Take a Risk (Risk #1)

by Scarlett Finn

  Lyssa didn’t know that, and she didn’t know that Colt knew that either. ‘You never told me that.’

  ‘Because I didn’t want you to be paranoid every time you walked down the street,’ he said. ‘I told you that the angle of the shots was interesting. They were taken from above because that is where the cameras are located. From there it wasn’t a leap to figure out who would have access to those systems after a bit of investigation.’

  His phone rang and he retrieved it to answer. The first few words were normal, but he became more deadpan and she knew that couldn’t be a good sign. When he turned his back on the group and lowered his volume Lyssa left her seat to move closer to Ruger’s side. He took her hand in a comforting gesture, he must have assessed Colt’s actions in the same way that she had.

  Colt hung up and didn’t turn for a few seconds as though composing himself before he came back to the group. When he did turn he was all aloof determination. ‘I have to take you home,’ Colt said to her.

  ‘What? But—‘

  ‘Is Archie still there?’ Colt asked.

  ‘Well… I… yeah, I think so.’

  ‘Does he know how to use a gun?’

  ‘What?’ Her shock came out as a shout. The man standing before her now wasn’t the same one who had just made love to her on the couch. The hardened look in his eye was unamused, in fact it was downright pissed off, and she wanted to know what was going on. ‘Colt—‘

  ‘Answer the question,’ he said. ‘Does he know how to use a gun?’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Flick asked, apparently not as shocked as Lyssa was. ‘We have weapons in the car if—‘

  ‘We have supplies,’ Ruger said.

  ‘Supplies are not the problem,’ Colt said. ‘Manpower is the issue. Lyssa doesn’t know how to use a gun.’

  ‘They learn fast,’ Rushe muttered, and Lyssa saw Flick pinch him.

  ‘My girlfriend won’t have to,’ Colt said, taking her shoulders and shaking her focus back to him. ‘Lys, does he know—‘

  ‘But… yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, he does, but—‘

  ‘Good,’ Colt said. ‘I’m going to call Blaser and he’s going to take you home. I want you to stay there until you hear from me. Blaser will talk to Archie and make sure that you’ll be safe.’

  ‘Talk?’ Lyssa said, not liking the idea of her boyfriend’s brother talking to her ex-husband. ‘Archie doesn’t know anything about what’s going on here and to be frank I don’t want to include him in my business. I wouldn’t trust him to look after my hamster… if I had one.’

  ‘Blaser will make it clear what the consequences will be if he lets anything happen to you,’ Colt said. ‘You’re going to be safe.’

  ‘Who is Archie?’ Flick asked.

  ‘Her ex-husband,’ Rushe answered. Surprised by his knowledge of her history, Lyssa began to wonder just how many people were checking her out these days.

  ‘I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what is going on,’ Lyssa said to Colt.

  ‘The DA issued the arrest warrant but they can’t find the suspect,’ Colt said. ‘That was Hoburn on the phone. I’m going to meet up with him and find out what they’re trying. We’ll do everything that we can to help.’

  ‘We can stay with the doctor,’ Flick said. Colt was already on his way to grab his jacket and Ruger disappeared into the back of the apartment.

  ‘You go wherever you want, sweetheart,’ Colt said. ‘But if you’re really here to stop this guy from doing any more harm then I’m going to need help from your boyfriend… if he can play nice with others and get the job done?’

  Rushe and Flick were on their way to the door, but she stopped when Colt said this. ‘Seems to me that you’re the one who can’t play nice,’ she said. ‘You can’t have him, unless—‘

  ‘He needs people who can track this guy, unofficially, without following the rules,’ Rushe said.

  ‘Oh,’ Flick said. ‘In that case you can have him; actually you can have us both, because we stay together.’

  ‘Always?’ Lyssa asked, letting Colt help her on with her jacket. ‘You’re always together?’

  ‘Unless he ties me to something and leaves me there, yeah,’ Flick smiled, hooking a hand into Rushe’s back jeans pocket.

  ‘Does that happen often?’ Lyssa asked, guessing that Colt was as taken aback by this declaration as she was.

  ‘Not as often as it used to,’ Flick said.

  ‘Not as often as I’d like,’ Rushe said, following up on what his girlfriend had said.

  Lyssa had no time to continue her questioning because Ruger came back with a small sports bag over his shoulder. From the determination on his face and in his gait, she didn’t need to ask what was in the bag.

  ‘Everybody ready to bail out?’ Ruger asked.

  Colt was already on the phone to Blaser who was no doubt at the garage, meaning he could meet them out front in a matter of seconds. She was being railroaded into taking the safe route. As much as she wanted to be involved, she didn’t want to be petulant when these capable men were doing what they were sure they needed to do. So when she was taken outside with the group and swept down the stairs, she went with it. But that didn’t quell the sense of impending catastrophe webbing within her, sending her psyche-senses into overdrive.

  After Colt put her into a truck, Blaser had showed up in the apartment block’s parking lot and spoken briefly with Ruger and Colt. Rushe joined the men after he locked Flick in his own car, and the introduction of Blaser and Rushe was so uneventful that her interest was piqued.

  When the men were finished talking they all got into their respective cars, meaning that Blaser got in with her, Rushe got in with Flick, and Colt shared a vehicle with Ruger. She and Blaser were going over to her place, while all of the others were going to join the police for the manhunt – at least that was what Lyssa assumed they were doing.

  On the journey over to her house, she tried to open a dialogue with Blaser but he wasn’t interested in small talk and didn’t say much during the drive at all. Blaser wasn’t really one for gossiping, which she thought he would be more used to tolerating given his work at Risqué.

  Archie was present in her townhouse when they arrived and he was surprised to see not only her, but yet another intimidating man at her side. Colt was difficult enough for him to take, but she wasn’t about to explain her relationship to Blaser. The lack of explanation seemed to work in their favour because he was suitably off-balance when Blaser took him aside to talk to him. Although she didn’t hear the specifics, Archie was considerably paler when the men came back to her.

  ‘I’m going to get going,’ Blaser said. ‘I have to hook up with Colt.’

  He was already running down the stairs, so she left Archie in the living room and ran down after him. ‘Wait, Blaser,’ she said and he paused at the front door. ‘I want to… I mean thanks for helping with this.’

  ‘It’s family,’ he shrugged, then lifted a hand to his shoulder which still had to be stiff.

  ‘I’m sorry about that too,’ she said. ‘I can’t believe that you got a hole in you because of this, because of me.’

  ‘You’ve already been told several times that this was nothing to do with you,’ he said, indicating his injured shoulder. ‘Not everything in our lives started when you came into them.’

  ‘I haven’t been told what it is about,’ she said. ‘So until I know I’ll just assume that you’re both covering for Colt.’

  ‘For Colt? Do you think he shot me?’

  ‘No, but he doesn’t want me to be hurt and he knows that I feel guilty about people being injured because of—‘

  ‘I got this because I deserved it,’ Blaser said. ‘I got this because I let down a woman who meant a lot to me.’

  ‘Gary’s sister?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said. ‘She… she went through a hard time and I could’ve prevented it. I was supposed to meet her but I was late… I wasn’t there when she needed me.’

  ‘And
Gary blames you for that?’

  ‘Gary blames everyone for everything because he thinks that the world is against him,’ Blaser said. ‘He doesn’t even see what Bri went through as important in her life, he only sees how it affected him.’

  ‘How did it affect him?’

  ‘He wasn’t there for her either,’ Blaser said. ‘We both let her down.’

  ‘But she’s ok now?’

  ‘I think ok is a relative term,’ he said, grasping the door handle. ‘I didn’t get shot because of you. I got shot because Gary needs to blame someone for what happened to his sister and I’m the only one he can lay his hands on.’

  ‘If you know it was him that shot you, then why don’t you tell the police and have him arrested?’

  ‘Because in a sort of weird, roundabout way, Gary is family too.’

  He would never rat out Colt or Ruger for hurting him, but she couldn’t see either of them doing something so severe. If Blaser had been physically intimate with this woman, Bri, that meant that Blaser and Gary couldn’t be blood, which meant only one thing.

  ‘You still care about her.’

  An uncomfortable half-smile formed on his lips, and his eyes fell to the floor. ‘Care doesn’t begin to cover it, Lyssa. But what I did to her, what she went through because of me… no one gets over that.’

  ‘Have you asked her?’ Lyssa asked, moving in closer to take his hand. ‘Have you talked to her about what she went through and what effect it had on you?’

  Snatching his hand away, he pulled open the door. ‘There isn’t a single person in her life who gives a fuck about what she went through. Gary is the only family she has left and all he does is make it about him. I’m not going to do the same thing to her.’

  ‘Maybe letting her talk, giving her a safe place to exist in and an environment in which she can share her experiences is what she needs.’

  ‘I wouldn’t know how to coach her through that,’ Blaser said. ‘I wouldn’t know how to help her forget what happened and everything associated with it, that’s what she needs to do, and I’m a part of that.’

  ‘You are a part of it,’ Lyssa said. ‘Maybe there’s a reason she holds onto you, a reason that she keeps you in her life.’

  ‘Yeah,’ Blaser said. ‘Because Gary can’t stand it.’

  ‘Do you really believe that she’s that callous?’

  ‘Bri? No. But standing up to her brother is her way of taking control.’

  ‘And she feels like control has been taken from her?’ Lyssa asked, wishing that she could move this through into her office and get him sitting down.

  ‘Yeah,’ Blaser said. ‘Isn’t that what they say about rape victims?’

  So this poor woman had been through a traumatic experience. Lyssa knew that talking about that experience and getting out all of the emotion associated with it that Bri hadn’t yet been able to express was important. This kind of event was the sort that she had been trained to help victims to process.

  ‘This might not be the time or…’ Lyssa started, ‘I’d like to meet her, if you’d consider letting me do that.’

  Her offer of help made him frown and he backed out of the door. ‘You want to work your hocus pocus on her?’

  ‘It’s medicine,’ Lyssa said. ‘But if she’s not comfortable, or isn’t interested, then that’s fine. But I want you to know that the offer is there, for both of you, together or apart… We’re all family, right?’

  This question put him somewhat more at ease, but he didn’t look any more eager to take her up on it. ‘I’ll think about,’ he said and she nodded. ‘I better get going.’

  Letting go of his hand she let him retreat, hoping that he would actually take the time to process her offer and think about how it could help both parties. If Blaser and this Bri woman had been close, or in some kind of relationship, before she went through her trauma then that had been interrupted by the event. Now Bri was living her life with her ex and her brother, two of the most important men in her life, at each other’s throats, and blaming each other for something that was nobody’s fault except her attacker’s.

  Knowing that in intellectual terms wouldn’t help Bri, she would have to be taken through the experience and have her emotions broken down into simple terms so that she could deal with them. Blaser cared about Bri and he was right, that did make them family. Lyssa didn’t want anyone to suffer alone through such an ordeal, least of all someone who was important to someone she cared about.

  Finding out more about Blaser gave her a distraction from what was going on in her life, and what her love might presently be going through. If she couldn’t be of use to Colt then she would be of use to his brother.

  Going into her office she began to work, putting together information and reading material for Blaser, and for Bri, that she hoped would encourage both of them to seek help. But the truth was that unless someone wanted it there was no way to force them into facing what they’d been through, and that was the only way to move forward.

  If this was a manhunt then Lyssa knew that it could take days to find the person that they were looking for. But as the hours passed she found herself more and more eager to speak to Colt and check that he was alright.

  After working for as long as she could and arranging for flowers to be sent to the patients she had lost, she went upstairs. It didn’t take long for Archie to get on her nerves. His bombardment of questions gave her a new respect for those who were reluctant to answer hers, and though she’d busied herself with chores, that didn’t stop Archie from following her around giving her a lecture about her choice of partner.

  This, of course, led to her bringing up his current predicament and how stupid it was of him to get mixed up in defrauding the IRS. That was a smokescreen for her own attack on his relationship with the young woman who was clearly only interested in the money Archie had accrued through his surgical practice. So they ended up having an argument just like in the old days. It actually helped to relieve some of her tension, but led to them agreeing to remain in separate rooms, which suited her just fine.

  She had cooked, but wasn’t looking forward to sitting at the dinner table alone with Archie. It would be immature of her to take her food to her bedroom or office, so she laid the table for two and was about to go to the spare room, where he was residing, when she heard a knock at the front door.

  Relief flooded through her because she was sure that the only person it could be was Colt. If he had news and was in proximity to her home then there would be no reason for him not to come over and deliver the news in person.

  But when she opened the door it was Suzette who stood in front of her, not her lover. ‘Suzette?’

  ‘I went to Colt’s, but you weren’t back yet,’ Suzette said, moving past Lyssa into the hall. ‘Some guy called Gus said that you’d come home.’

  ‘What are you doing here?’ Lyssa asked, taking Suzette’s coat from her to hang it in the hall closet. ‘I thought you were going to stay with your sister.’

  ‘She was driving me nuts and her kids were running around. I just needed to be somewhere that I could clear my head. You don’t mind, do you?’

  ‘No,’ Lyssa said. ‘We never got the chance to talk earlier. Archie is still upstairs, do you want to talk in the office? I have coffee.’

  Suzette nodded and so Lyssa let her into the office to get started on the coffee while Lyssa went upstairs to turn off the stove and tell Archie that there was food available to eat. She might be missing out on a meal, but that was no reason for the food to go to waste.

  Instead of sitting on her doctor’s chair, she chose to sit with Suzette on the couch and the women sipped their freshly made coffee before either spoke.

  ‘How are you feeling?’ Lyssa asked her friend.

  ‘Alone, scared, confused,’ Suzette said.

  ‘You’re going to be fine,’ Lyssa said. ‘This will blow over. I know that Pete will come to his senses.’

  ‘I…’ Her voice cracked. Lyssa put her c
up aside and slid closer to take Suzette’s hand. ‘I’m just so in love with him and I was sure that this was it. Everything seemed to be so perfect. I don’t know how it all fell apart so quickly. A few weeks ago we were fine and now… this. I mean… I can’t even… I don’t…’

  ‘It’s ok,’ Lyssa said, taking Suzette’s cup away from her to put it on the table, giving her leave to pull her friend into her arms. ‘This is a shock. Your emotions are perfectly normal and it’s good to express them.’ Suzette cried for a while, but eventually sat back enough to blink her watery eyes at Lyssa, who maintained her proximity. Suzette could need another hug at any minute and Lyssa was happy to be on hand to offer her friend the support. Coaching a friend was so different to coaching a patient and it was funny how easily she slid between the roles as was required. ‘Have you spoken to Pete today?’

  ‘Not since before I left the house and came to Colt’s this morning… I wanted to call him, but I’m just too scared, what if he hangs up on me? Or diverts me to voicemail or something? I’ve taken all the rejection that I can today.’

  ‘I’m going to go upstairs and get a bottle of wine, ok? Then we can either talk about how to fix this, or we’ll curse men and everything they stand for. How does that sound?’

  With a blubbery sniff, Suzette nodded and wiped her nose on her sleeve, prompting Lyssa to reach over her for the tissue box on the end table. ‘Thank you,’ Suzette said, blowing her nose. ‘I don’t know what I’d do without you.’

  Lyssa gave her hand a squeeze and did as she’d said she would. Pouring away the coffee, she got a bottle of wine and a couple of glasses. Archie was happily eating the dinner she had made while sitting in front of the television watching a reality TV show that she didn’t recognise. He didn’t even acknowledge her when she came through and she thought of how such an act, or lack of one, epitomised their marriage and it was funny how quickly they slid back into their old ways.

  Archie entertained himself in front of the television because he didn’t have an office to ensconce himself in. Other than that this situation was just like the days of their relationship. Him in one room alone, uninterested in her, and her in another room drinking wine and whining with Suzette. Nostalgia over the similarities made her smile as she descended the stairs, but they also made her more grateful for what she had now, because there wasn’t anything in the world that would ever make her go back to this, especially not now that she had her Colt to rely on.