Riverbend Road (25 page)

“You stupid bitch,” he snarled. His hand twitched as if he wanted to backhand her again. Cade still couldn't see his firearm but he knew it had to be close.

“Detective Warren, this is your last warning,” he said, his voice as hard as his Glock. “You are in violation of a protective order and you are under arrest. Let go of her now and raise your hands where we can see them. I will not ask again.”

“You stupid bitch,” he snarled again at Andie. “You ruined
everything
. If this is the way you treat the men who love you, it's no wonder Jason jumped off that frigging bridge.”

Before either Cade or Wyn could react, the man pulled out the SIG that had been concealed by Andrea's skirt, yanked her head back by the hair with one hand and shoved the gun under her chin.

She whimpered, tears dripping from her eyes.

“Here's the way this is going to go down. You two are going to put your weapons down and let me walk out of here, unless you want me splattering her brains all over this nice furniture.”

“You shoot her and you'll be dead a half second later,” Wyn promised.

“Do you think I care about that right now? She ruined everything. My career is ruined. My marriage is ruined. You might as well shoot me, but I'm taking this bitch out first.”

“Mama? What's happening?”

While Cade's attention had been caught by the bastard with a gun to Andrea's head, her daughter had apparently awakened. She stood in the doorway, eyes huge and terrified.

What happened next probably took only two or three seconds out of his life but Cade died a thousand deaths.

Like the rest of them, Warren turned at the girl's voice and Wynona—his brave, amazing
foolish
Wynona—apparently thought that was her moment to act. She surged forward, likely intending to disarm him with one of her tough-girl Krav Maga moves, but the detective's instincts had been honed as tautly as theirs. He reacted just as quickly and fired before she could reach him.

Her head flew back and Cade saw blood spatter and it was like her father, just like her father, only a billion times worse as his world imploded.

The little girl screamed, high and loud. Though he was sure he was howling inside too, somehow his own instincts kicked in and Cade fired on the man. He wanted to keep firing and firing, to blast him into nothing, but he charged him instead, kicking the weapon away as he dragged him from the sofa, shoved him to the ground and handcuffed him with the detective yelling and cursing in pain and the girl screaming on and on.

With the threat neutralized two seconds too late, Cade raced to Wyn, whipping out his cell phone to call in the backup while he crouched beside her. She was deathly pale, still, bleeding copiously from her head, but she was breathing.

He bit out the ten-code for officer-involved shooting. “I need an ambulance and all available units. Call Sheriff Bailey immediately. It's his sister. Wyn, baby, wake up, come on. Come on.”

Andie, he saw, had grabbed her daughter and held her tightly.

“Honey, I need you to go to Will's bedroom,” she said. “We're safe now, I promise but I need you to go to your room and shut the door and stay there until I come to get you.”

“Is Officer Bailey going to die like Daddy?”

No. No. No! He wouldn't let her!

“Come on, Wyn. I love you. You can't die. Don't leave me. Come on.”

He felt ripped apart, his insides jagged and raw. He didn't know what he said, he only begged her not to leave him as he applied pressure to the wound at her temple and prayed harder than he ever had in his life.

* * *

W
YNONA
AWOKE
GRADUALLY
, feeling as if the world around her was caught in some slow-motion video feed. At the perimeter of her vision, she caught blurred movement, distant voices, someone crying.

She was lying on a hard floor and someone was kneeling beside her, begging her to come back.

I'm right here
, she wanted to say but her throat wouldn't cooperate.

As consciousness gradually returned, vague impressions filtered through the haze. Shock, pain, fury. What happened? Why was she here? Why did her head hurt so badly?

Memory returned an instant later. Andie with a black eye. Cade, standing shoulder to shoulder with her, weapons drawn. That moment of distraction when Robert Warren had turned away and she stupidly thought she could disarm him.

Seriously? That ass-hat really shot her?

He must have. She felt as if somebody had jabbed a white-hot marshmallow roasting fork into her skull and was twisting it around and around.

“Please don't die, Wyn. You can't leave me. Please, baby. Don't die. I love you. I love you.”

The light jabbed painfully at her eyes but she managed to prop one open enough to see that the voice belonged to her big, tough, wonderful police chief. Cade looked...shattered. His eyes were haunted, devastated, his hands covered in blood.

As she became more aware of her surroundings, Wyn heard a woman speaking. Andie. It must be. “What can I do?” Andie asked.

Cade's voice sounded ragged. “Make sure the door's unlocked for the first responders. My officers should be here any second. And I called her brother.”

Marshall? He called Marshall? Crap. She would never hear the end of this.

The barn fire was bad enough. Her mom was
really
going to freak about her being shot. At least she might be a little more receptive when Wyn told her she was leaving police work and going back to school.

Harsh curses and moans were coming from the corner, out of her visual range.

“What about me?” she heard a man cry out. “I'm dying here. I need bandages or something before I bleed out. Did you hear me? Is anybody listening? I need medical attention right now!”

“Oh, shut the hell up,” Andie snapped.

Wyn blinked at the ferocity in her friend's voice. Even though her head hurt like a son of a mother trucker, she wanted to clap. She lost that instinct when she realized Cade was still beside her and the pressure on her hand was his fingers squeezing her tightly, as if he could hold her in place by sheer will.

“Wyn, baby, wake up. Please. I need you here. I love you. Don't leave me.”

Even though she wanted to lie there all night and listen to his impassioned words, she loved him too much to let him suffer.

“I'm not dying,” she croaked out.

He let out a long, slow breath and she opened her eyes just in time to see him close his and whisper what appeared to be a prayer of gratitude.

He brought her hand to his mouth and the tenderness there just about made her pass out again.

“Did Warren really shoot me?” she mumbled.

“I think maybe the shot went wild and he just grazed you. I can't seem to find an entry wound but you're bleeding like crazy.”

“It hurts,” she complained.

“I'm sure it does. I'm sorry. So sorry.”

Already, though, the pain was beginning to fade.

Cade loved her.

The words were the best analgesic she could imagine.

He loved her. Nothing else seemed to matter.

“EMTs are on the way. They should be here any minute. Just hang on.”

“Okay.” Shock was beginning to set in. She knew that was the reason the searing pain had started to recede. She would pay the price for the burst of adrenaline that was carrying her right now but she decided to ride it through anyway.

“Cade Emmett. You used the L word. I heard it.”

He gave a rough laugh and she managed to prop both eyes open enough to see the tender smile on his face and the naked relief he didn't bother to hide. “Yeah. You're right. I did.”

“Several times.”

“Not enough,” he said gruffly. “It can never be enough. I realized when I saw you go down that nothing else matters. Not the job, not your family. Nothing. I love you. I'll go work somewhere else if I have to. Maybe once your brother is done being pissed at me, he can hire me on as a deputy at the jail. I'll work as a traffic cop if I have to, as long as we can be together.”

His arms were around her and she felt safe and warm and cherished, despite the pain that was making her giddy.

“You don't have to give up the job you love, remember? I'm leaving. Six weeks from now, I'll be back in graduate school.”

“Then I'll come to work in Boise.”

They could work all this out, but it wasn't necessary for him to leave his job. She was only going to be in school for eight months and her classes were only an hour and a half away. The idea of a long-distance relationship wasn't at all appealing but they could survive a short separation.

She'd apparently survived a gunshot wound, hadn't she?

Oh, she loved him, this tough man who needed more lightness and joy in his life. She murmured the words to him again and his arms tightened.

“I don't understand how, but I'm not stupid enough to argue,” he said, his voice low. “I love you. You told me earlier today you wanted to be important to me, not to the department. I couldn't say it then, but I am now. You are everything to me, Wynona Bailey.”

She squeezed his fingers. “You better not be lying. I hear my brother's on the way and he has a bigger gun than you.”

He laughed roughly. “Oh, I doubt that.”

“Kiss me. Right now.”

“You just got shot in the head, Wyn. You're delirious.”

“I don't care. Kiss me. Please?”

He willingly lowered his head and barely pressed his mouth to hers. The gentle tenderness made her throat ache almost as much as her head.

She heard others coming in, brisk official voices, but still Cade didn't release her.

He loved her.

If she had any doubt, that kiss here, now—when his officers and the EMTs and her brother, of all people, were beginning to crowd into Andrea's small living room—would have removed the last of it.

He loved her and he needed her. She didn't question it.

This was the path her life was intended to take—the twisting, turning road that led her here, to this man she had loved forever and a future that promised more than she could ever imagine.

EPILOGUE

“A
RE
YOU
SURE
nobody can see
anything?” Wyn pressed, turning her head back and forth in the mirror over her
bedroom dresser.

She had never considered herself particularly vain but she had
spent more time in the last three weeks feeling self-conscious than at any other
point in her life—and that included the year she was thirteen, when she suddenly
went up three bra sizes in a matter of months.

A big white bandage on a girl's head tended to stand out even
more than a C cup.

“I promise, honey.” Charlene fussed around her with a curling
iron and comb in a cloud of hair spray. “If I didn't know you had eight stitches
there, I would never be able to tell. The jeweled clip completely hides it.”

“Whew. That's a relief. McKenzie will be very happy about
that.”

“She won't care a bit,” Charlene assured her. “Though why you
had to go and get shot three weeks before you knew you were going to be a
bridesmaid for her and Ben, I'm sure I don't know.”

A few weeks ago, Wyn would have rolled her eyes at that sort of
comment from her mother. These days, the world was too bright and beautiful and
full of promise for her to do anything but smile.

“It was quite thoughtless of me, wasn't it?” she agreed.

Charlene huffed. “Yes. And reckless and foolhardy too. You're
so much like your father and brothers.”

“I'm a Bailey, through and through.”

Charlene gazed at their reflections in the mirror, her eyes
unmistakably misty. For a brief moment, her mother rested her cheek against
Wynona's. “It was also incredibly brave of you, darling,” her mother said in a
low voice. “When I think of that man hurting and threatening sweet Andrea
Montgomery, it just makes me sick.”

That, at least, was something about which she and her mother
could agree. “He's in jail now and won't be going anywhere for a long time.”

Robert Warren was being held without bail in the Lake Haven
County Jail, facing a long list of charges including kidnapping, assault and
attempted murder. The case against him was so strong, she had every belief he
would soon realize he had no choice but to plead guilty and serve prison
time.

By the time he got out, Andrea's children would be grown and
possibly having families of their own.

She smiled, thinking of those cute kids. Because of them, she
knew Andrea would be okay. Her friend was resilient. In a short time, she
already seemed like she had been an important thread in the fabric of Haven
Point forever.

“Still,” Charlene said with a sniff as she made a few more
passes with the comb and hair spray, “I don't know what Cade was thinking, to
let you get shot! I hope he takes better care of you, now that the two of you
are dating.”

Was that what they were doing? She had to smile.

“Trust me,” she said blandly, “Cade takes very, very good care
of me.”

“Bragger.” Katrina wandered in from her own preparations in the
bathroom just in time to hear. “It's so unfair that you won't even give
details!”

“Someday I hope you'll meet a man worthy of a little
discretion,” Charlene said pertly and Wyn grinned at her sister, who, despite
her teasing, seemed thrilled about the two of them.

Her sister acted as if Wyn's new relationship with Cade had
been Katrina's idea all along.

The rest of her family was a little harder to read. The details
of the shooting were still a little hazy, though she vividly recalled her first
glimpse of Marshall after he rushed to the crime scene, only to find his sister
bleeding copiously from a head wound and Cade kissing her. She imagined it was
the same expression Marsh would probably wear if somebody knocked him over the
head with a bo staff.

Marsh seemed to have come around, though the few times she had
seen him since then, he'd appeared startled all over again, as if he couldn't
quite reconcile the idea of his best bro and his pesky little sister being in
love.

Elliot had made a video call from Denver to check on her the
day after the shooting, when she was still in the hospital. Cade hadn't known
she was talking to her brother when he walked into the hospital room and
straight to her bedside to kiss her fiercely, as if he'd been away for months
instead of a few hours.

She smiled a little now, remembering how mortified Cade had
been when Elliot cleared his throat and he'd turned to find her brother's face,
eyebrows raised, watching them from her tablet. Elliot hadn't seemed
particularly surprised, though, so she assumed Marsh had passed the juicy info
along already.

As for Charlene, her mother seemed to have taken things in
stride since she'd shown up near hysterical at the hospital emergency department
that night and found Cade refusing to move from Wyn's side. Other than one
shocked look, her mother seemed to accept the new state of affairs with
equanimity—or maybe she had just been so relieved that Wyn's gunshot wound had
been relatively minor.

Wyn
thought
she had accepted
things, until Cade told her with bemusement a few days after the shooting that
Charlene had stopped by his house to warn him in no uncertain terms that if he
hurt her daughter, Charlene would find a hundred creative ways to make him
pay—including, but certainly not limited to, pulling up every single vegetable
he ever tried to grow for the rest of his life.

A wave of warmth and love for her family washed over her. She
would miss them all so much when she left for graduate school—but she would come
back on weekends and holidays and they could talk and Skype all the time.

Though the thought of being ninety miles away from Cade right
now made her throat ache and tears threaten the careful job she'd done on her
mascara, she was determined to earn her degree.

You can do hard things, my dear
,
her dad often told her.

She could. This was important to her, a chance to reclaim the
person she had been and the dreams she'd envisioned for herself before that
horrible winter when she was attacked and Wyatt was killed.

When she graduated in May, she could come back to Haven Point
to work. She'd already had an offer from the director of an at-risk youth
program.

Maybe this time next summer, she would be planning her own
wedding.

Her face felt hot at the idea but somehow once it took root,
she couldn't seem to shake it. She loved Cade Emmett. She wanted nothing more
than to be able to spend the rest of her life showering all the love and
tenderness on him he had lived so long without.

“Okay, hair done, makeup done. Let's get you into your
bridesmaid dress,” Charlene said.

Wyn hurried to her closet and pulled out the dress, an elegant
confection in the palest mint green. It flattered her coloring and her figure.
Finally, after so many stints as a bridesmaid, she could come through the
experience with a dress she might actually wear a second time.

“Oh, you're both so beautiful,” Charlene exclaimed after
zipping Wyn into it. “I need a picture.”

She grabbed her little camera and shot a few frames of Wynona
and Katrina together, then Kat shot a couple of selfies with her phone of the
three of them.

When they finished, Wyn hugged her mother. Yes, Charlene could
be exasperating sometimes with all her fussing and fretting, but Wyn wouldn't
trade her for the world.

“Thanks again for helping me, Mom. You always do such a great
job and make me look far better than I could do alone.”

“Maybe the next time I help you with your hair for a wedding,
your dress will be white,” her mother said, an unmistakably wistful note in her
voice.

“The next wedding will be Devin and Cole's,” Wyn reminded her.
“I
hope
Dev doesn't pick white for her bridesmaids.
That would just be weird.”

“Okay. The one after that,” Charlene said.

“Maybe that one will be
yours
,”
Katrina teased.

“Oh stop,” Charlene said, her cheeks suddenly pink.

Over the last few weeks, Wyn had become far more accepting of
the idea of her mother with Uncle Mike. He was a good man and her mother did
deserve to be happy again. It didn't mean any of them would ever forget John
Bailey but he was gone now and wouldn't want his widow to spend the rest of her
life grieving and alone.

Mike and Charlene were quite sweet together, anyway, like a
couple of awkward teenagers not quite sure what to do with themselves.

“We should probably get moving,” Charlene said. “You'll want to
see if McKenzie needs any last-minute help, of course.”

“Is Cade still picking you up, or do you need a ride with us?”
Kat asked.

The doorbell rang at that precise moment and Pete, from his
spot on the floor watching the proceedings with interest, lumbered to his feet
and headed toward it. He adored Cade almost as much as Wyn did.

“That should be Cade,” she said, unable to control the little
kick in her pulse rate. “He was able to arrange with other officers to cover the
shift but he may have to leave the reception early.”

“We'll see you there, then,” Charlene said.

The two of them opened the door and Cade stood on the doorstep
looking incredible in a close-fitting blue suit she had seen him wear only a few
times.

She had left him just a few hours before but joy bloomed
through her all over again.

“Oh, look how handsome you are,” Charlene exclaimed.

He kissed her cheek and then looked embarrassed and pleased
when Wyn's mother straightened his tie a little and adjusted his collar.

“Seriously, Cade, you should wear a suit every day,” Katrina
said, with a slightly dazed look. “I would consider that part of your sworn duty
to the women of Haven Point.”

He shook his head and kissed her cheek too, holding the door
for both of them.

“We'll see you two there,” Charlene said.

“Hate to break it to you, but you two really don't have any
time to, um, dawdle.” Kat gave her a meaningful look over their mother's
shoulder as they headed toward her completely impractical sports car, and it was
Wyn's turn to flush.

“Goodbye,” Wyn said firmly and closed the door behind the two
of them.

As soon as they were blessedly alone, Cade pulled her into his
arms.

“I missed you,” he murmured and Wyn gave a happy sigh and
kissed him.

So what if she had to redo her lipstick? It was completely
worth it.

“Kat's right,” she said regretfully after several long,
delicious moments. “We don't have time to, um, dawdle.”

“Too bad,” he answered, his mouth warm and tender against
hers.

He loved her. She still couldn't quite wrap her head around how
huge and humbling and amazing that was.

With a sigh, Wyn finally pulled away. “I really do have to go.
McKenzie would never forgive me if I missed her wedding and she would know just
who to blame.”

“Yeah, you're probably right. And our mayor is not a good
person to cross.”

He gave her one last kiss brimming with so much sweetness it
made her throat ache all over again, then helped her out to his car.

They would have time later, she told herself. They had tonight,
tomorrow and the rest of their lives.

She couldn't wait.

* * * * *

Single mom Andrea Montgomery only agreed to look in on injured
sheriff Marshall Bailey as a favor to his sister, but when these lonely hearts
are snowed in together, there's no telling what Christmas wishes might come
true.

Turn the page for a sneak peek at
SNOWFALL ON HAVEN POINT
, the
next book in
New York Times
bestselling author
RaeAnne Thayne's Haven Point series!