Guarded (32 page)

“No,” Eddy sobbed. “It was an accident. Ask anyone.”

“I was there, you asshole.” Adam paced back and forth, cursing and waving his gun. In the clinic, he passed for a man in his early twenties, but right now, he looked older. Much older. Old enough to be who he claimed.

“Stupid motherfucker didn’t know I was in the back seat sleeping when he ran her off the road. The car flipped and flipped. God, there was so much blood. I didn’t know one woman could bleed so much. It coated me. My legs were sliced to ribbons, but she told me to crawl out. Run. She knew he’d kill me if he found out. So I ran and ran. But I watched the news. Heard my auntie talk about the half-assed job they’d done with his trial. How he’d gotten off with barely a slap on the wrists. How he’d kept his perfect little life while I lost everything. Then my auntie died and I was alone. Except for dear old grandpa who’d disowned his unwed daughter and wanted nothing to do with her bastard son.

“So I ran again. Forgot who I was. Where I’d come from. Until the day this fat asshole showed up on the news crying over the accidental death of his beloved wife. Drunk-driving accident my ass. He probably killed her just like he did my mother.”

“No!” Eddy wailed the word. “I loved Leticia. She was my life. I’d never have risked her. Rebecca was an accident.”

“Don’t you say her name!” Adam raised the gun. Dev had a split second to throw his body in front of the weapon. The pain ripped through his shoulder, slapping him back against the bars. His head cracked against the metal. His hips scraped against cement through his jeans. Stars performed a Scottish country dance in front of his eyes.

Adam, unaware he’d just shot a cop or perhaps not caring, railed, “Do you hear? Do you hear how that fat fuck doesn’t deny killing my mother? Calls it an accident. But I was there. I saw him stand at the guardrail and wave cars past, preventing help from getting there in time to save her.”

“Oh, Jesus. Oh, Jesus. You can’t remember that. You were four.” Eddy whimpered. “I made a mistake. I thought she was already dead. You can’t remember that.”

Gray edged the corners of Dev’s vision and he prayed he could hang on until help got there. A hand on his wrist and a whisper of Ian’s voice let him know the cavalry had arrived.

“Stay still, Cuz. I need the bastard to come a little closer.” Ian’s hushed words floated around Dev like a whirlpool. He paused, but Ian’s next words made Dev wonder if he hadn’t hallucinated his cousin’s presence. “Don’t ask me how, but a monkey stole my gun.”

*   *   *

A
LL
THE
ANIMALS
scattered at the boom of the gunshot ricocheting off the trees. Birds took to the skies in a cacophony of squawks, reptiles slithered beneath bushes, rocks, and signs; even the fox, raccoons, and squirrels bolted for the trees.

Shelley blinked at the sudden emptiness around her. Without her companions racing to the scene with her and the echo of the gunshot ringing in her ears, terror arrowed straight through her chest, immobilizing her.

But only for a moment. Because up ahead, she saw a man lifting his arm and aiming at something on the ground. Shelley yelled, “Hey! Don’t!” Then she ran a zigzag pattern, in case the killer started firing at her.

Everything happened at once. A swift-moving wraith leaped from the bushes. It was Ian and he dove headfirst, arms coming around the gunman’s waist, knocking them both back and down.

A hail of acorns rained down from the trees like well-aimed torpedoes. The tamarins and squirrels and owls pelted the gunman. Ian’s back took some of the attack, but it didn’t slow him down. The gun skittered out of the killer’s hands, toward Dev. He sat up, grabbed it, aimed and said, “Ian, stop playing with him.”

One well-aimed punch and the attacker’s head lolled back. He sank to the ground with all the grace of a drunk after a weekend bender.

Shelley’s pulse thumped loudly in her ears. Her heart beat so loudly that, for a moment, she was deaf to everything but the sound of blood rushing to her head. Then someone yelped. It wasn’t a scream, it was more a cry of shock. And it was enough to jolt her hearing back to normal.

Dev collapsed back onto the ground. His gun hand falling to his chest, where he clutched the toylike pistol to him, as if to keep it from being taken.

Shelley moved to Dev, glanced at Ian and . . .

“Jacob?” Shelley asked Ian and gestured to the unconscious man on the ground. “Is that
Jacob
?”

“Whoa,” Ian said at the same time Dev groaned the words, “Gun, Shells.”

Relief had an odd effect, sometimes. She’d seen him move. Had registered that Dev was still alive. But at the sound of his voice, she felt a rush of joy so profound that it made her eyes sting and her palms sweat. She turned to him, not forgetting about Jacob, just not caring.

She crossed to Dev, dropped to her knees, and swung her arms wide. Ian was tugging something from her hand. She jerked in alarm, when he said, “Just taking my gun back.”

“Dev, please don’t die,” she said, surprised at the shakiness in her voice.

“I’m okay, Shells,” Dev whispered, leaving his weapon on his chest and raising a hand to brush her cheek. His touch tender.

His head and shoulder bled freely. His breathing was steady, if somewhat labored. The sight of his injuries sent her emotions cresting until she was shaking. She stroked a hand down his clammy cheek. He was alive. He was still with her. Her throat was dry and her eyes brimming with tears, but she needed to say something. Her mind blanked and she said, “I-I thought I told you to wait at the gate.”

Shaking and unable to stop, she did the only thing she could think to do. The thing she wanted, no needed, most of all. She lowered her head and pressed her lips to his.

Dev’s lips were cold but welcoming.

The reassuring kiss was brief. Careful of his injuries, she hugged him close, her lips against his ear.

He trembled from pain or shock, maybe both. His voice weak and fading, he said, “Shells, I love you. I always have. I should have said it long ago . . .”

“Shhh . . .” she whispered. Tears tracked down her cheeks. Her own hands shook as she rocked him lightly in her arms. Deputies and paramedics raced to them. Hard hands clapped around her arms but before she was yanked away, Ian was there, shoving the hands off.

The reprieve couldn’t last. And Dev, her beautiful cop. No longer the impossible fantasy she’d had since college, but a man, flesh and blood in her arms. His face gray with pain, his eyes hazed with the will to hang on, stared into her eyes imploringly.

And she was lost.

“I love you, Dev.” She wasn’t surprised when his eyes closed on those words. He’d barely clung to consciousness this long. He slipped now into the oblivion that offered an escape from his pain. The words ripped from her. “Don’t leave me now. Please, don’t leave.”

D
EV TRIED TO
sit up. Pain lanced up his right shoulder and made his already aching head throb. He hissed in pain.

“Whoa, sit still, Cuz.” Ian’s face bobbed in front of Dev’s eyes. The normally happy-go-lucky Marine appeared worried, his face pale beneath his tan. Ian blinked his weary-looking eyes before he turned, calling over his shoulder, “Hey, can we get a nurse in here? He’s awake.”

Awake?

“Ian what the fu—” Dev cut himself off. An older woman with dark ebony skin, silver hair, and bright pink scrubs bustled into the room.

“Well, it’s about time, sugar. How do you feel?” With a wide grin on her pleasantly plump face, she unlooped the pink stethoscope from around her neck and immediately pressed it to his chest.

Confused.
But he thought better than to say that. His mind was rapidly beginning to clear and he deduced he was in a hospital. Which one, how long he’d been there, and what happened he figured he could get from Ian after Nurse Happy left the room. “I feel fine, thanks.”

“No pain?” The grin slipped from her face, disbelief heavy in her voice.

As if to test her theory, she tugged at the bandages on his head and on his shoulder. Normally he would have held the pain in, but sensing her need to witness it, he let his breath out on a hiss.

She nodded. “You don’t need to play tough guy with me. I got three grandsons as big as you. I know how you boys like to pretend you’re all steel, but I can’t help you if you don’t let me.” Nurse Happy grinned again, then winked at him. “Now you sit tight while I go get the doctor. Welcome back.”

Waiting until she shuffled out the door, Dev turned to Ian. “What the fuck is going on?”

Ian ran both hands through his golden hair, sending it sticking up in odd directions, then tugged a piece of grape bubblegum from his pocket. He popped it into his mouth and chewed thoughtfully before sighing. “You’re in Tidewater General. You were medevacked here after you decided it would be a good idea to keep a bullet in your broken collarbone.”

“Christ.” Dev touched his injured shoulder with his uninjured hand. “This was at the zoo last night?”

“Two nights ago,” Ian corrected. He rose from his chair and clapped Dev’s hand lightly. “The McKinnon clan has been camped out in the waiting room for news. Guess I’d better tell them.”

Dev grabbed his cousin’s wrist. “Wait, where’s Shells? Is she okay? The last thing I remember is her bitching because I didn’t wait outside. I think she was hit too. Is she okay?”

His fear rose as the memory of that night returned in rapid fire. Jacob, calling himself Adam, aiming the gun. Shelley running to Dev’s rescue. The gun in her hands. The crash and pain exploding in his shoulder and head as he was hit. The sight of her pale face and quivering lips as she wrapped her arms around him. The heady scent of vanilla as her hair formed a curtain around them before she bent over and kissed him.

Ian glanced out the window into the dark night. His brows knit and lips compressed.

“Where . . .” He had to clear his suddenly dry throat. “Where is Shelley? Oh Christ, is she hurt? Take me to her.”

Dev threw his feet over the side of the bed and tried to stand. His vision swam and legs wobbled before Ian pressed a hand to his chest, forcing him back down.

“She’s not hurt. Stay put.” Ian pointed to the bed. “Lie back down and swear you’ll stay there, and I’ll tell you.”

Under normal circumstances, Dev would have knocked his younger cousin to the floor and gone out the door, but right now a toddler could probably have beaten Dev in an arm-wrestling match, so he complied. “Fine, now tell me,” he said, when he’d returned to the stiff and damned uncomfortable bed.

Ian sighed hard and said in one long breath, “Deputy Do-Wrong insisted on hauling her into the station for questioning. Don’t look at me like that.” Ian folded his arms over his chest and scowled. “Ryan and Seth went with her. She was released pretty quick. She’s been downstairs with the family ever since. Except when she went to your place to check on her ferret. Who knew those ratlike things could be so damned cute?”

“Lucy’s not a rat,” Shells said, her voice floating in from the open doorway.

Monitors he didn’t know he was attached to beeped like gunfire at her presence.

God, she was beautiful. In jeans and a pale blue T-shirt with her hair flowing in long red curls down to her shoulders, she could have been an angel framed in the doorway.

“Frack, Dev! I told you to wait at the gate. But, oh no, you had to rush in and save the day. If you had died, I would have killed you!”

Okay, so maybe not an angel.
Still . . .

“Um . . . yeah.” Ian rose to his feet and hustled to the doorway, turning sideways to slide past Shelley. “I’m just gonna give you two some privacy. I need to tell the clan you’re back in the land of the living, so, uh, make up quick.”

Dev hissed between his teeth at the scowl on Shelley’s face as Ian all but left a vapor trail behind him.

For several long moments she remained in the doorway, twisting her fingers. Finally, she stormed—there really was no other word for it—over to the bed.

Dev braced himself for a tongue-lashing. She’d been frightened when he was shot. He’d seen the fear in her eyes just before he blacked out. Not a big jump from terror to anger.

But when she reached the bed, she bent over and pressed her lips gently against his. The touch was featherlight and so quick, he hadn’t had time to wrap his good arm around her before she pulled back and put three feet between them.

“I-I’m glad you’re all right.” She cleared her throat and blinked rapidly. Dev’s heart squeezed against his rib cage at the unshed tears in her eyes. “I’m not happy with you for getting shot, but you did everything I asked. You saved a lot of lives, animal and human, that night. I wanted to thank you before I went home to Elkridge.”

“Home?” The monitors beeped wildly again. “Shells, you can’t leave.”

“I don’t have a choice. I’m needed there.” She shrugged. “Beau is being transferred from here to Elkridge General tomorrow morning. I’ve applied to be his emergency foster mother. My old social worker, Mrs. Harris, helped me. I can’t stay here with Beau back in the Ridge.”

“Oh.” What could Dev say to that? Beau would need her. “What’s his prognosis?”

Shelley smiled. “He should be fine. It was touch and go the first night, but the doctors are confident he’ll make a full recovery.”

But what about us?
He wanted to ask, but before he could, Shelley said, “The zoo is being shut down. I’ve been offered an opportunity to help with the relocation of the animals. Dr. Kessler is a mess. Jacob was his grandson. Between finding out his daughter’s child is a killer, being attacked, hospitalized, and learning he doesn’t have Alzheimer’s, he needs my help.” She gave a half-hearted smile.

“He doesn’t have Alzheimer’s?”

“No. Turns out Jacob, who insists everyone call him Adam now”—she waved a dismissive hand in the air—“anyway,
Jacob
was drugging him with benzodiazepine. It’s why he attacked my boss in the clinic that night. Dr. Kessler caught Jacob drugging his afternoon tea. I guess Jacob wanted to make his grandfather suffer for disowning his mother. He was trying to shut down the clinic. Only Jacob really does love animals. He wanted to protect them, even as he killed four people.”

“An animal-loving, deranged killer? That’s a new one on me.” Dev stretched, as much as the bed and wires would allow. “This has to be the strangest case I’ve ever worked, and it wasn’t even in my jurisdiction.”

Shelley’s grin was brief. “I know what you mean. It gets weirder. Remember I told you about Miah’s first cub? I was right. She really didn’t hurt it. Reyna sold it. Jacob found out she was selling to private collectors and threatened to turn her in if she didn’t make him her partner. Together, they stole animals, but Jacob relocated them to actual zoos and sanctuaries.”

“What about the deputy? Did he know?”

Shelley sat on the edge of the bed and took Dev’s hand into hers. “No, he had no idea. But he’s in hot water with Sheriff Webber anyway. Sheriff figures he should have had a clue what his fiancée was doing.”

Dev nodded. “I’m with the sheriff there.” He paused, a flicker of something playing on the fringes of his memory. “Who was in the cage with Eddy?”

Shelley’s expression grew somber and she pushed to her feet. “Cristos. Jacob had already killed him before we got there.”

“I’m sorry, Shells.” Dev interlaced his fingers with hers. “I know he was your friend.”

Her red-rimmed blue eyes met his briefly, then she slid away from his touch. She put several feet between them before she said, “Anyway, I wanted to say good-bye. And thank you for everything you did.”

“But what about us?” The words were barely out of his mouth when the sheen of tears in her eyes started to spill.

“I can’t.” She shook her head. “Dev, I-I’m sorry. I just can’t do this. Tidewater is your home. You have a big family downstairs that needs you. Here. I don’t belong here. I don’t have anyone here.”

“You have me.” He gritted the words between his teeth, furious that he wasn’t enough. Then it occurred to him. “You have Jules too. She’s been searching for you forever. You’re not just going to leave her again?”

Shelley shook her head and backed away. Tears tracked stains down her cheeks. Her blue eyes bright with agony and . . . fear.

The pain in her gaze was so overwhelming, he almost missed the fear. “Shells, wait.”

Nurse Happy followed by a short doctor in blue scrubs and white lab coat hurried into the room. She called to Shelley over her shoulder, “Sugar, you’ll need to wait outside while the doctor examines him. Don’t worry, darlin’. Your man’ll be just fine. Now go on outside and I’ll come get you.”

Shelley didn’t run for the door.

But Dev wasn’t surprised to learn she hadn’t waited.