Thank God the girls were safe. Dee had taken them to a hotel for the night. Hailey had wondered what they’d think about going with Dee, but Camilla had sounded ecstatic on the phone, and all Ali could talk about was ordering room service and watching Kung Fu Panda 3. Dee had booked them in a suite at the W—probably nicer than any room she’d ever stayed in. They would have a blast. And be safe.
That was one less thing to worry about.
The nurse shifted Bruce’s head on the pillow and checked his breathing tubes and blood pressure monitor.
When she was done, she turned to Hailey and put her hand on her arm. “He’s doing well.”
“I’m sorry about calling you in here,” Hailey said. “I guess I’m sort of out of it.”
“It’s no problem. Let us know if you need anything else. Dr. Schwann should be in again in a few hours.”
Baker had performed the six-hour surgery to remove the bullet, which had struck only a fraction of an inch from Bruce’s fifth cervical vertebrae.
Instead, it had punctured his right lung and done damage to some nerves. Chances were there’d be no permanent damage, but no one would know until he woke up.
“He will wake up, though?” Hailey had asked.
“We have no reason to believe he won’t,” Baker had told her after the surgery. “There was no cranial injury. His vitals are good.” He must have seen her looking at Bruce’s breathing tube. “A little extra oxygen, that’s all. We’ll remove it once he’s awake.”
“So, we just wait?” Desperation filled her voice. Jim had been shot. Then Hal at Hunters Point. Now Bruce. That bullet was meant for her. She had just gotten off the phone with Jim only moments earlier.
How could that be coincidence?
Dr. Baker nodded. “We just wait.”
“Did you retrieve the bullet?”
“We couriered it over to the San Francisco police lab,” he said. “Standard protocol for shootings.”
“You didn’t happen to notice anything odd about it, did you?” she asked.
The doctor frowned, shook his head. “I’m not into guns myself.”
“Of course.” She was disappointed. She wanted answers. She wanted them this minute. What was she hoping for?
For the doctor to hand her a connection between the gun used to shoot Bruce and the one used to shoot at Jim. To confirm it was the same shooter. It had to be, didn’t it? And what did it really matter? Knowing the same gun had shot both men didn’t get them any closer to a suspect.
Nothing short of a copper jacket etched with a name was going to help.
When the resident came by at midnight, Hailey asked why Bruce wasn’t awake yet. How long would it take?
“The bullet struck close to the spinal cord, so there’s always the chance of paralysis.”
“Paralysis.” Bruce could not be paralyzed. Not after John. Not while sitting in front of her house.
“Sometimes it’s just the shock to the body,” the doctor added. “We have to wait and see.”
Hailey was still waiting.
She stood in the middle of the room and felt the weight of the last year come down on her.
John’s death. Jim’s shooting. Hal’s distrust.
The girls.
Ending things with Bruce minutes before he was shot by a bullet that was meant for her.
Hailey began to sob. She sobbed as she hadn’t since the days after John’s death. Let herself fall apart.
Only when her phone buzzed did she fight to calm herself.
Jamie Vail.
Hailey answered. “Hey.”
“I heard,” Jamie said.
“It’s four in the morning,” Hailey said.
“I know. I always wake up at this hour.”
“Lucky you.”
“It’s amazing what YouTube videos you can get sucked into in the middle of the night.” Jamie paused as if waiting for a reply. “Do you want company?” she finally asked, the joking aside.
In the days after John’s death, Hailey had struggled with needing to be alone and never wanting to be alone. Not that she’d had much choice—the girls had been glued to her. “I don’t know,” she admitted.
“You want to talk about it?” Jamie asked.
“It’s a royal shit storm, Jamie.”
“You’re talking to the right person, then. I’ve lived through a few of those.”
Hailey drew the chair to Bruce’s bed and held his hand as she told Jamie about Hal’s request for a transfer and Jim’s shooting.
She told Jamie everything she had intended to tell Hal.
Then, she told Jamie about the conversation with Bruce—that he had come on official business. And soon, Hailey was telling Jamie all of it—about going to his house and finding out about the other woman, about breaking up with him minutes before he was shot. “I was breaking up with him.”
“You didn’t get him shot.”
“He has to wake up, Jamie. I can’t lose him, not after …”
“He’s going to be okay.”
“I know it’s the middle of the night, but I hope they’re in the lab working on this.”
“Roger’s there.”
Hailey sat up. “He is?”
“He had the team working on matching the tread marks from the street.”
“They find the casing?” Hailey asked.
“No.”
She exhaled. “Who’s working it?”
“A team out of CAP, but I don’t know who.”
Crimes Against Persons would process the scene as an assault. Unless he died. Then, the case would get routed to Hailey’s department.
How soon would the shooter realize he got the wrong person? How long before he came after her?
She couldn’t think about that now.
“Go get some sleep,” Hailey said.
Jamie promised to touch base in the morning and hung up. Hailey slipped her phone in her pocket and stood beside Bruce.
The bristle of the day’s growth on his jaw was rough on her fingers. She raked her hands through his hair as she had countless times. It fell, thick, across his cheek, and she brushed it off.
She pressed her face to his. “I love you. I’ll let you go. Just wake up, okay? Come back.”
She sank back into the chair. If she called the lab, she would only be pulling Roger away from the work. He would text if he made any discovery. She couldn’t imagine calling him at four thirty in the morning.
Hal. He was the guy she’d call at four thirty in the morning.
She looked at the missed calls.
Hal had so many questions. Where would they begin?
She drifted off and woke later to the sounds of people arguing in the hall. Hailey sat up and rubbed her eyes. She expected the doctor.
When the door opened, it was Hal who entered.
The anger in his face was gone, and relief poured over Hailey as she started to cry. “Hal.”
Chapter 26
Seeing Hailey’s face took Hal back to the day John had died. The awful tightness in his throat, a burning in his eyes.
He glanced at Bruce Daniels, lying in the bed. His neck bandaged, the machines, the IVs. The look in her eyes as she watched him.
He rubbed his eyes with one hand, stretching his thumb across the bridge of his nose. “Damn.”
Hailey was scared.
She couldn’t have been taller than five-three, the size of his ten-year-old nephew, but she was a force. Hal had never thought of her as small. She was the size of her intellect, her power. It was immense.
Often, he felt small. He’d never been comfortable around small women, feared the fragility.
Curled into the chair beside the bed, she could have been the patient. Tiny. Frail.
She stood and swept her palms over her hair as though to tame it and pull herself together. Then, her gaze drifted to Daniels and her expression crumbled.
It hurt to watch.
And there it was. Another secret she’d kept.
“Since when?”
“Almost two years,” she said, her voice cracking. The tears fell faster, her breath coming in gasps.
He closed the distance between them, wrapped an arm around her, and pulled her, easily, against his chest. He looked down at the top of her head, felt the sobs against him, and said nothing.
Hal had met the doctor in the hallway. He would be in to check Daniels soon, but he didn’t have a lot of good news.
Daniels should have been awake.
The longer the coma, the lower the chance of coming out of it.
Why was Daniels at Wyatt’s house in the middle of the day? A partner should have known.
Hal had requested a few minutes with Hailey before the doctor came in. Maybe he could get her out of there. Just for a while.
Hal held her, fighting his own welling emotion. He’d only seen her cry a couple of times—both right after John’s death. It had been awful, seeing her like that. But this felt so much worse. Like he was part of it. Part of her pain.
A few minutes later, a knock sounded at the door, and they both looked up as the doctor came in, followed by two others. Hailey stepped away from Hal and moved to the bedside.
“Let’s go get some coffee, Hailey.”
She shook her head. “I can’t.”
Hal grabbed her hand. “He won’t be alone. We’ll be right back.”
She was trembling and whispering “no,” but Hal held her arm tightly and pulled her toward the door.
In comparison to Bruce’s room, the hallway was bright and loud. Hailey halted midstride, blinking and watching the activity at the nurses’ station. Phones rang and a line of metal charts clinked against each other as nurses passed by to take one out or slide one in.
One nurse, a white guy almost as big as Hal, filled in a wall-sized grid on a white board. Third from the bottom was “B. Daniels.” In the next box was the attending physician, the one Hal had met. Baker. Next to that, a bunch of letters he couldn’t understand—some sort of acronym.
He pulled on Hailey’s hand, not wanting her to try to decipher the board. The nurse directed him to the cafeteria.
He saw the elevators and paused instinctively. Hailey kept walking.
“Stairs,” she said.
Her pace was slow. She yawned, barely raising her hand high enough to cover it. They passed a series of rooms. A game show played on a TV—Wheel of Fortune or maybe Jeopardy.
The patient was maybe seventeen. On his head was a metal halo attached to his skull with long pins. A woman adjusted his covers, though they were straight already, like she just needed something to do with her hands. She had the same expression in her eyes that he’d seen in Hailey’s. Please don’t let something else go wrong.
They reached the stairwell, and Hal pushed the door open. Hailey stepped inside and stopped, looking around as though she remembered the place.
The last stairwell he’d been in with her was at the jail, the night before he’d asked Marshall for a transfer. This one was bright. Windows lined one wall, and it smelled clean. Hailey made her way to the steps and then turned, and sat.
“Aren’t you hungry?”
“No.”
“How about some coffee?”
She shook her head again.
“Shakley’s awake,” he said. Hal had gone to the hospital to see Shakley earlier, after he’d parted ways with Hailey at the Bank of America Center.
“He’s going to be okay?”
“Better than okay. He’s meeting with the police artist this morning to create a composite of his shooter.”
Fresh tears trailed down her cheeks.
“He said it was a white guy,” Hal added.
“I saw his face. I told you.”
“And I believe you …” Hal moved to sit beside her, but she put a hand out to stop him. “You should go.”
“I’m not leaving,” he said firmly.
“You have to.”
“Did you see him?” She wiped at her tears. “That happened because of me.”
Hal shook his head, stepping forward again.
“Don’t.”
“That did not happen because of you.”
“Yes, it did,” she said. “I let it happen. Somehow, I let it happen.”
“How?” Hal asked.
Hailey shook her head.
“Come on, Wyatt. You’re the most honest cop I know. Who are you protecting?”
She rose and started to climb the stairs. “You have to leave, Hal.”
Hal caught up and took hold of her shoulders, turning her to face him. “I’m not leaving.”
She looked angry now. “I’m telling you to leave.”
“And I said no,” he shouted. His voice echoed in the stairwell. “Who are you protecting? John? Are you protecting John? Because he’s dead, Hailey. You don’t have to protect him.”
She broke through his grip, starting up the stairs again. “Don’t talk about John.”
“Is it Jim, then? Why are you protecting him? He doesn’t deserve your protection.”
She said nothing, sinking onto the steps.
He watched her, the hesitation as it almost came free. He knew she needed to tell it. “Where’s Hailey Wyatt? Where is she? Your husband died. He was shot, but this isn’t about him. It’s about his father, a man who belongs in jail. If John were the kind of man I think he was, he’d agree. He’d help me. Why the hell won’t you?”
Hailey dropped her head in her hands.
The anger in him burst. She’d held this secret too long. It was wrecking them. It was wrecking him. He had to know. Damn it. She had to tell him.
“What about the girls? Is this the legacy you want to leave them with? Because I know what that’s like, Hailey. I know what it’s like when the only thing anyone wants to remember about your old man is that he was crooked.”
How could Hailey turn her back on the truth?
What would make her do that?
Why would she protect Jim Wyatt? How could she after all the lies? He had to have been involved. He didn’t buy that it was Hailey’s mother-in-law, with her lace doilies and her floral teacups. If she’d shot her son, she never could have hid the secret. It would have eaten her alive.
How many times had he studied that file? Most of the window glass had been found in the room, but a few shards of glass fragments lay on the ground outside. Someone had broken the window from the outside to make it look like the shot came from there.
Hailey held her arms against her midsection. As though protecting herself. She’d done that when she was pregnant, rubbing at her belly.
Pregnant.
Hal staggered back. His hands fell from her shoulders. “Christ.” He knew. He raked his hands across his scalp. “It’s the girls,” he whispered. “You’re protecting the girls.”
Terror made her brown eyes black. She started to speak. Stopped. Started to stand, but didn’t move. She shrank as though a box was closing in around her.
Hal sank onto the stair next to her and set his elbows on his knees. Above them, a door opened. Shoes clicked on the cement steps. Another door opened and it was quiet again. Hal hid his face in his hands, filling his lungs with deep breaths.
In. Out.
“I’ll give you Jim,” she whispered.
He waited, listening.
“But if you take him down, you take me too.”
Why hadn’t he realized sooner? She was protecting her girls. Of course she was. But why hadn’t she told him? Him of all people. They could solve it if only she’d trust him. God, he was sick to death of holding it in, of pretending. He steeled his breath, pressed his hands into his knees.
“Was it Camilla or Ali?”
Her eyes went wide. Her hands pressed to her chest as though she couldn’t breathe. “No.”
“Ali,” he guessed. Camilla was too old. It would have come out. But Ali had been only four, almost five, when John died. “Ali shot John.”
Hailey leaned into the wall and cried. Silently. St
reams of tears that she let drip off her chin and nose.
“How?” He sat on the stair, giving her space.
He didn’t yield. “How?”
“Oh, God. She can’t ever know. She can’t ever remember.”
“It’s me. It’s just me,” he whispered.
And then she began to talk, to tell the story. “It was Jim’s gun. He gave it to John because of the threats at the DA’s office. He was teaching John to use it. Ali was bored—” She caught a sob. “—Liz was taking Camilla to a show, and Ali wanted to go, so she went into Jim’s office. He and John started talking, got distracted …” She paused. “I heard them arguing from the kitchen. But they did that a lot, Jim and John.” She met his gaze. “It wasn’t loaded. Jim swore he’d checked it, and John would’ve too. I’m sure he would have.”
He hadn’t. If it hadn’t been loaded, John wouldn’t be dead. One moment of oversight, a little carelessness—that was how it happened.
“Ali turned the barrel toward her dad. He reached for it—to take it away …”
There had been so much blood in the crime scene photos.
She touched her hand to the back of her neck, the place where John’s wound would have been. Had she watched him die?
He gave her time, and after a moment, she went on. “Jim came out of the room, shouting. He had Ali in his arms.” She looked up at him. “His only child was on the floor, dying, and he took her out of there, didn’t want her to see it.”
He couldn’t imagine what Jim had gone through, leaving a dying child. He pictured his own father. The photos he’d seen of his murder. Rubbed his eyes.
“Can you imagine that? Can you imagine leaving your child to die to save Ali the agony of seeing it?”
“I’m so sorry.”
“I got to him, but the bullet grazed the jugular. It was too fast.”
Her eyes clouded. Her stare went flat.
“Christ, Hailey.”
She looked at her open palms. “There was too much blood. I tried, but …”
She had spent the last year trying to save her child. Lying to her bosses, her partner. To everyone. Avoiding that file, because she already knew who killed John, and the reality was too painful to relive.
Why hadn’t he seen it?
“Do you know what John said, lying on the floor?” The words came out as a whisper.
The Rookie Club Thriller series Box Set Page 51