Never Too Late

by RaeAnne Thayne

For all of the five years she had known him, Hunter had been making her pulse skip and her insides quiver. Though she knew it was hopeless—and embarrassing, when it came right down to it—she had long ago accepted the fact that she had a powerful crush on the man.

  Now, after more than two days of being with him constantly, she had finally faced the grim, inevitable truth. Her feelings for Hunter Bradshaw ran much deeper than a simple crush.

  If she wasn’t careful, she would find herself headlong, foolishly in love with the man.

  That would be disastrous, she knew. All she would get from him would be a shattered heart. Though there might be some physical attraction stirring between them—and she still wasn’t sure whether that had only been one-sided—that was as far as things went.

  If anything, her revelations the day before about her life in foster care seemed to have given him a definite disgust of her. After they had talked about her history, he’d said little throughout the afternoon and evening, and had barely made eye contact with her when they’d stopped at a motel off the freeway in Little Rock close to midnight.

  She was only glad she hadn’t told him the whole of it.

  Kate tried not to let his reaction hurt, but she wasn’t succeeding very well. With every centimeter he withdrew further into himself, tiny sharp barbs lodged under her skin.

  A big baby, that’s what you are, she chided herself. The man is doing you a huge favor. He doesn’t need you making a fool of yourself over him.

  Still, as they drove southeast across northern Mississippi with rain clicking against the windshield, she listened to B.B.’s mournful guitar and you-treat-me-bad songs and thought she could write a few pretty decent blues songs of her own right about now.

  “Belle is probably ready for a run to work off her breakfast,” Hunter said after only a few hours on the road. “Thought I’d stop in Tupelo for gas.”

  “Great. I need to stretch my legs too. At least the rain looks like it’s letting up.”

  By the time they took the exit east of town, the rain had slowed to a drizzle, then stopped altogether.

  Hunter pulled up to the pump at a busy truck stop. Really busy, Kate thought. The convenience store inside was full of people, about twenty or so. She wondered at it until she saw a Greyhound bus pulled up to one of the diesel pumps on the other side of the building.

  By now, she knew the drill. He started to fill up the tank while she opened the cargo door, hooked the leash on the dog and let her out of her crate.

  Hunter scanned the bustle of activity inside. “There might be a wait if you need to use the restroom.”

  “I’m good. I’ll just take Belle for a little walk around the block. We’ll be back in a minute.”

  “Be careful. It looks like a safe enough neighborhood, but you never know.”

  She mustered a smile. “I’ll keep my guard up, Detective.”

  She was warmed by his concern, even though she knew he was the kind of man who would show that same solicitude to anyone. Tempting as it was, she couldn’t let herself read anything more into it.

  She walked away from the truck stop and took off down a small cluster of businesses. The air was cool and misty, but she didn’t mind. Compared to the bone-numbing cold of the Utah December they had left, she found this milder weather refreshing.

  Belle kept up a fast clip as they walked through the largely industrial area. Kate didn’t mind that either—her cramped muscles welcomed the activity. Maybe a little vigorous exercise would take her mind off the futility of her feelings for Hunter.

  A few more days, she thought. They would probably reach Miami late that night or the next morning. If all went well, they would find Brenda quickly, shake some answers out of her and then be back in Utah by the end of the week.

  She would be ready for her next rotation, Hunter would figure out what he wanted to do with the rest of his life, and their paths would probably rarely intersect, only through their connections to Taylor and Wyatt.

  Her hand tightened on the leash and she forced herself to keep walking, even though she suddenly wanted to stop and have a good cry.

  When they were about half a block from the truck stop, Belle suddenly spied a convenient tree at the mouth of an alley. As Kate slowed to wait for the dog to mark territory she would likely never see again, she heard voices and saw a trio of people standing a dozen yards away.

  An older black man was deep in conversation with a couple of white boys who looked to be about fifteen.

  She raised a hand in greeting and was about to say a polite good morning when Hunter’s words echoed in her mind. Be careful. Something didn’t sit right about the scene. She couldn’t quite put a finger on what—maybe just a subtle vibrating tension in the air.

  The three hadn’t noticed her yet. She was going to keep on walking when Belle suddenly growled low in her throat, something so rare for the dog that for a moment Kate could only stare.

  She shifted her gaze back to the group down the alley at the same moment the sun found a thin spot in the heavy layer of dank gray clouds. A shaft of light caught on the men and flashed off something silvery in one of the boy’s hands.

  A knife! One of the boys was holding it close to the man’s side!

  Kate caught her breath; her fingers tangled in Belle’s leash. Every instinct urged her just to keep walking. This was not her business and the last thing she needed right now was to jump into the middle of somebody else’s trouble. She had plenty of her own to deal with.

  Even as she thought it, she knew she couldn’t walk away. Two young, muscled, shaved-head little punks against one frail old man just wasn’t fair, and the tough little scrapper she’d been at seven urged her to help even up the odds.

  The smaller teen must have heard Belle’s growl. He turned, a triple row of earrings swaying in his ear. He looked tough and wiry, with a pierced lip and a jagged scar above one eyebrow.

  He nudged the other boy—the one with the knife—who shifted his gaze from the old man to her, his eyes small and mean.

  Unlike his companion, this one had no earrings or scars, but a tattoo of a hissing snake slithered up his neck, the forked tongue licking his jawbone.

  They both looked rough and scary, though she saw they were heartbreakingly young, maybe only fourteen or fifteen.

  For just a moment, Kate stood in the alley, her nerves buzzing and her mind working frantically to come up with a plan. She had to do something and fast, so she went with the first thing that came to her.

  “There you are!” She stepped into the alley, dragging a bristling Belle along with her. “Where have you been?”

  As she continued moving toward them, all three males looked at her as if fireworks had just started shooting out of the top of her head.

  “We’ve been looking everywhere for you!”

  She reached for the elderly man’s elbow as if he were her best friend. He was bony and slight and she wanted to punch both of these little punks for terrorizing an old man.

  “Come on, let’s get some lunch,” she said to the stranger. “You know how your blood sugar dips if you don’t eat on a regular schedule.”

  The man frowned in her direction though his eyes didn’t make contact with hers. As soon as he stepped away from the building with a baffled kind of look, she realized why. In the heat of the moment, she had missed the white-tipped cane resting at his feet.

  He was blind!

  All the more reason to intervene. What kind of evil spawn preyed on a blind man? She reached for the cane, shaking with the urge to whack these two young delinquents over the head with it.

  One of the teens—Snake Boy—slid a combat boot over the cane so she couldn’t pick it up. “Stay out of this, lady. This ain’t none of your business.”

  “What isn’t? I’m just here to take my friend back to the car.”

  “Don’t try to play us, bitch. He ain’t your friend. He walked off the Greyhound, same as we did. You weren’t nowhere on there.” His cold eyes scoured her fr
om head to toe, a suddenly dangerous light in them. “Believe me, I’d a noticed a li’l hot thing like you.”

  Now what? Even as adrenaline pumped through her, her mind felt slow and dull. “Um, we were meeting up here to take him with us the rest of the way. Come on, Grandpa.”

  The two punks seemed to think that was the funniest thing they’d ever heard. “Here that, old man?” Snake Boy said. “This little white girl says you’re her grandpa.”

  “Hi honey.” The blind man smiled in her direction. “I was wondering when you’d get here.”

  Charmed by him and grateful he was willing to play along, Kate smiled even though she knew he couldn’t see it. She tucked his arm firmly in hers. “I’m right here. Now let’s go on and get some lunch. I know how you love that chicken-fried steak they serve at our special place.”

  She started to drag him toward the street, hoping sheer cojones would get them out of the alley, but the boys weren’t having any of it.

  The twitchy little one stepped forward and grabbed the man’s other arm. He produced a knife of his own and Kate’s heart sank.

  She had an awful feeling that two tough punks with knives against a woman, a dog and a blind man wasn’t a scenario that was likely going to end happily.

  “You ain’t going anywhere, Grandpa, until you hand over that roll we saw you flashin’ around back there.”

  “Okay. Okay. I’ll give you what you want. Just don’t hurt the young lady here.”

  “You ain’t calling the shots here, Grandpa. We’re the ones with the pig stickers.” As if to emphasize his point, Snake Boy started to grab for Kate.

  Kate wasn’t exactly sure what happened next. Belle barked, protective of her, as Kate tried to wrench her arm out of the punk’s grasp. In the confusion, the elderly gentleman stumbled a little—right into the nervous boy holding the knife.

  He grunted with pain then staggered and fell to the ground. Kate took a lurching step forward, a strangled cry in her throat and her hold on the leash going slack.

  Belle took advantage of her newfound freedom and escaped the thick tension between humans, running out of the alley with her leash trailing behind her like the tail of a comet.

  Panic spurted through Kate as she rushed to the fallen man but she did her best to push it away. She had to keep a level head. One of the first lessons in med school was how to stay calm in a crisis.

  The kid holding the bloody knife looked like he was about to cry. “Damn! I didn’t mean to stick the old dude! He fell right into my knife.”

  “His own frigging fault.” Snake Boy scratched his tattoo, his eyes cold. “If he’d a just handed over his stash, everything would have been cool.”

  She would have expected them to take off but they loitered there in the alley as if not quite sure what direction to run, while she assessed the man’s injuries.

  Kate pulled the elderly man’s crisp blue dress shirt from his slacks and lifted it free of the wound, a two-inch puncture just below his rib cage. She had just finished her rotation in the emergency room of a level-one trauma center. Stab wounds had been an everyday occurrence and this one looked cleaner than most.

  The old man grimaced as she probed the wound. To her relief, it looked as if the knife had glanced off the rib.

  She didn’t think he would have any internal injuries, but the wound was bleeding copiously.

  “Kid made a mess of my best suit,” the man said in a disgusted voice. “I’m probably bleeding all over it, aren’t I?”

  “We want to help you keep as much of your blood as possible inside, for your sake and for your suit’s. I’ll do my best to keep the damage to a minimum,” she promised.

  “One of you will have to go for help,” she told the teens. “We need an ambulance to take Mr….” She stopped, realizing she didn’t know the man’s name. “To take my grandpa here to the hospital.”

  Snake Boy raised an eyebrow. “You can forget that, lady. We’re out of here.”

  “You might want to reconsider that.”

  The deep voice from the alley’s mouth was the most welcome sound in the world. She looked up from applying a makeshift pressure bandage from her sweater to find Hunter standing there, Belle right behind him. Good girl, she thought. Way to go for reinforcements.

  As the cavalry, Hunter was perfect. He had never seemed so big, so mean, so dangerous.

  “Screw this.” Snake Boy didn’t look intimidated. “Come on, Juice.”

  Hunter moved farther into the alley and, for the first time, Kate noticed he carried a gun.

  “Like I said—” his voice was as dark and as deadly as the gun that had suddenly appeared in his hand “—you might want to reconsider.”

  The smaller boy again looked like he was just an earring away from bawling, but the older one just looked resigned.

  “You a cop?”

  “Used to be.”

  Snake closed his eyes and gritted out a raw epithet that would have singed Kate’s eyebrows if she hadn’t spent plenty of time in an E.R., hearing much worse than this gangsta wannabe could ever hope to dish out.

  “Watch your mouth,” her patient said from the ground. “There’s a lady present.”

  With the gun pointed at the two juvenile delinquents, Hunter fished out his cell phone and dialed 911 to report the armed robbery and assault.

  “An ambulance is on the way,” he told them, after he’d summed up the situation and given their location in a brisk, efficient way, which said better than anything else that he still had plenty of cop left in him.

  “What a bother. I don’t need an ambulance.” The older man’s voice was smooth, well-modulated, with only a slight southern accent. “He barely nicked me. I’ve done worse than this shaving.”

  Hunter looked to Kate for confirmation, but she shook her head.

  “I’m sorry, Mr….”

  She knew he must be in pain but he still mustered a smile. “Mr. Henry Monroe, miss.”

  Charmed again by his polite manners, she smiled back. “I’m Kate Spencer and this is Hunter Bradshaw. Mr. Monroe, I’m sorry but you’ve got a deep puncture wound that’s going to need several layers of stitches. I don’t think they’ll have to operate but you need to be treated at a hospital.”

  He appeared to digest this information for a moment but it didn’t sway him. “Well, now, I appreciate your help, miss, but if I don’t get back to that gas station in a real hurry, I’m afraid I’ll miss the Greyhound. My granddaughter is dancing in The Nutcracker tonight in Memphis and I decided to ride up and surprise her.”

  “We’ll find you another bus,” Kate promised. “Don’t worry, we’ll make sure you get to Memphis, won’t we Hunter?”

  As sirens wailed in the distance, Hunter shifted his gaze from the two punks at the business end of his gun to her.

  He gave her a long, inscrutable look out of eyes, the color of a stormy sky, then he shook his head and she could swear she saw one corner of his mouth turn up and amusement flicker in those dark eyes. “Sure we will, Mr. Monroe. Don’t worry about a thing.”

  A squad car pulled up with a couple of Tupelo’s finest before she could say anything else and Kate turned her attention back to her patient.

  Hunter leaned back in the uncomfortable chair in the E.R. waiting room of the Tupelo hospital and surveyed Kate in the chair across from him.

  She had bloodstains on her shirt, her hair had slipped free of the casual ponytail she’d pulled it into that morning and her makeup had washed away in the drizzle that had descended on them while they were trying to get Mr. Monroe into the ambulance.

  She looked bedraggled and tired and worried, and he had to just about sit on his hands to keep from reaching for her.

  How was it that she seemed to grow more beautiful with every moment they spent together? Physically, yes, he had always thought her attractive. Even without makeup her features were elegant, soft and lovely like a woman in an old-world painting.

  But more than that, she was beautiful, deep in
side where the rest of the world couldn’t see. She had faced down two little dumb-ass punks to protect an elderly blind man with nothing more than her own courage—and now she refused to leave the hospital until they made sure she found the man’s treatment acceptable.

  “It took three layers of stitches but everything’s closed up tight now. They’re just bandaging him up but I thought I’d better come find you to give you a status report,” she said.

  “I appreciate that. You know, I didn’t realize part of our trip itinerary was a tour of hospitals across the country,” he couldn’t resist adding.

  She made a face. “I’m sorry. I had to come along. I don’t suppose it makes sense to you but in a way Mr. Monroe feels like a patient of mine. I couldn’t just leave him alone in a strange city.”

  As someone who used to have the same level of caring about his own job, he had to admire her dedication to her chosen profession; at the same time, part of him seethed with envy. How long had it been since he’d cared about anything that passionately? He couldn’t remember—and he wasn’t sure he ever would again.

  “Are they keeping him overnight, then?”

  “The attending physician is pushing hard for it. He seems like a bit of a jerk. But Mr. Monroe is a stubborn one—he insists he’s got to leave. The Nutcracker is waiting.”

  Hunter studied her. “You want to take him to Memphis, don’t you?”

  A hint of color dusted her cheekbones and she gave him a sheepish look. “The thought had occurred to me,” she admitted. “I just don’t feel good about sending him off alone on a Greyhound with his injury. If I really were his doctor, I would order him to bed for a few days but I don’t think he would take that advice.”

  “You do realize Memphis is more than two hundred miles out of our way round trip, right?”

  She fretted with a loose thread on her sweater. “Yes. And you’ve already done so much for me, I know I can’t ask this of you, too. I don’t know, maybe I could call the daughter and have her come get him.”

  “Would she have time to drive down here and still make it back in time for the granddaughter’s performance?”