What Mattered Most

by Linda Winfree

  Anger battled against the fear rising in his throat. “Are you done?”

  She snapped the notebook closed. “Not really, but this is getting us nowhere.”

  “He won’t hurt Lanie.” He wondered if he meant to reassure her or himself.

  “That’s right, he won’t. I’ll make sure of it. Martinez is going to stay with her.”

  “I wouldn’t have let him near her.”

  “You did a really good job of protecting Beth, too.”

  “You—”

  The door swung inward, and Sheriff Dennis Burnett stepped into the room, his dark hair disheveled. “Cait, we’ve got the little girl.”

  Hope surged through John, and he struggled up against the pillows. Agony stabbed at his ribs, and he subsided, gasping. “Is she all right?”

  Caitlin ignored him and tucked her notebook back into her pocket. “Where?”

  “Couple of teenagers found her wandering the parking lot of the hamburger joint out on Route Six. Right now, she’s downstairs in the ER, being checked out. Other than being cold and scared out of her mind, she seems to be okay.”

  She moved toward the door. “We need to spread out a net from that point—”

  “Already doing it. Who put you in charge, anyway? Did you forget you were on vacation?”

  Ignoring the teasing, Caitlin glanced back at John, her smile cool. “Thank you for your help, detective.”

  John matched her stare for icy stare. “Sure. Anytime.”

  Once the door closed with a soft click, he dropped his head back against the pillow and stared at the ceiling. He welcomed the pain that shot through his skull. He deserved it. Guilt coiled through him. She was right—he’d let down his guard, let Mitchell catch him unprepared.

  Beth was paying for his mistakes.

  He couldn’t stay here in this bed while she was out there, somewhere, at Mitchell’s mercy. A grim chuckle escaped him. Mercy. Mitchell didn’t have any, and Beth bore the scars to prove it.

  Teeth gritted against the pain, he shoved to a sitting position and swung his legs over the side of the bed. Waves of dizziness attacked his head, and he closed his eyes, swearing. Beads of icy perspiration broke on his upper lip, and he brushed at them, the slight weight of the intravenous line dragging at his arm.

  He glanced at his hand, a large purple bruise spreading to his wrist, and memory returned of pulling the needle out earlier. Gritting his teeth, he tugged the line free once more. Stinging hurt shot up his arm. He held on to the discomfort, using it to focus his flagging energy. His feet slid to the floor, and he stood, shaky knees not wanting to bear his weight.

  The door opened, and he glanced up, his gaze clashing with Lanie’s. Her full mouth, already bracketed with tension lines, twisted in frustration. “Damn it, John, I warned you.”

  “I’m getting out of here.” He glanced down at the hospital gown and his bare feet. “Where the hell are my clothes?”

  One hand holding the door open, Lanie glanced back over her shoulder. “Steve, I need your cuffs.”

  “Like hell you do!”

  Martinez appeared in the doorway. “Falconetti, you’re not really planning to—”

  “Watch me.”

  “Don’t touch me,” John snarled, pushing her hands away.

  “Believe me, right now I’d rather pick up a live rattlesnake.” Lanie glanced at him, her hazel gaze far colder than her cousin’s had been. Unable to meet her eyes, John glanced away. Damn it, he’d never wanted her hurt. He struggled to stand again. “But you’re going to hurt yourself if someone doesn’t stop you.”

  Her fingers slid into the pressure point behind his clavicle, buckling his knees, sending numbness along his arms. “You damned—”

  Cold steel closed around his wrist; a metallic ring told him the other cuff had closed around the bed frame. Lanie glared down at him. “Just spit it out, O’Reilly.”

  He gave a hard, ineffectual tug at the cuff, then matched her glare. Defensiveness tightened his lungs. “I guess you’ve been talking to your cousin.”

  Her eyebrows lifted, a cold smile curving her mouth. “I’m just finally seeing what’s been right in my face all along. Steve, would you leave us alone?”

  “You’re not going to hurt him, are you?” The joking didn’t cover the concern in Martinez’s disembodied voice.

  “No.” The disdain in her voice matched the emotion that John watched flicker in the golden depths of her eyes where before he’d only seen affection and desire.

  “I’ll be right outside. Holler if you need me.”

  Silence followed the click of the door closing. His chest heaving and aching, John stared up at Lanie. Blood dripped down his wrist and pooled at his elbow. “You have to take that cuff off. I’ve got to get out of here.”

  Her stony expression didn’t change. “I don’t have to do anything, you lying rat.”

  “Lanie, please.” He rattled the cuff again, hating the hoarse pleading in his voice. “You don’t understand.”

  “I understand plenty. Do you have family I need to contact?”

  He frowned. She knew his parents were dead, that he was an only child. “No. You—”

  “So at least part of it was the truth. Wait, you didn’t really lie, did you, O’Reilly? You just didn’t tell the whole truth.”

  “I know you’re angry, but I’ve got to—”

  Her harsh laugh exploded in the quiet room. “Angry? I wouldn’t exactly call it anger. And what you’re going to do is stay in that bed and recuperate.”

  Desperation slid under his skin. “He let Nicole go because he won’t hurt Beth in front of her. She’s in danger, and I—”

  “You love her, don’t you?”

  The quiet, deadly words brought him to a stop. For the first time, he glimpsed agony beneath the ice. Guilt cramped his stomach, and he softened his voice. “Lanie, I didn’t mean for this to happen.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t.” Her gaze didn’t move from his, but the existence of their unborn child hung between them, the double meaning heavy in her words. “Were you sleeping with her, too?”

  Anger rocketed through his veins. “No, damn it, I wasn’t sleeping with her.”

  “Of course not.” That same harsh laugh escaped her, and she turned away. “If she was sleeping with you, you wouldn’t have needed me, would you? So were you thinking of her while you were with me?”

  Her voice dropped with the accusation, and he shook his head. He hadn’t had to think of Beth because the physical attraction, the pleasure, had always been so strong with Lanie. She’d made him forget anything or anyone else existed. “No.”

  “Liar.”

  “Lanie, it’s the truth, I swear.”

  She shot him a glare, sliding the infinity pendant over her head and letting it drop into a silver pool on the bed. “Right.”

  He watched her move toward the door, and panicked helplessness rose in him. “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to check on Nicole, and then I’m going home.”

  “Take Martinez with you. Your cousin thinks Mitchell might try to use you to get back at me.”

  “I can take care of myself. And as good as Cait is, there’s only one problem with her scenario—in order for Mitchell to use me against you, you’d have to give a damn about me. Goodbye, John.”

  “Damn it, Lanie, I do care about you.” The words fell in the empty air, the door closing behind her. Dropping against the pillow, he muttered growling curses, jerking at the cuff and sending pain shooting up his arm and through his upper body.

  She wasn’t going to listen to him. The lump of cold fear in his stomach grew larger. What if Ms. Perfect was right? What if Mitchell decided to go after Lanie?

  He tugged at the cuff again. He had to get out of here. He couldn’t let another woman die because of him and his failures.

  “Steve, really.” Lanie huffed a sigh and pulled the pin from her hair, letting the heavy mass fall about her shoulders. Her spine ached all the
way from the base of her skull to her lower back. “I don’t need a babysitter.”

  “What if the FBI chick is right and this nut decides to come after you?” Steve tapped his fingers on the open refrigerator door, examining the contents of her fridge. “Did you know you’re out of beer?”

  “First, she’s not a chick—she’s my cousin and she’d kick your ass if she heard you call her that. Second, she’s been wrong before, and she’s wrong this time. Mitchell wants Beth. Not me. Third, I have a state-of-the-art security system, not to mention a rather large caliber handgun. And yeah, I knew I was out of beer. The rat drank the last one yesterday.”

  Steve straightened, a soda in hand, and swung the door closed. “You’re really ticked at him, aren’t you?”

  “Ticked doesn’t begin to cover it.” Lanie moved by her partner to the refrigerator and grabbed the milk, drinking from the carton. Satisfactory spite warmed her veins—John hated when she did that.

  After taking a swig of soda, Steve shook his head. “Getting involved with your partner is always a bad idea. I don’t know why guys do it.”

  “Well, you don’t have to worry about that, do you, Martinez?” Even if she’d ever been remotely attracted to him, she was off men for life. Lord, she should have followed through on that vow the first time she made it. She slumped against the counter, swirling the milk in the carton. “I think I’ll become a lesbian.”

  He brightened. “If you do, can I watch?”

  She slugged his shoulder and stuck the milk back in the refrigerator. “No.”

  He laughed, opening the cabinet and surveying the junk food selection. “Listen, I really don’t mind hanging out here. I can crash on the couch, catch the end of the game on the tube—”

  “Eat me out of house and home,” Lanie finished for him. She resisted the urge to push him toward the door. “I appreciate it, truly I do, but I really just want to be alone right now.”

  “All right, but let’s check and make sure you have everything locked up. Then I’ll call dispatch and have them put a car outside, just in case.”

  The plan sounded like overkill, but Lanie relented, following him from the kitchen. “I’ll sleep with my weapon, too. Will that make you feel better?”

  Steve grew serious. “Yeah, it will. This whole thing makes me nervous.”

  They moved through both levels of the house, checking the locks on all of the windows and doors. Lanie endured her partner’s safety instructions and breathed a sigh of immense relief when she closed the door behind him.

  Solitude.

  The quietness wrapped around her, sheltering her from the emotional storm brewing on the horizon. She walked to the bank of floor-to-ceiling windows that lined the living room wall. Rain clouds gathered over the Gulf, wind whipping at the white-capped waves. She wrapped her arms around her stomach and leaned her cheek against the cool window. Tears leapt to her eyes. How could she have been so wrong? The story had been so plausible—a young widow moving to escape the memories, her partner with no family ties seeking the excitement and warm weather of Houston. John’s attitude toward Beth had been friendly and warm, never that of a lover, not in Lanie’s presence.

  And God knew, if anyone could see the signs of infidelity, she could. She’d lived them, had them drummed into her psyche by her mother’s litanies.

  Lightning streaked across the black-purple sky. Acting on protective instinct, she backed away from the glass, drawing the ivory sheers closed. Picking up the remote, she fired the gas logs in the fireplace, the cheerful flames doing little to elevate her spirits. Everywhere she turned were reminders of the folly that had been her relationship with John O’Reilly.

  Relationship. Anything but. She’d been a convenient lay. Scratch that—an eager, ultimately inconvenient lay, she corrected, still hugging the swell of her baby. Could she have made it any easier for him?

  Tears dripped down her cheeks, and she let them fall as she gathered emergency candles, matches, blankets and pillows. The electric service was notoriously unstable in windy weather, and she couldn’t face sleeping in the bed she’d shared with John. The cold sheets were still rumpled and tossed from their early evening lovemaking, and she would not crawl between them.

  This wasn’t much better. With a shuddery sigh, she settled onto the couch. How often had they made love in front of the fire, the curtains open so they could look at the water afterward? The images came too easily—firelight on burnished skin, highlighting the ripple and play of muscles as he moved above her, within her.

  That hadn’t been making love. That was sex, pure and simple. The memory of the desire that had seemed so pure, so strong, pulled at her, and she shuddered with self-disgust.

  All he ever had to do was look at her with those dark blue eyes, smile at her a certain way, and she was ready for him. Once upon a time, the reaction thrilled her. Now it damned her, made her feel again like the girl she’d been in high school—the one who had sought with desperation the love and affection so lacking at home, who traded her body and her self-esteem for the illusion that someone cared.

  She’d taken years to rebuild that self-respect, and in one night, John O’Reilly had taken it away again. Hell, be honest, Falconetti. He didn’t take anything. You gave him everything.

  She pulled the blanket closer to her chin and stared into the leaping flames. The baby stirred, rolling beneath her hand. The tears fell faster. What was she going to do?

  Wind gusted, rattling the glass, and the rain began, harsh sheets of water blown against the house. Lanie shivered. Beth was still out there somewhere. Lord, this entire situation was a mess, the emotional equivalent of an atomic bomb waiting to go off, but she wanted the other woman safe.

  Repeating prayers for all of them, she drifted into sleep.

  “Let me get this straight—your girlfriend’s idea of a joke involved handcuffing you to the hospital bed?”

  John met the security guard’s incredulous gaze and nodded, trying not to look like the worry-crazed maniac he was becoming. The more he’d thought about it, the more Caitlin Falconetti’s theory made a sick sort of sense. Mitchell could very well go after Lanie, and John meant to stop him. “We’re both cops. She got mad at me and…”

  He let the words trail away, lifting his cuffed wrist for illustration.

  After radioing the main desk, the security guard shook his head and released John’s wrist. “Craziest damn thing I ever heard.”

  His bladder threatening to burst, John rubbed at his wrist and swung his feet over the side of the bed. “Thanks.”

  The guard eyed him with lingering suspicion. “Where do you think you’re going, young feller?”

  One hand keeping the back of the too-small gown closed, John tested weak legs. “To take a leak.”

  Still muttering, the guard left the room. John eased into the bathroom, trying to get his thoughts in order. He didn’t even have his watch. He had no clue what time it was, what was going on with the search for Beth, or how long Lanie had been alone.

  Please let Martinez be with her. The wish was pointless, though. Lanie’s stubborn independence had been one of the traits that had drawn him to her most strongly. She could stand on her own; she didn’t need him. Lanie could take care of herself.

  That’s what you thought, O’Reilly. How do you know what she needs? You never asked. You just took what you wanted and the hell with her feelings.

  The memory of the awful hurt in her eyes stabbed him with renewed guilt, but he shook off the emotion. She knew what she was getting into from day one with him. Her eyes were open.

  Yeah, sure. But she didn’t know everything, did she, O’Reilly?

  Guilt grabbed at his gut again. After flushing the toilet, he ran cold water over his hands, splashing his face. He’d worry about blaming himself later. Right now, he had to get to Lanie before Mitchell, and maybe in the process, he could help Beth as well.

  First, though, he had to find a way to cover his bare ass.

  Chapter
Four

  Wind shuddered against the glass, and Lanie jerked awake, the remnants of a panicked nightmare still clinging to her throat. Only the fireplace flames lit the room, and she sat up, her lungs fighting for air. Pushing the blanket away, she laughed at herself. Lord, she was letting Caitlin and Steve get to her. Having a nightmare and waking up in the dark weren’t reasons for panic.

  She reached for the matches and froze at the sticky wetness between her thighs. Hands trembling, she lit a candle, and the leaping flame cast shadows dancing about the room. The material of her leggings clung to her upper thighs, and she touched the dampness, holding her fingers to the light.

  Blood.

  The crimson stain on her skin sent panic skittering along her nerves. Her hands folded around the stillness of her swollen abdomen. Move, baby. Please move.

  No response came. No movement, no pain, just the blood. Maybe it wasn’t as bad as she thought. Maybe it was just the pre-labor show. Somehow, even weeks-early labor seemed preferable to this painless bleeding.

  With shaking hands, she grabbed the candle and the cordless phone and edged her way to the bath off the small foyer. The gush of fluid between her legs took her breath. This wasn’t normal. No way was this awful flow of blood normal.

  Frightened tears clogging her throat, she sat on the edge of the tub and tried to dial her doctor’s number. The only reply was a dead line. Oh God, not the phone lines, too. Not now. A panicked sob tore at her lungs.

  Her cell phone would be in the charger next to the refrigerator. Maybe the battery had enough power to let her make a call, and Steve had said he’d have a car posted outside. Help was available.

  She wanted John with a breathless urgency, wanted the feel of his strong arms, the security of his deep voice. Lanie forced herself to breathe at a normal rate. She was on her own in this, and she might as well get used to that now. John O’Reilly didn’t belong to her. He never had.

  When she opened the door, the draft extinguished the flickering candle flame. With a muttered curse, Lanie felt her way along the wall. If only the batteries weren’t dead, a flashlight lay in the junk drawer by the stove. As she made each sliding step, more blood pulsed from her body. Weak tears burned her eyes again.