Maternal Instinct (15 page)
Authors: Janice Kay Johnson
"You have been late," Hugh said mildly.
Her shoulders sagged. "I know, I know."
"You wake up sick?"
She gave a grim nod.
He glanced at her flat stomach and remembered the fleeting glimpse that morning in the Explorer as she arched to pull up her trousers. White skin, the delicate line of her rib cage, the cluster of honey brown curls, were etched in his memory. An ache stirred in his groin and he wrenched his gaze to their patrol unit.
She was carrying his baby. The idea was still unreal. He'd lain awake last night thinking about it. Officer Nell
Granstrom
was pregnant with his son or daughter.
He should be more dismayed than he was. Instead he found himself aroused every damn time he looked at her. More, he was settling into the knowledge that he'd be a father, and almost liking it, as he was coming despite himself to like
Granstrom
herself. Okay, she wasn't his usual type. But he wouldn't have chosen any of the women he'd dated in the past ten years to be the mother to his child. They'd all been pretty, some smart, some funny. But he wouldn't have trusted any of them beside him going into a building to face a gunman. Hell, wasn't having a kid together a similar thing?
Nell
Granstrom
was a gutsy woman whose voice and eyes softened like taffy in the sun when she talked about her daughter. He liked knowing she'd love this child as much.
His final, unsettling thought last night had been to wonder whether she had ever loved a man that much. Whether she ever could love a man enough to give him that same kind of fierce devotion.
"We're up on the strip today," he said abruptly, referring to the stretch of Highway 101 that was lined with malls, fast-food restaurants, taverns and banks. All greenery had been wiped from the earth for about two miles, to make way for asphalt and giant Target, Safeway and Home Depot stores.
"Great," was her comment. Patrolling the strip meant issuing multiple speeding tickets and making the occasional arrest for shoplifting. The swing and graveyard shifts would substitute bar brawls and DUIs for the shoplifting. Nothing more exciting ever happened. Who would hold up the clerk at Home Depot?
Hugh slapped on the siren the minute he turned onto
The kid was nonchalant about getting a ticket. "
Dad'll
pay it."
Watching the boy accelerate away from the shoulder with a spurt of gravel, Hugh grumbled, "I suppose it's too much to hope Dad will take away the keys."
"Who do you think bought him that car?"
Granstrom
was studying the boy's list of citations, already too long. "He's going to lose his insurance soon."
"We can only hope."
Hugh watched an SUV weave, then steady. A moment of inattention, he decided, as it continued sedately in the middle of its lane.
"You tell anybody yet?" he asked, not looking at her.
She didn't ask what he was talking about. "No."
"Not even your parents?"
"I don't have a father." She sounded distinctly unfriendly. "And I haven't told my mother."
Back off, buddy,
he told himself. Clearing his throat, he asked, "Who were we going to interview next? Anybody nearby?"
She shook her head. "Sarah Stevens lives by North Point—remember, at the end of that gravel road? And, Mark Weaver is out in a development almost to Sequim. Let's see…"
The radio crackled.
"What the hell," Hugh said in amazement, listening to the request for a unit to respond to a holdup in progress. Not at the Home Depot, but at a convenience store not a quarter of a mile away.
"Responding," Nell said into the radio, as he did a U-turn and hit the lights. Another voice spoke up as well, and dispatch confirmed that backup was needed.
When they reached the corner gas station-convenience store, Hugh pulled up in front of the glass doors, where the
perp
would be able to see the blue-and-white marked car. He and
Granstrom
crouched behind their open doors, weapons drawn. The backup unit arrived within a minute and screeched around the corner to cover the rear of the store.
Hugh heard Nell talking to dispatch, requesting a phone call to the store. After a pause, she raised her voice.
"The clerk says she was held up, but the suspect has left the scene." His partner was still listening. "Dispatch says her voice sounds funny. She might not be telling the truth."
"Have her describe herself and then come out the front door with her hands up," Hugh said. They both spoke with the icy calm potential danger provoked.
Nell relayed the request.
"Twenty-two years old. Brown hair, brown eyes, wearing jeans and a yellow T-shirt that says Angel."
The morning sun reflected off the broad windows, obscuring activity within. Usually able to intensely focus, Hugh found his attention split. He saw movement. A flash of yellow. Even as he was tensing, lifting his weapon, he was assessing how protected Nell was behind the car door. Would she have the sense to stay down? Let him be primary?
The glass shivered as the door began to open. "Hands over your head!" he shouted, as a young woman edged nervously out, her body blocking the opening. He could see the whites of her eyes, maybe just because of the police blockade, but maybe…
Shit,
he thought, as a man followed her, his gun to her head. Hugh couldn't get a good look. No…
Yeah… He saw the face. Skinny, young, wild-eyed. Some stupid nineteen-year-old who thought he could get some easy money and found himself trapped.
"You won't get away," Hugh ordered. "Let her go. Put down the weapon.
Now!"
Granstrom
was murmuring to dispatch and to their backup, but the barrel of her gun stayed steady on the
perp
and the young woman who blocked a clear shot.
With a string of obscenities, the punk pulled his hostage along the front of the store. Hugh half stood, frustration raging in him. He'd have to circle the car now to get at the pair.
Granstrom
was swiveling on her heels to keep her gun pointing at the two.
"What do we do?" she asked urgently, low. "What do we do?"
The backup unit hurtled around the corner and slammed to a stop, blocking any escape. Hugh saw the punk turning his head frantically, trying to figure out his next move. A weed-choked, chain-link fence ran on the other side from the store to the street with no gaps. Even if he let the girl go, he'd never make it over before the cops would be on top of him.
"You can't get away," Hugh said again, keeping his voice calm. "Let her go now. Don't make this worse for yourself."
"I'll shoot her!" he screamed, the hand holding the gun to the weeping girl's head shaking. "I'll shoot her. I swear I will."
Nell half rose from her crouch. "We can't let you go."
"Let me by! Let me by!" Fear dripped from him with the sweat.
"Sorry," she said coolly. "No go." She stood now in his way, both hands braced on her weapon.
Gasping for breath, he hesitated for a moment, clutching the clerk in front of him as a shield. One of the backup officers was edging directly behind him. But nobody could make a move while he had the barrel of his gun to the clerk's temple.
In a split second, he made up his mind. Still holding his hostage, he turned the barrel of the gun on the cop in front of him and pumped off a shot. In agony, Hugh saw Nell drop.
Chapter 7
A
frantic need
to get to Nell wiped common sense and procedure out of Hugh's mind. Without checking to see if the other cop was moving, Hugh hurdled the hood of the car and grabbed the hostage in the instant before the son of a bitch could get the barrel of the gun up to her head again. By the time they hit the pavement, the other uniform barreled into the bastard and bore him to the ground. There were a wild few seconds as Hugh shoved the girl out of the way and then dove to join the fight for the gun.
The struggle didn't last long. Hugh viciously chopped the robber's wrist and saw the gun skitter free. The other cop, a big man, cuffed the
perp
and slammed him against the patrol car.
Hugh scrambled for his partner.
"Nell." He was swearing savagely as he half fell around the open car door, going to his knees as he found her sitting behind it.
Face paper white, she clutched her shoulder with one hand. Blood oozed between her fingers. "I'm okay. I'm okay."
Distantly Hugh was aware that the second backup officer was calling for an ambulance. "Officer down. Hostage may be injured."
Hugh checked her everywhere. Her pulse was
thready
, rapid.
"I'm all right," she kept saying. "Really."
"Yeah, you're going to be fine," he said hoarsely, not believing it, reliving the moment the gun had fired and she'd vanished. "The
ambulance'll
be here any minute."
Sirens sounded in the distance; other faces appeared over the car door to see how she was. Hugh ignored everyone and everything but her.
Her head turned, she watched as he pushed her hand aside and ripped open her shirtsleeve. "I don't even know if I need an ambulance."
"You've been shot." He swallowed the fear that still choked his throat. "You need one."
"Is the hostage okay?"
Nell's wound was bloody but looked more like a deep rut than a hole. "Yeah. Skinned from hitting the pavement, maybe."
"And scared to death."
"If I were her, I'd get a job at the library." He grunted in near amusement. "Or Home Depot."
He'd never noticed before how long her lashes were until she blinked in puzzlement. Her face was inches from his.
"Why Home Depot?" she asked.
"Later."
Sitting on her butt on the pavement, back to the car door frame, she pointed out, "We don't have anything else to do."
One of the other cops leaned over the car door and thrust a pile of gauze pads into Hugh's hand.
"Thanks," he said, without looking up, and pressed them to the raw furrow in her upper arm. In answer to her question, he said, "Just before the call, I was thinking we'd have a dull day. Nobody ever holds up Home Depot."
She laughed, and he discovered she had a tiny dimple right beside her mouth. He stared at it until her smile faded.
"Am I puke green?"
"What?" He sank back on his heels. He was too close to her. Proximity was making him dizzy. Crazy. "No. Actually, you're so pale, I keep expecting you to keel over."
"I just have white skin." Her voice was husky. "I burn easily."
With him crouched over her, they felt enclosed in a bubble, a world unto themselves. Her eyes, toffee brown, huge in her pale face, stayed fixed on his, as if she couldn't—didn't want to—look away. As if she were relying on
him.
Hugh had to fight the need to wrap his arms around her.
The sound of sirens had swelled without him consciously noticing. Now he realized an ambulance had braked right behind him. Just in time, no chance for him to make a fool of himself. EMTs leaped out and shouldered him aside. Hugh reluctantly backed away. Clutching the compress, she watched him go, seemingly oblivious to the pair working over her.
Once more, their gazes met, when the EMTs had surrendered to her refusal to get on a gurney, and were helping her walk to the ambulance, one on each side.
"I'll be right behind you," Hugh promised.
She gave him a smile, tinier and more wobbly than she'd probably intended. "Don't call Kim."
"You sure?"
They were boosting her into the back of the ambulance.
"I'm sure," she said, before vanishing into the depths. A second later, the ambulance pulled out of the parking lot with an unnecessary explosion of lights and horn.