Heal Me

by Grady, D. R.

  “You got him, Jenna. You took down the Gentleman Caller. Way to go, girl. I’m sure you must have been afraid, but you did it anyway, and now he can’t hurt any more women. We’re going to haul him off to jail, and he’s not getting out. Trust me on this one. And he killed someone, so he might even fry. You come back to us. By the time you open those blue eyes of yours, we’ll have hauled Brandan in and have him safely tucked into a prison cell. I’ve already put in a request to have him join a really nasty inmate we call...well, never mind, just know that justice will be done.” McCully rattled on a little too fast, a little too much, but what she said seemed to relax Carrie Snyder’s sister and Jenna.

  He looked at his partner and the physician assistant and then at Jenna. “Can you give me a....”

  “Certainly,” the woman said and hauled his partner out the door. She snapped the door shut and he brushed the hair off Jenna’s forehead.

  “Jenna, I love you,” he whispered, and bent down to kiss her unresponsive lips. He couldn’t stop himself from gathering her close for a hug and another kiss. “You’ve got to wake up, Sweetheart. Okay? Wake up for me. I’ll tell you I love you when your eyes are looking at me, I promise. Just wake up,” he begged before brushing his lips over her forehead.

  He left her room soon after so the staff could continue monitoring Jenna and followed McCully into the room where they held Brandan. Owen motioned for her to do the honors. Not only did it seem fitting that a female detective arrest this serial rapist, but he was afraid he’d snuff the man’s life out with his bare hands if he got too close. As it was, he had a difficult time reigning in his chaotic emotions. As well as balancing his needs and wants. Right now he needed to pound the man to a bloodied pulp and he wanted to make the man suffer just as he’d made those women who he chose as victims.

  Rage surged through his blood like a voltage overload and he swallowed several times before finally quelling the assault. Owen unclenched his fists and his jaw with effort.

  He liked his job too much, and he didn’t think Jenna would approve of him beating up the man sobbing on the floor before McCully. Brandan had crumpled as soon as they walked into the room. He kept sobbing something Owen didn’t pick up but figured McCully could clue him in on later. Besides, Jenna seemed to have done a pretty excellent job at saving herself. Self-recrimination now streamed through him in a torrent and he again fought to squelch the reaction.

  He should have been here to protect Jenna. Yet even as that little voice in the back of his head reminded him life didn’t work that way, it didn’t ease his conscience. He hadn’t been here to save Jenna. And she could have been among the sobbing man’s victims.

  When McCully jerked Brandan to his feet and read him his rights, after handcuffing him, Owen saw with interest that the man had some definite bruises littering his exposed skin. Go, Jenna, he couldn’t help thinking and the fact that she had protected herself made him feel a little better. Not a woman to sit around and wait for someone to take care of her, Jenna had stepped in and done the deed herself.

  He thought fleetingly of Emmy Fields and Bunnet, a hitman who had been sent after her and her husband. Emmy, infuriated by the man’s intent to kill her husband, had thrown their trash bag at the man, then leaped the fence and wrapped her small hands around his throat in a glorious feminine show of rage.

  Then pithily reminded her husband, after he started yelling at her, that his sister would have done the exact same thing. As would his cousin, Julia. He’d heard about Julia taking down her abusive ex-boyfriend, and now he personally witnessed the result of Jenna’s own inner fortitude. She had single-handedly kept herself from becoming a victim. What an impressive woman.

  He shoved all guilty thoughts from his mind. He realized intellectually that he couldn’t protect her or McCully or the rest of his family at all hours of the day. Owen knew that. But emotionally... it was obvious he had some work to do there.

  “Let’s get this creep behind bars,” McCully said savagely behind him and he turned to see her herding William Brandan, dubbed The Gentleman Caller, toward the door. He followed behind them, knowing he emitted anger and malevolence toward the man who had dared hurt Jenna. Brandan sucked in a shaky breath, sobbing so hard he nearly fell a few times.

  McCully, Owen noted, didn’t offer even a smidgen of sympathy. She wrenched him around with little regard to his emotional state. In fact, she appeared to get some sort of kick out of torturing him because he finally caught one of her statements to the man.

  “Yeah, keep bawling, because that’s sure to turn on some of your cell mates,” she told the man, her voice harder than he’d ever heard before.

  He raised an eyebrow at her. She scowled at him. “He intended to hurt Jenna. And killed Carrie Snyder. As well as raped and tortured how many women? Slimeballs don’t get my sympathy,” she bit out and jerked a little harder on Brandan than she needed to.

  A uniformed police officer took over and shoved Brandan in a police car. Owen and McCully split up again so they could ask questions and he wanted to check on Jenna again. Heaven help him if she didn’t pull through this attack.

  Chapter 20

  That night, after Jenna woke up and McCully and Fred took her home, Owen swung by Fred’s house. He had plans for the evening and none of them included a cozy party of four. He located what he had come for and scooped everything into a bag before leaving.

  When he arrived at Jenna’s, his eyes flew to hers. She looked more alert but was still groggy. Despite that she still managed to tell them almost verbatim what had happened. Her memory fortunately hadn’t been altered by the drug Brandan injected in her, and she told them of using her stethoscope and a few self-defense moves to save herself.

  The only thing she was a little vague on was what happened directly after Brandan had managed to plunge the needle into her. They mentioned the little they pieced together.

  The receptionist, one of only three people at the clinic at the time had heard Jenna scream and called for assistance from the security guard. They rushed to her office, saw Brandan slumped on the floor, and the guard had quickly subdued him. The receptionist immediately went to Jenna, and upon seeing her unresponsive state, had panicked. But she recalled that the other doctors should be arriving at any time and ran into the hall to intercept them.

  They, in turn, had set to helping Jenna and the night shift nurse Brandan had considered expendable. The guard, once he cuffed Brandan, called the police. They figured out that Jenna managed to throw her attacker into the wall with a kick. That action had probably saved her from becoming another victim. Brandan’s head slammed against the wall, and that stunned him long enough for the receptionist and security guard to run to her aid.

  Now, Owen’s eyes traveled over her in a concerned rake. She looked too pale, but her blue eyes held a sparkle that gave him some hope. He saw Fred watching McCully and he jerked his head at her then at the basement doorway. Fred nodded and hauled her downstairs. Owen figured she needed to work out some of her frustration so they installed a punching bag. McCully could use that.

  In the meantime, he dumped the bag he brought from Fred’s house on the floor beside the TV and then gathered Jenna into his arms. He needed to feel her warmth and smell her sweet feminine scent, and touch her before he could convince himself she really was okay.

  “I heard you,” she murmured against his chest.

  He tightened his arms around her almost involuntarily.

  “I wanted you to. I was afraid you wouldn’t wake up.”

  “Like Carrie Snyder?” she whispered.

  His heart burned like an open wound. “Like Carrie Snyder.”

  “He gave her the strongest dose of any of us. That’s why she didn’t wake up. Since I got injected, too, I’m pretty certain she had no idea what he’d done. I don’t believe she ever came out the drug induced coma.”

  “She didn’t suffer?” he asked, not certain why they spoke of this. Were they avoiding his declaration?

&nb
sp; “No, I don’t believe so. But I wasn’t in a coma. I heard everything you said. Do you really love me?”

  So much for them avoiding this.

  “Yes. I love you. Jenna, I don’t think I can live without you,” he said softly, breathing in the scent of her hair.

  She pulled back to stare at him. Those blue eyes, the ones that had been haunting him for so long now gazed trustingly up into his. “I love you, too, you know.”

  “No, I didn’t know, but I’m glad you told me.” He didn’t break the connection of their eyes, wanting to take her into him, make her a part of him.

  He scooped her up and padded to the couch. Sitting down, he settled her on his lap and held onto her. Not ever wanting to let go.

  “I didn’t protect you today,” he said. Shame and anger intermingled into a double helix of doubt and disaster.

  “Yes, you did.”

  “How?”

  “Owen, I thought of you, and what you would do and I knew you wouldn’t go down without a fight. I knew you would, so I had to do no less. I also couldn’t bear the thought of that slimeball touching me,” she said softly, firmly, and with much vehemence.

  “I’m glad, baby. I don’t know how we didn’t recognize that you wouldn’t be safe at the clinic,” he said, holding her closer.

  “Not his M.O.,” Fred’s voice said softly behind them.

  They turned to see Fred and McCully, who both looked as haunted as he felt.

  “What?” he asked.

  “Brandan didn’t operate that way. He never attacked the woman at her place of work. He always followed them home before making his move, in the privacy of her home. He may have met them at their place of work, but he never attacked them there,” Fred said, and scraped a hand over his jaw.

  McCully’s eyes appeared too large for her face. And Fred seemed jittery. Owen didn’t want to contemplate how he and Jenna looked. Instead, he nodded to the bag he set by the TV.

  Fred’s lips formed into a frown, but he stepped forward and peered into the bag. The frown lifted into a grin, unsteady, but a grin nonetheless.

  “My gaming station,” he exclaimed and he turned to McCully and lifted his eyebrows suggestively.

  “Really?” she demanded and strode forward to paw through the bag.

  Owen thought some of the tension in the room unraveled and he and Jenna watched the pair hook up the gaming equipment. Then McCully selected a cartridge, and challenged Fred to a dual.

  To which he happily complied. He even returned the challenge by sticking his tongue out at her. Her face settled into lines of concentration, which his followed and pretty soon they began blowing things up, their tongues out, controllers swishing left and right, up and down in front of them. Amid shrieks, taunts, giggles, and the clatter of the video game, Owen, satisfied the pair would be occupied for the remainder of the evening, picked Jenna up and left the room.

  He hurried up the stairs and into her bedroom. She had showered as soon as she got home, and once he arrived, he did the same. Owen wanted to spend every moment of this evening with her. He wanted to spend the rest of his life with her.

  When he told her this her eyes grew soft. “I feel that way, too,” she said, and her hand cupped his face.

  Leaning forward, he kissed her.

  Chapter 21

  A few days after the attack Jenna answered a phone call from him. “I’m not going to finish here for at least another hour,” Owen said, and she could hear his disgust and disappointment which helped to relieve those same emotions in her.

  “I’ll probably be late as well.”

  “I don’t know when I’ll be able to leave,” he said, and Jenna figured she had about half his attention.

  “Can you hold on a minute?” he asked and then she heard his voice distantly.

  Used to working in a demanding job herself, she understood and waited patiently while he held a mini conference. He came back on the line, and sounded even more distracted.

  “Look, honey, can I call you later?”

  “That’s fine. I guess you’re not going to get away for dinner?”

  “Doesn’t look that way,” he replied. “But I’ll try, baby, I promise.”

  “Okay,” she agreed but she didn’t feel that way inside. Instead, Jenna had fought with the knowledge that she probably wouldn’t see him again tonight.

  The days after they apprehended Brandan had passed in a flurry. Her housemates eventually all left and Jenna suddenly lived in an empty house again. Something she didn’t care for. Especially that Owen now resided at his apartment. She hadn’t seen him recently, probably wouldn’t tonight, and feared for their relationship now. So much for their mutual declaration of love because he appeared to have sprouted cold feet.

  She still loved him, but now she wasn’t so certain about his feelings for her.

  The doubts grew as she answered a call from Emmy.

  “He doesn’t love you... Jenna are you crazy?” Emmy demanded after Jenna expressed her crazy thoughts. She thought back to the phone conversation with Owen, and that familiar leaden feeling closed in again.

  “He told me he wanted to spend the rest of his life with me, but I haven’t seen him since the night of the attack,” she finally said.

  “You haven’t talked to him in several days?” Emmy asked on a gasp.

  “No, we’ve talked, several times, actually, but I haven’t seen him. I want to see him.”

  “Why haven’t you two gotten together?”

  “He’s been working hard to finish up the Gentleman Caller case, and now they’ve got some other high profile case going on. He sounds so tired,” she said, chewing on her lip. Knowing she was being selfish, but with no knowledge of how to alter her feelings.

  “Damon commented on how much time O’Maley puts into his job,” and Jenna heard her bang something on her end of the line. “Of course, you do too, Jenna.”

  “I know. I do work long hours. But they’ve got help in the ER now, so I won’t be needed there. We’ve also talked of hiring on another physician assistant here.”

  “At least you’re starting to take care of your long hours. You’re just concerned about his,” Emmy summarized. She always could dip into Jenna’s train of thought.

  “Yes.” She was concerned but had no idea how to rectify the situation. He liked his job, and who was she to tell him to cut back his hours? She didn’t even know if that was a possibility.

  “Can you try to schedule a meal together?”

  “We have. Tried, I mean.” More doubt added to the weight on her shoulders and Jenna fought the overwhelming urge to cry. “It hasn’t happened.”

  “Oh, Jenna,” Emmy said sadly, and Jenna felt the hot, wet tears on her cheeks and realized she’d lost this battle.

  “You haven’t seen her in how many days?” McCully shrieked from her side of their desks.

  The headache he’d been fighting for the last two days escalated and Owen dropped his aching head into a palm.

  “McCully, could you lower the volume, please?”

  “You haven’t seen Jenna in how many days?” she hissed. At least she toned down the shrill voice. He supposed he should be grateful for that. Except it was hard to be grateful for much when his head pounded with such fierce intensity, his stomach had turned queasy on him.

  “I don’t know. We’ve tried to match our schedules, but haven’t had any luck.”

  “O’Maley, you told me the two of you agreed you loved each other and wanted to spend the rest of your lives together. I mean, you practically proposed to her.” McCully actually ignored the open package of cupcakes in front of her. She must really be worked up.

  “I know,” he muttered, and rubbed his head. An exclamation of frustration from her reverberated through his aching skull and he turned to glare at her. She glared back.

  “I can’t believe you,” she said, and then someone or something behind him caught her attention. “Sedgewick, c’mere a second,” she ordered.

  The dete
ctive sidled up to their desk and helped himself to one of her cupcakes. Amazingly enough, she didn’t even seem to notice. “You rang?”

  “You used to put in how many hours at this place?” she demanded, staring him down.

  To give Sedgewick credit, he didn’t seem in the least bit phased by the attention. Or the consequences of stealing TJ McCully’s food.

  “I hardly ever went home, why?” He took a huge bite. Some of the icing flaked off. Owen’s stomach lurched.

  “How many hours do you work now?” she answered his question with another question and turned her attention back to Owen. He barely bit off a groan as the scent of the cupcake wafted closer. He swallowed the rising bile.

  “Why are you asking me this?”

  “Just answer the blasted question.”

  “I work between forty and sixty hours. Forty normally, but only up to sixty if the case is closing. Why?” he repeated around another bite of cupcake.

  “I’ll get to that. Tell the nerdboy here why you work normal hours now.”

  “To save my marriage,” Sedgewick answered and turned his attention to him. “Got problems with the doctor already, O’Maley?”

  “He hasn’t seen her in several days,” McCully spat for him.

  “That’s bad,” Sedgewick said, and so helpfully, too. Owen wanted to shred the two of them with a sharp, witty rejoiner, but his brain seemed to have shut down on him while his stomach churned. He wondered if this was what hitting overload felt like. He groaned again. Since when had he started to sound like McCully?

  Two more detectives wondered over and joined the conversation. They agreed that he should take more time for his relationship with Jenna than work.

  “This job is going to be here for the next thirty years. But will she?” one of them asked, and the three married men exchanged knowing glances and nods.