The Right Kind of Trouble (41 page)

The alligator slowly lowered her head.

The adrenaline flooding him started to ebb.

Another shot came tearing out of the woods and he swore, wheeling around. But it hadn't come from the hill.

Eyes wide, he looked up.

Gideon stepped out from behind a tree, weapon steady.

The one Charles held was anything but, and his vision was graying around the edges too. He grabbed Moira's throat, struggling to think. That dog. Stupid, miserable dog.

“I should get that dog, feed it to the alligator,” he said against her ear as he stared at Gideon.

She called him a coward, and he squeezed her throat until the noise cut off.

“Let her go, Charles. You got nowhere to run and you know it.”

As if to reiterate that, the white dog emerged from Charles' left, followed closely by Zeke. Charles started to edge through the heavy growth toward the west. There was no path there, but they could all see the river—

A line of fire was laid down.

Gideon smiled at him, his eyes cold and flat.

Those eyes made him think of the alligator's. Full of nothing but predatory interest. “Maybe I'll just take her with me,” he said, surprised at how level his voice was.

“We'll kill you before you have the chance, boy,” the old man near the dog said. “Although I'm thinking I'll just shoot you in the fucking kneecaps and let the gator eat you. They don't get as much to eat in the winter. And they ain't picky. They'll eat any old piece of shit.”

He eased up on the pressure on Moira's throat as he thought through his options. They were getting decidedly slim.

However, he wouldn't die on this island. Not here. Not where everything had started. Patrick McKay had started it all here. He'd taken the money that would have been his—
George's,
he told himself. But it would have come to him. He would have had his own fucking dynasty, just like the McKays.

He squeezed Moira's throat one final time, hard, brutal, fast.

Then he flung her toward Gideon. “Here. Take your slag, Marshall.”

He darted behind the fallen tree near him, ignoring the voices shouting after him to get on the ground. Like that would bloody happen. Another shot rang out, close—too close. He crashed into a rotting stump when he instinctively ducked, his right arm smacking into it. The scream that tore out of him sounded like nothing human.

Sensing the men drawing closer to him, he lurched out of the trees, focusing on nothing but the glint of sunlight on water.

He didn't see the wriggling little body until he'd already stepped on it, nor would he have cared.

Mama gator cared, though.

There was a shout. If he heard the panic, it didn't quite penetrate.

It wasn't until something grabbed his leg that the urgency in those shouts actually penetrated the pain fogging his head, and then the pain got worse.

So much worse.

He went down.

Instinctively, he kicked out, but part of him thought …
well, mate, that's it then …

A boom echoed in his ears.

Somebody shouted.

A face appeared in his line of vision and then hands grabbed him, dragged him away. He found himself looking up into Moira's face.

She really was rather lovely.

She glared at him. “Don't say that, you son of a bitch.”

“I di…” He frowned. Had he said that outloud? And why couldn't he …

He was cold.

Reaching up, he went to rub at his eyes.

Seemed darker than it should be. Something smacked him in the face and he blinked, confused.

The locket.

Moira's locket. Everything felt slow and stiff as he grabbed at it, held on.

“Where's the treasure, love?” he asked, his tongue so thick it was hard to form the words.

“There isn't…” She sighed. “Let me have my locket, Charles. I'll show you how to find it.”

“That's right, love.” He blinked hard, trying to clear his eyes, then he swore as pain tried to eat up his leg.

Voices clamored all around, like gnats buzzing in his ears. “Fucking noise. Sod it. Where's the treasure, Moira? Told my father I'd find it. Promised.”

“I imagine you did.” She held something up and he looked.

“I don't…” He blinked and tried to catch the swaying, shining …

Moira guided his hand, steadied it as she guided the locket closer.

His gaze swam in and out of focus.

From a distance that seemed like miles, he thought he heard Marshall barking orders. “Keep him talking, Moira …
fuck
.”

“Tell that prick to…” Charles blinked, then his voice trailed off as the words on the locket finally swam into focus. “No. No, that can't be…”

“It is. It was there all the time, Charles.”

 

CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

“He didn't make it.”

Moira rubbed the locket with a soft rag somebody had given her. She didn't know who. She'd been cleaning unseen blood from the surface for what seemed like hours.

They'd sat in the small, rundown county hospital for nearly two hours while doctors tried to save Charles Hurst, the man she'd tried to convince herself she loved.

Gideon sat across from her.

“Mac?”

Slowly, she lifted her eyes and met his, a knot in her throat bigger than the entire damn state. “Am I a killer now?” she asked, her voice raw.

“No…” Gideon came to her, his voice raw. “Baby, no.”

“I knew that alligator was there. I knew she had her young with her and I knew Charles probably didn't know much about them.” Tears blurred her eyes. Pressing her face against his neck, she tried to hold back the sobs, but she couldn't. They ripped out of her and for the next few minutes, it was a chore just to breathe with all the pain that came tearing out of her.

Gideon rocked her, stroking a hand up and down her spine, his cheek resting on her hair.

When the door burst open, he wasn't surprised to see Brannon and Neve, followed closely by Ella Sue and her husband, along with Ian and Hannah. Hannah was moving a little slower and Ian stayed with her, allowing the siblings to get to Moira first.

Family, he thought absently. It was a family bearing down on them.

But they came up short when they saw Gideon holding Moira cradled against his chest.

Neve went to lunge for them, but Ella Sue caught her arm, giving Gideon a questioning look. He lifted his head just a fraction and shook it in response to that silent question.

Not yet.

So they retreated.

Because that was family … sometimes pain cut too deep to share all at once.

Long moments passed before the storm of misery eased. Gideon didn't think Moira had even realized the others were there. From time to time, he saw them pacing just beyond the narrow slit windows, their frustration palpable. But his concern was Moira. As it always was.

She sniffed against his neck.

“How mad are you?” she asked, her voice raspy.

He didn't pretend not to understand.

“At you walking off with a man who had a loaded gun? Oh, I don't think mad covers it. I'm thinking about spanking you.”

She gave a watery laugh, then snuggled in closer. “Okay.”

“It's no fun for me if you're okay with the idea. Well, yeah it is. But you could pretend some reluctance.” He rubbed his cheek against her hair.

“I don't have the energy for that.” Another sigh shuddered out of her, a wet sound that was too much like a sob for his comfort. “I keep seeing the way he looked when he went down.”

“He could have lowered that weapon at any time, Moira. He could have walked away. He made his choices. You told him that she was active—he's seen enough gators moving around in the summer to know what that means, baby.”
He's …
Mentally, he corrected himself. Charles
had
seen. He'd never see another.

The mother alligator had sank her teeth into his lower leg and torn at him, ripping at his leg and severing it right at the knee.

Logically, Gideon could say she'd been doing what any decent mother would do—protecting her babies. Charles had stepped on one of them when he'd been stomping off after Moira had already warned him about the alligator.

If he hadn't already had some blood loss, Gideon and Zeke might have been able to do more for him, but by the time EMTs, quickly followed by paramedics, had arrived, Charles had already been hovering right at death's door.

Gideon didn't mourn the bastard.

But he mourned for Moira.

Sinking his fist into her hair, he tugged until she lifted her head and then he rubbed his lips across hers. “You are not a killer. You were fighting for your life … for mine. He's been targeting all of you for years. You were fighting for all of you. You're a fighter, Mac.

A sigh escaped her and this time, it was steadier.

It parted her lips, and he let himself kiss her.

A quick kiss, he told himself. Just one.

But as she opened for him and sank into his arms, he had hot, ugly flashes of the day slam into him. One right after the other. Neve showing up at his house, showing him the information she'd found. Himself, showing up at Brannon's only to find Moira missing. Charles' house, empty.

The call from Zeke.

Seeing that son of a bitch holding her, one hand at her throat.

Moira whimpered against his lips and strained closer. He shifted her around in his lap and shoved both hands into her hair, craning her head farther back as he hauled her closer.

Need punched into him hard and brutal.

She was alive.

She was safe.

She was alive.

Part of him still didn't believe it, not yet, but each stroke of her tongue across his and each delicious bite of her fingernails into his arms made him more and more aware.

If it hadn't been for the gentle clearing of a throat, Gideon later realized, he might have done something that would have embarrassed them both.

Tearing his mouth away from Moira's, he looked up, dazed and a little surprised to see the plain, utilitarian white walls of the surgical waiting room around him.

Hospital.

Damn.

Hell.

“Shit.”

Ella Sue cocked a brow at him.

She stood inside the door. She was the only one
inside,
but several other faces were all but smashed against the glass. Neve wagged her eyebrows. Brannon scowled at him, while Hannah and Ian looked like they wanted to bust out laughing.

Moira stiffened in his arms, her breathing slowly returning to normal. “Why do I get the odd feeling that Ella Sue is staring at me?” she asked, looking at his throat.

“Well.” Gideon flicked a look from Ella Sue to Moira.

“You called them.”

“I did.”

Moira dropped her head onto his shoulder. “That's … well, that's good. I guess they've been worried.”

He slid a hand up her back. “Yeah. Look at it this way. I think you've scarred your brother for life. Your day has one bright spot, right?”

She snorted out a laugh. It had that odd, half-sob sound. She went to hug him, and her locket smacked into his cheek. “Beating me with jewelry won't help, Mac.”

He tugged it from her hand as she looked over her shoulder at Ella Sue. “They can come in,” she said softly.

Ella Sue stepped aside. Brannon was the first one in.

“Say one thing, kid, and I'll tell you all about the time I walked in on Mom and Dad having sex,” Moira warned.

Brannon stopped dead in his tracks.

Hannah sniggered.

Gideon smiled a little but was staring at her locket. She'd shown this to Charles as he lay there, bleeding to death. She squirmed off Gideon's lap, glancing down at him before she turned to face her siblings and Ella Sue.

While they wrapped her up in hugs, Gideon flipped open the locket.

There was a tiny, hand-painted miniature that he knew was of Madeleine, Patrick McKay's wife. On the opposite side of the locket was an inscription.

Gideon frowned as he read it through once, then a second time.

My Greatest Treasure

Moira eased down into the seat next to him. Everybody was firing questions at her, but when they saw the look on her face, oddly enough, silence fell.

Moira took the locket from him gently. “He was looking for a treasure. The past hundred fifty, hundred sixty years people talked about some mythical treasure that Paddy had buried somewhere, all because of a few words he wrote in a journal that disappeared. He'd talk about it, too, I know, when he was drunk, which was probably more often than he needed to be. But they never seemed to get it.”

She lowered the locket and Gideon watched as she pressed on something with the edge of her thumb.

“Madeleine was pregnant when he had that commissioned,” Neve said.

Gideon looked up, saw the smile on the youngest McKay's face. She leaned against Ian, her head on his chest. Although Brannon didn't say anything, he reached over and rubbed at Hannah's swollen belly.

Understanding dawned even before Moira put the locket into his hand.

There was another inscription, hidden under the miniature.

Lies Here

“My greatest treasure lies here,” Gideon murmured. “It was his family. His legacy … that's what you were talking about in the hospital.”

“Yeah.” Moira shrugged a little sheepishly. “He gave her the locket after the baby was born. The baby—Patrick's son—he was the one who really started to build his father's empire, helped clear his father's name. He was thirteen when it all went down, and by the time he was twenty it was all he could think about. He asked his stepfather Jonathan to help him, and so that was what they did. They hunted down the men who'd set Patrick up—all save for one.”

“George Whitehall.”