Jordan grunted as Rusty climbed over him and started swinging. His fist slammed into the man’s face. Blood spurted from his mouth, his nose. He screamed, but Rusty didn’t stop. All he felt was hate. All he knew was vengeance. He swung again and again, until his knuckles were bloody and his arms were aching.
Jordan went still beneath him. It was the only thing that slowed Rusty’s punches. One look told him Jordan was unconscious but still breathing.
He staggered off the man and lurched for the phone Jordan had dropped. Lifting it to his ear with shaking hands, he yelled, “Harper! Harper, talk to me!”
“Shit,” a voice mumbled. His heart was in his throat. His nerves were frayed beyond belief. Some kind of commotion was taking place outside the doors of the office, and he turned that way, but he couldn’t focus on what was happening there. He had to find out if Harper was okay. Needed to hear her voice . . .
“Harper, dammit, talk to me!”
“Rusty? Is that you?”
“Hunt?” Thank God . . . “Please tell me you got there in time.”
“We got her. She’s already on the way to the hospital.”
He swallowed hard. “Is she okay?”
“They drugged her. She’s pretty banged up, and—”
The door to the office burst open, and three armed police officers stormed into the room with weapons drawn. “Hands up where we can see them!”
Rusty’s hands went straight up, and he dropped the phone. A sea of police swept into the room.
An officer in full riot gear pointed his weapon at Rusty and said, “On the ground. Now. Arms out.”
“Not him,” a voice called. “Let me through, dammit.” Footsteps sounded across the hardwood floor, then the voice said, “Not him; he’s one of the good guys.”
Rusty lifted his head as Callahan bent and held out his hand to help him up. “You okay?”
“Yeah.” He nodded toward Jordan, lying on the floor near his overturned wheelchair. “He shot both of them.”
“We heard.”
Thanks to Hunt’s fancy software.
“He’s still alive.”
“Good. He’s more valuable to us alive. Don’t worry. He won’t ever see the light of day again.”
“He’d better not.”
Callahan glanced toward Renwick slumped over in the corner and shook his head. “Stupid son of a bitch. He left a message at the station yesterday. Sounded like he wanted to make a deal. I didn’t know it was about this case. Too little, too late.”
Rusty wasn’t sure if that was a just result for Renwick’s shady dealing, or if he felt sorry for the man.
“Go on, get out of here,” Callahan said, nodding toward the door. “Something tells me she’ll want you to be there when she wakes up.”
Rusty nodded, a lump in his throat, and moved for the door. And as he wove around police spilling into the house and jogged up the stairs to the main level, moving faster as he headed toward the open front door, he pushed thoughts of Jordan and Rossi and Renwick aside for good. And hoped like hell Callahan was right.
Because he wasn’t about to leave her again.
Harper jerked awake and stared wide-eyed into the darkness with a gasp. Her heart raced, her hands grew sweaty, her chest rose and fell with deep, painful breaths.
“Hey,” a familiar voice said softly to her left. “Relax. Breathe. You’re okay. You’re safe.”
She knew that voice. Knew it really well. She looked to her left in the dimly lit room to see Rusty’s smiling face as he leaned forward in the chair beside her and ran a hand down her arm in a gentle, calming motion.
“Rusty?”
“Yeah. It’s me. You’re in the hospital. Everything’s fine. Hunter and his team got to you before anything happened. You’re okay.”
“Oh my God.” The memories came rushing back—the blinding light, that psycho doctor with the scalpel coming at her, the sound of gunfire, shouts, and the screams . . . his screams, muffled and frantic and coming from far away.
A tremor she couldn’t control racked her body, and tears spilled over her lashes before she could stop them.
“Hey.” Rusty pushed out of his seat and perched a hip on the side of her bed, wrapping an arm around her and pulling her up against his familiar warmth. “It’s okay. Everything’s okay.”
She turned into him, clinging to his dirty T-shirt as she pressed her face against his chest. “I-I was so scared.”
“I know. But it’s over now. That doctor’s never going to touch you again. The facility’s been shut down. They can’t hurt anyone else like that again. And neither can the Plague. We got ’em.”
“No.” She pushed against his chest and sat up, staring at him though blurry vision. “You don’t get it. I don’t care about that or what they were going to do to me. I was scared about you.” She clenched his shirt tightly in her fist as the emotions slammed into her again, as hard and sharp and painful as they had when she’d heard him scream her name and that gun go off. “I thought—”
Her voice hitched.
“Hey.” He lifted a hand to her face, swiping the tears from one side and then the other. “I’m fine. Look at me. No worse for the wear.”
She blinked several times. Sniffled. Stared at him through watery eyes. “How . . . I don’t . . . What happened?” she finally managed.
“They sent me a message. Told me if I wanted to save your life, I had to meet with them. I called Hunt. I had a hunch they’d taken you to that research facility. He and his men got you out.”
“I know, but what . . .” She looked down at her hand, still holding tightly to his shirt. “What happened with you?”
“They made me drive out to this fancy mansion in the hills outside the city. Rossi and Renwick were there.”
She sucked in a breath. “Renwick really was working with them.”
“According to Callahan, he was a small-time player. He covered up a few things for Jordan, like you found early on. That was enough to rope him in. They had him then. Forced him to cover other things up over the years. I don’t think he was a willing participant, if that helps.”
She shook her head, swallowing the bile as she stared down at his shirt. “It still makes him an accomplice.” And she’d still worked for him.
Rusty’s hand dropped to the mattress. “He’s dead, Harper.” When she lifted her gaze back to his, he said, “Jordan shot him right in front of me.”
Her eyes widened. “Jordan? But he’s de—”
“No. He’s very much alive. He fooled everyone.”
Her gaze skipped over his face. “I thought Rossi—”
“He was there too. He was the front man. But Jordan was running the entire thing from his cushy mansion in the hills. He survived that fire. I don’t know how, but he did.”
“My God.”
“There’s more.”
“More?”
“Yeah.” A somber look filled his eyes. He wasn’t touching her anymore. The arm that had been around her was perched on the bed railing at her side. His other hand was resting against his thigh, and she didn’t know what that meant. Was afraid to ask when he was staring at her like he had something truly horrible to say.
“What? Tell me.”
“Remember when I was telling you about the night my mother died?”
She nodded.
“I told you I got into a fight with Jordan. That he beat me to a pulp.”
“I remember.”
“I managed to crawl behind his desk after he killed my mother. And then someone came into the room and shot him.”
“Yes. You said you never saw his face, but he’s the one who lit the house on fire.”
“Yeah.”
He was torturing her by not elaborating and just staring at her with those worried eyes. “What, Rusty? Just say it.”
“It was your dad. He was working undercover vice back then. Jordan and his cronies were just starting up the Plague. That’s what those meetings were about, the ones he too
k Lily to. Your dad tried to stop him. He had to have met Lily at some point. If he was at any of those meetings, he had to have seen her. All I can figure is that he’d found out Jordan had sold her, and he confronted him about it.”
Harper let go of his shirt and lifted her hand to her mouth.
“I know,” he said softly, shifting his hand from the railing to cover hers perched on the mattress at her side. “I know that’s not what you expected.” He curled his fingers around hers and swallowed. “And I don’t want to be the one to tell you this, but your dad wasn’t killed on a routine domestic violence call. He was still trying to stop the Plague, almost twenty years later. He’d found out Jordan was still alive. They killed him because he got too close.”
“Oh my God,” she whispered, the shock of everything swirling in her head.
Tears sprang to her eyes all over again. Tears she couldn’t contain. Everything she’d been told about her dad’s death ricocheted through her mind, and with it, the reality that it had all been a lie.
Rusty leaned forward, closed his arms around her, and held her close. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I’m so sorry this has all been so fucked up and connected.”
It was. Completely fucked up and insanely interconnected in a way she’d never thought possible. She sank into him and let him hold her as memories ignited behind her closed eyelids, mingling with what he’d told her and the realization that her dad had known Lily. He’d been trying to stop the Plague.
“He was a good cop,” she whispered, sniffling against him.
“Yeah. He was.”
“He tried to help people.”
“Just like you.”
She squeezed her eyes shut as a bittersweet pain stabbed at her heart. And then it hit her.
Wide-eyed, she pushed back and stared at his arms, covered by the long-sleeved shirt, visualizing the burn scars on his forearms he’d gotten trying to escape that fire. “Oh my God, he started that fire.”
“No, he didn’t. Someone else did. I was wrong about that. One of Jordan’s men set that fire to fake his death so your dad would think he was dead.”
Tears filled her eyes again. Tears because she could have lost him then, long before she’d ever known him. And she could have lost him today, when she’d finally realized she didn’t want to live without him. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, gripping his forearms over his scars. “I’m so sorry. I should have told you about the deal I made with the police commissioner. I don’t know why I didn’t. I think I was just scared . . . I didn’t know what I—”
“Yeah, you’re right. You should have told me.”
Her lips snapped closed, and she blinked damp lashes at him. “I know,” she whispered. “And I wanted to. I just . . . I was afraid. I didn’t want you to think that’s why I was with you.”
“Is it?”
Her heart contracted, and fear wrapped around her heart as she looked down at his arms and swallowed hard. She didn’t want to lie to him, not about this. Not about anything ever again. “At first, yes. I mean, I didn’t sleep with you to try to get my job back, if that’s what you think. I went to that masquerade party intending to meet up with you, hoping we could work together so that, yeah, maybe I could find a way to get my job back. I know you can’t understand this, but being a cop is all I know. It’s what I thought I wanted again. But then everything happened between us, and I realized—”
“That I’m irresistible.”
Heart racing, she slowly looked up at him only to discover he wasn’t upset. He didn’t even look mad. He was watching her carefully with narrowed, amused eyes, almost as if he knew a secret.
Almost as if he knew her secret.
Her pulse pounded hard in her ears, and she swallowed again, knowing this was her chance not to get her old life back but to reach for one she’d never thought she could ever have.
“Yes,” she whispered. “Completely irresistible. I didn’t plan to fall in love with you, but I did. And it changed everything.”
He stared at her for several seconds in silence, and as the clock ticked on the wall and she watched his gaze skipping over her features, she had no idea what he was thinking or feeling or what he would say in response. All she knew was that she couldn’t lose him. Not now, not after she’d finally realized he was everything she’d never known she’d wanted.
She gathered her courage. “Rusty—”
“No more secrets.”
She blinked, unsure what he was saying. “What?”
“From now on, if you want something, just come out and say it. I knew you were keeping something from me. If you want to go back to being a cop, I don’t care. That’s your choice, and I’ll support you in whatever you want to do. But I do care that you couldn’t just come out and tell me. I would have said yes if you’d just asked me to help you straight up. In case you haven’t figured it out by now, I can’t seem to say no to you no matter how hard I try.”
Warmth flooded her chest, and tears burst free of her lashes, but they were the good kind, the happy kind, the oh-my-God-I-didn’t-fuck-this-up kind of tears.
She threw her arms around his shoulders and held on tightly, and as his arms closed around her back and she turned her face against his throat, she whispered, “I will. I promise. I love you.”
He pressed his lips against the soft skin behind her ear, then said, “I love you more.”
Joy burst inside her when his mouth found hers, and as he kissed her and tightened his arms around her like steel bands, she knew he would always be her safe haven. And that anywhere with him was exactly where she wanted to be.
When she was breathless, when she knew he wasn’t going anywhere, she drew back and looked up at him, taking a good look now that her heart wasn’t about to lurch out of her chest.
She brushed her fingers down his cheek. “You’re a mess, you know.”
“So are you.”
She smirked and pressed her lips to his. “We make quite a pair.”
“Yes, we do.” His gaze skipped over her face. “And I meant what I said about the department. I want you to do whatever makes you happy.”
“You make me happy.” She skimmed the stubble on his jaw. “And to be honest, I don’t really know what I want to do. I mean, I thought I wanted to go back to law enforcement, but with everything that’s happened, I don’t know if my heart’s in it anymore. I kinda like being able to set my own hours. Means I can spend more time with you.”
He smirked. “That does have its advantages.”
She laid her head against his shoulder. “I also want to work for someone I believe in. Someone I know is doing good.”
He ran a hand down her hair. “I’ve got an almost brother-in-law who runs a security and PI firm.”
“Yeah?” God, she loved being close to him like this. “How does he feel about hiring women?”
“I’m gonna guess he’s just fine with hiring women. Plus, if he lets you do something reckless, I can go yell at him and not you.”
She laughed and snuggled closer.
A knock sounded at the door. Rusty lifted his head. Harper glanced over her shoulder.
“Who is it?” Rusty called.
The door pushed open a tiny bit, and from behind the curtain that was drawn, a female voice said, “The cavalry. Is she up for visitors?”
“Shit,” Rusty muttered. “Hold on.”
“Who is that?” Harper asked.
“My mother and the rest of the family.” Rusty let go of her and pushed off her bed so she could sit up. “I’ll get rid of them.”
“No, don’t.” She grabbed his hand, stopping him. “Let them in. I want to meet your mom.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yeah, why not.” Harper let go of his hand and fluffed her hair even though she knew it was probably a lost cause, then swiped at her eyes just in case her mascara was sliding down her cheeks. “Are you afraid for them to see me like this?”
A warm smile curled his mouth just before it lowered and
pressed a quick kiss to hers. “Not a bit. I just don’t want them to overwhelm you.”
She reached for his hand again. “I need to get used to them at some point, right? Better now than later.”
“God, I love you.” He kissed her again, then said, “When you want them to leave, squeeze my hand.”
“Got it.”
“Okay, come in,” Rusty called.
Voices sounded, footsteps echoed, and then the room was filled with more people than Harper could count.
Most she recognized—Ethan and Samantha, Kelsey and Hunter, Raegan and Alec, with little Emma perched on Alec’s hip—but there were a few she didn’t recognize . . . the lanky teen in the corner shaking the shaggy hair out of his eyes, and a man and woman, both in their fifties, moving up on the side of her bed.
Rusty cleared his throat. “Harper, you know most of the rat pack. That goofy-looking kid over there in the corner is my youngest brother, Thomas, and these are my parents, Michael and Hannah.”
Michael McClane smiled down at Harper with warm eyes and reached for her hand. “It’s very nice to meet you, Harper. The kids filled us in on what you did for our son. We’re very thankful. And we’re very happy to hear you’re all right.”
“Th-thanks.” A lump formed in Harper’s throat. She wasn’t used to praise. At least not from strangers.
“We’re also very proud of both of you.” Rusty’s father glanced up at his son on the other side of Harper’s bed. “Though if we’d known what you were up to all this time, my reaction might have been very different.”
Rusty smirked and squeezed Harper’s hand. Harper glanced his way, imagining just what kind of lecture he would have gotten if his father had known what he’d been doing late at night in seedy strip clubs around town.
Soft fingers closed around Harper’s other hand resting on the top of her blanket, and she looked up to see Rusty’s mother smiling down at her with shimmering amber eyes. “You are absolutely beautiful. I had no idea. If I had known . . .” She turned and looked up at her husband, then back down at Harper and finally to Rusty. “If we had known . . .” A tear spilled over her lashes. “I always wanted Rusty to find a nice girl. I had no idea it would be you. It was meant to be.”
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