ROUGH RIDER (29 page)

B
reathe
…
Just breathe…

I tried to keep my cool as the Crown Vic swerved onto Elm, coming to a hard stop just shy of the police line. I practically leapt out, shouting at the Lieutenant to let me through as he trained a gun at me. His eyes flashed with recognition and he gave me a wave, my hand reaching back into the seat to pull the tactical shotgun out of the vehicle. I slung it over my shoulder, crossing the police line with purpose and intent.

“Detective, where the fuck have you been?” Lieutenant Daniels shouted as I stormed past him. At least one cop wasn’t in on this little scheme.

“Enjoying the roomy trunk of my cruiser,” I shouted back, walking straight past the line of police before breaking into a run.

“Detective! Stop!” Daniels shouted, but I wasn’t giving him a chance to slow me down. He was a good cop, but I had no way of knowing how far the corruption had spread. Any of these men could stop me from getting into that house, and I wasn’t about to let that happen. I needed to keep moving.

Captain Pierce’s house loomed at the edge of the cul-de-sac. The police had formed a semicircle around the front as a pair of helicopters thumped through the air overhead, blades chopping at the clouds almost as fast as my heart was beating.

I held my breath as I passed SWAT, trying to remain as inconspicuous as possible while still moving at a good clip. For my sake, and Nathan’s, I hoped to God that the corruption hadn’t spread to their snipers, wherever they were. Thankfully, nobody stopped me as I stepped away from the perimeter and headed straight for the house.

I reached the captain’s stoop and racked a round into the shotgun before bursting through the door, ready to rain down lead justice on anyone who stood in my way. If Nathaniel Hale was here, I needed to understand. I needed to see him, and if necessary, I needed to stop him. Someone needed to take Captain Pierce down, but not like this. Not with murder, and not in front of his wife and kid. I half expected carnage… What I found instead was a woman tied to a chair, screaming.

“Upstairs! Oh, God, they’re upstairs!” she shrieked, frantically motioning toward the living room with her head.

Confused, I aimed the shotgun toward the stairwell. “Who’s upstairs? Who the hell is up there?” I asked her, adrenaline surging through my body. Behind me, I could hear cops shouting, their voices strained. They knew I’d breached the house. I kicked the door shut and stepped away. I wasn’t about to give anybody a clean shot.

“My husband. My son. Please, help them!” she begged me, tears streaming down her pale face.

“Who’s up there with them? Who has your husband?”

“A man.”

There wasn’t time for more explanation, and I doubted she was capable of giving a coherent one, anyway. Poor woman looked shell shocked, like she was just hanging on by a thread. I nodded to her and rushed past.

I stormed the stairwell. I couldn’t stop myself. Whatever was happening here, I was the only one who could fix this. I was the only one on the force who I knew for sure wasn’t some Irish puppet. I was the only one I could trust. It was a terrifyingly lonely feeling.

I hit the landing, careful not to let my desperation get the best of me. I couldn’t go into this half-cocked, and I was dangerously close to doing just that. I had no backup, no one to cover me if things went south. I had to be more cautious, more patient. I had to plan ahead.

Gun drawn, I edged around the corner of the hall, sweeping my gun toward the door. When no one moved, I moved quickly and quietly past the family portraits hanging on the walls, all signs of domesticity passing by me in a blur. This wasn’t a house to me anymore. This was a war zone.

I stopped in front of the door. I knew I should have waited, should have listened for who was inside, but there was only so much time I could waste. If Nathan was in there with the Captain, then I needed to intervene as soon as possible, and even if he wasn’t, the cops outside wouldn’t wait forever to come and get me.

I took a deep breath through my nose and let it out between my trembling lips. This could have been the last thing I’d ever do. Was I prepared for that? Was I ready to die today?

No,
I decided.
Stop thinking like that. You fight. You fight smart, and fight hard.

I nodded to myself and faced the door.
Here goes…

I kicked the door wide open. It swung inward with a crash, burying its knob inside the interior wall as I raised my gun again, throwing myself over the threshold.

“Police!”

Adrenaline pulsed through my veins as the little boy came into view, cowering in a corner. The Captain was just to the left with his hands in the air, the long barrel of a handgun pointed at his head. We stared at each other in shock.

It wasn’t Nathan inside with them. It was one of the phony Irish policemen. I was hit with a sensation that was equal parts relief and cold, hard dread. I was glad it wasn’t him, but at the same time, the fact that it wasn’t created a new set of problems. I could have talked Nathan down. This guy? Probably not so much.

This was not the situation I had expected to walk into.

“Drop the weapon,” I growled, training my shotgun on the Irishman. Behind him, I could see the shattered window and the shell casings scattered on the floor. He must have fired at least half a dozen rounds toward the officers on the street. Clearly, this was a man who had lost control of the situation.

That, at least, partially worked in my favor. It meant that corruption or not, the men and women on the street would be aiming at this asshole and not at me. Most of them, anyway.

“I said, drop it!” I shouted, wincing as he jumped, his finger resting firmly on the trigger.

“You should be dead,” the man offered up, glaring. He shot me his best sneer, but I could see the tremor in his hand. “You should be fucking dead. This isn’t how things are supposed to go. This isn’t my fucking fault!”

He looked scared and way too young to be up here with that weapon in his hand. He was quickly devolving, his trembling now so obvious that he was knocking the business end of his gun against the Captain’s skull.

This wasn’t good. A calm, cool, collected criminal was bad enough. But a man who thought he had no way out, who believed he had no option except to choose his own death? Those were way more dangerous, and any attempts to talk them down almost always ended in blood.

“There’s a SWAT team outside,” I began, “and every officer in a twelve-mile radius is parked down there. They’ll be coming through the door downstairs any second now. You’re not walking out of here. They won’t hesitate to kill you.” I took a breath, trying to offer him a little bit of hope in the face of overwhelming odds. “But if you drop the weapon and let me take you out of here, maybe none of this has to happen. Cooperate, and we can work out a deal. It doesn’t have to end this way.”

“No!” the man shouted, swinging the Captain around to put him between us. “You think I’m gonna let you put me in prison like you did Wallace? I’m not half the man he is. The things they’ll do to me in there…”

He trailed off, lower lip quivering. “I know how things go with your boys down there. I won’t be in my cell for a week before some guard looks the other way while I get shanked to death as I’m takin’ a piss.”

Okay. This wasn’t working. It was time to change tactics. I wet my lips.

“That asshole you’re holding tried to get me killed,” I said, lifting the gun higher. “And
this
shotgun is loaded with slugs. Do you think I won’t hesitate to put one right through both of you right fucking now?”

He blinked at me. I saw his eyes dip to the shotgun, then back up to me. There was uncertainty flashing across his face now. It was time for me to make the decision for him.

I stared him down with all the viciousness I could muster, my body taut as a bow string.

“
Put the fucking gun down!
”

I let out a breath as he dropped it, the metal clattering against the wood floor. The captain kicked it across the room, quickly moving away from the Irishman.

“Get to your room, get under your bed,” he shouted at his son, and the boy fled from the corner as fast as he could, shooting past me to do as his father bade him.

I’d done it. I moved forward and tossed my handcuffs at the cowering Irishman, snarling as they skittered across the floor to his feet.

“Put them on,” I demanded. I left no room for argument in my tone. This fucker needed to know he had no options left now.

We’d have to act quickly. The SWAT team would be prepping an entry, especially after I went and burst into the house prematurely. I watched the man pick up the cuffs, preparing to strap them onto his wrists, his fingers trembling and his shoulders slumped as he resigned himself to his fate.

A gunshot shattered everything. The Irishman was stock still for a moment, as though time itself had stopped at the colossal sound ripping through the air. Then he collapsed, his face slack, eyes rolling as he hit the ground.

I watched him fall as if in slow motion, crying out as I spun toward the Captain. He stood there without a hint of remorse, holding the gun the Paddie had discarded only moments before. He was still aiming it at him like a cobra waiting to strike.

“What are you doing?!” I asked him as the sound of crashing windows and shattering wood rose up from beneath us. The SWAT team must have taken the shot as their cue to enter.

“I’m protecting my family,” he replied, leveling the gun at me. There was no joy behind his eyes. No care or compassion.

I tried to spin away, my head turning as he fired. A flash of pain seared through me and I collapsed, my legs simply refusing to carry me any farther, my body failing as I hit the ground.

I didn’t even feel the impact. I knew it should have bothered me, knew part of my brain was screaming that this was bad—
really
bad. I’d been hit. I was in shock, probably, which often did more damage than the bullet itself. I had to maintain my grasp on reality. I had to…

But it was no use. Every attempt I made to hold on to my life slipped through my fingers like sand sifting back into the shore. I expected my life to flash before my eyes, to see Momma and Jenny, to see Nathan’s face one last time, but all I saw was darkness closing in from the outer corners of my vision, creating a tunnel with no light at the end of it.

The very last things I saw as I drifted into unconsciousness was the Irishman’s gun skipping across the floor toward his corpse, his cold face staring at me in a way I knew we’d soon share. Darkness took me as the rush of boots clambering up the stairs filled my ears, then silenced.

C
old
.
Darkness. Pain. I had known these things before, but time seemed to stretch out as my senses began to wake from their unnatural slumber. Everything felt slower, almost as if I’d been taken out of the normal world and thrust into something supernatural. I could feel my heart racing in my chest.

My heart… A heartbeat… I’m alive!

The realization seemed to sweep through me, connections turning on as I could feel myself moving, little sensations of touch filtering through the fog. Where the hell was I? What was going on? I forced my eyes open, the blurry brightness causing them to clamp back shut immediately.

Oh, fuck. I’ve been drugged!

I had to get out of here. I had to do something to run, to save Nathan, to escape this place. I began to thrash in place, even as a pain shot out from my arm, searing into my shoulder and neck. I reached across my body blindly, feeling the tubes, struggling to understand what the hell was happening to me in this terrible place.

“Nurse!”

The voice was strange, almost ethereal. I thrashed harder as I felt hands pinning my shoulders down, but then a strange sense of calm flooded over me like the gentle lapping of the tide coming in. I felt warm and light, like I was soaring beyond myself, back into the blackness I’d fought so desperately to escape.

They were drugging me again! No!

But as hard as I tried to claw back toward the light, it faded again, and there I was in the cold, the darkness, the pain…

The next time I woke was different. It wasn’t the hard beating of my heart that brought me back into the world; it was the soft touch of someone’s fingertips on my palm, and the overwhelming scent of flowers.

“You’re going to be okay…”

The whisper was nice. The voice was soft, and each syllable seemed to caress me, wrapping me up in a warmth I’d almost forgotten existed. I took a chance and fluttered an eye, glad to be shrouded in darkness. I could feel my hand being squeezed.

“That’s right. Come back to me, Sandra.”

My eyes flashed open, unfocused, straining to understand. I was in a hospital room, that much was certain, but it was nicer than the ones I’d seen as a child—much nicer than the facility my grandma had lived in during the last hard years of her life. High tech equipment and soothing colors surrounded me. Even the bed I was lying in seemed unusually comfortable. More importantly, the room was filled with flowers of every size and color imaginable, even more opulent than the display Nathan had put on back at the Peachtree.

Nathan… that voice…

As I turned my head, I saw him beside him.

“Nathan,” I whispered, staring up at him.

“I’m here,” he replied, his face contorting with emotion. Regret, fear, happiness, love—I watched all of those feelings shift across his face as he watched over me. My heart began to race as I tried to piece together exactly what had happened to me back at Captain Pierce’s house.

“The Captain… he shot me. We have to stop him.”

Nathan just laughed softly, running his fingertips along my arm. Even in my weakened state, he gave me goosebumps.

“Relax, Sandra. He came out of that house looking like a hero, but it turns out there are still a few good cops on the force. When you went storming into the building, you left a car with a busted trunk and all the evidence you needed to put that asshole away for life just sitting there on the passenger seat. You’re lucky the right person found it.”

Lieutenant Daniels
, I thought to myself. I’d been right about him. He
was
a good cop. I’d owe him big time for this one.

“Where is he?” I asked, suddenly worried.

“The Captain? You don’t have to worry about him anymore. He’s in a holding cell waiting to be charged right along with a dozen paddies. He rolled on the whole organization. You should see the news. This whole thing has been one hell of a story. You’d hate it.”

I laughed and instantly regretted it. Pain shot through my neck, and I hissed as it momentarily blinded me.

Nathan grimaced. “Sorry. Don’t laugh. You did take a bullet, remember? Few inches in either direction and it would have taken out your spine or your jugular. Doctors said you’re lucky to be alive,” he added, holding my hand tightly. “I told them you were too goddamn stubborn to die.”

That shed some light on what had happened to me. but I still had questions for him to answer. “Where are we now? This doesn’t look like County General.”

He grinned a little. “I hope you don’t mind, but the hospital they had you in was a little beneath my standards. Soon as you were stable, I had them move you here. Good Samaritan East, best care you can get this side of the Mason Dixon line.” His expression softened. “My baby deserves the best,” he told me.

I blew out a slow breath. Good Samaritan East wasn’t in my provider network. This whole thing must have cost a fortune, but then I realized I was worrying over nothing. Fortunes were something Nathan could afford to lose. Hell, it might even humble the guy a bit… But something about his words caught me off guard.

Baby? He never called me baby…

I glanced up at his eyes, and suddenly I understood. My hand softly moved to my tummy, holding it tight. No words could express the way I was feeling.

“Relax… You’re fine, and so is our little miracle,” Nathan said, placing a hand over my own. “Everything is going to be ok.”

Nathan’s face blurred before me, and I squinted, trying to make him out. “Nathan,” I whispered, feeling drowsy again. I desperately fought to focus. I didn’t want to lose him again.

“Yes?” he replied quietly, stroking my cheek.

I leaned into his touch, craving just a few more seconds of lucidity. “Stay with me… Stay with us…”

He nodded, leaning forward to press his lips against my forehead just above the bridge of my nose. “Always, Sandra,” he promised me. “I’ll always stay.”

I let his words wrap me in a tender embrace as I closed my eyes and drifted blissfully away.