Lawman's Redemption (20 page)

“But I don't want you here with your sisters. I want you here with Brady. He needs us. He's too alone, and he's lots happier with me and you than he is by himself.”

“You think?” Hallie asked dryly. She closed the cookbook, then tore her shopping list from the notepad. “Get some clothes
on and let's go to the grocery store. You and I are going to learn how to make the best chalupas you've ever had.”

“I've never had chalupas.”

“Good. Then they'll be the best no matter how they turn out.”

Lexy headed off to the guest room, which she'd claimed for her own. Hallie was about to leave the dining table when she noticed the girl's headphones hanging on the back of a chair. The kid wore them more often than not, and frankly, Hallie was tired of seeing them attached like some sort of semi-permanent headgear.

She hesitated a moment, then grabbed the headphones and followed the cord to the CD player in the front pocket of the backpack. Clutching them in one hand and the CDs in the other, she went to the pantry, dumped them all on the lowest shelf and arranged a stack of boxed goods in front of them. Of course, Lexy would miss them, but maybe they could negotiate a fair-use agreement before Hallie gave them back.

 

They were on their way into town when Lexy gave Hallie another of those sly looks. “Oh, gee, it's just about lunchtime. Maybe we should drop by the courthouse and see if Brady has plans for lunch.”

“Maybe he's had enough of our company in the last few days.”

“If he has, he can always say he's got work to do. Come on, Hallie. Look at me. Look how
ordinary
I look. Doesn't that deserve some kind of reward?”

Her outfit was definitely ordinary—a pair of denim shorts that reached halfway to her knees with a tank top, sneakers and socks, all in white. Her hair was still purple, though the color was fading nicely, and she'd left it in its naturally curly state. Her tattoo and belly ring were covered, and the only other foreign objects stuck in her body were in her ears—simple silver balls and hoops.

“Okay,” Hallie said with an exaggerated sigh of defeat.

“We'll stop. But if he cringes, hides under his desk or races out the back way when he sees us, we leave again. Agreed?”

“Agreed.”

She found a parking space on the side street in front of Stella Clark's antique shop, then gave another great sigh as the skies opened up and the gentle rain turned into a downpour. She had no objection to getting a little damp, but with this deluge, she would look like a drowned rat by the time she reached the courthouse.

Fumbling around the seat, she finally came up with an umbrella. She opened her door and popped it up, then splashed around the car to share its protection with Lexy. Huddled together, they crossed the street and were halfway to the courthouse when, without warning, something slammed into them from behind. The umbrella went flying and Hallie stumbled forward, trying without luck to catch herself. She rolled to the side and landed facedown in the waterlogged grass, but not before cracking her head on the base of the lamppost there.

Pain streaked through her, turning everything dark, muffling the voices around her. There were two men, she thought dazedly, and Lexy, screaming and swearing as fluently as any teenage boy. “What are you doing?” someone else shouted, and another voice chimed in. “Leave them alone!”

Hallie tried to roll over, to get up and help Lexy, but lifting her head sent pain and nausea through her in great, heaving waves. Tears burning her eyes, she sank back down and willed the throbbing to settle into mere agony.

She was dimly aware of a screech of pain from somewhere nearby, followed by running footsteps and squealing tires. Their attackers were gone. Good. Now she could rest….

“Hallie! Hallie, can you hear me?”

She frowned, wanting the noise to go away. She had what her mother used to call a sick headache, and she needed a dark room, a soft pillow and sleep.

Then came a softer, pleading voice. “Oh, please, you have to be all right! This is all my fault!”

“Brady? Lexy?” She managed to open one eye, then the other. Lexy was kneeling on one side, looking as if she'd just stepped out of the shower, tears dripping down her face, and Brady was on the other side. He was wet, too, his hair glistening,
his uniform shirt plastered to his body. Around them were a dozen or more faces she didn't recognize.

She reached up to wipe a drop from Brady's jaw. “Hey, it's raining.”

“Yeah, it's raining,” he said grimly. “How do you feel?”

“I have a headache.” She raised her hand to her forehead, but he caught it and clasped it tightly in his.

“You hit your head when you fell. You've got one hell of a knot there.”

“I…fell?” She was trying to work that far back in her shaky memory when a terrible sound split the air—and her head. Wincing, she held tighter to him. “What's that awful racket?”

“It's a siren. The ambulance will be here in a minute.”

“Ambu— Oh, my God, Lexy!” She tried to sit up, but Brady pushed her back down, and Lexy took hold of her other hand.

“I'm okay,” the girl said with a sniffle. “But they got away with my backpack. I tried to hold on, but the strap broke and they got it.” She smiled weakly. “You would've been proud of me, Hallie, I did just like my dad said. I screamed and bit and kicked one of them in the ba—testicles.”

Hallie matched her smile. “So that explains that squeal of pain.”

“Yeah. If I'd had my combat boots on, I could have done some real damage. With just my tennis shoes, he managed to get away.”

“Yeah, but he was limping real good,” someone remarked.

The siren abruptly shut off, and Hallie closed her eyes gratefully. A moment later the paramedics shooed everyone away, poked and prodded and asked her a few questions. Once they'd strapped her onto a gurney, Brady crouched next to her.

“They're taking you to Dr. Walker's office a few blocks over,” he said, gently stroking raindrops from her cheek. “From there we'll see if you have to go to the hospital. Lexy and I will follow you over, okay?”

“Okay,” she whispered. “But please tell them no siren. It hurts my head.”

“No siren,” he agreed. Then he did the most extraordinary thing. In front of his daughter, his deputies and more than a few
townspeople, he bent over and kissed her on the mouth. Not just a peck, but a possessive, claiming sort of kiss.

Hallie knew she was smiling stupidly as the paramedics wheeled her away, but she didn't care. A kiss like that in public just might be worth a conk on the head.

Or two or three.

S
eth Walker had been a doctor for forty-eight years, and he'd spent all but two of them practicing right here in Buffalo Plains. He'd delivered most of the people in town and had patched up car wrecks, tractor injuries, drunken brawls and domestic disputes. He was a good doctor, according to his patients, but he was seventy-some years old and feeling it. He'd tried to get another doctor to come in and take over his practice, but when that had failed, he'd made a deal with Dr. Hansen over in Heartbreak to bring in Callie Sellers, a nurse practitioner, to work for them both.

Callie had started out mostly delivering babies, but as the two doctors got older, her practice expanded. She was as good as most doctors and better than some, and in emergencies, she proved it—such as when she'd removed a bullet from Reese's shoulder a few months ago. It might have exceeded the scope of her duties, but an MD couldn't have done it any better.

Brady stood in the corridor with her outside the treatment room where the paramedics had taken Hallie. Callie's friend, Isabella—the sexy, sultry redhead who brought out the protective instincts in most women—was curled on a sofa nearby, a
milkshake on the table beside her and
People
in her hands, paying them little attention.

“Mugged?”
Callie exclaimed. “Right outside the sheriff's department in the middle of the day? Are these guys idiots?”

Brady shrugged. “Lucky idiots. They got away. Ran out into the street, and when Mrs. Marketic stopped to keep from hitting them, they forced her out of the car and took off. The sheriff's office and the highway patrol are looking for them, but they've probably already ditched that car for another.”

“Is your daughter okay?”

Brady's jaw tightened. “She's got some scrapes where they shoved her down. Mostly, she's worried about Hallie.” And he was worried about both of them.
They're not interested in me,
Hallie had said after the break-in at his house, and he'd pointed out that she was with Lexy all the time.
If you get in their way…

And today she had.

The exam-room door opened and Lexy stepped into the hallway. “She's ready,” she said, her voice subdued. The first thing Callie had suggested was getting Hallie out of her soaked clothes, and Lexy had volunteered. Though Brady would have preferred doing it himself—he knew he could do it without aggravating her pain, but wasn't so sure about anyone else—it had seemed important to Lexy. In his truck all the way over, she'd kept saying it was her fault Hallie had been hurt. Even now she looked as if she might burst into tears any moment.

The nurse went into the room. As the door slowly swung shut, her cheerful voice filtered out. “Hi, Hallie, I'm Callie. If you'd come in a half hour earlier, our receptionist, Sally, would have been working. That would have been fun, huh?”

As the door closed with a thump, Isabella looked up from her magazine. “I understand you have a bit of a crime wave going on, and most of it's directed against the two of you. Is small-town sheriffin' so boring that you have to drum up business by going out and making new enemies?”

“Boring is the best way for it to be,” Brady said as he slid his arm around Lexy's shoulders.

“Or maybe it's not you at all. It seems like those Madison girls come to town and everything just goes all to hell.”

“It's not Hallie's fault,” Lexy said defensively.

“If you say so.” Isabella stood up gracefully and walked past them to the next treatment room. She was barefooted and wore jeans and a sleeveless sweater, and she couldn't have looked more elegant in an evening gown and diamond-studded heels. She returned with two large towels and a blanket. “You look cold. So, Brady…this is your daughter. Proof of the old adage—you might not get what you want, but you'll get what you deserve.”

The smile accompanying the words was brittle, and there was a curious bitterness in her voice that made Brady think that old bit of wisdom was directed to her, not him and Lexy. He'd suspected from the first time he'd met her that she was running away from something. What had she wanted, and what had she deserved?

The question disappeared from his head in an instant when Callie came out of the exam room. “I've taken some X rays, and I'm going to develop them. You can go in with her now.”

Lexy, wrapped in the blanket, shot into the room. Brady finished toweling his hair, then followed more slowly.

Hallie was lying on a padded gurney, wearing a hospital gown, tucked under a thermal blanket, and looked about as pale and washed-out as the blanket. She managed a smile for them, but it was obvious she felt like hell.

So did he. He'd been at his desk when he'd heard Lexy's screams, but he'd written it off as kids playing in the rain. After a long, hot, dry spell like they'd had, kids tended to do that. Then Wilda, the dispatcher, had shouted that someone was being mugged right outside and he, along with a state trooper and the deputies who were in the office, had gone running.

He hadn't had a clue
who
was being mugged until he'd seen Lexy, soaked and disheveled, scrambling across the sidewalk to Hallie, and his heart had stopped beating. It hadn't started again until she'd opened those pretty hazel eyes and said his name, and he'd known in that instant he was a goner. He might not have found the courage to face it before, but kneeling there beside her in the rain, it had been impossible to avoid.

He loved her.

Was in love with her.

He'd sworn never to trust anyone again, never to love anyone again, and he'd spent the past fourteen years making sure no one ever got close enough to put him at risk. And somehow Hallie had just slipped in. She'd bypassed every one of his defenses and made a place for herself in his life before he'd had the sense to worry.

She'd made a place for herself in his heart.

And now she was lying there, injured, because he'd failed to protect her.

When he reached her, he went to the head of the bed where no rails blocked his access and bent to kiss her cheek. Keeping his face close to hers, he softly said, “I think I have a solution to this problem I have with worrying every time you and Lex are out of my sight.”

“Oh, yeah? What's that?”

“I have a cell in the Canyon County Jail with your names on it. I'm just going to lock you up and keep you safe.”

“You can't do that,” Lexy scoffed.

He glanced up at her. “Honey, I'm the acting sheriff. I can do damn near anything. We'll call it protective custody.”

“I thought the idea was to lock up the bad guys,” Hallie murmured.

“Soon as we can find them. But as long as they're running free, I really like the idea of you two behind bars.”

“You couldn't come spend the night with us,” she pointed out.

“Refer back to the ‘acting sheriff' part of my earlier statement.” He straightened as Callie came back in.

“How's that headache, Hallie?” the nurse asked, sliding a couple of X rays onto the light-box.

“On a scale of one to ten, it's about a fourteen.”

“We'll get you fixed up soon. Hey, Isabella, come in here, please.”

The redhead appeared in the doorway. “Yes, ma'am?”

“Come look at these.”

She didn't budge from the door. “Oh, gee. X rays.”

“Come over here, please.”

“Nope. Not gonna do it.”

Callie gave her an exasperated look. “I don't want to send her to Tulsa if she doesn't need to go. She's been through enough already. But I want a second opinion.”

Brady looked from Callie to Isabella. “You're a nurse, too?” She'd been present when Callie removed the bullet from Reese's shoulder, but the extent of her participation had been lavishing attention on the patient. She hadn't so much as touched a bandage.

“No, I'm not a nurse,” she said flatly, then turned to leave.

“Isabella.”

Brady watched her. So did Hallie, Lexy and Callie. After a long, tense moment, the redhead sighed and stalked across the room to the light-box. She studied the films for a moment, then said in a no-nonsense voice, “Everything looks fine. There's no evidence of any linear or depressed fracture or other deformities, no subdural or extradural hemorrhage, no subgaleal hematoma. Just a little soft-tissue contusion here.” She gestured toward a spot on one X ray. “Give her a head-trauma sheet and send her home. Satisfied?” Spinning around, she disappeared down the hall.

“She's a doctor?” Brady asked, surprise evident in his voice.

Callie nodded.

“But why—?”

“Don't ask, okay? But if she says you're all right, Hallie, trust me—you're all right.” Callie pulled a mimeographed sheet from a file on the counter and offered it to Brady. “For the next twelve hours or so, be on the alert for any changes in her vision, the onset of a headache other than what she's already got, drowsiness, irritability, agitation, nausea, vomiting, seizures. If she has any of that, give me a call ASAP—my numbers are on that sheet. Other than that, give her a couple of aspirin tablets when you get her home, and an ice pack on that knot should help reduce the swelling.”

“Thanks a lot, Callie,” Brady said.

“Anytime.” The nurse gestured toward a white plastic trash bag. “Lexy, her clothes are in that bag. Wear the gown home, Hallie, get some rest and take it easy.”

With help from Lexy, Brady got Hallie settled in the truck. “So,” he began hopefully, “now we go to jail?”

“No,”
Hallie and Lexy answered in unison.

“Come on, it's not so bad. You can have a television, and we'll provide you with three hots and a cot.”

Hallie gingerly turned her head to look at him. “If I thought for a minute you were serious, I'd sma—” Breaking off, she paled, then turned a delicate pink and looked away.

“It's okay to say ‘smack,'” he said softly.

“I've never struck anyone in anger—well, except the occasional sister when we were kids.”

“I know.”

When they got home, Lexy got Hallie into bed while Brady put together a lunch of sandwiches and chips. They'd just finished eating when the doorbell rang. “I'll get it,” Lexy said, popping up from the bed before Brady could speak.

He took advantage of her leaving to move closer to Hallie. Lifting the ice pack she'd put on her bump after she'd polished off her lunch, he gave a low whistle. “You've got one hell of a goose egg there, darlin'.”

“Tell me about it. It's a good thing I'm not vain enough to care.”

He wrapped his fingers around hers, then studied her a long time before asking, “Are you really okay?”

“I'm fine. You know, the stupid thing is, I deliberately fell in that direction because I didn't want to scrape the sidewalk with my face. Apparently, I underestimated the distance to that lamppost.” A chagrined look came across her face. “Maybe I am vain after all, in addition to being clumsy. I couldn't regain my balance, I couldn't get my hands out to catch myself…and I couldn't help Lexy at all.” After a moment, she raised her tearful gaze to his. “What if they'd gotten away with her instead of just her bag? I couldn't have stopped them. I couldn't have protected her.”

He gathered her into his arms and gently stroked her hair. “That's not your fault. One of those guys is most likely the same one who broke my wrist, and, sweetheart, I'm a hell of a
lot bigger than you and was armed at the time. Don't blame yourself. Lex is okay, except for worrying about you.”

“Hey.” Lexy appeared in the doorway. “There are some deputies here to see you, Brady.” Then she grinned. “Including Deputy Mitch.”

“Ooh, the cute one,” Hallie murmured.

Brady stood up and gave her a stern look. “He's too young for you,” he said, then transferred the look to Lexy. “And he's too old for you. Why don't you stay here and keep Hallie company?”

“Sure.”

He went down the hall to the living room, where Ryan Sandoval and Mitch Connors were on the couch and Canyon County's lone female deputy, Lucy Manning, sat in one of the two armchairs. He took the other one.

“How's Ms. Madison?” Ryan asked.

“She's okay except for a headache and a knot on her head.”

“A trooper found Mrs. Marketic's car at a gas station out on Highway 28,” Ryan announced. “But there's no clue where the bad guys went from there. The best description anyone was able to give was that they were both Caucasian, male, early-to-mid-twenties, and one was taller than the other. Both were wearing jeans and windbreakers, with the hoods pulled up over their heads. Nobody saw where they came from—but everyone saw where they went.”

“I think Mrs. Marketic was more shaken up than anyone,” Mitch put in. “When they yanked her out of her car, she was convinced she was going home to meet the Lord.”

Brady smiled faintly. The woman was in her seventies, a hypochondriac if ever there was one, and frequently thought she was on her way to heaven.

“You know of any reason these guys would try to grab your daughter? Could it be some enemy she made at home?”

“She says she doesn't have any enemies,” Brady said with a shake of his head. “She's never seen these guys before, she doesn't know their car, she doesn't know anything.”

“What was in the backpack?” Lucy asked.

“Makeup, candy, tissues. A couple of ink pens. About two
hundred bucks in cash. The key to my house they burned down.” He grimaced. “Not a bad consolation prize, I guess, since they couldn't get her.”

“You're sure—” Ryan broke off and exchanged looks with the other two deputies before awkwardly continuing. “You're sure she told you everything?”

Brady settled back in his chair and rested one ankle on the other knee. He knew from personal experience that suggesting a child had lied to a parent wasn't easy. Most parents believed they could tell when their kids were lying, and most, in his experience, didn't have a clue. He had no doubt Lexy could lie to him and make him believe it was God's honest truth, but his instincts said that wasn't the case. “I can't be sure without having inventoried the backpack. But am I willing to take her at her word? Absolutely.”