Secret Protector

by Ann Voss Peterson

  He raced across the area of lawn and vaulted low bushes and tall clusters of flowers. He came down on the patio, shoes skidding on cobblestone. Regaining his balance, he covered the rest of the distance to the side door that led into the dinette. He turned the doorknob and pushed.

  It didn’t budge.

  He studied the frame. Long nails, like the spikes he’d found in the back of the cottage a week ago, had been driven through the wood and into the door itself. The shooter had nailed the door shut, and he’d obviously been planning this assault for some time.

  Gray thought about the cottage’s other entrances. He could try the front door, but he’d be exposing himself to the gunman once again, and judging from the burning pile on the front stoop, he might not be able to get in even if the door itself wasn’t compromised.

  He glanced along the side of the cottage. The bedroom windows were a possible entrance point, but they weren’t very wide. He’d be lucky if he could squeeze his shoulders through. Same with the studio window, which was pouring smoke.

  His gaze landed on a heavy wrought-iron planter at the corner of the patio. He made a step in the planter’s direction.

  The crack of a shot split the air. A round hit the cobblestone in front of him.

  He fell back into the cover of the house.

  Two pops came from deep in the gardens. Thad returning fire, drawing the shooter’s attention.

  Heart pounding in his ears, Gray kept low this time. Crouching forward, he ran for the planter, grabbed it at either edge and lifted. It was heavier than it looked. Although harder to lift, that should make it even more effective for his purposes.

  He made it back behind the corner of the house before another shot was fired. Resting for only a second, he pulled in a deep breath and heaved the planter through the patio door’s window.

  Glass shattered and scattered in tiny, rounded pebbles over the patio. The scream of the smoke alarms burst out along with a haze of smoke. He grabbed the sheer curtain stretched tight over the opening and gave a yank. The light fabric ripped from its rod and flapped to the ground.

  Gray scooped in one last clean breath and stepped through the opening, angling his body to slide through.

  Once inside, he lowered himself to hands and knees. Smoke rose, and if he had any hopes of finding breathable air, he needed to stay as close to the floor as possible. He could only hope Natalie was doing the same.

  If she was still alive.

  He pushed the possibility of anything else from his mind. He wasn’t even certain she was still in the house. But he needed to focus on searching every inch. He’d meant what he promised Thad. If Natalie was here, he’d find her.

  Or he’d die trying.

  He crawled through the dinette. Smoke burned his eyes and caused tears to run down his cheeks. He could still see, but he wasn’t sure how long that would last. He needed to hurry.

  He swept the kitchen with his gaze then moved on to the living area. No sign of Natalie there, either. He made for the hall leading to the other rooms. As he moved into the narrow space, the fumes grew thicker. He blinked back their sting and kept moving.

  The lack of windows in the hallway combined with the thicker smoke made seeing anything difficult, if not impossible. He couldn’t keep his eyes open. Even when he did, the area was so dim and gray, he had a hard time making out his hand when he held it in front of his face.

  He reached out his left hand and dragged his fingertips along the wall to keep his bearings. With each scoot forward, he swung his right leg out to scrape across the floor, feeling for Natalie where he could no longer see. He coughed with every other breath, the fumes hot and foul.

  He heard the sound of flame up ahead, snapping and crackling in a low background roar. If Natalie was in this part of the house, he had to find her now. Most people who died in a fire perished from the smoke. He had to hurry.

  Sweat trickled down his back and neck. He shucked his jacket then kept moving. The hall had never seemed long, but navigating it blind while crawling in this awkward way seemed to take forever. The door to the studio had to be here somewhere.

  Light glowed from his right, slightly orange in the gray haze. The studio. Natalie’s paintings. Judging from the broken pane he’d noticed outside, whoever had done this likely tossed a Molotov cocktail through the window as well as the front door, aiming to burn the paintings and trap Natalie inside.

  He swept his right foot wide, dragging his toe along the baseboard. The wall gave way to the indentation of the studio’s doorway. His foot ran into something soft and solid.

  Natalie.

  He found her with his hands. He skimmed his fingers over her face. Her body was warm, but with the heat in the hallway, he wasn’t sure that meant anything. He found her throat and felt for a pulse. The beat thrummed steadily against his fingertips.

  She was alive. Thank God, she was alive.

  Now he had to get her out of there so she’d stay that way.

  He rolled to his side and draped her arm over his shoulder. Grabbing her wrist, he heaved her onto his back and caught her leg with his other hand.

  He could feel her cough, her diaphragm moving in a spasm. She gripped his hand.

  “I’m here, babe. I’ve got you.”

  “Trying to get out.” She coughed several times and muttered more words he couldn’t understand, ending with “…to the bedroom.”

  “Okay, to the bedroom. We’re going to get out of this mess.”

  “No, the window. No, jammed.” She seemed disoriented, but he understood the gist of what she was trying to say.

  Probably nailed shut the way the patio door had been. He felt for the wall, trying to recalibrate his sense of direction. “Okay. I have another way out. Leave it to me. You just hold on as tight as you can.”

  “You hold on, too.”

  “You bet I will, Nat. No matter what happens, I’ll never let you go.”

  She clung to him as he crawled along the wall. He made it out of the hall in much less time than it had taken going in, now that he didn’t have to search. His knees were sore from crawling, his head ached to high heaven and his lungs felt like glowing, red cigarette ash. He hoped the fumes of the paints weren’t toxic. He had no idea how long the studio had been aflame or how that might affect Natalie.

  He pushed those worries to the back of his mind and kept moving. If he didn’t get them out of here, he needn’t concern himself with anything else.

  He made it into the living room and took a turn into the dinette. The hardwood floor made his knees ache even more. Natalie gripped his hand, still coughing. Now that they were away from the fire, he could hear the rasp of each of her breaths.

  They reached the patio door. Fresh air streamed through the hole. Glass crunched under his knees. Uncomfortable, but since it was tempered, it wasn’t sharp. “I’m going to stand up, Nat. Hold tight.”

  She squeezed his hand.

  He climbed to his feet. Stepping through the hole he’d bashed in the door, he angled Natalie to the side so they could both fit through.

  Now he had to pray Thad had been able to what he’d promised.

  He lowered Natalie to the patio, snug in the lee of the cottage. The shooter could have changed positions while he’d been in the burning structure. He had no way of knowing. He just hoped by keeping low, they could avoid being spotted.

  Natalie doubled forward in a coughing spasm.

  He stroked her hair and blinked his eyes, letting his tears cleanse away the smoke. Now that he could begin to see a little more in the light and fresh air, he noticed a rosy cast to her skin. The wind whipped around them, cooling his sweat-soaked shirt and chilling his skin, but Natalie’s color didn’t fade.

  God, no.

  He knew what that color meant, why she’d been on the floor, why she’d been disoriented. Why he had a splitting headache and nausea from the short time he’d been inside.

  Carbon monoxide.

  Her cells were filled with it. So fi
lled they couldn’t accept oxygen. If he didn’t get her medical help, she would die.

  He slipped one arm under her legs, one under her back. “I’m going to take you to the hos—”

  He felt the bullet hit before he heard the report.

  The force of the impact shoved him forward onto Natalie. Cold sliced through his chest and spread through his body. He gasped for breath, but as hard as he strained, it wouldn’t seem to come. “Nat?”

  Footsteps crunched through the fall garden, slowly coming toward them.

  Gray forced himself up, bracing himself into a sitting position with his hands. Still struggling to breathe, he looked down at the blood covering Natalie.

  His blood. God, let it be his blood alone.

  Pain breaking through some of the frigid cold claiming his body, he twisted to look at the shooter.

  The man held his assault rifle in front of him, finger on the trigger. Brows low and mouth in a tight smile, he looked at Gray with hard eyes.

  Eyes that Gray recognized. “You.”

  Gray should have thought of him. Maybe he should have known, but he hadn’t. Whoever this guy was, he wanted to kill Natalie. He wanted to finish what he’d intended ever since that night he’d followed her from the coffee shop.

  He raised the rifle to his shoulder. “Get out of the way,” he said.

  Gray threw his body over Natalie’s. The bullet would go through both of them. He couldn’t stop it. But he couldn’t just give up. He had to do anything, everything, something to save her life.

  A shot exploded in his ears.

  Chapter Eighteen

  Gray never thought he’d wake up. But when he opened his eyes, Thad was pulling him up from Natalie and pushing his jacket against the wound in his chest. “Where is he?”

  Thad glanced at something on the ground, something Gray couldn’t see. “Dead.”

  Gray grabbed the jacket from Thad and propped himself into a hunched forward sitting position. The past few moments shuffled through his mind. The rifle pointing at Natalie. Covering her with his body. The shot ringing in his ears. “You were the one who fired?”

  Thad nodded. He knelt down beside Natalie.

  Sirens screamed from somewhere in the distance. “You found a way to call out?”

  “Must have been the neighbors. Is Natalie…”

  “The blood is mine. But she’s in rough shape. Carbon monoxide.”

  Thad nodded at Gray’s chest. “Looks like you’re in rough shape, too.”

  He glanced down at himself. Blood already soaked Thad’s jacket. Breathing was becoming difficult. He felt dizzy. Weak. “Only because you kicked the hell out of me earlier.”

  Thad gave a strained laugh.

  Gray tried to laugh along, but it ended up in a series of choking coughs that felt like they were ripping his body apart.

  When the coughs subsided, he glanced back at Thad. “The shooter. I recognized him.”

  “Who was he?”

  “Name is Wade. All I know. Could be fake.” He shook his head, wishing he’d realized the Romeo wannabe was really a dangerous threat from the first.

  “Why was he trying to kill Natalie?”

  “I have no clue.”

  Police cars streamed into the driveway, an ambulance behind.

  Gray leaned heavily forward on his hands and struggled for breath. Then everything went black.

  WHEN NATALIE WOKE IN THE hospital, her throat was more sore than it had ever been in her life, including all the times she’d had strep throat as a kid. A heart monitor beeped at her bedside. A plastic tube snaked under her nose and looped behind her ears. A medicinal smell hung in the air.

  “Welcome back.”

  She looked in the direction of the voice and focused on a face. A face she hadn’t seen for a long time. Her heart gave a little hop. “Thad,” she whispered in a croaking voice.

  He smiled. His blue eyes twinkled. “Am I glad to see you. You just missed Aunt Angela.”

  “You’re home.” She probably sounded stupid, stating the obvious like that. But she could hardly believe it. It was so good to see him.

  “I have been back in St. Louis for a few days now.”

  “A few days?” She didn’t understand.

  “You’re in the ICU. You’ve been here for three days, recovering from carbon monoxide poisoning. You were on a respirator, so they kept you knocked out.”

  She shook her head. She didn’t remember how she’d gotten here. She had no idea she’d been asleep that long.

  Thad narrowed his eyes on her. “How much do you remember?”

  She searched the images in her mind, the feelings. “I remember Ash and Rachel’s wedding. The shooting. And the night after…” She pressed her lips together, keeping the events of that night to herself. But as soon as she recalled making love with Gray, the rest came back, too. Gray leaving her. And Chet, lying motionless in the garden. “My bodyguard, is he okay?”

  “You mean Gray?”

  She shook her head. “Gray? Was Gray hurt?”

  Thad nodded. Holding her hand carefully so as not to disturb the IV needle in her hand, he propped one hip on the edge of her bed. “You remember the fire?” She nodded.

  “The cottage. The man who was trying to kill you started it on fire.”

  Shock vibrated through her. She remembered bits. The smell of smoke. The choking panic. The darkness and confusion.

  “The firefighters put it out. But there was a lot of smoke damage. Gray Scott, he was the one who rescued you. He was shot in the chest.”

  Her breath hitched.

  “It’s okay,” Thad said. “He’s going to be all right.”

  She let out a shuddering breath. “And Chet?”

  “He was killed. He was dead before Gray or I got there. I’m sorry.”

  She lay still for a long time, her brother holding her hand, gently rubbing her fingers. So much had happened she wasn’t sure if she could ever get it all straight in her head. “And the man who shot Gray and Chet?”

  He was quiet for a long while. Finally he said, “I took him out.”

  “You? How?”

  Thad explained what happened, blow by blow. When he was finished, Natalie was able to connect some pieces in her mind, although most parts were still foggy. But out of all the traumatic things that had taken place, the hardest thing for her to believe was that the normal-looking guy with bad shoes was the person who’d been trying to kill her all along.

  Still, she couldn’t ignore it. Judging from all Thad told her, the evidence was conclusive. His fingerprints matched the ones Ash had lifted from inside the cottage after her paintings had been shredded. The oversize powder-blue sweatshirt worn by the person who’d pushed her into traffic was recovered from his apartment. And the rifle he’d used to shoot Chet and Gray matched the slugs found in Gray’s apartment and outside the wedding chapel.

  Natalie’s head whirled. It seemed like it should all add up. It seemed like it should make sense. But try as she might, she couldn’t grasp any of it. “Who is this Wade guy? Why would he want to kill me?”

  “We don’t know that yet. But believe me, all of us are working on it. Ash even postponed his honeymoon.”

  She knew Thad, Ash and Devin wouldn’t rest until they found out the truth. She would help, too, if she could, as soon as she was well enough. “You said Gray was shot, but he’s okay.” Just saying the words, just thinking about Gray being hurt, made her start to tremble.

  Thad nodded. “He’s going to be fine. I just popped in to see him about an hour ago. He’s right here in the hospital. They moved him out of ICU a couple of days ago, so I guess you could say, he’s doing better than you are. When you get strong enough, I’ll take you to see him.”

  Shivers spread over her skin. “No, that’s okay.”

  Thad’s eyebrows arched toward his closely cropped dark brown hair. “He saved your life. In fact, when Wade was about to shoot you, Gray threw himself over you. As if he thought he could shield yo
u from the bullet.”

  Tears filled her eyes. The hospital whites and beiges swam in front of her, mixing until she could see nothing but a bland wash.

  “You care for him, don’t you?”

  She didn’t say anything. She couldn’t.

  “You love him.”

  A rumble of voices sounded in the hall outside. Natalie wiped her eyes just as the curtain whooshed back and Devin and Ash stepped into her ICU cubicle.

  After a flurry of exclamations about her being awake and a bunch of gentle hugs, Devin focused on Thad. “Natalie loves who?” he asked.

  Thad looked up at their oldest brother. “Gray Scott.”

  Devin frowned.

  Natalie shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about this.”

  Natalie glowered at her traitorous brother. Of course, she never could have expected Thad would stay silent on the matter of her love life, or lack thereof. All three of her brothers tended to gang up when it came to protecting her.

  “Maybe we should drag him in here,” said Ash. “Make him do right by our little sister.”

  Devin nodded. “Got any handcuffs on you?”

  “Stop it, guys.” Natalie had meant to throw the words at them in a joking fashion. Instead they came out on a wave of tears.

  All three of her brothers stared at her with expressions of horror on their faces.

  Devin hovered over her first. “I’m sorry, Natalie. Don’t cry. We didn’t mean to joke. You know I wasn’t happy with Scott taking advantage of you in the first place. But if you love him, he should damn well be here for you. And we’ll make sure he is. Better yet, we’ll make sure that when he comes to visit you, he brings a diamond ring with him.”

  Ash nodded, joined by Thad.

  Natalie closed her eyes. She knew they loved her. She knew they meant well. But they didn’t understand. “Don’t you dare say one word to Gray. Understand?”

  She looked at her brothers in turn, waiting for each to nod, before she went on. “I don’t want a man to ask me to marry him because my big brothers bully him into doing it.”