All I Need (Hearts of the South) (19 page)

“I know you’re right. I
know
it.” Tears washed Landra’s blue eyes with a bright sheen. “But you didn’t see how keyed up he was last night. You know his temper, Tick, and I cannot risk—”

“I know the temper he had ten years ago, when he was a high school boy, and your mama was trying to keep him under control because your daddy wasn’t interested in being his daddy.” Beneath the gentleness, Calvert’s voice was firm. “Now he has six years of law-enforcement experience under his belt, and that refines a man. Plus, he’s spent the last year reconsidering everything he thought he knew about life. That polishes a man. You think I’d have hired him with the intent of putting him back in a patrol car if I thought he couldn’t control himself?”

“Oh my God, you could have gone all day without talking about putting him back in a car.” Landra sucked in an audible breath and pushed her hair, falling from its bun, away from her face. She set her shoulders in a straight line. “I’ll think about it, all right? What’s the next step?”

“I’m going to make contact with Frank’s lawyer and apply a little leverage. He might be willing to trade a divorce and giving up his parental rights for his career.” Autry gestured at Calvert’s clipboard. “What are the odds that report might be delayed a couple of days on its way to Leon County?”

He shrugged, a hint of mischief lighting his dark eyes. “It’s possible. The guy who files my reports is currently creating an electronic archive of a decade’s worth of cold cases.”

“Great. I’ll try to nail down his signature on some quick agreements.” Autry’s smile could only be described as feral. “Then when Landra’s and the baby’s interests are covered, we’ll ruin his career and see if we can send him to prison.”

Savannah scrawled followup and discharge instructions across the chart and passed it off to Haley. She excused herself and slipped from the room. Outside, she rested her elbow on the counter and covered her eyes with one hand. She blew out a long breath.

“Jim, I don’t care how crappy your life is.” Clark Dempsey leaned over the counter next to her and snagged a random pen to fill out his report. The bulletproof vest, required daily wear for all EMTs since the second shooting, made his movements awkward. She lifted her head to slant a look at him as he glared at his partner. “And I especially don’t care today. Give it a rest, will you?”

“I would listen to you.” Jim turned his back and rested his elbows atop the counter. “You want a cup of coffee?”

“Yeah, heavily spiked with Xanax if you’re going to keep it up today.”

Jim ignored him. “Mills, you want anything?”

“No, thanks.” He eyed her a moment and she lifted an eyebrow. She wasn’t in the mood for him either. “What?”

“You remind me of someone. Just don’t know who.”

Dempsey looked up from his shift report. “Yeah, me too. Coffee, Jim. Lots of Xanax.”

With a harrumph, Jim disappeared down the hall in the direction of the small coffee shop on the hospital’s ground floor. Dempsey scratched out a line and started over. “What would I have to do to get you or Mackey to put me on a seventy-two-hour hold so I didn’t have to listen to him for a few days?”

“A lot.” Normally, she liked him, but she was too tired and wrung out to entertain his particular brand of humor. Besides, she was still smarting a little over the fact Emmett had walked out on her the night before to talk to him. Apparently, he trusted Dempsey.

Exam four opened behind them. Savannah glanced down the hall to see Calvert duck out the back entrance to the side parking lot. Landra caught her gaze and touched Autry’s arm. “Would you go ahead and give me a minute here?”

“Sure.” Autry waved toward the front exit. “I’ll be in the waiting room.”

“Hey, Landra Sue.” Eyes narrowed, Dempsey watched Autry’s departure, then turned to Emmett’s sister. He dropped his voice to a low murmur. “Little more to this than you’re telling Em, isn’t there?”

“Not now, Clark.” Landra pinned Savannah with a piercing expression. “You’re the one, aren’t you?”

Savannah started to shake her head, not sure exactly what Landra meant, but Dempsey nodded and dropped the filched pen back on the desk. “She’s the one.”

“I should stay out of this.” Landra crossed her arms over her chest, her voice intense despite her hushed tone. “He’s a man and he has his own life, but he’s my little brother. He’s been mine and Mama’s hope since she brought him home, and then when there wasn’t any hope left, he was our joy. I’m asking you, please don’t hurt him. He’s not a plaything or a stopgap or whatever is going on with the two of you. I don’t like looking at him and seeing him without hope or joy. If that’s because of you, let him go. Please.”

Without waiting for a reply, she strode toward the front exit and disappeared through the door.

Savannah stared after her, speechless for once in her life.

“Gates Melbourne.”

The name sank into her shocked consciousness, and she whirled on Dempsey. “
What?
”

“That’s where I know you from. I worked with him some when he was swinging shifts between here and Valdosta.” Dempsey tilted his chin. “You’re Gates Melbourne’s fiancée.”

Too much was happening at once, and she struggled for her normal reserve. She matched Dempsey’s challenge with her own chin. “Yes.”

Dempsey was silent a moment, his eyes sad. “Poor guy.”

She nodded. “Yes, it was bad—”

“Not Gates. He went out on top, doing what he loved, loving life, loving you.” Dempsey shook his head, for once his face set in a sober expression. “I meant Em. He doesn’t stand a chance, and he doesn’t even know it. Landra’s right—you need to let him go.”

Was he crazy? Leaving for work and then simply never coming home did not constitute “going out on top”. Gates was supposed to come home that night, like always, and tangle his feet with hers while they watched late-night television in their bed, and that Saturday, he should have put on the tux he’d kicked up such a fuss about and waited for her at the altar, waited for them to start the rest of their lives together.

Then all of that had just been gone.

And Dempsey was worried about Emmett, who she was simply…whatever the hell they were doing. It wasn’t the same by any means.

Gates was gone. At least Emmett could have those todays and tomorrows and…

“If you’re going to get pissed at anyone, make it me.” Dempsey’s voice hardened. “Not Em because he’s alive while Melbourne’s gone. Because you have no clue how close it was, and you have no idea what the last year’s been like for him. He’s getting his bearings back, finally, and I don’t want to see them knocked out from under him again.”

She sucked in a breath that was shakier than she liked. “And you think I’d do that to him?”

“Not on purpose, no.” Neither his expression nor his voice softened. “But you’re still putting your world back together, right? His well-being is not your primary concern, and we both know it. I’m out of line here, and he’ll have my ass for this, but yeah, Landra’s got a point—if you can’t see him as part of that life you’re making, you need to back the hell off him.”

Chapter Ten

Desperate for a little calm in the hurricane of her day, Savannah pulled into Amy and Rob’s driveway after work. Amy’s car was gone, but Rob’s truck signaled he might be home. Still feeling shaky, she let herself in and found him in the dining room, perusing a county map spread out on the table. With a drowsy Hamilton draped football-style on his arm, he looked up and smiled. “What’s up?”

She slung her bag on a nearby chair and crossed to stand by him. With a gentle fingertip, she stroked the thin silk of Hamilton’s dark hair. “Do you think I’m trustworthy?”

Taken aback, he studied her a moment. “It depends on the context. Why do you ask?”

“Emmett doesn’t trust me.”

“Smart guy.” He leaned forward to mark a point on the map with a thick black marker. “Only way he could be smarter would be to run for the hills.”

“Robert.” He was not helping.

“I’m serious.” He straightened and held his arm closer to his chest when Hamilton stirred. He rested his hip on the table. “I love you, Savannah, and I know you’d have my back no matter what, the same way I know Amy would. But that’s different. You’re still holding your grief like a shield, with both hands. You won’t let it go, and that means you can’t have his back.”

She crossed her arms over her chest. The conversation made her stomach hurt. As much as she knew she needed to look at this, she didn’t want to. “Clark Dempsey thinks I should let him go.”

“You probably should.” His expression serious, Rob stared her down. “He’s a decent guy. Playing him isn’t fair.”

“I’m not playing him.” Her voice wanted to break on the words.

“Not on purpose, but you’re stringing him along when you don’t have any actual intention of being real with him.” His features softened somewhat. “It’s wrong, Savannah.”

“I’m not—” She swallowed the protest. Not knowingly, but yes, she was, because she couldn’t damn well make up her mind what to do.

“Do you trust him?” Rob’s quiet question cut across her confused thoughts.

“Yes.” She did. He’d promised not to let her fall, had shown her he could be depended on, and look at how he was with his family. He was a stand-up guy, the kind a woman could trust herself to.

“Then what’s the problem?”

She grimaced. “I don’t trust life.”

“There’s that being-buried thing again.” He lifted his free hand and let it drop to his thigh. “Why don’t you try letting go, just a little, and living again? Maybe then Emmett can find his way to trusting you.”

* * * * *

Emmett made himself close the truck door with a quiet snick. He wasn’t going to slam the door, he wasn’t going to knock the apartment door open, he wasn’t going to yell at Landra.

He for damn sure wasn’t going to yell at Landra.

But he was going to get to the bottom of the photos that had shown up in Tick Calvert’s cloud-sharing folders that afternoon, the photos of bruises and lacerations and contusions, photos that had Landra’s name attached to them and turned his stomach.

He was pretty sure he already knew the story, and he was fucking mad about it.

His key scraped in the lock, and he pushed the door in with a soft touch. Landra, curled into one end of the couch with one of his Maxwell leadership texts, looked up. A smile died on her lips.

“You want to explain these?” He held the file, with copies of the photos, aloft and let it hit the coffee table. Pictures scattered across the glass top. The one on top—he was certain the mark it highlighted came from a belt buckle striking tender skin.

She hissed in a breath, her expression pained. “Oh, Emmy, I didn’t want you to see.”

Protecting
him
. Son of a bitch. That only made him angrier.

“You weren’t supposed to see these.” She gathered the photographs and slipped them back into the folder. “How did you get them?”

“I coordinate all the reports for the department. I have access to everything, and I get a notification whenever Calvert uploads something new.” He rested his hands at his hips. “Hell, Landra, the question is why didn’t you tell me?”

“I didn’t want you—”

“Let me guess. You were afraid of what I’d do.” He shook his head, disgusted. “You and Mama are never going to let me forget any of it, are you? Shit.”

“Em, it’s not that.” On her feet, she faced him, one hand a shield over the lower curve of her abdomen. The memory of the bruises darkening that area of her body pulsed in his head, and he wanted to vomit. “You’ve been through so much, and you have so much going on right now. I didn’t want to add to that.”

“You’re my
sister
.” He didn’t know how to push everything that meant into two small syllables. “You’re all I have left.”

He could say that honestly because he damn sure didn’t have Savannah.

“And you’re all I have too.” Jaw set, she blinked hard. “Your first reaction last night was to go after Frank. You can’t deny that.”

“Every guy I know would have the same instinct.” He threw up his hands. “But I didn’t and I won’t, even without Mama or you to run interference. I know what I have to lose, and I’m not going to risk that, not even for the satisfaction of watching Frank hurt for what he did to you.”

“Emmett, I couldn’t take that chance—”

Ignoring her, he stalked down the hall to his bedroom and opened the gun locker in his closet. He grabbed the shotgun and strode back to the living room.

She frowned at the gun, a sudden stillness about her. “What are you doing?”

Fuck, she didn’t trust him to do the right thing. He could talk until Jesus came back, and they’d still see him as the hotheaded boy he’d been.

Hell, maybe if they’d tried less to control him and more to mold him, it wouldn’t have taken so long for him to outgrow it.

“I’m supposed to be able to trust you, Landra. You’re the only one I can trust—you and Clark. Because Dad’s always going to be a cheating prick and Mama’s always going to take him back. But now you’re keeping secrets too, out of some misguided idea that you have to protect me from myself.” He passed the gun into her startled hold. “Eight in the magazine. If Frank shows up, shoot his ass. I’m going out.”