

  A slight rustle of sound had him looking behind him, and he almost cursed out loud as Erin reached him, her bare feet slapping lightly against the tiled floor.

  “What in the hell are you doing here?” He kept his voice low, but the anger escalated it a notch. No way was he putting her in danger, and she’d just made things a hell of a lot harder unless he could convince her to go back to her room.

  She placed a finger against her lips, ignoring the question. “Stuart, it’s me you want.”

  Matt’s heart seized, and he caught hold of her arm so quickly, she jerked. “You are not going to face him.”

  “Erin!” Stuart sounded delighted. “You had to know I’d come back for you. Come on out so we can talk.”

  “That’s not happening,” Matt replied, still keeping a death grip on Erin’s arm.

  “You can’t protect her forever, Matt.”

  From the pitch of Stuart’s voice, he’d moved closer, was probably hanging over the edge of the counter to get a better look. That made Matt even edgier than he already was. He shoved Erin back against the wall, putting himself in front of her. “Why can’t you do as you’re told?”

  “Because he’s my brother, and he’s here because of me. I can’t let people die because Stuart wants me dead.” Erin touched his face with gentle fingers, but they didn’t soothe the beast roaring inside of him.

  “Let all those people go, Stuart. You don’t need them when you’re right around the corner from me.” Erin squirmed to get out from behind Matt, but he stood firm.

  “Yeah, but I’m betting that behind that corner Matt has a gun in his hand. You get him to drop that, and you and me might be able to talk.”

  “Yet another thing that’s not happening, Stuart. You’re batting zero today. In a few minutes, this hospital is going to be swarming with SWAT and cops. If you believe you can out-think and out-shoot all of us, let me disillusion you. There is only one way this is going to end.”

  Stuart chortled in a high-pitched, almost manic tone. “Is that a threat, agent?”

  Erin patted Matt’s shoulder to get his attention. “Let me talk to him. At the very least, I can distract him. With you, he’s only going to be more vigilant.”

  The idea of Erin doing anything with her brother, even if it involved five hundred feet of distance, twisted his stomach into captain’s knots. But he had to consider the situation and the innocent lives at risk. And no matter how ill it made him, Erin had a point. He jerked his head in a begrudging nod.

  “Back at that office building, you said you had some questions for me. Do you still want answers? Is that why you’re here?” Erin softened her voice. “You could have gotten the nurse to bring you right to my room if all you wanted was to kill me. So why the stand-off, Stuart? What is it you want?”

  “What I want,” his voice rose to a shouting level, “is for you to tell me why you turned your back on me! What I ever did to deserve your rejection! Yes, I killed Mom and Dad—” The air filled with gasps at the announcement. “But I never hurt you.”

  “You don’t think killing them hurt me? They were our parents.”

  “And what did they ever do for us? Yeah, they raised us, but how much love and affection did they give us, Erin? They didn’t give a shit about us.”

  As Stuart ranted on, Matt dropped to a squat and duck-walked forward to keep himself out of Stuart’s line of vision. If he could get close enough, he could pop up at the front of the desk and drill a hole right through his brother-in-law without any other injuries.

  “Stuart O’Malley!” A voice contorted by a bullhorn called out. “Drop your weapon and come out with your hands in the air.”

  “No! No!” Stuart danced around in a circle. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell them, Erin. You tell them!”

  “Tell them what?” She raised her voice to be heard above the din.

  “That you are just as responsible for Mom and Dad’s death as I am.”

  Matt looked over his shoulder at Erin’s pale face. What in the hell was the lunatic talking about?

  Erin clutched her stomach against the wave of nausea. Stuart couldn’t be talking about what she thought…could he? “I had nothing to do with their deaths.”

  “No? No? I’ll bet Matt doesn’t even know about that night, does he? Have you told him?”

  Her legs jellied, and she slid down the wall for support. “No, I haven’t told him.”

  “Why? Because you’re ashamed, aren’t you? You know if you’d given me what I’d asked for that night, Mom and Dad would still be alive.”

  She could feel Matt’s eyes on her, but she couldn’t look at him, didn’t want to risk seeing the possible anger in his gaze. “I couldn’t give you money, Stuart, not when I knew what you were going to do with it.”

  “No, you wouldn’t give me money. There’s a big difference. The only reason why you refused me is because of Matt. You were more worried about your husband than your own brother.” Stuart coughed then spat on the floor. He moved farther to the right, enabling Erin to catch a glimpse of him. “And you knew Mom and Dad wouldn’t give me any more money just as you knew that’s where I’d go next.”

  The words struck her like arrows to the heart, but he was right. She had
known where her brother would go once she’d refused him. He’d been so angry with her, but she hadn’t thought anything of it. She’d seen him angry before, and he always calmed down after he’d gotten high.

  “Come out and talk to me before I blow this woman’s head off!” Stuart screamed.

  The nurse begged him to let her go, telling him she had children, and amidst her pleas, the other nurses wept, in fear for their own lives.

  “I said come out!”

  Erin stood, her gaze meeting Matt’s for one quick second before he reached the front of the circular desk. He wouldn’t let her get in the line of fire. Neither would the trio of armored cops coming up behind Stuart. No happy ending was in sight for her brother, but she needed him to hear her. Or maybe she just needed to hear the words spoken aloud before she could believe them herself.

  “I didn’t put that knife in your hand, Stuart, and I didn’t tell you to kill our parents. That was all you. One horrible decision ended their lives and put you behind bars. That wasn’t my fault, and I won’t take the blame for it.”

  “You could have stopped it! All I wanted was twenty dollars. It wasn’t like your husband didn’t make enough money. He could have spared that little amount.”

  “Yeah, I could have.” Matt stood up, pulling the trigger almost simultaneously. The bullet caught Stuart between the eyes, and as the nurse fell away screaming, Stuart toppled over.

  Surprised that her legs would function, Erin ran toward Matt, meeting him halfway. In his arms, she buried her face into the curve of his shoulder.

  He lifted her, holding her tightly against his body. “I told you to stay put,” he whispered, his voice both strained and shaky.

  “This was where I needed to be. With you.”

  Matt unlocked the door to the hotel room and stepped aside so Erin could enter first. She had her arms wrapped around her waist as she walked past him. Her teeth hadn’t stopped chattering since she’d gotten into the car to leave the hospital.

  Under ordinary circumstances, she would have stayed to be properly discharged, to sign all the appropriate paperwork. But Stuart’s death had locked down the entire seventh floor of the hospital, and after much arguing with the doctor in charge, Matt had finagled her release.