A Little Harmless Submission 6 (23 page)

“Shut up. Just shut up.”

“Your father didn’t want you, and when he was sick of you and your mother, he left. He left you alone with a sick woman. A woman who didn’t know any boundaries. And she turned you into some kind of freak. A freak who doesn’t know how to be a real man.”

“I said, shut up—”

His voice ended on a scream, and Maria toppled herself and the chair against Jack. Rome rushed forward, but Jack’s gun discharged. He felt the sting of the bullet in his shoulder, the burning, but he ignored it. He was on Jack, taking his gun away as they fought back and forth. He gained the upper hand and straddled the bastard’s chest. He hit him several times and then wrapped his fingers around his neck.

“Rome, stop. Rome.”

Maria was standing next to him, grabbing on his arm. They were surrounded by FBI agents, and it took him a moment to realize they had come in the moment the gun went off. He released Jack’s neck and rose. He needed to touch her, to make sure she was okay. He pulled her into his arms.

“Oh, baby, I’m so sorry.”

She shuddered against him. “It’s not your fault.”

He blinked as his vision started to blur. “I should have known. Should have figured it out.”

“Rome?”

The room was spinning, and Maria sounded like she was far away. Very far away. But she was there in his arms.

“Rome, honey, you need to sit down.”

“No. I’m fine. Don’t worry about me.”

“Rome!”

The spinning increased, and his vision dimmed to black.

Chapter Seventeen

Maria watched him sleep. It had been a long night. The shot hadn’t been life-threatening, but Rome had lost a lot of blood. She closed her eyes and said a little prayer. She didn’t know how many times she had done that in the last few hours.

The door opened quietly, and Micah stuck his head in. “Hey.”

She smiled then winced at the pain radiating from her lip. “Damn, that hurt.”

Micah stepped inside, and he was followed by Evan. “How’s he doing?”

“Okay. Nothing big, although because of the fight, he lost a little bit of blood. That’s why he fainted.”

“I did not faint.”

She looked at Rome, surprised he was awake. The nurse had said he would be out a few more hours.

“What do you call it?”

“Women faint. Men pass out.”

She rolled her eyes then looked at his friends. They were both grinning at her. “As you can see, he’s fine.”

Her voice caught at the end. Evan tossed her a sympathetic look. “You have to be exhausted. First you had to save his ass and then you had to sit here all night.”

“Hey.”

Both his friends ignored him. “Why don’t you call your boss? There are also a couple of FBI agents hanging out in the hallway wanting to talk to you again.”

She rolled her eyes as she rose. “I already talked to them.”

“You don’t have to talk to them now. You can just say the hell with them and stay here,” Rome said, frowning. The tone in his voice made him sound like a petulant child, but she knew part of it was being in the hospital. Neither of them were very good at being patients, she was sure.

She kissed his forehead. “I have to call my supervisor anyway. I’ll be right back. Don’t let him get agitated.”

She tried to walk by Evan, but he drew her into his arms and gave her a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “Thank you.”

Then he handed her over to Micah, and he did the same. “We owe you one, Agent Callahan.”

Tears burned the back of her eyes, but she blinked them away. She looked over at Rome who was watching them with a frown.

“I’ll be back in a few minutes.”

She slipped out of the room, relieved to be out of there. Rome had been giving her such a strange look. Almost angry. Like it had been her fault. Leaning against the wall, she shut her eyes and tried to keep from allowing the fear that had swamped her the night before to take over. She would not let it win.

“Agent Callahan?”

She opened her eyes and found the agent she’d talked to the night before. “Agent Brewer.”

The man smiled at her as if her remembering his name was a gift. “If you have a chance, I’d like to talk to you. Agent Smith is on his way here.”

Her eyes widened at the news. “He is?”

“Yes. He has been calling every thirty minutes to check on you.”

She smiled. “He’s a family friend.”

“This family friend wants to know just what the hell you were thinking.”

She looked down the hall at her supervisor. He looked tired. She had always thought of him as an honorary uncle. He and her father had started at the Academy together, came up in the ranks together, and it was Smith who had been beside the bed with her when her father died. Everything she had been holding back came bubbling to the surface. The fear for Rome, for herself, the stress she’d been working under the last two weeks…

She let the tears fall as she walked down the hall to him. When she reached him, he opened his arms, and she allowed him to pull her close. And then she wept.

· · · · ·

“You fainted,” Evan said, chuckling. “Wuss.”

“I didn’t faint.”

“Maria said you did,” Micah said as he settled in the chair beside the bed. The one Maria had been sitting in. All night, he had known she was there. He had been drugged to the gills, but he had felt her presence, and it was the only thing that would have kept him in that hospital room.

“She’s wrong.”

“I have a feeling she’s hardly ever wrong,” Micah remarked. There was a hint of humor in his friend’s voice, but Rome ignored it.

“She thinks she knows what she’s doing. Damned if she just thinks she can do what she wants.”

Evan and Micah shared a look.

“And another thing, how does she get off acting like she saved me? I’m the one who got her out of the situation.”

“Jack was your partner,” Micah said quietly.

The guilt crashed down on him. “Yeah, I know. It’s something I should have seen.”

“Shit, son, no one could have seen it. He hid it well. His name isn’t even Jack Daniels.”

That caught his attention.

“What do you know?”

“Just what that Agent Brewer told us. They started looking into his background. Jack Daniels died twenty-two years ago. He stole the kid’s identity, built a life for himself. I have a feeling the FBI will be uncovering information about the bastard for years.”

“Maria blames herself, Rome,” Micah said.

“He was my partner. I should have known he was killing women. Hell, I didn’t even make the connection with all his trips back to the mainland.”

“From what I heard, they’re going to have a special commission, and your girlfriend is going to be under the microscope,” Evan said.

“What the hell are you talking about? They’re blaming her for their idiocy? Feels like she’s going to be the scapegoat. They couldn’t find the man, and she has to come up with some kind of asinine idea of using herself as bait, and this is the way they treat her?”

“Yeah, well, she’s a trained FBI agent.” Micah’s tone was oddly neutral.

“So.” It sounded very immature, but he didn’t care. The fear he’d had when he knew that Jack had her, what he could have done to her, came rushing back. “If she thinks that she’s going to be doing shit like that after we get married, she has another think coming.”

“You’re getting married? You proposed?” Evan asked.

“No, but we will.”

“You will?” Micah asked. “Is she coming to live here?”

Rome hadn’t gotten that far. Hell, he’d just come up with the idea. He couldn’t let her go, couldn’t watch her leave. It would tear him apart. He loved her, loved her like crazy, and there was just no way he could let her go.

“I’ll probably have to move to DC.”

“You hate DC,” Evan said. “You called it a cesspool.”

“That was the Pentagon. And it doesn’t matter. As an FBI agent, she would have to be there. They can’t move around as easily.”

“You might want to ask her about that,” Micah said.

Rome shook his head. He couldn’t do that. Truth was, he wasn’t sure she would say yes to moving to Hawaii. He was worried if he asked her to choose between her career and him, he would lose out. That he couldn’t have.

“No. She’s probably going to easily end up a hero in this. She put her life on the line, picked up that it was someone in law enforcement, and with me, she defeated the bastard. So her career should take off. I can easily get a job there.”

Even if it would kill him. Hawaii was his home, his love, but he couldn’t be here without her. She was more important to him than anything in the world.

“No, I’ll move to DC.”

· · · · ·

“We have no idea who he is.”

She stared at her supervisor. “What do you mean?”

“We have taken his prints, his DNA, nothing. But the bastard has no record. Nothing to link him to any other identity.”

She sipped the water he had given her and looked out the window. The sun was just peeking over the mountains, and she sighed.

“So he stole an identity?”

He nodded. “Kid who died of leukemia. He invented a whole life.”

“Not good that we didn’t pick up on that.”

“Us?” Her supervisor crossed his arms over his chest. “No. Three police departments hired him. Hell, he turned down a detective position with Phoenix to come here.”

“Do you know anything else?”

He shook his head. “He wasn’t really fixated on Rome until he came here. It was hard to work with a man who had so much respect. Jack had little from what I have been told. The other officers didn’t like working with him.”

She nodded.

“There’s going to be an investigation at some point, but the fact that you picked up that he was in law enforcement will definitely get you some leverage. I have a feeling you’ll end up with a promotion out of this.”

“What?”

“Oh, don’t look so stunned. You caught a serial killer that has been haunting us for two years. You got caught by him, but by doing that, I’m sure you’ll end up with a promotion. Might mean you have to move. I do know there will be an opening in the Phoenix field office.”

She waited for the joy that should bring, but there was nothing there. Nothing that made her feel good about getting a promotion. It should have made her ecstatic, but it didn’t. In fact, she felt somehow deflated.

“Now, agent, you’ll explain just what the hell you were doing.”

She shook herself out of her thoughts. “Catching a killer.”

“No. Your phone was left at this Detective Carino’s house. What were you doing there?”

“Are you asking me about my personal relationship with Rome?”

“Yes.”

“As my supervisor or as my honorary uncle?”

“As your father’s best friend. Just what the hell is it? I hear you were going to a BDSM club with him, living with him? Was that just part of the job?”

Not for her. She shook her head.

“And just what the hell is going to happen between you two?”

“Are you by chance asking me if his intentions are honorable?”

He looked uncomfortable, but he nodded. “Someone has to.”

“I wasn’t a virgin. I’m close to thirty.”

“And you might be able to fool other people, but I know that none of your relationships were like this.”

She straightened her spine. “Keeping tabs on me?”

His expression softened, and he reached across the table to pat her on the hand. “No, honey. I hear it when you say his name. You’re in love with him.”

The tears started to burn the back of her eyes again, but she would not cry. She would not fall apart again. “Yes.”

“So, what ya going to do about it, little girl?”

“Nothing. Rome isn’t into long-term relationships, and I knew that when I went into the this. Don’t worry about me. I can handle it.”

The look he gave her told her that he thought otherwise.

“I have to talk to you about something else,” she said.

“What would that be?”

“My future at the FBI.”

· · · · ·

“You didn’t have to drive home.”

Rome was grumbling, and he knew he sounded like a little boy. He didn’t care. He hurt. Inside and out. His shoulder was hurting like a bitch because he had refused his last painkillers. Probably a bad idea now that he thought about it, especially since Maria had insisted on driving.

“I’m not sure you would have been up to it. You know I got shot in the shoulder once and found it hard to drive for a few days.”

She unlocked the door and then pushed it open. Stepping back, she took his arm to help him into the house. Like he was an invalid of some sort.

Once they were inside, she closed the door and locked it.

“Micah and Evan made sure to get your prescriptions taken care of.”

“I don’t need painkillers.”

She said nothing, so he turned to see her giving him a wry look. “Yeah, you’re a big, bad He-Man. But one of them is for infection. You want to make sure you take it.”

He nodded and headed toward the couch. Damn, he was tired. Just coming home from the hospital had him feeling like a ninety-year-old man.

She was staring at him and biting on her bottom lip. Then she winced.

“Damn, I keep forgetting about that.”

Rome frowned. Dammit, he thought he was over the anger, but it whipped through his blood. He held it back the best he could. He was still pissed at himself for leaving her in that position, for not picking up on Jack’s issues. He was his partner, and he should have known.

Her spine stiffened, and he knew she misinterpreted it. Her boss had told him that she blamed herself for not checking Jack out, but the problem had been he wasn’t officially part of the HPD anymore. They’d already started his paperwork for the resignation before Maria hit the island. He hadn’t been on their list. That was Rome’s fault.

“Are you sure you’re alright?”

He nodded. “I’ll be fine in a day or two. You heard the doctor.”

She gave him an overly bright smile. “Well that’s good because my flight leaves at ten tonight.”

“What?” he asked, but she was already walking back to the bedroom.

“My flight. I’m going back with Agent Smith.”

She didn’t even slow down. She yelled it out from the room.