Protecting Justice (The Justice Series Book 4) (37 page)

“You heard me. Is it because every time you look at me, you’re reminded that you failed to protect me from Jordan?”

He didn’t answer, screwing up his lips as that muscle in his jaw jumped again.

Grey threw up his hands and looked at the ceiling. “Why me?” he muttered. “Why do I always get stuck in these things?”

Syd pinched him on the leg.

“Ouch.” He swore and gave her a look that would send most people cowering.

Syd swatted his arm and Grey slouched on the bed, looking like a three-year-old who had to sit in the corner.

Fallyn grabbed the arms of the wheelchair and put her feet on the ground. She pushed herself up to standing, wobbling for a moment and Tony made a move toward her. Dani reached out as if to assist, but she gently knocked the girl’s hands away.

Of course. Because that was Fallyn. Always pushing ahead on her own.

“Look at me,” she said to Tony.

Why was she pushing herself right now? He should just pick her up, toss her back in her bed and strap her down. They could talk about this later. In private. When she was better. Now? It wouldn’t do anyone any good.

He met her gaze and held it.

“If I fall right now, are you going to reach out and keep me from hitting the ground?”

What the hell kind of end-run was this now? “Stop it.”

“Just answer it, Gerard,” Sydney said.

He sighed, continued to hold Fallyn’s gaze. “If you fell, of course I would keep you from hitting the ground.”

“Why?”

“
Why?
”

“Give the poor man a break,” Grey said.

“Shut up,” Fallyn and Syd told him in unison.

“Because,” Tony said without further prompting, “I don’t want to see you get hurt.”

“Exactly.” She took a step toward him. “That’s who you are, Tony. It’s not a mantle you wear and take off at the end of the day. You’re a protector. The problem is, you can’t protect everyone you love every minute of the day. No one can do that. The control freak in you hates that, but that’s life. You can’t control everything. Believe me, I get that. We’re alike in that way. Always wanting to control the spin.”

He looked away, that mental wall trying to shut her out. She’d said it herself, they were too much alike. But, damn, it was hard to let her go.

“You’re here for Grey,” she stated.

“So?”

“You blamed yourself for his accident, yet you didn’t abandon him after it all went down, like you’re doing with me.”

“That’s different.” He raised his eyes to hers. “Grey is…well…Grey.”

“Damn, right,” Grey muttered.

And…
swat
. Syd smacked his arm, looked at Tony like she was going to swat his as well.

“He’s alive because of you, Tony,” Fallyn said. Her voice was low, controlled, but there was a rawness to it that made his chest ache. “
I’m
alive because of you. You didn’t
fail
this past week. You succeeded beyond measure. You saved the lives of
two
people. You helped solve a murder and expose corruption at the highest level of our government. Yeah, some stuff got out of your control, but your overachieving ass outdid itself once again.”

“She’s right,” Syd said from the bed. “I might be making funeral arrangements right now if it weren’t for you.”

“I was a camp counselor once,” Fallyn said. “Heather and I went to the same camp every summer and our third summer there, we were both counselors. Each of us was in charge of a house with younger campers. My best friend’s little sister, Suzie, was in my group of twenty-four kids. We went for our usual morning hike one day and Suzie wandered off without me knowing about it. We got back to the cabins and Suzie was gone.”

Just…hell.

“Oh, my God,” Syd said. “That must have been horrible.”

“It was my fault.”

Fallyn’s legs trembled harder now. He could see it and stepped closer, anticipating her going down. He extended his hands and she grabbed on. “Sit. Please,” he said.

But she didn’t move. Stood there, looking up into his eyes.

“My best friend blamed me for her sister’s disappearance. She wouldn’t talk to me, wouldn’t have anything to do with me. I was sent home early from camp. Many of the parents came and picked up their kids when they heard. No one wanted their kids around me.”

Grey had tuned in to her story. “Did they find the girl?”

“Yeah, actually they did three weeks later. She hadn’t wandered off, she’d been abducted by a neighbor who snuck into the woods that day and waited for her. He was a serial pedophile and had been watching Suzie for months, I guess.”

“It wasn’t your fault,” Tony said. “She knew the guy, thought she could trust him.”

“But I should have kept a closer eye on her. All twenty-four of those kids were depending on me, a fifteen-year-old girl. My best friend was depending on me to keep her little sister safe.”

“You couldn’t have known that bastard was after her.”

“Just like you couldn’t have known Jordan was after me.”

He stared at her.

She stared back.

“That was different.” And, damn, he was losing this battle. Score one for the pushy spin-doctor. “I knew you were in danger.”

“But you didn’t know from whom. Neither of us did. You called in Matt. You did everything you could do to keep me safe.”

“Tony, if we use your method of splitting hairs,” Syd said, “I’m as responsible as you are for Fallyn being shot.”

Tony glanced at Grey as if begging for help, then slid his attention to Syd. “How so?”

“I asked her to help me out and take over for career day. She wouldn’t have been there otherwise.”

“And I decoded the fucking video,” Dani said. “Which led her to Don Fox and Jordan knew that was going to backfire on her so maybe I’m responsible for her being shot.”

Who the hell is this woman anyway?
Syd offering up an opinion was one thing, but the kid with pink hair? He didn’t even know her.

“Wait,” Fallyn said. “I’ve got it. Heather knew there was someone in her office that was selling out the president, so maybe we should blame her. It’s all my dead sister’s fault when you get right down to it.”

Tony held up a hand. “All right, all right. I get what you’re doing, and I even halfway appreciate your enlightening, if completely illogical, way of spreading the blame around.”

“I hear a ‘but’ coming,” Fallyn said.

Tony frowned at her. “You don’t understand.”

“I do, actually, because I’m a control freak, too, but this obsession of yours isn’t healthy. We all agree. So I’m not letting you out of this hospital room until you give it up. And until you admit we’re good together. Yes, there will be some rocky moments. Everyone has those. We’re alphas. Both of us. We’ll work through it.”

“Fuck that. This is not an intervention.”

“Call it whatever you want, but you’re not going anywhere until we work this out.”

Finally Tony took a step toward her. “Why won’t you leave me be?”

“Because, you idiot, I love you.”

“Jesus Christ,” Grey said. “We’re going to be here all fucking night.”

Syd patted his leg. “Looks like it. And I didn’t bring popcorn.”

Fallyn squeezed his hands and he felt the tremble. “Don’t make me throw myself across the door to keep you here.”

Tony looked all around the room. Grey, Syd, Dani and Fallyn. When had he entered this alternate reality and why couldn’t he get back to
his
world. The one before Fallyn. “I…”

“You what?”

He let out the mother of all sighs. “Fine. Whatever. You want the truth? Here it is. I thought I was going to lose you. You took ten years off my life when you were lying there bleeding out.”

“Let me get this straight,” Fallyn’s assistant—he guessed this was Dani—said. “You thought you were going to lose Fallyn and it wrecked you so hard, that now that she’s alive and pouring out her heart to you, it’s easier to walk away? That’s screwed up, man.”

Tony opened his mouth to say something, shut it.
Wait.
He couldn’t be pissed. Couldn’t be. “I actually followed that logic.”

“That’s not logic,” Syd put in. “It’s an observation. What Dani is trying to say so nicely is, you’re being stupid.”

The floor rippled under his feet. His universe shifted again. Fallyn wobbled a little, tipped slightly sideways, then forward.

Tony caught her, wrapped his arms around her. Steadied her. “Now will you please sit down?”

She clung to him, letting him gently guide her back into the wheelchair. “Syd’s right. Stop being stupid. I need you.”

He shook his head, touched her face, his fingers gliding along her jaw. He cupped her chin in his hand. “Are you doing this on purpose? Pretending to be this weak?”

“I wish. I should be in bed, but I have an idiot boyfriend who’s making me do an intervention. And by golly, I may pass out, but I will not go back to bed willingly unless he carries me there himself and promises to stay with me.”

“You are the most stubborn woman I know.”

“Really?” Fallyn glanced over Tony’s shoulder at Syd who gave her a thumbs up. “You know some pretty stubborn women.”

The door burst open and Caroline and Mitch rushed in, stopping short when they found Dani, Fallyn, and Tony blocking their way.

“Hey,” Caroline said, looking around at everybody. “What’s going on?”

“Thank God.” Grey pushed off the bed. “Gerard, take your woman back to her bed. Monroe, get me the hell out of here. These people are warped.”

“You don’t look so good,” Mitch said to Fallyn. “What are you doing to her, Tony?”

“I’m not doing anything to her!” He stared into her eyes and shook his head in frustration. “But I’m about to.”

“Just kiss her already,” Grey said. “Then get the hell out of the way.”

Tony smiled. “This is so fucked up.”

“Should we maybe…” Caroline thumbed at the door behind her. “Come back?”

“No,” everyone said.

“You’re crazy, Fallyn Pasche,” Tony said, “if you want me hanging around.”

Her eyelids drooped, but she fought to open her eyes again. His girl. Always battling.

“I’m your brand of crazy, Tony Gerard, and you know it. You’ll never be happy with normal anyway.”

“I don’t want normal. I want you. I just…”

“No qualifiers. Stop where you are. Quit while you’re ahead and all that. Besides, it’s about time you admitted that. You’re a little slow on the uptake, you know that?”

“Yeah, but something tells me you’ll help me with that.”

Everyone laughed.

“Let’s get you back to bed,” Tony said. “You have a lot of healing to do before you conquer the world.”

“Especially if you’re taking Ryan Nicols on as a client,” Dani chimed in.

“You’re taking on the president’s son as a client?” Grey barked.

Tony squeezed her arm. “Of course she is. That kid is going to need the best political fixer in the business to salvage his reputation as an ace airman after the press gets done with him and his father.”

Fallyn grinned at him. “He might need a protection detail, too, and not the Secret Service guys. They’re loyal to his dad. He won’t feel comfortable with them.”

Grey straightened to his full height and glared at Fallyn. Yep, definitely feeling better. “Are you poaching my employee?”

“Technically, I haven’t signed up for anything long term with the Justice Team,” Tony said. “I’m still an employee of the Court.”

“You’re not going back to the Supreme Court.” Grey sounded pretty sure of himself. “We’ll iron out the details of your employment with the Justice Team first thing tomorrow morning.”

“Don’t sign anything until you read my offer first,” Fallyn said, sending Grey her best
don’t mess with me
face, which was fairly comical considering she was having trouble standing.

“Seriously?” Grey said.

“Damn straight,” Fallyn answered. “I’m tired of contracting out for security services for clients who need it. Tony’s top notch, just the type of guy I can use on my staff here in my new DC office, and I can offer him three times the salary you can.”

Mitch whistled under his breath. “You got any openings for former FBI agents? I can work security.”

Caroline slapped his arm.

Tony reached down and oh, so carefully, scooped Fallyn up into his arms. No doubt, this woman would kill him. “Okay, badass, let’s call it a day and get you back to bed.”

She curled into him and his chest got tight. He inhaled and the flood of warm air shattered the tension.

They could do this. Even if it got crazy once in a while, they were both too stubborn to give up. What he had now? Hope. And wasn’t that an interesting development.

With her, he was home. They’d both lost a lot in their lifetimes, but now they had each other.

He skirted past Mitch and Caroline and carried her down the hall. Nurses smiled, Dani walked beside them.