Safeguarding the Surrogate

by Delores Fossen

  Barrett lunged toward them, ready to help, but Kara knew he didn’t have a clean shot. Plus, Rizzo was using the positions of their bodies to his advantage. If Barrett tried to punch Rizzo, he could end up hitting her. While that wouldn’t kill her, it might cause her to move the wrong way, and that could allow Rizzo to get off a shot.

  “Put down the gun,” someone shouted.

  Daniel.

  Kara couldn’t see him, but there was no mistaking that voice, and she could also hear his running footsteps as he approached. The relief came, even stronger than her earlier rage. He was alive.

  But he might not be for long.

  From the corner of her eye, she could see Daniel running toward them, cutting through the smoke that had already made its way to the backyard. At the speed he was going, it wouldn’t take him long to reach them, and Rizzo might be able to shoot him. Unlike some of his other shots, she doubted Rizzo would miss at such close range.

  And Daniel could die.

  Using brute force, Rizzo punched Kara with his left fist, and he hauled her to him so that Daniel wouldn’t be able to shoot him. However, it would make Daniel an easy target for Rizzo. She couldn’t just sit there and let Rizzo gun him down, especially when he was trying to save her.

  Kara went at Rizzo again, and she managed to bash her elbow into his face. He cursed her, his growled tone a vicious threat. He turned and pivoted his hand.

  So he could point his gun at her.

  Kara had only a split second to decide what to do. Daniel was right there, already taking aim. Kara knew she had to move, too. So that Daniel would have the shot. So instead of trying to latch onto Rizzo again, she went limp and dropped on her side to the ground.

  Time seemed to slow to a crawl, and she heard herself scream when Rizzo lifted his gun, pointing it right at Daniel. The blast came. A thick syrupy sound that quickly turned to an explosion in her head.

  Rizzo had pulled the trigger.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Daniel didn’t brace himself for Rizzo’s shot. No time for that. He simply took aim as best he could and fired. Just as Rizzo did.

  Rizzo missed.

  Daniel didn’t.

  The shot slammed straight into Rizzo’s chest, and Daniel heard the unmistakable sickening sound of the bullet tearing through him. Daniel hadn’t meant for it to be a warning shot. That would have been too risky. So, he’d aimed to kill.

  Rizzo’s body went slack, his own gun sliding from a hand that was no longer receiving the right signals from his brain. Still, the man managed a dry smile.

  “You’ll never be able to save Annie,” Rizzo said, attempting a grin. It was no doubt meant to taunt Daniel.

  And it worked.

  Because what Rizzo said could be the truth.

  “Where’s Annie?” Kara asked, her voice tight with the strain from the fear and the fight.

  Daniel had to shake his head, and he glanced at Barrett. “Annie wasn’t with the hired gun when I caught up to him. Either she got away or he stashed her somewhere.”

  Or he could have killed her.

  Daniel hadn’t heard the hired gun fire a shot, but he could have snapped her neck. However, Daniel didn’t want Kara to have to deal with that possibility right now. Not when she looked to be barely hanging on by a thread.

  “And the gunman, this Ned?” Barrett pressed, already getting to his feet.

  Daniel tipped his head toward the area where he’d left him. “I had to shoot him, but he was alive when I cuffed him to the door of the dumpster behind the hardware store. He’ll be able to tell you where Annie is.”

  Barrett volleyed a few glances at Kara, Rizzo and him, and his brother must have decided this situation here was under control because he took off running. Daniel heard him call someone, Esther probably, and he barked off orders for a search to find the now missing surrogate and to have the EMTs and the fire department move in. Daniel wished he could help, but there was no way he could leave Kara alone.

  Struggling to get to her feet, she hurried to him, her gaze skimming over him, no doubt to check him for injuries. Daniel had a few, just cuts and bruises, but she had a lot more than he did. The nicks were still bleeding, and the right side of her face was swollen.

  It felt like multiple punches to the gut to see her like that. To see the injuries that this SOB had caused, but Daniel didn’t want Kara to feel his anger. He wanted to give her what comfort he could, so while keeping his gun aimed at Rizzo, he hooked his arm around her and pulled her to him for a hug. But he was the one who was comforted, and Daniel felt the immediate relief of just being able to hold her like this.

  “Now, that’s touching,” Rizzo rasped out. He coughed, then groaned. “Guess you won this round, huh?”

  Daniel thought it was a shame that Rizzo had used what little of his breath he had left for that. There’d been no confession. No remorse. Not even a message he wanted given to someone who might care for him. Just that stupid question that drilled home for Daniel just how senseless all the murders and violence had been.

  Senseless enough that Kara had nearly died because of it.

  Now, he watched Rizzo die. He heard the death rale, saw the life drain from the man’s eyes. And Daniel felt both disgust and relief. Rizzo wouldn’t be able to hurt another woman or launch another attack.

  “We have to get away from the building,” Daniel told Kara when he saw the firemen move in to start putting out the flames at the front of the inn. He also motioned to the two EMTs, and he pointed to Rizzo. “He’s dead, but Kara needs help.”

  Kara was shaking her head before he even finished. “No. We have to look for Annie.”

  “Barrett will find Annie,” he assured her, and Daniel hoped that was the truth.

  He led her to the back of the ambulance, away from some of the smoke, away from Rizzo, and he had her sit while one of the EMTs started to examine those wounds on her face. The other EMT stooped down to take a look at Rizzo. Daniel stepped back so he could call Esther to see if she could give him an update on the search, but he spotted the deputy.

  Not alone.

  She was walking toward them, and she had the injured gunman in tow. The guy was bleeding, but he didn’t appear to have any trouble walking. The man was definitely in better shape than Rizzo.

  Daniel hurried toward them. So did one of the EMTs who’d been by Rizzo. “Did he say where he’d put Annie?” Daniel immediately asked.

  He could tell from the deputy’s expression that the answer to that was no. Daniel simply put out his hand to stop the EMT from going to the gunman. He didn’t say that the piece of slime wouldn’t get medical treatment until he talked, but Daniel was pretty sure he got his point across.

  The gunman huffed. “I knocked her out and dumped her on the side of garbage bags in the alley.”

  Daniel texted that info to Barrett as fast as he could, and he instructed Esther to help Barrett with the search. Esther shoved the man to a sitting position on the ground and hurried off.

  At the front of the inn, Daniel could hear the firemen getting to work. Maybe they’d be able to save the place. If not, it would end up being yet something else that Rizzo had ruined.

  “I want a deal,” the gunman insisted, giving Daniel a snarling look. “I tell you everything you want to know about Rizzo, and I get immunity.”

  Not bothering to keep his language in check, Daniel told him what he could do with his immunity demand.

  “You’re not calling the shots here,” Daniel reminded him. “You’re going down for multiple murders, attempted murders, murders for hire, conspiracy, kidnapping and any other charge I can tack onto that. You’ll be on death row before you know it.”

  Now it was the gunman who cursed. “I didn’t kill anyone.”

  “Maybe not, but accessory to murder will still land you on death row.”

 
Daniel finally saw something he wanted to see. The panic in the man’s eyes. “I’m not going down for this,” the gunman snapped. “Rizzo was the one who put all of this together.”

  Bingo. That was a good start, but Daniel wanted to hear a whole lot more. He glanced behind him to check on Kara—she was still being treated—and he gave the go-ahead nod to the other EMT to check the gunman’s wounds.

  “Keep talking,” Daniel told the man as the EMT stooped beside him. “Start with your name and don’t stop until you’ve convinced me to take the death penalty off the table.”

  Something that Daniel doubted would happen even if the man told them everything. It didn’t matter that he might not have actually killed anyone, accessory to murder carried the same penalty as murder itself.

  “I’m Ned Kershaw,” he finally said. “Rizzo and I belong...belonged to the same group.”

  “The militia,” Daniel provided. “The Rangers have proof to put a stop to that.” If they didn’t already have that proof, they soon would with what he could get from this idiot.

  “Yeah, but I can give the Rangers more. I can give the names of everyone in the group and the location of our stashes. I’ll cooperate, and that should help cut back on my sentence.”

  Maybe, but that’d be up to the Rangers. It was possible they would indeed want to make a deal with him to take down a militia group. For now, though, Daniel was more interested in what Rizzo had done to the surrogates and what he’d tried to do to Kara and him.

  “Tell me about Rizzo,” Daniel demanded. “What was his part in all of this?”

  Ned winced when the EMT cut away his shirtsleeve and began to clean the wound. “Rizzo set all of this up,” Ned repeated. “He killed those women. The surrogates from that clinic. He figured that way when he killed you and your woman, that he wouldn’t get the blame, that the crazy guy who lost his daughter would.”

  Daniel shook his head. “Rizzo was going to set up this man to make him look guilty?”

  “Yeah,” Ned confirmed. “Rizzo sent him some pictures to stir him up. Said he was already right on the edge since he was all broken up about losing his daughter. Rizzo thought maybe the crazy guy would do the job for him, that he’d kill you because it’d look like you were trying to set him up. But the crazy guy didn’t take the bait. That’s when Rizzo tried to stir up the other guy, too, by shooting him.”

  Sean. So that explained who’d shot Sean and why.

  “Rizzo didn’t want this second man dead?” Daniel pressed.

  “No. The idea was for him to go after you and your woman. He was one pissed off guy, I gotta tell you, and Rizzo thought he wouldn’t have to push him too much. Still, I guess he didn’t push fast enough ’cause Rizzo set all of this up.”

  Ned was right about Sean’s anger level. He was indeed a hothead. But obviously Rizzo hadn’t been able to provoke him into committing murder.

  “I didn’t know about any of that, though, about shooting that man until after it was a done deal,” Ned went on a moment later. “When things didn’t go the way Rizzo wanted at the hospital, he hired me to help him tonight. All I was supposed to do was hold the other woman. Annie,” he clarified. “And I was to fire shots that didn’t hit anybody. Especially Rizzo.”

  Daniel could see Rizzo setting up something like this, but there was one piece that didn’t fit. And it was a huge piece. “Why didn’t Rizzo just have you gun me down when you had the chance?” He could have easily done that when Daniel had stood to toss Kara’s gun into the yard.

  “Because he wanted to do it himself,” Ned answered without a moment’s hesitation. “He said no one but him was gonna put a bullet in you and that he wanted you to watch while he killed your woman.”

  None of that was a surprise, but hearing it still packed a wallop. Daniel saw that same reaction in Kara’s eyes when she walked toward him and stood by him. She touched his arm, and he was surprised at how much that simple gesture steadied him. Actually, everything about her steadied him, but Daniel knew they had a long road ahead of them. It was going to take a lifetime or two to get past the nightmare that Rizzo had created.

  “How’d Rizzo ever expect to get away with this?” Kara asked.

  “He faked being shot when he fell in the yard,” Ned explained while the EMT worked on him. “He had some of his own blood drawn, and he used that. He said that would have been on all your clothes when your bodies were found. He’d planned on putting it on the crazy man’s clothes, too. So, when Rizzo just disappeared, it’d look like the crazy man had also killed him.”

  Rizzo had obviously planned on running. On making a new life somewhere else. A life that wouldn’t have involved any jail time for his involvement with the militia or all the murders he’d committed. A life where Kara, he and anyone else who’d gotten in Rizzo’s way would have been dead.

  Since Ned was still wearing his cuffs, Daniel risked taking his attention off the man for a couple of seconds so he could pull Kara into his arms. She was trembling, probably dealing with an adrenaline crash, but she still looked better than she had a couple of minutes ago. That was in part because the EMT had wiped most of the blood off her face, but Daniel could see the relief there, too. Rizzo was dead. The threat to Sadie was over.

  He looked down at her, their gazes connecting, and Daniel realized there was so much he wanted to say to her. Things that would have to wait, though, he realized, because she spoke first.

  “I’m in love with you,” she blurted out. “And I know the timing sucks for telling you that, but after everything that just happened, I didn’t want to wait another minute without telling you.”

  Daniel just stared at her. He certainly hadn’t seen this coming. But he knew it was true. She was in love with him. He also knew she was right about the timing being bad, and his response was going to have to wait. That’s because he caught the motion out of the corner of his eye.

  Since his body was still on alert, he pushed Kara behind him and pivoted in that direction. However, there was no need for him to take aim. It was Barrett.

  And he had Annie with him.

  “She’s okay,” Barrett quickly assured them, and he handed the woman off to an EMT who came rushing toward them.

  “He bashed me on the head with his gun,” Annie snapped. She sounded more riled than hurt, and she aimed a nasty glare at Ned. “I hope you put him in jail and throw away the key.”

  Daniel thought that was a stellar idea. He wanted the man in a cage and was certain that’s exactly where he’d be.

  “She needs to go to the hospital,” one of the EMTs said, referring to Annie. He looked at Kara and Daniel. “You two do, as well. You’re both pretty cut up, and you’re going to need some stitches.”

  Stitches weren’t a picnic, but Daniel thought they were a small price he was willing to pay, considering their injuries could have been much, much worse.

  “Go ahead to the hospital,” Barrett told them. “All three of you can go in the ambulance, and Esther and I will take care of things here.”

  Daniel hated to put all of this on his brother and his fellow deputy, but he doubted Kara would go to the hospital without him. That’s why he slipped his arm around her and began to lead her to the ambulance that was parked behind the fire truck.

  “After the hospital, we’ll go see Sadie,” Daniel assured her.

  That made her smile, and he wasn’t sure how she managed to look so darn good when they’d both been beat to hell and back. But she did. Kara looked amazing. So amazing that he couldn’t stop himself from leaning down and brushing a kiss on her mouth.

  “I’d like that,” Kara whispered. She kissed him, too. It was both casual and intimate, the kind of kiss that couples shared even after they’d been together for years. “I like this.”

  He knew what she meant. This was those kisses. Him, holding on to her. Them being together even if it was only for this
moment. For this night.

  Or longer.

  Kara clearly wanted this to last for a while. And that was something they needed to discuss. Maybe when they got to the hospital, he could find a minute to talk to her alone so he could ask her about what she’d said to him.

  I’m in love with you.

  He’d heard the words clearly enough, but Daniel wasn’t sure she’d meant them. No. Her emotions had been sky-high, and coupling the danger with the fact they’d had sex must have made her believe her feelings went beyond...

  Daniel stopped. Literally and mentally.

  With the EMTs and Annie ahead of them, Daniel looked down at Kara. “It’s been a tough night,” he said, testing the waters. Or something. Heck, he wasn’t sure what he was doing, but he suddenly felt off-kilter.

  No.

  That wasn’t it.

  He suddenly felt as if everything was...right.

  “You’re in love with me?” He hadn’t intended for that to be a question or for him to make it sound as if it were some kind of miracle. But it was. It fit the miracle label just fine.

  “I am.” She didn’t smile this time, but there seemed to be a contentment about her when she looked into his eyes. “How much of a problem will that be for you?”

  Daniel had heard a lot of tough things tonight, including some tough questions. But that wasn’t one of them.

  “No problem at all,” he assured her—after he kissed her again.

  This time, though, it was a lot more than a brush of his lips on hers. He made sure that she felt it. Hopefully all the way to her toes. It must have worked because when he pulled back, she had a dreamy smile on her face.

  “Good,” she whispered. “Because I plan to love Sadie and you for a long, long time.”

  Since that was exactly what Daniel had in mind, he smiled, too, and kissed Kara again. Soon, very soon, he wanted to get started on that long, long time.