“The surgery went well,” the doctor explained. “I was able to remove the bullet, and I don’t think there’ll be any permanent damage. She’ll be here a day or two.” She hitched her thumb to the corner of the room. “Him, too.”
Only then did Declan see Kirby in a wheelchair.
“He insisted on being here.” Dr. Landry frowned. “But now that he’s sure Stella’s going to be okay, I need to get him back in his own room. He’ll need to stay overnight. He’s fine. No injuries. It’s just a precaution.”
“I wasn’t going anywhere until I knew she was okay,” Kirby grumbled.
Stella’s weak smile returned, and even though her eyelids were already drifting down, she motioned for Declan to come closer. When he did, she took his hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. “You called me your mother tonight. That’s the first time.”
He kissed her forehead. “Won’t be the last.”
And that was true. Nearly losing her had brought it all crashing down. In a good way, this time. He’d always loved Stella. Always thought of her as his protector and caregiver. Now he wanted some time to get to know her as his mother. The woman who’d made a lot of sacrifices to keep him alive.
And she had.
“Does this mean Declan will get special treatment now?” Wyatt asked, kissing Stella’s cheek, too.
“All you boys are mine. He’s just the only one who got my blood.”
Clayton, Harlan and Dallas came forward to give her the same cheek kiss, and even though Stella was clearly enjoying the attention, at the moment she couldn’t keep her eyes open.
“I need all of you out,” the doctor insisted. “A recovery room means there’s some recovering to do, and Stella needs that right now. But you can come back in the morning.”
They would. Declan needed to have a long chat with Stella, but it could wait. For now, he leaned down and whispered in her ear, “I love you.”
Despite her half-shut eyes, he saw the tears, but he thought they were of the happy variety. He made a mental note to tell her that more often.
When the doctor gave them another get-out order, his brothers began to trickle out, each of them stopping by Kirby first. No hugs. Kirby wasn’t the hugging type, but Declan figured the man knew how they felt about him.
“You speaking to me?” Kirby asked when Declan stopped in front of him. “Because I could see why you wouldn’t want to.”
“I’m speaking to you all right, and I’m warning you to never again pull that sneaking-out stunt. You fought enough of my battles when I was a kid. You don’t need to go fighting more.”
Kirby nodded. Maybe thanking him. But probably not agreeing. If it came down to it, Kirby would fight for any of his sons, and Declan knew if their situations were reversed, he’d do the same thing.
“Well, I do have one battle left,” Kirby said. “Webb’s murder. The rangers aren’t just going to drop this. They’ll keep looking for his killer, and they’ll keep looking at all of us.”
“We’ll handle it when and if the time comes.” Declan gave Kirby’s shoulder a gentle squeeze. Not a hug, but close enough.
“I’m proud of you, boy. Proud of all of you.”
Declan felt his own eyes burn. It wasn’t that Kirby had withheld praise. He’d been plenty generous with it over the years. But it never got old hearing it from his father.
Eden gave both Stella and Kirby a kiss on the cheeks, and they left before Dr. Landry pushed them out of the room. Declan didn’t feel the actual relief until he got into the hall where his brothers were waiting. And it hit him then.
They’d survived.
All of them.
“You okay?” Eden asked, and she took his arm, maneuvered him so that his back was against the wall. Probably because he didn’t look too steady on his feet.
He managed a nod. He was more than okay. “I’m thinking we should start dating,” Declan told her.
Dallas grumbled something he didn’t catch. “I’m out of here. See you back at the ranch.” Slade left behind him. Then Clayton.
But Wyatt stayed, as if amused by this.
Eden put her mouth directly to his ear. “Dating? But we’ve already had sex. Great sex,” she amended in a whisper.
“Yeah, but we can still date, and then maybe you’ll consider moving in with me. Of course, since I live in the sticks, you might not want—”
She stopped him with a kiss. A good one, too. “I’d love to move in with you.”
All right. This was going pretty well. “Then maybe you’ll fall in love with me. Hope so anyway. Because I’m sure as hell in love with you.”
“You cursed when you said I love you,” Wyatt pointed out. “Women don’t like that.”
Declan shot him a glare. “Don’t you have someplace else to be, maybe some other shooting to get mixed up with?”
“Nope. Besides, I like watching my kid brother trip over his tongue.” But he chuckled and looked at Eden. “Make him suffer a little. Wait a month or two before you let him know you’re in love with him, too.” He met Declan’s gaze. “Because she is in love with you, you know. Or maybe you’re just too dense to see what the rest of us already know.”
With that, Wyatt strolled away.
“Are you in love with me?” Declan asked her.
“Yes.” And she didn’t hesitate, either. She even added another of those mind-numbing kisses.
Oh, man. This day had started like a nightmare, but the ending was getting better and better.
He’d never be thankful to Leonard for what he’d done, but it had brought them to this point. Of course, they would have gotten here anyway. He’d been crazy about Eden since he’d seen her on his porch.
Declan moved closer to her, put his mouth to her ear. “After you move in, I figure I’ll give it a month or two, and then I’ll ask you to marry me.”
She smiled. “Then I figure I’ll say yes. You’re not getting away, Declan. I want you for life.”
Life sounded pretty darn good.
Declan contributed one of those mind-numbing kisses, as well. Then another. Because she tasted so good and felt so right in his arms.
In fact, everything about this felt right, and that was the first time in his life he’d been able to say that. Declan pulled Eden to him and didn’t let go.
* * * * *
Don’t miss the heart-stopping conclusion of
THE MARSHALS OF MAVERICK COUNTY
when WANTED goes on sale next month from
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Prologue
September<
br />
“I’ll save you,” she whispered into the phone.
Brian Elliott looked at her through glass that separated them. The lines of strain around his blue eyes and handsome mouth were more pronounced. And the orange jumpsuit certainly didn’t flatter.
After all she’d done for him, he still doubted her? “You don’t think they’re screening all my visitors? You’re tempting fate by coming here.”
If he wasn’t looking so haggard, so in need of the comfort he normally sought from her, she would have been irritated by his doubt. Instead, she smoothed a smile on her face—for his benefit as well as the guards who might be watching. “It makes perfect, logical sense for me to come see you. Besides, you’ve had a lot of visitors, haven’t you? Too many for the authorities to focus solely on me.”
“You arranged all those visits?”
“Not many people can benefit from being associated with an alleged serial rapist.” She’d gone to work as soon as she learned the news of his arrest. “Some of your friends and business associates probably are truly concerned for your welfare. And I might have suggested to some of them how staying in your good graces would prove most beneficial once you’re acquitted.”
He tipped his mouth closer to the phone that connected them and rubbed at his temple, as though the stress of the past couple of days had given him a headache. “How can you be sure that will happen? The police have eyewitness testimony. Experts from the crime lab to talk about trace evidence and DNA.”
“The only thing their evidence proves is that you once fathered a child with a woman who’s now in a mental institution. The D.A. will never put her on the stand to argue that it wasn’t consensual sex. Everything else is circumstantial. A good lawyer will make that go away—and you’ve got the best attorney in town on your payroll. Any other charges are minor, and I expect you’ll get probation and time served.”
Her heart twisted with sympathy when he rubbed at the cuts and scratches on his forearm, painful wounds inflicted during his arrest just days earlier. “All it takes is one woman to stand up and identify me as the man who raped her.”
“An eyewitness?” Despite his pain, she had to laugh. “How can any victim swear it was you? They were all unconscious, and you wore a mask.”
“There’s Hope Lockhart.”
“You didn’t rape her.”
He cupped the receiver with his hand and revealed a hushed admission. “I wanted to. I wanted to hurt her so badly—”
“Shh.” She leaned toward the glass and splayed her fingers there, wishing she could physically touch him and reassure him. “A jury can’t convict you for being angry and having these revenge fantasies. But it won’t help public perception if word gets out that you...enjoy the violence.”
“I’m sitting in a jail cell. My bail hearing isn’t until tomorrow. Public opinion doesn’t matter in here.”
“You talk as though you don’t believe you’re getting out.”
She was pleased when he flattened his larger hand close to his side of the reinforced glass, touching her in the only way he could. For now. As long as he needed her, as long as he loved her, she’d find a way to make it work so they could both get what they wanted. “Do you really think we can fix this and make it go away?”
“Yes. But you have to trust me.” She pulled her hand away, getting down to business. Brian had always appreciated her practical sense about how to get things done. It was one of the things that had drawn them together in the first place, even though the arguments often drove them apart. “I would have taken care of that issue with Miss Lockhart, too, if I had known how upset you were. If you had listened to me before, if you had let me handle the situation, you wouldn’t be sitting where you are now.”
“Let you handle it? I can’t tolerate a betrayal like that. She needed to understand that I—”
“Hush.” She quieted him before his agitation drew the guard’s attention to their conversation. “Your emotions are your Achilles heel, Brian. I can think rationally, for the both of us. Let me do this for you. I’ve saved your gorgeous hide more than once. That was our agreement, remember? I take care of you. I know you’re sick. I can live with that. As long as you love me. But you have to trust—”
“Sick?” He shook his head and leaned back, the boardroom glare that had intimidated many an adversary directed squarely at her. “Trusting a woman is what got me into this mess in the first place.”
She smiled. Poor thing. Didn’t he know by now she couldn’t be intimidated? “Trusting a woman is what will get you out of it, too.”
She waited, displaying far more patience than he had ever shown her. At last, his broad shoulders lifted with a heavy breath and he nodded, accepting her promise. Accepting her.
“I love you.” Pursing her lips together, she blew him a kiss. “Oh, and Brian, darling?” There were rules to this relationship, and he needed to understand them. “I’m willing to do whatever is necessary to save you. But if you betray who I am to anyone—a cell mate, a police officer or even a fly on the wall—I will destroy you.” She smiled again. “Now, say you love me.”
She held the defiant challenge in his dark eyes until, with a nod of understanding, he lowered his gaze. “I love you.”
She hung up the phone and walked away.
Chapter One
December
“That’s him. I recognize his voice. The build’s right and the eyes are the same. He’s the man who raped me.”
Bailey Austin braced her hand against the chilly window that separated her from the suspect and decoys lined up in the adjoining room at KCPD’s Fourth Precinct headquarters and closed her eyes. They all wore black clothes and surgical masks over the lower half of their faces. But she didn’t need a visual to relive the sounds and smells and every violent, humiliating touch that had changed her life more than a year ago.
“Shut up!” A fist smashed across her cheekbone when she’d dared to beg him to stop. Pain pulsed through her fractured skull, swirling her plastic-covered surroundings into a dizzying vertigo that made her nauseous. Her stomach was already churning from the stingingly bitter smell of vinegar and soap on the washcloth he was bathing her with. As if he could simply wash away the pain and shock and violation of what he had done to her. Bound and battered, helpless to struggle against him, she tried to blank her mind against the unspeakable things he was doing to her. “I’m the one in charge here, you filthy thing,” he needlessly reminded her.
Dark eyes swam in and out of focus from the grotesque black-and-white mask he wore. “Please...”
“Close your eyes and that mouth, or I’ll put the hood on you again.” She squeezed her eyes shut, dutifully doing what she could to save herself more punishment. “Do exactly what I tell you,” he warned her, scrubbing away any evidentiary trace of himself or the crime scene from her body, “and maybe I’ll let you live.”
Bailey had been one of the lucky ones. She’d survived.
But she hadn’t been able to erase the memory that night, and she couldn’t now. Even with a simple recitation from a Kansas City travel brochure, she recognized his voice—so bitter and devoid of caring. “That’s him,” she repeated, opening her eyes to see a uniformed officer stop and cuff the black-haired man she’d identified. When he peeled off his mask, she recognized his face from the business and society pages of the Kansas City papers. “Brian Elliott is the man who... He’s the Rose Red Rapist.”
District Attorney Dwight Powers stood beside her at the one-way window. “You’ll testify to that in court? You’ll point him out to the jury?”
She swallowed the emotions that rose in her throat. Despite all logic that told her she was invisible to him here in the look-at room, Bailey hugged her orange wool coat tighter in her arms and backed away from the glass when her attacker turned and looked in her direction. She nodded, transfixed by the cruel e
yes, warm with color and yet so cold. There was something wrong with that man, something sick or disconnected inside his head. A brilliantly successful businessman, charming on the surface, yet twisted, damaged, inside. And he’d taken all that rage, all that self-loathing out on her. As if she’d been the cause of his pain. Even through the glass she felt his hatred aimed squarely at her.
She could feel his hands on her all over again, her arms pinned above her head, his body on top of hers, and she shuddered.
“This is a dubious identification at best, Powers, and you know it.” Shaking off the nightmare crawling over her skin, Bailey turned away from the glass as Kenna Parker, Brian Elliott’s articulate defense attorney, started earning her expensive fee. The taller woman clutched her leather attaché in her fist and looked down with sympathy. “I’m sorry for what you’ve gone through, Miss Austin. But if the district attorney here puts you on the stand, I can promise you that my cross-examination won’t be pleasant. If you’re certain my client is your attacker, then why didn’t you identify him sooner? He’s a known figure in Kansas City society.”
“I didn’t know him. Not personally.” Bailey’s gaze darted up to meet the blond woman’s faintly accusatory question. “I identified him by voice. And I did recognize his eyes as soon as I saw them again. Once he was arrested, I picked out his mug shot from a group of several suspects.”
“You had a head injury, didn’t you? Perhaps your memory isn’t as clear as you’d like it to be.”
Before Bailey could form the appropriate words to defend her competence as the prosecution’s star witness, Harper Pierce, the family attorney her parents had insisted accompany them down to Precinct headquarters this morning, interrupted.
“Is that a threat, Kenna?” he challenged.
The woman smiled up at the attorney in the three-piece suit. “Of course not. I’m good enough I don’t need to make threats.” With a polite nod to everyone in the room, she turned on her Italian leather pumps and headed out the door. “Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go talk to my client. Chief Taylor?”
JUSTICE IS COMING Page 19