Internal Affair

by Marie Ferrarella

  A shot rang out. Foster screamed and the weapon he’d been aiming at Patrick went flying from his hands. Patrick made a dive for it. Only when he had the gun in his hands did he turn around to see the small figure running in through the warehouse entrance.

  Maggi. Goddamn it, it was Maggi. Was she out of her mind?

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he demanded roughly.

  Maggi’s eyes were on the fallen patrolman, watching for the one false move that would trip them up. “Tying up loose ends, saving you, take your pick.” It was damn hard to sound flippant, what with her heart in her mouth and all.

  Instinct had made her follow Patrick when he’d left the police station even while she’d counseled herself to give him some space. She knew she didn’t like being crowded when she had to work something out for herself. But patience wasn’t her long suit in this case.

  Maggi was eternally grateful that just this once she hadn’t listened to her head, but gone with her instincts and her heart. If she hadn’t, Patrick could well be dead by now.

  “How about dying alongside of him?”

  The question came from the row of dust-encrusted shelves just behind them.

  Captain Amos Reynolds stepped out, a gun in his hand. Contempt flared in his eyes as he glanced in Foster’s direction. The latter looked as surprised as Maggi felt to see the senior officer.

  This was bad, Maggi thought, very bad.

  “Get up, you idiot. I knew you’d botch this,” Reynolds said to the other man.

  Foster began to take a step forward, but the look in Reynolds’s eyes froze him in place. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, she got the drop on me.”

  Anger and disgust creased the captain’s handsome face. “Do you have any idea how pathetic that sounds?” He moved the barrel of his weapon to point at Foster. The other man jumped uneasily. “Three bodies are just as easy to get rid of as two.” Smoothly Reynolds swung his hand back to aim at Patrick. “Drop your weapons, you two.”

  Patrick’s hand only tightened on his. “You can’t kill both of us.”

  Reynolds’s gaze was unrelenting. “I can and I will unless you do exactly as I say. I’m not about to let you mess up something that’s been going on for ten years. Everyone was protected, no one got hurt.”

  As if that made it right, Patrick thought. “Tell that to Ramirez,” he spit.

  Reynolds appeared unfazed. “That was unfortunate. It was only meant to be a warning, just a wound. But he moved.” Reynolds looked in Maggi’s direction. “It worked with your father.”

  Maggi’s mouth dropped open. “My father?” Anger colored her cheeks. Reynolds wasn’t fit to mention her father’s name.

  “Don’t look so indignant.” The soothing tone of Reynolds’s voice only served to agitate her further. “He doesn’t know anything. But he was starting to ask uncomfortable questions. Getting him off the force was the best way to deal with it.” His smile was cold. “You don’t worry about inconsistencies you’ve stumbled across when you’re busy trying to cope with regaining the use of your leg.”

  All pretense at civility terminated. His eyes darkened. “Now I’m not going to ask you again. Drop your weapons.” He took aim at Maggi. “Or she goes first.”

  Patrick had no other choice.

  If he dropped his weapon, they’d be gunned down where they stood. He knew it.

  It was going to be a matter of split-second timing. Shoving Maggi out of the way, he took dead aim and fired. Reynolds went down, spasmodically getting off one shot before he fell face forward to the floor. Dead.

  Patrick whirled around and trained his weapon on Foster.

  “Don’t even think it,” he warned. He kept his gun aimed at Foster as he warily approached the fallen captain. “Get his weapon, McKenna.” When she made no answer, adrenaline kicked up another notch. He glanced in her direction. “McKenna?”

  “Give me a second,” she breathed, trying to gather herself up from her knees. Her shoulder felt as if it was on fire. Touching it, she looked down at her hand, which was covered in blood. Blood also oozed from her right shoulder, soaking its way into everything.

  “Oh, my God, Maggi, you’re hit.”

  Her teeth clamped down on her lower lip as she struggled to her feet. “Can’t put nothing over on you, can I?” She sucked in air. Every breath hurt.

  Guilt snapped its jaws around him. He should have pulled her down. Instead of sparing her, he’d pushed her right into Reynolds’s line of fire.

  “Is it bad?”

  Trust Cavanaugh to understate something. It was almost funny. “Other than feeling like someone just set me on fire, no,” she answered between clenched teeth. And then she stopped. “Listen.” The sound of sirens in the distance pushed their way through the silence. “Better late than never, huh?”

  She’d almost forgotten about that. On a hunch, she’d called for backup the moment she saw Foster. A man who didn’t have anything to hide didn’t go around meeting people in abandoned warehouses, didn’t take these kinds of precautions.

  It was getting hard to stay focused. “Don’t let him get the drop on you again,” she warned Patrick.

  It was the last thing she said before the darkness claimed her.

  Maggi had opened her eyes, but he didn’t think she saw him. She looked so pale as she lay there on the gurney, so white she almost faded into the sheet.

  He was afraid to say her name, afraid to call out to her and not have her respond. So as he sat beside her in the ambulance, he held on to her hand as tightly as he could. He willed her to hang on, silently forbidding her to slip away.

  He’d never felt terrified before, not even when he’d been a small boy and his father had gone on a rampage, smashing things around the house, threatening to kill them all. Then his thoughts had been centered around protecting his mother and sister. But now there was nothing he could do to protect Maggi.

  Nothing he could do to make her whole.

  It was out of his hands and he hated the feeling of helplessness. Hated the fact that he was sitting here, maybe impotently watching her life slip away.

  He wanted to yell, to rail.

  He could do nothing.

  Patrick bent very close to her ear, so that only she could hear him.

  “I’m not going to let you go, you hear me? I forbid you to die. God damn it, Maggi, you can’t do this to me. I love you.”

  Her face remained still and pale, her color a contrast to the blood spread out on her shirt.

  Patrick closed his eyes and tried to remember how to pray.

  Patience came flying down the long corridor. The moment she saw him, she threw her arms around her brother, embracing him. Patrick had called her less than twenty minutes ago. She’d broken speed limits to get here, using her cell phone to call the people who needed to be called as she drove to the hospital.

  “How is she?” she asked breathlessly.

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. They won’t tell me anything.” He sighed, feeling like a man who was just about ready to leap out of his own skin. “She’s in surgery.”

  There’d been no time for details when he’d called her. Only that Maggi had been shot and that he was in the hospital with her. “What happened?”

  He’d been asking himself that same question over and over again in the past half hour.

  “I thought she was clear. I shoved her out of the way. Reynolds was going to kill her.” Stopping, Patrick dragged in air. It didn’t help to calm him. Nothing would help until he knew Maggi was all right again. “Instead, I pushed her right into the line of fire.”

  Patience tried to lead him over to the chairs lined along the hallway. He didn’t budge, remaining against the wall as if he was holding it up. Or maybe it was holding him up.

  “She’s going to be all right, Patrick. This is the best hospital in the county.”

  “Yeah, right,” he said numbly.

  But people died in good hospitals, didn’t they? Oh God, what if…?


  He couldn’t bring himself to finish the sentence, even in his own mind.

  They heard the sound of footsteps approaching quickly. The next moment, Matthew McKenna came racing down the hallway, his face as ashen as Maggi’s had been when they had wheeled her into surgery.

  He’d never met Maggi’s father, but Patrick only had to take one look at the man’s face before he knew. Straightening, he met the other man halfway.

  “Are you Maggi’s father?” There were suppressed tears in the man’s eyes as he nodded. “I’m Patrick Cavanaugh, Maggi’s partner. I’m the one who called you.” Belatedly, he remembered he wasn’t alone. “This is my sister, Patience.”

  “They told me at the front desk that she was in surgery. Do we know anything yet?” Patrick shook his head. Matthew tried to get control over his fears. “What happened?”

  “She saved my life,” Patrick replied simply. There was no doubt in his mind that if she hadn’t shot the gun out of Foster’s hand, he would have been dead right now.

  Taking a breath, he pulled himself together and filled in his sister and Maggi’s father as best he could about what had happened in the warehouse, ending with Foster’s arrest and Maggi being taken into surgery. Reynolds had gone to the morgue in a body bag.

  Matthew listened to it all in solemn silence. When Patrick finished, he nodded.

  “I had a feeling all along that something wasn’t right, but I had no way of proving it and I didn’t want to let Maggi in on my suspicions. I knew she’d try to do something like this. Stubborn as all get-out, that girl. Thinks she’s Joan of Arc the way she carries on about doing the right thing. I was afraid she’d take this into her own hands,” Matthew McKenna said.

  He didn’t know, Patrick realized as he looked at Maggi’s father. Matthew McKenna had no idea that his daughter worked for IA. She’d kept it from him.

  “She’s headstrong that way,” Patrick agreed, not adding that it was also part of her job. Her being part of IA wasn’t his secret to tell.

  They heard several voices coming from around the bend. The next moment, Patrick saw his uncles Andrew and Brian heading toward them. He looked at Patience.

  “I called them after you called me.” She looked at Maggi’s father. “Patrick told me that you know my uncles. I thought maybe you might need some company right now.”

  Matthew felt as if he’d aged ten years since he’d received the call from Patrick. He was grateful for Patience’s thoughtfulness. He couldn’t be distracted, but being around old comrades helped keep some of the demons at bay.

  “Thank you.”

  Patience nodded. She glanced at her brother. If only there was someone she could call for him.

  Patrick stood apart from the others, although it wasn’t easy. The corridor had become crammed with people who knew Maggi, family friends and veterans of the force who had watched her grow up from a golden haired toddler into the woman she was, as well as people she worked with now. Carving out a space for himself was difficult, especially when everyone was trying to bolster each other.

  He didn’t care about other people’s stories of miraculous recoveries or statistics that tipped the scales in her favor. None of that mattered. The only thing that mattered was what was going on behind the closed doors of the ground-floor operating room.

  He felt as though he were standing in a time warp, holding his breath, vacillating between anger and fear.

  When the blue-gowned internal surgeon finally made his way among them and asked, “Who’s here for Maggi McKenna?” everyone replied in the affirmative and crowded around the physician.

  Matthew pushed his way into the center. “I’m Maggi’s father.”

  “How is she?” Patrick demanded, cutting the man off. He’d been the one the surgeon had briefed as quickly as he could about Maggi’s situation. The surgeon wouldn’t have even done that except that Patrick had rushed alongside of him as Maggi was being hurried into the operating room.

  The surgeon looked close to exhaustion.

  “She’s one hell of a lucky girl. Half an inch closer and the wound would have been fatal.” He seemed as relieved as the people crowded around him. “But we got the bullet out and she’s going to be just fine, although she needs a lot of rest.”

  Patrick knew how receptive Maggi would be to that. The instant she started getting better, she would want to be back in active duty. “Don’t worry, I’ll sit on her if I have to.”

  “I wouldn’t advise that if I were you.” The surgeon smiled weakly, removing the surgical mask from around his neck. “At least not on her stomach.”

  There was something in the other man’s voice that made Patrick wary. “Her stomach?”

  “I’m sorry, little joke to ease the tension on my part. That’s just my way of saying that the baby’s fine, too.”

  “Baby?” Patrick echoed incredulously. For the second time that day, he felt as if he’d been punched straight in the gut. Taking the man’s arm, he drew him over to the side. “She’s pregnant?”

  “Yes. Just barely.” The surgeon’s eyes searched Patrick’s face. He must have made the assumption that Patrick was his patient’s husband. “I’m sorry, did I just spoil the surprise?”

  Feeling shaken and hardly aware of what he was doing, Patrick clapped the surgeon on the shoulder. “No, you did just fine, Doc. Just fine.”

  He left his hand there a moment longer before withdrawing it. Balance became a matter of intense concentration. Patrick felt as if someone had just taken away the ground from beneath his feet.

  Chapter 21

  Maggi’s surgeon finally allowed Matthew and Patrick in to see her once she was out of recovery and safely in her room.

  “But only for a few minutes,” he cautioned before opening the door for them. “She’s conscious but she’s still very weak.”

  Matthew nodded solemnly as he passed the physician. The moment he saw his daughter, clear colored tubes running through her arms, his heart constricted. Positioning himself on one side of her, he took Maggi’s hand in his, lightly kissed her forehead and said, “You’re getting off the force.”

  Maggi smiled at her father. Her eyes flickered over Patrick. He was here. She hadn’t imagined it. And he was all right. He and her baby were all right. That was all that mattered.

  “Hi, Dad.” Her voice sounded raspy and distant to her own ear. “Didn’t the doctor tell you not to get me upset?”

  His grip tightened slightly around her hand. “I’m older. I’m not supposed to be upset first.” Tears sprang to his eyes as he thought of what could have been. “Oh Mag-pie…” Unable to finish without cracking, his voice trailed off.

  All the emotions she’d felt when she’d first gone to see him in the hospital returned. She wished she could have spared him this. “I know, Dad. I was standing on the other side of the railing not that long ago, remember?”

  He nodded. “I like better being the one to get shot. You don’t worry as much.” He bent over and kissed her cheek. This wasn’t over, but right now, she needed her rest. He glanced toward Patrick. The young man was restless. It was easy to see he wanted some time alone with her. “We’ll talk later,” Matthew promised.

  “Won’t do any good,” she warned. A smattering of the sparkle had returned to her eyes and Matthew took heart in that.

  “I’ll be right outside if you need me.” Feeling a rock had been lifted from his heart, Matthew slipped out and left Patrick alone with his daughter.

  The words erupted out of Patrick the second the door was closed. “What the hell were you thinking, flying in like some goddamned superhero?”

  “Probably the same thing you were when you went in.” She was weak and it was costing her to talk. But things had to get said. “Y’know, a person shouldn’t be afraid or be too proud to accept help, especially when there are guns pointed at him.”

  “You could have been killed,” Patrick said.

  “So could you,” she countered though with far less energy than she would have wante
d to. “And if you had been, it would have been my fault. I couldn’t have that on my conscience.”

  “Why would it be your fault?”

  She took a deep breath, fighting against the desire to close her eyes and drift off. “Because you weren’t thinking straight after you walked out of Halliday’s office. Anyone could see that.”

  Patrick struggled against the urge to shake her. To grab her and hold her close to him, never letting her go. Instead, he forced himself to remain where he was and just look at her. “Can you blame me?”

  “Yeah, I can. You know how the job works.”

  “And you were only doing your job, right?” He didn’t want to be having this same argument again. It led nowhere. And besides, she was right. “Sorry. It’s behind us now and yes, I do know how the job works.” He hadn’t realized until this moment just how shaky he felt, as if his insides were one huge mass of undulating Jell-O. “And better someone fair and impartial like you than someone on the take and under Reynolds’s thumb.”

  She took in a deep breath, trying to tack her words onto it. “Does it stop with Reynolds?”

  To take his mind off her surgery, Patrick reported the matter to Brian, who, as chief of detectives, promised to take it from there.

  “Too soon to tell, but it’s a lot dirtier than we thought.”

  Bits and pieces of thoughts floated through her head. She thought of Alicia and her children. “What about Ramirez’s wife?”

  “I think I can keep her clean.” Unless something drastic came to light to change the picture, the woman was safe. He paused. He didn’t want to talk about the case or other people. Not when there was something so much bigger before them. “Doctor said you were going to be fine.”

  She smiled weakly. She’d never had a doubt. Not about herself. She supposed that was vain in a way, but her own mortality had never occurred to her. “I’m tough, like my dad.”

  “Baby’s going to be fine, too.” Each word had been measured out. He looked at her intently. “Is it mine?”

  Her heart felt as if it had been pricked. Did he doubt her? The other deceptions didn’t matter. This he should have known. “Do you have to ask?”