One Good Man (18 page)

Whack!

The refrigerator door slammed him sideways. He stumbled, grabbed the counter for balance, bit off a succinct “What the hell?” and looked up.

Then he bit his tongue and watched the Hispanic man standing there use the hand with the snake tattoo to shut the fridge. His other hand held a gun. Kell did not like being on this end of it.

“The girl,” the man—he was gangly, edgy, no more than five foot seven—said in accented English. “Down at the water. Get her to come here. Now.”

Think, think, think.
Kell remained silent, his sluggish mind racing, his blood firing in his veins. The man knew where Jamie was, that she was there alone, yet had come after Kell instead. He obviously wanted Kell out of the way before taking care of Jamie. Otherwise, why not shoot her, dump her body in the water and go?

He didn’t plan to go. He didn’t want a quick kill. That was the only conclusion Kell could come to for the delay. And then he came to another, equally horrifying. Soon enough, this man would figure out that Jamie would eventually return to the cabin on her own. He did not need Kell to get her here. He didn’t need Kell for anything.

That meant Kell had to find a reason to become indispensable before the man with the snake tattoo dispensed with him.

“She won’t be able to hear me if I yell.” It was a lie, of course. With only the whistling wind for noise, Jamie would hear him just fine.

But there was a glassiness to the other man’s eyes that made Kell go for it, a stall tactic while he tried to figure out how his team had let this one through. Something was off, wrong. Something big. “And if I’m not back in another minute, she knows to run.”

The Hispanic man’s gaze sharpened, his thick black brows coming down in a vee. “There is no place for her to go. No one to help her.”

Kell weighed how much of the truth to reveal. “I have a man—”

“You had a man. He is not there now.”

He’d taken out one of the team. Goddammit. Kell didn’t have time to wonder who, what had happened, how serious it was. He only had time for Jamie. “I have more. And once they realize one of their own has gone silent, they’ll be coming here to get you.”

“Then I will kill the girl, and you will be my hostage.” The man raised his gun hand, wiping his sleeve beneath his nose. “Then when I am safely away, I will kill you.”

A plan that would keep Kell alive for the moment. Now to work on keeping Jamie the same. He kept his hands where the other man could see them and took him in, the ragged athletic shoes, the worn jeans, dirty with torn hems, the long-sleeved plaid shirt that said hand-me-down charity. The glassy eyes, the runny nose…

“What were you after? At the Sonora Nites Diner? Money to fund your habit?”

He rolled his head on his shoulders, looked around the kitchen, came back on Kell with a wave of the gun. “The girl. Make her come here. Before she runs.”

Kell started to tell him to go ahead, pull the trigger, but he wasn’t certain that if Jamie heard the gunshot, she wouldn’t run toward it instead of away. And with Kell down—or dead—he wouldn’t be able to fulfill his promise to Dr. Kate that he’d bring her daughter home. Hell, he’d promised Jamie just last night that they’d get out of here in one piece.

In his line of work, he shouldn’t be making promises.

C’mon, Kell, focus, think, focus
. His gun was in the bedroom, his phone on the table, but Jamie had a knife…“I’ll have to walk to the dock, wave her up from there.”

He was getting nervous, the tattooed man. He couldn’t kill Kell and go after Jamie alone; he’d have no hostage should he get caught. And now that he’d revealed himself, he couldn’t get to Jamie without going through Kell, and whatever he was on had him just paranoid enough not to go along with Kell’s suggestion.

Kell was looking for his next move when he saw a shadow cross the wall behind the killer. He hadn’t heard tires on the crushed-shell driveway or the rumble of an engine approaching—meaning the body creeping closer had to be Jamie’s.

He kept his gaze trained on the man who held the gun, fought the rising fear that sent his heart to his throat to choke him, wished he had a better weapon than the only thing he’d seen within reach—the iron skillet he’d left on the stove top last night after washing it.

He backed a step closer to the door, closer to the skillet, too, praying that Jamie could hear him and that the killer couldn’t hear her. “Is that what you want to do then? Have me wave her up from the dock? I can’t say she won’t run if she sees you’ve got a gun. Or sees that you’re here, for that matter. Best bet is to let me walk down there alone. You’ll still be able to see me, but she won’t see you.”

He was rambling now, but he wanted Jamie to come near enough without giving herself away, and leave him the knife on the table. That’s what he assumed she intended to do, so when she rounded the corner with her arms over her head, all he could do was yell, “No!”

The killer turned. Jamie slammed the rock she held into the side of his skull, sending him spinning. Kell whipped the skillet off the stove and caught the man’s flailing gun hand. The weapon skittered toward the back door. He stopped it with his foot, grabbed it up and straddled the man who was on the floor, holding his head in his hands.

“The bedroom. My service weapon,” he said without looking at Jamie. She ran off, was back in seconds, still in her underwear and dripping pond water all over the floor. He reached over and released the safety. “Keep it pointed at his head. Shoot him if he moves.”

Kell kept one eye on the man while scrounging through the kitchen’s supply closet for something…rope, twine, a bungee cord, fishing line…Yes! Duct tape!

Yanking a strip from the roll, he nudged Jamie out of the way and bent at the man’s feet to bind them. Next, he pulled his arms behind his back and did the same with his wrists. After that, he took the gun from Jamie and set the two safetied weapons on the table along with the roll of tape.

Finally, he braced his hands on his knees and leaned over to catch his breath. He was halfway through his recovery when he noticed her feet. “Where are your shoes?”

She curled the toes of one foot over those of the other. “Outside the bedroom window.”

The window. Of course. He hadn’t stopped long enough to think about how she’d gotten in. He straightened, his chest still tight and aching. “I leave you a knife and you come armed with a rock?”

Just as breathless as he was, she looked over her shoulder toward the bedroom, then looked back at him. “I brought the knife. I left it on the windowsill. I figured I stood a better chance against a rock if he turned it on me.”

Smart cookie. But just for the record…and because he wouldn’t be able to live with himself if he lost her while she was trying to save him…“Promise me you’ll never do anything like that again.”

“The way it looks, I won’t have to,” she said softly, her voice breaking at the end.

He followed the direction of her gaze; when he looked back, he found her shaking, crying, on the verge of collapse. Cursing himself for a jerk, he grabbed her against him so fast he knocked away what breath he’d managed to catch. He didn’t care, not about anything but taking care of her.

It was over. The terror of her last ten years. No, he didn’t have the answers to explain what had happened today, or what had happened at the Sonora Nites Diner. Not yet. But he would have them soon. All of them. That was his job.

Jamie, she was his life. “No, sweetheart. You won’t have to. Not ever again.”

“I’ll bet Kate’s relieved,” he said. He had already made all the calls he needed to hours ago, checking in with his team, seeing to the officer who’d been shot, calling for whoever it was that would take the killer away.

Jamie had waited for all of that to be done before phoning her mother. She’d wanted to be able to deliver the good news that the ordeal was now behind them, the killer off the street and out of their lives.

“Yes. Very.” Jamie nodded, strangely nervous. She’d finished with her mother, and the members of law enforcement who’d been here were gone.

It was just them now. Her and her Texas Ranger. The two of them alone, safe, the baggage of the last ten years lighter, and less of a stumbling block between them. She was still having trouble breathing, however, not to mention believing the events of the previous eight hours.

Once the suspect had been contained and she’d recovered her composure, dried her skin and her tears, and changed out of her wet clothes, Kell had left her holding his gun long enough to retrieve rope from his SUV’s toolbox and reinforce the job he’d done with the duct tape.

Then he’d taken her out to the front porch while he’d contacted Greenley and the rest. She’d been out here ever since, sitting on the steps, or in one of the porch rockers, or for a while on the porch itself. She hadn’t gone back into the cabin except once to use the restroom. She’d watched the comings and goings of the authorities from whichever vantage point kept her out of their way.

While she and Kell had waited for them to arrive—a long wait considering his cabin’s location—Kell had made more sandwiches, leaving the ones on the dock for the birds who’d discovered the feast not long after Jamie had abandoned it, swimming to the other side of the pond and trekking the long way through the brush to the cabin in search of Kell.

It was when she’d reached the open bedroom window that she’d decided she didn’t trust herself with the knife she’d brought with her. She was scared, feared she’d be too physically shaken to hold on and would lose it in a fight. She’d seen the rock, and been much less intimidated by the thought of using it as a weapon.

She’d hoped she wouldn’t need a weapon at all. She’d hoped she’d find Kell had fallen and twisted his ankle, or for some reason was sick on the bathroom floor. What she’d found had been worse than any of her imaginings—the man who had killed her friends, threatening to take her lover’s life.

She shuddered now, reminding herself that she’d gotten through that horrible moment—and those that followed—just as she had through the last ten years, though this time she’d had more of a reason to do so, one more valuable than staying alive. She’d had to make sure Kell survived, that he did not sacrifice his life for hers.

Sitting beside her, his forearms on his knees, Kell clutched the phone with both hands, squinting as he stared into the distance, his mouth grim. Jamie loved the crow’s feet that stepped from his eyes to his temples.

She did not like the tense set of his jaw, and laid a hand on his thigh to tell him. “It’s the end of a case, not the end of the world. You’ll get more chances to wear your white hat and be a hero.”

He dropped his head forward, a grin teasing at his lips. “After these last few days, I’m pretty much considering taking early retirement.”

She knew he was kidding, but she liked a lot the idea of him never again facing the wrong end of a gun. She also liked seeing him smile. It helped with the scary part of not knowing what came next. “And let the bad guys win? I don’t think so.”

“There are plenty of candidates itching for this job. The bad guys don’t stand a chance.” He reached for her hand, laced their fingers, squeezed. “But then sometimes the good guys don’t either.”

“Oh, Kell,” she said, pulling free to wrap her arms around him, to pillow her head on his shoulder and hold him close, staring out over his property at the safe world beyond. And it was safe now. She just knew it. “I’m so sorry about your man. But he should be okay, yes?”

“Yeah, as long as he comes through surgery. It’s something we all face. That possibility, taking a bullet.” He patted her arm where it lay across his chest, tilted his head to rest against hers. “But thank you. For understanding. For being here.”

She loved him. “Where else would I be?”

“Yeah. About that.” He sighed, made as if to move away, to stand, but only got as far as pulling his feet to the step beneath the one where they sat, remaining in the circle of her arms. “I guess we’d better pack up and get you back to Weldon. Before it gets any later.”

She took a deep breath. Here went nothing. Unless it was everything. And if she didn’t go for it, she would never know. “Or we could not pack.”

He looked over, his expression broadcasting his confusion. “You don’t want to pack?”

“I don’t want to go back to Weldon.” She let her arms fall away from him, and knitted her hands in her lap. Never before had she felt such a need to be brave. “Not yet.”

“You want to stay here?” he asked after a short, cautious pause.

She nodded, treading carefully, too. “I’m thinking, it’s been ten years. I deserve a true vacation. It would be my first.”

Another pause. “And you want to take it here?”

“I do.” Deep breath, deep breath. “But it would be nice not to take it alone.”

“Me?” It was all he asked, his voice soft, his tone wary as if he were walking a razor’s edge of hope.

Hope she could give him. “Of course you. Who else?”

“I don’t know.” He stretched, but the tension remained, radiating toward her. “I thought maybe your mother.”

Now,
that
was funny. “I love my mother. I would never have gotten through the last ten years without her. But I’ve seen her every day of them. And if I were to take a vacation with her, it would be a cruise, or to a spa. She and I and isolation wouldn’t mix.”

“But you like being isolated with me.”

“I love being isolated with you. And before you run away scared because I used the L word—”

He turned toward her, his eyes flashing, hot and proud and suddenly supremely confident. “Use it again.”

Gulp. “What?”

“Use it again,” he demanded, pressing, intense. Potent as he growled. “Or else I’m going to.”

Oh my. Oh my. This was real. She could barely find her voice. “Then you go first.”

“I love you, Jamie,” he said, cupping her nape and threading his fingers through her hair. “I know it’s been less than a week. I know this has been a wild trial by fire. But I would love you if I’d brought my kid into your clinic for an appointment and met you there.”

“You have a kid?” she asked, a question as crazy as what was happening here.

“Not yet. That would be getting ahead of ourselves, don’t you think?” he asked, one wicked brow rising. “Unless I’m reading you wrong.”

She shook her head, shook it again, kept shaking it until the words and the tears shook free, and her hair began to tumble. “You’re not. I love you Kell. It’s been fast and furious. A whirlwind. But it would’ve been just the same if we hadn’t spent our first week together catching a killer.”

“It’ll be the only week we spend doing anything like that,” he promised, hefting her up to straddle his thighs.

She looped her arms around his neck, her vision blurred, her heart a swollen mess of emotions. “So we can stay here for a while?”

“What about your job?” he asked.

As if she cared. The only thing she cared about was this. Him. Her Texas Ranger. Her Kell. “Six years of accrued vacation, remember? And then I may just take leave. Or quit.”

Half-moon dimples appeared beneath the scruff covering his face. “All these life changes. Maybe you’d also consider moving? Somewhere not too far from your mother?”

“My mother would have no trouble sending me packing if she knew I was happy.”

This time his gaze softened, grew dreamy, and just a little bit damp. “Are you happy, Jamie?”

“Exquisitely,” she told him before he brought her mouth to his and kissed her with all he had. How could she be anything but in the arms of her one good man?