by Linda Ladd
Right now
Oh, thank God, he’d finally done it! He’d killed that bastard Nicholas Black! He’d aimed dead square at his heart, and he’d hit him. The man went down hard. Jesse was almost positive he’d delivered a fatal bullet. But then, almost at once, Annie let loose on him, several quick shots. He tried to get down, but not fast enough, because a bullet slammed into his arm. It felt like somebody had punched him hard, and he cried out and fell to his knees in the bushes. He scrabbled on all fours behind a tree and fired back at her, but he didn’t want to hit her! He didn’t want to hurt her! Oh, my God, Annie shot him. His Annie, his own special friend, his own Annie, whom he loved more than anybody in the world! How could she have done it? Didn’t she see that Nicholas Black was keeping them apart? Didn’t she understand how that made Jesse feel?
Annie had ducked down out of sight and was most likely calling the police on him right now. He had to get away! He started at a run for the hill behind her cabin, protecting his bleeding arm and scrambling and clawing his way up through the clinging vines and thick vegetation to the logging road where he’d left his car. God, he’d been so close to grabbing her when Black had to show up in that goddamn boat. He couldn’t believe it. Nicholas Black should’ve been in jail. And then Annie had run all the way to the dock to see him, as if Black was her one true love, instead of Jesse.
That’s when he’d crept out of the house, made his way down the hill near them. He heard them talking, heard almost everything they said, and he’d heard what Black said about him. The burn began then, the red fire of his hatred had gushed forth into his bloodstream, enraging him so much he couldn’t bear it. When Nicholas Black stood up in the boat, presenting a perfect target in the dock’s light, he lost all control and didn’t hesitate; he raised his rifle and shot him without a second thought. And he did hit him. The big man had been knocked forward to the ground. Annie must have thought someone was trying to kill her, that’s why she fired back at him. That must be it; she didn’t know it was Jesse. Of course, she didn’t.
When he finally reached the crest of the hill and the hidden Caprice, he stopped and listened. He could hear the boat’s motor moving away, farther and farther, until it faded to a low hum drifting across the water. They weren’t chasing him, but he still jumped into his car and headed straight for home. The roads were deserted so late, and he tried to stay calm, driving carefully so a cop wouldn’t stop him. His arm was bleeding profusely, and the idea that Annie had done this to him broke his heart. He began to cry, hard, wracking sobs that made it difficult to hang on to the steering wheel. Annie must not love him anymore. To have hurt him so much like this. He wept with grief and despair all the way home, so sad and hurt that she did this to him. How could she? How could she?
Dragging himself into his house, he slumped down on the sofa, too depressed even to get Miss Rosie out of the refrigerator and tell her what had happened. He couldn’t face her; he couldn’t tell her that his sweet Annie, the girl that he’d been telling her about all this time, had tried to kill him. Finally, he got out his first aid kit and his sharpest sewing needle and a syringe of morphine he’d stolen from Nicholas Black’s personal medicine cabinet upstairs at Cedar Bend. He fingered the wound, but the bullet had passed all the way through. He sat down and slid the hypodermic needle into his open wound, then splashed iodine into it. He screamed with agony, but somehow the suffering made him feel better. He stopped crying and carefully threaded his sewing needle. He inserted it into one side of the deep cut, and then the other, and then pulled it together in a neat black stitch. He stitched it all the way up, yelling with pain with each jab, but the sewing calmed him.
Of course, it wasn’t Annie who shot him. It was Nicholas Black. He had gotten off a shot before he died. Annie would never fire on him. She loved him. She had told him so in that short time before when he had gotten her under his control. Now that Black was dead, she would want Jesse again. She would come with him and Miss Rosie, and they would be a happy family again. She would come back home, and he would be there, waiting for her. And once she saw him, saw how much he loved her, she would pack her things and they would go away together. Forever and ever.
By now, he was feeling much better about everything that had happened. He got out some hot dogs and put them on a cookie sheet. Two for him, and one for Miss Rosie. Soon he would be putting an extra hot dog on for Annie. Maybe even two, if she was really hungry. And one for Jules Verne, too. He would serve potato chips and pickles and Ding Dongs for desert. Or maybe, he’d serve Snickers candy bars for dessert for her first dinner at home with them. She loved Snickers bars, especially if they were frozen. Monica had told him so. Poor old Monica, he really missed her. Too bad he needed to leave her body for the police to find. Otherwise, he could’ve cut her head off and let her be Miss Rosie’s new daughter. Oh, well, he guessed he couldn’t have every head he wanted.
He fixed Miss Rosie’s plate for her, and then he ate hungrily. Now, it was back to the drawing board. And he just might have to punish Annie a bit, if she was the one who had shot at him. She had to learn that she couldn’t shoot the people who loved her most. But then she’d learn what she had to do for them to be together, and they’d be happy again.
Chapter Twenty
Frantic to get Black to a doctor, Claire shoved the throttle of the powerful Cobalt 360 cruiser to full power and the big boat leapt ahead at even greater speed as it flew across the dark water. So fast, in fact, that they made it all the way to Cedar Bend Lodge in less than ten minutes. She could see the flashing lights of the ambulance well before they got there. As she steered the boat into the deserted marina, and way too fast, too, throwing a wake into the surrounding berths and rocking the boats against their moorings, she could see the two EMTs with a gurney standing next to an open double berth. She cut the engine and nosed her boat into the slot. The bow hit the rubber tires hard, but her rough arrival didn’t stop one EMT from leaping into the stern and kneeling quickly at Black’s side, while his partner helped Claire secure the boat.
Dropping to her knees beside them, Claire breathlessly filled them in on what had happened, her voice shaking so much she hardly recognized it. “The slug hit him in the back and exited in front. I tried to stanch the bleeding, but he’s lost a lot of blood. A lot of blood!”
“Okay, we got him now,” the EMT said, his words terse, quickly wrapping a blood pressure cuff around Black’s arm while his partner administered some kind of shot. Black’s white T-shirt was completely red now, every inch soaked in blood. Quickly cutting it off, they furiously tried to bind up the wounds and stop the heavy flow of blood, long enough to get him to the E.R.
Black was no longer moaning or trying to talk, just lying there as still and white as a dead man. Claire swallowed down burgeoning panic through a throat constricted with dread. Finally, after what seemed like forever, they got Black stabilized and out of the boat and onto the gurney. Claire picked up Jules from where he was cowering in the cockpit, quivering with fear and reaction, and handed him off to one of the marina attendants helping with the boat. Then they were off running with Black’s gurney down the pier to the ambulance. She jumped aboard in back with one of the EMTs, just in case Black woke up, but she was so scared she couldn’t breathe. What if he didn’t wake up? What if he was gone already, before she even got to talk to him? Oh, God, he had to be okay.
Listening to the EMT transmitting Black’s vitals and transport condition to the physicians waiting at the Canton County Medical Center, her heartbeat was simply off the charts. She couldn’t seem to draw in enough air. Black’s blood was all over her clothes, all over her hands. This was so bad, so terribly bad; his wound was catastrophic, very close to his heart. She needed to calm down, use her training and not lose it completely. Okay, the hospital was prepping for immediate emergency surgery, so that was good. They’d go right to work on him. With trembling fingers, she somehow punched in Bud’s number, somehow got out what had happened before her voice just die
d away to nothing. Bud said he’d call Charlie, and that they’d meet her at the emergency room, to hang in there, and then the line went dead.
The E.R. team was already outside and grabbed Black’s gurney at the curb and then they were gone, just like that, into surgery, trying to keep him alive on the run. They blocked Claire from following them through the swinging doors of the surgery unit, and she stood there and tried to see through the small, screened window. But they whisked Black out of sight, and she collapsed weakly on her haunches against the wall opposite the door and tried to get hold of her labored breath and thundering heart.
Out of nowhere, she got a glimpse of a dark-tinged memory of arriving at a run at this very hospital, rushing a different gurney into the emergency room. Bud was with her; they were trying to save somebody. And then that vision was gone, poof, and she dropped her face into her palms and willed herself back into self-control. Black had come out to her place to protect her, to warn her that she was in danger, and she hadn’t listened, had brushed off his fears. And he had paid the price for that refusal, maybe with his own life. Was it that Thomas Landers freak? Was he hiding there all along watching them?
Claire sat alone for what seemed like months before a nurse came rushing down the corridor. She told Claire that she was a friend of hers, that her name was Chris Dale Cox. Claire didn’t recognize her, but Chris said that Black was in critical condition and not out of danger. He was still in surgery, she said, and would be for probably another couple of hours.
Chris hugged Claire then, and Claire found herself clinging to the woman, wanting human touch, wanting somebody to tell her that Black was not going to die. But nobody did. After a little while, Chris took off, and a few minutes later brought Claire a chair and a large Styrofoam cup of hot black coffee. Oh, God bless you, Claire thought, as she sat and gulped down the caffeine, still immersed in that paralyzing daze of terror. If he died, he died protecting her. Was he right about this stalker of hers? Was that who shot him? Or was the shooter aiming at her? They were attacked at her house, after all. She found herself praying fervently and then she stood up and paced the long empty hallway, waiting, waiting, interminably waiting.
Bud and Charlie finally arrived through the outside doors at a dead run. Both looked shocked, and scared, which scared Claire. She tried to tell them how it went down, managing somehow to get out the basics while they listened, frowned, and shook their heads.
“Who was the shooter?” Charlie asked Claire quickly. “Did you get a look at him?”
“How the hell did he get past Harve’s security gate?” Bud demanded, looking as stunned as Claire felt. But she was getting steadier, now that they were with her and asking pertinent police inquiries. Her training finally kicked in, thank God.
“He must’ve come down the hill behind my house. It’s heavily wooded. Or by water, he could’ve come in by water. There are lots of places he could’ve beached a small boat or kayak along the bank. He could’ve tied up at Harve’s old dock, the one on the point with the blinking blue light. It’s not far from my house. Neither of us had a clue he was anywhere near. We were out on my dock in Black’s boat. When Jules barked and ran into the trees, Black got up and stood in the bow, trying to see what it was.” Her voice died, and she felt bile sour the back of her throat. “The shot just came out of the dark, Bud, and got him in the back.”
“What the fuck was Nick doing out there?” That was Charlie, getting to the point in his own unique way. “I told him to stay the hell away from you until we straightened out this Wheeler investigation. Shit. What the hell’s goin’ on here?”
Claire sank down in the chair again, stomach roiling around, her voice shaky. “He came out there to protect me. I went down to the boat and told him to leave, but he wouldn’t. He said he was going to sit out there all night.”
Bud said, “Protect you from what?”
“He’s convinced he’s being framed. He thinks somebody wants to get rid of him to get close to me.”
“Who?” demanded Charlie.
“Thomas Landers. Do you know who that is?”
When they exchanged shocked looks, there was a short silence. Then Bud said, “They declared Thomas Landers dead, almost a month ago.”
“Black says they never found the body.”
“No, they didn’t,” Charlie agreed. “They searched for days while you were lying next to dead in that damn coma.”
“Oh, God, I hope to hell that bastard’s dead,” Bud said, squeezing his hands into fists. Antsy himself now, he paced a couple of steps down the hall and back again.
“Do you recall anything about this Landers guy, Claire?” Charlie said.
“Not much. But I need to. Black was telling me about him when he got hit. He didn’t get to finish.”
“Do you think the assailant was close enough to overhear what he was saying?”
“He had to be somewhere close, on the bank, yeah, probably in hearing distance, maybe. He shot out of tree cover. I opened up on him as soon as Black fell, but I can’t be sure I hit him. It was too dark, and I didn’t know where he was. I hope I got him.”
“Okay, I’m getting officers out there right now to canvass the woods around your house. Maybe he’s dead or wounded and lying out there somewhere. Is there anything else you can tell us?”
Claire shook her head. “He was hiding in the dark. I saw the muzzle flashes and fired straight at them.”
Bud was frowning, worried, too, but he put a bracing arm around Claire’s shoulders. “Black’s gonna be all right, Morgan. The doctors here are great. They got me through a real nasty snakebite once upon a time.”
Nodding, she only stared at him, because she wasn’t sure at all. Bud hadn’t seen Black’s wound, the bullet so very close to his heart. It might have been too close, or too close to the aorta. But he was able to talk for a few seconds. If the bullet slammed into his heart, he would’ve died almost instantly. And he didn’t. That meant he had a chance to survive.
The surgery ended up lasting over five hours, and then Black was transferred out of recovery to the intensive care unit. The doctor came out, a pretty young woman with long brown hair tied back at her nape, and large and intelligent brown eyes. But her face was set in very grave lines.
“Are you the officer who brought in the gunshot victim? Dr. Black?”
“Yes, I’m Claire Morgan. Is he gonna make it?”
“I’m Dr. Katelyn Atwater, and yes, we think right now that he’ll recover, but we can’t say that for sure, not yet. The bullet missed his heart completely. He was extremely lucky because it didn’t miss by much, only a few inches up and to the left. About here.” She touched a finger to a spot under her clavicle and close to her upper arm. “He must have been moving when the bullet hit because it exited underneath his scapula in the back. It nicked the bone, but I think we got out all the fragments. And it cracked the humerus in his left arm. It’s a miracle it didn’t break it. There’s no sign of infection, but he’s lost a great deal of blood and we’re rectifying that with blood transfusions. The next few hours will tell us more, but he’s a strong, healthy man. That’s certainly in his favor.”
Yeah, and the next few hours in the waiting room were horrendous. Charlie and Bud both remained there with Claire. None of them said much of anything, just sat there and stared at each other, eaten up with concern. Both men obviously thought a lot of Nicholas Black. But who had she met who didn’t like him? He was a good guy. He had certainly taken good care of her when she was the one in that hospital bed. She hoped she got the chance to repay that kindness.
Not long after dawn sifted its rosy hued light into the wide windows of the deserted waiting room, Dr. Atwater came back out and told them that Black was doing as well as could be expected. She told Claire that she could go into the ICU and see him, but if he was lucid, not to ask him any questions or upset him in any way. Claire jumped at the chance. Once she got inside, she wasn’t so sure about the doctor’s prognosis. Black looked about as a
wful as awful could get. He still had a breathing tube in his nose, his eyes were taped shut, and both blood transfusion and IV tubes snaked out of his arms.
Appalled, Claire just stood there and stared down at him. She didn’t know what to do. There was nothing she could do. She just had to wait. The ICU nurse brought her a rolling blue vinyl recliner, and Claire blessed all nurses from her heart as she sat down and leaned back her head. All she could hear was the soft murmur of the nurses at their station just outside Black’s glassed cubicle and all the little beeps and blips of Black’s monitors. The clock on the wall said six o’clock a.m. She stared at it for a long time before she fell into a light and troubled doze.
Claire woke up with a jerk when the surgeon appeared and ordered the breathing tube removed. Black was coming to, but he was nowhere near mental lucidity yet. He was mumbling incoherently, and they’d taken the tape off his eyes, but he never opened them. She heard him mumble something about where he was, and he muttered her name a couple of times, but mostly he was lost in a fitful and heavily sedated sleep.
Claire left the ICU a couple of times that day, once to say good-bye to Bud and Charlie, who were going home to shower and change before they went back to work. The other time, she walked into the women’s restroom, splashed water on her face, and stared at her reflection in the mirror. There was still dried blood on her arms and more that had saturated and dried until the front of her shirt was stiff with it. More blood had discolored her blond hair, making it look darker with strands sticking together in clumps. Black’s blood. He had lost so much blood that it had pooled in a large puddle under him in the bottom of the boat.
The idea of so much of his blood soaking into her clothes sickened her, and she was glad when Chris Dale Cox came in and hustled her out and into the shower in the nurses’ dressing room. Grateful for her thoughtfulness, Claire stripped off her shirt and jeans, kicked off her bloody Nikes, swept back the white curtain, and stepped into the stall. She let the hot water beat down on her face and body for a long time. Then she scrubbed Black’s blood out of her hair, dried off with a towel, and slipped on the clean blue scrubs that Chris had left for her.