Beau (In the Company of Snipers Book 18)

by Irish Winters

  “You’ll see, ma’am,” he replied evenly. “May I take that bag for you?”

  “Ma’am? Me? You do know that makes me sound ancient, don’t you? And no, you may not take my bag.”

  “As you wish.” Maverick answered as if he were Wesley from “The Princess Bride.” Very courteously, he opened the passenger door of a sleek, black Infinity and gestured her to slide into it. “But Mom taught us boys that ma’am is the only way to address ladies, whether they’re inclined to take it the wrong way or not.”

  “You’re right. I was out of line,” she breathed as she tucked her legs in and peered up at him. The way he handled himself and the way that cowboy hat perched low on his forehead… Gah. He was one hot ‘well baby’ all right.

  While he circled to the driver’s side, she breathed evenly to get her pulse to slow down. Just because it had been a while since she’d had one, years in fact, Dr. McKenna Fitzgerald had studied too hard and too long to be reduced to drooling after a nice male ass.

  But the minute he settled those long lean, denim-clad legs inside the vehicle…

  As soon as he hit the ignition and flung one muscular arm over the seat while backing the car…

  The second she caught a whiff of that delicious shaving lotion he’d doused himself with…

  Her feminine receptors flared. Too much work and too little play had turned a dedicated doctor into a horny woman with illicit, inappropriate thoughts.

  You need to get out more often and shack up with somebody. Anybody. Spread your legs, girl, and fly.

  I’m busy.

  Too busy to have a life? A quickie?

  What is this, pick on McKenna day? He’s married!

  Then pick someone else. Anyone else. Just pick someone!

  “So what’s up with Kelsey?” McKenna asked as she corralled her wayward thoughts and fastened her seat belt. That didn’t help. When she couldn’t locate the belt receptor, she’d ended up facing her melt-in-your-mouth, let-me-lick-your-lips male escort. Where’d Alex Stewart get these guys? From a Chippendale catalog? “W-who’s hurt? Lexie or one of her dogs, umm, Kelsey’s dogs?”

  Think woman! You are not post-menstrual or that hard up for a good time.

  Skillfully, Maverick maneuvered the vehicle through early morning traffic, his head dipped low because, face it, even with his Stetson tossed on the rear seat, the man was a tight fit for this car. It had to be China’s.

  Focus!

  McKenna smoothed one hand over her knee on her way to the medical bag at her feet. That was what was important, her medical expertise and the lifesaving items in that bag, not some married guy with an irresistible cowboy vibe and an incredibly hot bod. Nope. Nada. Dating and marriage didn’t matter in the grand scheme of all things Doc Fitz related. Only the children she could save mattered. The mothers she could keep from hurting or killing their children. They were the important ones. Only them.

  When Maverick pulled through the guard shack at Kelsey’s gated community, he let out an intensely masculine growl. Emergency vehicles blocked the street for the next two blocks west. An ambulance. Fire engines. Police vehicles.

  “What’s going on?”

  He parked alongside the nearest curb, then turned to her without answering. “This is what’ll happen next, Dr. Fitz. I’ll come around and open your door. Once you’re on your feet, you and I are going directly into Stewart’s side garage door. Got that? Stay right with me and do not bolt. Keep your head down. Don’t look around and don’t talk to anyone.”

  “But the police—”

  “Focus on me. Just me. Anything happens, you run for that door and don’t look back.”

  “What on earth is going on?”

  Maverick glared out the windshield. “There’s a murderer on the loose. You ready?”

  Clutching the handle to her bag, McKenna pulled it close to her chest. “Always.”

  Chapter Seven

  Beau came to in groggy, disjointed stages of flickering lights, sharp staccato gunfire, and a banshee with a wicked blade in her gnarled fist. Peeling his eyelids back, he took a deep breath and—It’s her! The bitch who cut me. She’s here! Right now! In my face! The nerve! He shoved her back, ready to roll and run, his heart thudding a mighty, “Fuck off!”

  Strong hands muscled him back to her table, and…

  Shit, no. She’s got help. Get me out of here!

  “Beau, honey. Beau!” All at once, the bitch morphed into pretty Kelsey leaning over him, her brows furrowed and concerned and...

  That was just plain weird. But those were Kelsey’s brown eyes smiling through the fog in his head. That was her dark chocolate hair spilling into his face. She was patting his cheek. Kneeling on the same table with him. Ah, no. Make that the floor. I’m lying on her kitchen floor. What the hell?

  He forced a swallow, blinking to clear the muddled haze in his head.

  “Wake up, hon. It’s just me. Take it easy and breathe.”

  Okay. I can do that. I think. For you, I can breathe. Eventually. Once my heart stops climbing up my throat. It’d be nice if she stopped touching him, though. Kelsey’s hands were clean and pure. She should know better than to touch someone like him.

  Gradually, the room came into better focus. Kelsey was leaning over him, and yes, he was on his back on her floor. The hulking shadow leaning over the top of him, pressing him down to keep him from hitting his wife was—

  Oh, shit. Alex. Another woman, a much prettier-than-the-bitch-who’d-cut-off-his-finger knelt alongside Kelsey, but nearer Beau’s head. Wearing scrubs and a stethoscope like a nurse or a doctor or—

  “Where the fuck am I?” he demanded, searching out the stern, upside-down-glare of his no-nonsense employer. Not wanting this to be happening to him in Kelsey’s kitchen. “How, how’d I get... here?”

  “Settle down,” Alex replied, his tone uncommonly gentle despite those laser-sharp eyes boring holes in Beau’s forehead as if he were reading his mind. Beau wouldn’t put it past Alex to be able to do that. The guy had a photographic memory or something. Maybe x-ray vision, too. With one scathing glance, he could make grown men wet themselves. “You’re hurt and you’re at my place, but you’re safe now, Beau. I’ve got you.”

  “Th-that’s my line. Course I’m safe. I’m A-Army, b-but...” He sucked in a long breath to calm his heart rate and get his bearings. His head, which at the moment felt like a bag of marbles with a hole in it, the marbles scattered to who knew where, pounded like a mother. Waking up in Alex’s house was—weird. Damned unsettling. And the last place Beau wanted to be.

  But with a snap of his wrist, and all the pain that came with it, he remembered. “Son-of-a-bitch!” hissed out of him as he tried, unsuccessfully, to curl that wounded, throbbing limb into his chest. “What the fuck’s wrong with my hand? What happened to me?”

  The unnamed woman, who now held one damned long hypodermic needle in her fingers, also had a firm grip on said throbbing wrist, and he didn’t dare struggle too much. Damn, what a bloody mess his finger was. Made a guy’s innards roil looking at what was left of it.

  “You have got to hold still, sir. I can’t help you if you fight me. Now please. Relax and let me do my job. You want to feel better now, don’t you?”

  Fuck, yeah. “Who are you?” he asked because he damned well needed to know who thought she was in charge of his fingers this time.

  Her head lowered as soft green eyes focused intently on his wounded hand. “I’m Dr. McKenna Fitzgerald.” Of course, she also inserted that needle into his bloody stump, when she spoke and—

  “Ow, ahh, shit! Damn it, Jesus!” he cussed, fighting the urge to knock both these women on their butts, so he could get the hell out of there and make the pain stop. “You’re killing me!”

  Kelsey kept patting his stomach like she needed something to do with her hands. “It’s okay, Beau. It’ll be okay.”

  ‘In which fuckin’ universe?’ he wanted to scream, but he di
dn’t. He couldn’t. Not at Kelsey. Sucking in a deep breath, he forced his rank, foul, other self, back into its corner. Just because he was hurting—like a mother!—he couldn’t hurl obscenities at one of the sweetest women he’d ever met. But that other gal... She’d better knock it off.

  “Another pinch,” Dr. Fitzgerald said in that annoying professional tone she no doubt used on other helpless victims. Her hair flipped over her shoulder when her head tilted. It caught his eyes. Pretty hair. Blonde, but streaked with raspberry red highlights. For a second, he lost track. It looked like rays of pink sunshine were caught in those shimmering strands. As if the sun couldn’t help kissing her. Like he wanted to kiss her. Beau reached out to run one of his not bloody fingers through it when—she stabbed that son-of-a-bitchin’ needle into his finger again!

  His back turned into McDonald’s golden arches. “Jesus Christ! Will you leave the fucker alone? It’s gone already!”

  “Settle down, Beau,” said the man with All. Ten. Fingers!

  “You settle down!” Beau hissed at his employer. “You’re not the one she’s stabbing, are you?”

  Alex stopped talking. Damned good thing.

  “Another sting. Sorry. I know this hurts.”

  You think? Beau bit the inside of his cheek, ashamed for acting like no Army Ranger ever and in front of his employer no less.

  “But it’ll all be over in a few seconds. Can you hang tight for me, big guy?”

  Big guy? Now she’d made him feel like a baby. Despite having cursed at her, he snapped, “It’s nothing.” He wasn’t used to being the one on his back. But he remembered more and more. It hadn’t been a dream. That digit really was missing.

  His narrow escape from that wooden table came back to him in an adrenaline-powered hot flash of awareness. Tilting his chin up, he stared at Alex. “I was in Boxster’s Pub. Alone. Last night. After work. You know the one, and... Shit. That’s all I remember. When I woke up this morning, the bitch, ah…” He glanced at Kelsey. “Sorry, ma’am. Don’t mean to cuss so much, but… Holy Christ!” His head came off the floor as Doctor Pain-In-The-Ass stabbed him yet again. “Are you done torturing me yet?”

  Withdrawing the needle, she leaned back on her heels with a sadistic, satisfied smile. “I am now. You’ll be numb soon. In the meantime…” She set the damned thing aside—thank you, Jesus!—and removed the stethoscope from around the slender neck he wanted to wring. Her hair swished again as she pressed the cold flat disc under his shirt to his sweating, heaving chest. He felt like a racehorse gone lame on the track, slathered and about to be put down. “Let’s have a listen, shall we?”

  “Yes, let’s! And while we’re at it, how ’bout I stick you?” Instantly, Beau’s gaze flickered to Kelsey in shame. Okay, that hadn’t come out like he’d meant. Not exactly. But the thought of sticking this annoying doctor offered a pleasant distraction.

  Alex’s grip lessened. “Do you remember anything else?”

  “Yeah,” Beau muttered, breathing hard through his nose and hating being the center of attention. “No. Maybe.” Shit! He couldn’t remember Jack!

  He focused on his breathing and on his boss’s stern glare, not the woman running her fingers over his chest checking him for a heart. Yes, he had one. Least, he used to a long time ago. With the soft pitter-pat of her fingertips on his chest, the urge to run a comb over his head came out of nowhere. This was so not his best day. I look like shit, and I’m disgusting. Please go away. Leave me alone.

  “She was nothing like you, the bitch who did this, I mean,” his big mouth told the doctor for some inane reason. “She wasn’t pretty.” At least I don’t think she was. He couldn’t sound intelligent to save his life, and trying to recall what went down this morning or last night? Not happening.

  “That’s nice,” the doctor replied, her tongue in her cheek like she knew he was making a fool of himself.

  Great. Go ahead and laugh at me. Everyone else has.

  Focus! Oh, yeah. Beau turned back to Alex. “She had l-lots of jewelry. Rings, bracelets. Junk like that. I could hear them jingling. Like wind chimes.” I think.

  “Was she blonde?”

  “Maybe. Couldn’t tell. Only saw her standing in the doorway.”

  “Then how do you know she wore jewelry if you’re not certain what she looked like?”

  Beau shrugged. Maybe because I heard it? Why’d Alex have to ask such hard questions?

  “That’s better,” the doc purred, her long fingers once again fluttering on his pec like he’d been a good boy just because she’d found his heartbeat.

  Beau shot her a covert glance. She was pretty for a physician. Her nose was what they’d call pert. Cute. Turned up at the end. Dots of cinnamon freckles ran across her cheeks. He liked the combination. They reminded him of those sugar sprinkles on cupcakes. Sweet extras not every kid came home to. They were what good mothers put on after school treats they made for their kids. Other mothers. Not his.

  Fidget Jennings never baked anything but crap in her life. Even that wasn’t baking. You don’t bake heroin. You want to get pinned real good, you cook it. In a spoon. Over a Bunsen burner flame, or if you’re too broke, a cheap candle’ll do the trick. Not the nice smelling candles rich folks bought. Just the dollar store chunks of colored wax. The ninety-nine cent specials with three wicks. Every kid with an addict mom knew to buy those, cuz guess who got sent to the corner store when mom ran out of juice?

  “Hispanic?” Alex asked gently.

  Beau blinked up at his boss. “Huh?”

  “Was the woman who did this to you Hispanic? Did she say anything else? Did she speak with an accent?” Why was Alex talking so slowly and enunciating like Beau was an idiot?

  “This morning, fuck yeah.” Not that Beau could remember much. He shifted his gaze to Kelsey, hoping she’d forgive his language, then onto the Doc, not sure he cared what she thought. “Sorry, but you’re... who?”

  “Doc-tor Fitz-ger-ald,” she enunciated just as slowly as Alex had, smiling down at Beau like he was a five-year-old. “But you can call me Doc Fitz. Most of my patients do, if they can talk, that is.”

  What other kind of patients were there? Mutes?

  “Was she Hispanic?” Alex asked again, a hint of exasperation in his tone.

  Beau nodded. “Think so. Yeah, okay. Hispanic.”

  “Does that sound like the same woman?” Alex asked Kelsey.

  She nodded. “Yes, Athena is Hispanic. I’d put her at five feet tall, maybe one hundred forty or fifty pounds.”

  Both Kelsey and Alex looked expectantly down at him, making Beau feel like he was in a tennis match. Who to look at first? No contest. Kelsey won. “I didn’t get her name, ma’am. It’s not like I had time to chat. I was kinda busy getting away.”

  “No, of course not, but she was very intense, wouldn’t you say?” Kelsey asked, her eyes wide and her brows arched encouragingly.

  “Most killers are,” he murmured, trying to keep his eyes open. Trying hard not to look weak in front of his boss. Doc Fitz, either. For some reason, it was okay that Kelsey was there, helping him. Not that it made sense, but he didn’t mind looking weak with her. She was different. Always kind. Forgiving. A guy didn’t have to pretend who he was with her. He could be broken, but she had some kind of invisible super glue that had put him back together after their few meet-and-greets. Everyone liked Kelsey.

  “Focus,” Alex reminded him, tilting Beau’s chin up to maintain eye contact. “Tell me what else you remember. What’d she say? Specifically.”

  “Oh, yeah. Sorry.” Beau lifted his wounded arm. At least, he tried. But Doc Fitz now had it strapped to a board that extended under his shoulder blade. He didn’t remember when she’d done that. Not like his hand hurt any longer, but his head did. The room was back to spinning like a giant carousel—or else he was. To catch his balance before he flew off, not like he could, but still, Beau slapped his free palm to the floor and spread his fingers. That slowe
d the spiral he seemed to be riding.

  “Beau?” Alex reminded him.

  “Umm, yeah…?”

  Doc What’s-Her-Name’s stethoscope had just dropped to her chest. It dangled there, nonchalantly bumping the lush mounds hidden beneath her baby-blue scrubs like he wished he were capable of doing. She canted her head, studying him, her smiling green eyes exact replicas of the hidden pools he’d stumbled on in that desert oasis a few years back. Mysterious. Refreshing. Hiding secrets while saving his worthless life.

  Complex thinking got crazy difficult. His entire body hardened as if she’d just put on a striptease act instead of simply checking his stats. Beau licked his lips, not able to make his eyes move off his attending physician and those luscious—scrubs. If she’d lean over just a little bit farther...

  All at once, a tray of surgical instruments, tape, scissors, shit like that, appeared beside him. Some kind of surgical drape covered his left arm up to his shoulder. Blinking, Beau took in details he should’ve noticed earlier, like the bath towels under his injured arm and hand. Like the pillow under his head. The step stool propped under his feet. Okay, that was thoughtful. They were treating him for shock. Good thinking.

  “Beau?” Alex asked again, his fingertips squeezing Beau’s shoulders. “Are you still with me?”

  “Ah-huh. Yeah. Sure...” Beau answered, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t even in the same room or on the same floor any more. Not unless floating above it and looking down at himself counted.

  Across from him, Maverick Carson leaned against the closed mudroom door like an angry ghost. Maybe the Grim Reaper, with his arms crossed over his chest, and his eyes always so, so black. Unpleasantly dark. Glowering. Hovering. The only things missing were the black robe and scythe. But that was Maverick for you. Never overly friendly. Never approachable. Beau had yet to understand what made him tick.

  He startled, his damned heart pounding up his throat, ready to jump back into action. “Where’s Lexie? Is she safe?” Jesus, please say yes!