Safe from Harm (4 page)

What the fuck?

For a fraction of a second, he was confused by the sudden blow that stole his breath. But then the truth hit him, as sure as the bullets that had nailed him in the chest. A wave of panic and fear washed over him, but he shoved it away and managed to raise his weapon, returning fire at the bastard who'd gotten the drop on him. And there was no question who that bastard was.

Mark Monroe.

Gabe's ears filled with the screams of the reporters and others on the courthouse steps, panicked as they raced for cover. He heard his brother Tom's ragged scream of fury. More shots were exchanged as the sidewalk came rushing up on him.

Then there was silence.

It took him a few seconds to realize he lay on the steps, staring up at the clouds as they drifted overhead. For a moment, he wondered if he was dead, but then he saw Elle's beautiful face peering down at him, her brows drawn together in concern. She was taking his face in her hands, saying something. He wasn't really listening. All he could focus on was the blood trickling down her cheek from a wound on her forehead. A fury like none he'd ever experienced filled him at that moment.

Monroe had hurt her. That sick, cop-hating asshole had hurt her. Pissed as hell and ready to knock some heads, he shoved up, trying to get to his feet, but Elle pressed him back down.

“I'm fine,” he ground out, pushing back and attempting to get up. “I'm fine. Wearing my vest.”

“You're
not
fine, dammit!” she snapped, her voice shrill, panicked as she snatched the silk scarf from around her neck. “Jesus, Gabe—be still!”

This brought Gabe up short. Elle didn't panic. Not ever. She was too tough. Too strong.

Shit. Not good.

He collapsed back onto the concrete, the edges of his vision beginning to blur. But he was coherent enough to know she was tying the scarf around his leg. Like a tourniquet.

Well, hell…

Elle's heart was in her throat. Seeing Gabe lying there, his leg bleeding, his face growing visibly pale, rattled her more than she cared to admit. And yet in spite of his own injury, he kept frowning at her with what looked like concern.

“You're hurt,” he mumbled.

She shook her head. “No, no, I'm fine, Gabe. Just be still. I—”

He reached up and touched her forehead with such surprising tenderness it stilled her breath, but when his fingers came away covered in blood, her breath returned to her in a gasp. Her own fingers were covered in blood from trying to staunch the flow from Gabe's leg, so she wiped the inside of her wrist against her head, wincing with pain, though her own touch had been nearly as gentle as Gabe's had been.

Her eyes widened when she looked at her wrist and saw blood there.

What the heck?

In the next moment, hands grasped her upper arms and pulled her back, away from Gabe.

“No!” she cried out, reaching for him, but then she saw the paramedics crouched down beside him and turned to see who'd drawn her away.

“Oh good,” Gabe mumbled with a grin. “The cavalry has arrived…”

One of the paramedics laughed, sounding relieved to Elle's ears. “Hang in there, Dawson. We gotcha.”

“Let's get your head looked at,” Gabe's brother Tom was saying, his arm going around her shoulders and leading her to where several police cars were waiting, their lights flashing. The rapidly alternating red and blue made her wince now that her adrenaline was beginning to taper off and one hell of a headache was coming on.

She reluctantly nodded, then cast a look over her shoulder to see the paramedics loading Gabe onto a gurney.

“He'll be okay,” Tom assured her, but Elle could hear the note of concern in his voice. He'd seen the amount of blood Gabe had lost. He knew they were racing against time. “Now, c'mon. We need to get your head checked out. Looks like you might need some stitches.”

Elle was only vaguely aware of the paramedics inspecting her head wound. She winced when they wrapped it well enough for her to be transported to the hospital, and she was pretty much in a daze as the ER staff cleaned and stitched the laceration just below her hairline, where the bullet had grazed her.

If Mark Monroe's aim had been any better, she'd be lying dead in the morgue instead of sitting in the tiny exam room that smelled of rubbing alcohol and disinfectant, waiting for a ride home. Elle blinked away tears as she realized how close she'd come to dying that day, how close
Gabe
had come to dying. Just the thought of it made her physically sick, and she put a hand to her mouth, searching desperately for a bedpan or bowl.

Luckily, a nurse popped her head in at that moment, offering her a smile, distracting her from her churning stomach. “Your aunt is here to take you home, Ms. McCoy.”

Even before the nurse had finished speaking, Aunt Charlotte was pushing into the room and enveloping Elle in her motherly embrace. “Oh, my sweet girl,” Charlotte murmured into Elle's hair. “When I heard what'd happened at the courthouse…”

Elle managed to swallow the bile that burned her throat and sniff back her tears before being released from her aunt's embrace. “I'm okay,” she assured her, not quite sure if her words were true. “I'll be fine.”

Charlotte put her at arms' length and searched her face, determined to do her own assessment. She must've been satisfied with what she saw because she gave Elle a curt nod and turned to the nurse. “Is she free to go home?”

The nurse handed Charlotte a handful of papers that Elle had signed and vaguely understood to be her discharge papers and instructions for wound care. “As far as we're concerned, but I believe Sheriff Dawson wants to speak with her.”

Charlotte frowned. “Mac? Where is he?”

“Waiting for his son to get out of surgery,” the nurse explained.

Elle slid off of the bed. “Let's go.”

“Mac can wait,” Charlotte said, her irritation evident.

Elle didn't care what kind of tension might be brewing between Charlotte and her old friend and one-time high school sweetheart, Mac Dawson. That could wait. All she cared about was getting an update on Gabe.

She turned to the nurse. “Show me where they're waiting.”

When Elle arrived in the family waiting room with her aunt reluctantly in tow, she wasn't surprised at all to see the entire Dawson family there. Tom paced the room, his normally unflappable calm clearly overridden by concern for his brother. Their younger brothers, Joe and Kyle, sat in the row of chairs, their respective girlfriends gripping their hands, offering the men their love and support.

Their venerable patriarch, Sheriff Mac Dawson, stood at the window, arms crossed over his chest, his back to all of them. Mac had a gruff, severe demeanor even on a good day, but the scowl on his face was fierce when he glanced over his shoulder to see who had entered.

“How's Gabe?” Elle asked, her voice tight with apprehension.

“They removed the bullet from his leg,” Tom told her. “Luckily, Monroe didn't hit an artery or the bone.”

Elle closed her eyes for a moment and breathed a huge sigh of relief. “Thank God.”

“How are
you
?” Joe asked, gesturing toward her head.

She forced a grin. “I'll have a scar, but nothing—”

Elle's words died on her lips as all three Dawson brothers suddenly stiffened, on alert, their expressions deadly. The hair on the back of her neck rose in warning, and she spun around to see a tall, gangly man with a tanned face lined with creases that told the story of his many years working in the sun. Unfortunately, she knew him all too well.

“What the hell are you doing here?” Tom demanded, his hands fisted at his sides.

Jeb Monroe held out his hands in a placating gesture. “Just came to identify my boy's body,” he replied. “And I heard what had happened to one of yours.”

“Like you had nothing to do with it,” Joe snapped.

Jeb nodded. “I figured you'd assume that, given our…history. I didn't know what Mark had planned. But I'm sure the idea of his brother being locked away by your government was more than he could bear.”

Elle couldn't suppress the little grunt of disgust that slipped out, drawing Jeb's attention to her. But she didn't look away from his offended gaze. The son of a bitch had everything to do with what had occurred that day, she was sure of it. He'd been preaching his hatred for years. And he'd filled the heads of his sons and other family members and acquaintances with the same vitriol.

“The bloodshed today is on
your
hands,” Elle hissed. “You might not have stood on the steps and pulled the trigger, but it's all on you.”

Jeb's eyes flashed with anger. “I wouldn't expect
you
to understand, Ms. McCoy. You are the very tool—”

“I think it'd be best if you left, Jeb,” a deep, rumbling voice said, cutting through Monroe's words. Everyone turned their attention to the sheriff, who still stared out the window. Without turning, he continued, “My boys have showed a great deal of restraint since you entered the room, but I'm afraid I lack their self-control. And if you don't turn around and walk out of this room right now, I will be forced to disrespect your grief by explaining to you none too politely exactly what I think about what happened today.”

Jeb's eyes narrowed at the sheriff's back. “Well, I expect we've
both
got a few things to say, Mac. We never
have
finished the conversation we started all those years back. But as I see I'm not welcome here, I guess I'll just save what's on my mind for a later time.”

Mac's voice was little more than a growl when he replied, “You do that.”

As soon as Monroe had gone, Tom shook his head, looking like he wanted to spit acid. “That son of a bitch. He's even crazier now than he's always been.”

“What the hell was he talking about when he said you'd never finished a conversation years back?” Joe asked. “What conversation?”

Mac cast his steely gaze around the room, lighting on Charlotte and Elle for a long moment, as if weighing the prudence of talking openly in front of them. He finally turned his attention to his son. “The Monroe family's farmland used to be much more extensive, but about ten years ago, Jeb's father got into some financial trouble after several years of bad crops. He defaulted on loans and owed hundreds of thousands of dollars to the IRS. In order to pay off some of his debts, he was forced to sell some of his best land to developers. A few weeks later, he suffered a massive heart attack while working in the fields and died before paramedics could reach him.”

“What's that have to do with you?” Charlotte asked. “If anything, you'd think Jeb's problem would be with the IRS for leaving old Buck Monroe no choice but to sell his land.”

Mac sent her a sidelong glance, trying a little too hard not to acknowledge whatever was going on between them in Elle's opinion. “I served Buck with the papers. Thought I should do it myself since I'd known him for so long. But Jeb saw it as me taking the government's side. He blamed me for his father's ruin—guilt by association. He blamed the government for not valuing farmers. He blamed the paramedics for not getting there sooner when Buck had his heart attack. Jeb already held some extreme opinions at that point, but with his father gone, there was no one else who could talk any sense into him. We had rather heated words.”

Elle could imagine. She'd known Mac Dawson for a long time, but had never really
known
him. There weren't many people who intimidated the hell out of Elle—not anymore. But Mac was among them. The only person she'd ever seen break through that tough exterior was her aunt. And on
that
topic, Charlotte was just as tight-lipped as the object of her affection.

“So, basically,” Tom interjected, bringing Elle out of her musings, “he blamed everyone else for anything and everything horrible that ever happened to him or his family, and began posting his antigovernment rants online.”

“How is it he's not on your watch list?” Joe demanded of his brother Kyle. “Shouldn't the FBI be keeping an eye on this guy?”

Kyle crossed his arms over his chest. “Oh, we're aware of guys like this, trust me. But our resources tend to be focused more on foreign terrorists or the organized groups who have huge followings and are stirring up trouble on a large scale—not these lone-wolf types of domestic terrorists. They're hard to track and can spring up literally anywhere—cities, towns, rural areas—without warning. These guys can be even more dangerous and unpredictable than organized cells.”

“Well, Monroe's certainly not acting alone,” Tom told him. “His brothers have totally bought into his bullshit. And so have his kids, obviously. Who knows how many other friends and family he's swayed to his beliefs. But we can't pin anything on
him
personally.”

Elle couldn't agree more. Too bad the patriarch of the Monroe clan had been careful to veil himself behind layers of plausible deniability from a legal standpoint. But anyone who knew the man also knew his radical views on the government and what he considered to be the tyranny of law enforcement. He believed men should make their own laws as dictated only by the word and letter of the Bible—most specifically, the eye-for-an-eye style of justice in the Old Testament.

Elle had heard his views on this particular subject more times than she cared to recall while she was building the case against his son. He'd been more than happy to offer up an anti-
everything
sermon at any opportunity. But he'd never crossed a line, had never been threatening. In every instance, he'd merely been exercising his First Amendment rights—according to him.

“Social media has given him a whole new audience for spreading his conspiracy theories and rallying others to his cause,” she interjected into the conversation. “His following is growing. The disenchantment with the government and all their infighting is making it easier for him to recruit.”

“Fan-fucking-tastic,” Joe murmured, slipping his arm around his fiancée's shoulders and pulling her in close, tucking her under his chin. “That's
exactly
what we need.”

Elle glanced away, suddenly feeling like an intruder on the family's time together. She turned to Charlotte, the only family she had left, the loss of her parents and siblings a sharp pang in the center of her chest.

“Let's go,” she whispered. “I feel like I'm just in the way. I'll check in with Mac later and answer any questions he has for me.”

Charlotte's auburn brows drew together in a frown. “Alright, honey. If that's what you want.”

Elle nodded quickly and slipped out into the hallway without saying good-bye, her eyes lighting on a spritely doctor with unruly, wavy, bobbed hair. “Hi, I'm looking for a patient who was in surgery for a gunshot wound to the leg. Deputy Gabe Dawson.”

The doctor started at Elle's direct approach, then giggled. “Oh jeez. Sorry! Little jumpy. This is what happens when they let me out of the operating room.” She laughed again, her hazel eyes sparkling. She looked at Elle expectantly as if waiting for her to say something. Then she shook her head and closed her eyes for a moment. “Sorry. You asked me about a patient.”

Elle grinned. “Gabe Dawson.”

The doctor turned on her heel and took a few bouncy little steps before motioning for Elle and Charlotte to follow her. Charlotte sent an amused look Elle's way, brows lifted in a silent question. Elle shrugged and followed the quirky doctor.

A moment later, they were standing at the nurse's station. “Here you go,” the doctor said, gesturing vaguely toward the woman behind the desk. “Wanda can help you.”