Second Chances [Pine Valley 4] (Siren Publishing Classic)

by Keyonna Davis

  Daniel leaned heavily against the door as she used the key to unlock it. Leah could tell he was trying to hide how much pain he was in, but from the pinched look on his face, he wasn’t doing a very good job. Once the door was open, Daniel stiffened and moved her to the side before entering the room first. Leah stood at the door and watched as he scanned every inch of the room before doing the same to what she guessed was the bathroom in the corner. When he finally nodded his head, Leah entered the room and locked the door behind her. Only then did she turn on the light and get her first clear look at what her hesitation had caused.

  “Are you okay?” Leah cursed herself for the dumb question as soon as it left her lips. “Of course you aren’t okay. Stupid question. How bad is it? Do you need a doctor?” Judging by all the blood that was covering the left side of his chest and arm, there was definite need for a doctor. Having no clue what to do for a gunshot wound, Leah decided the best thing she could do was stay as far away from Daniel as possible. As badly as she wanted to rush over to him and run her hands all over the man to make sure he was okay, she would probably do more damage. It was her fault he had been shot in the first place, so the last thing Daniel probably wanted was her hovering around him. The man could more than likely take care of himself. From the look of him as he lifted his shirt before examining his chest and back in the mirror, Leah assumed it wouldn’t be the first time that he had to treat his own wounds.

  “It doesn’t look like the bullet exited. I’m going to need your help to get it out.”

  Leah’s shoulders slumped as Daniel dashed her hopes that he was fully capable of treating himself. Dread formed in the pit of her stomach as she slowly made her way over to him, hoping with each step that he came up with another way to get the bullet out. She didn’t want to go digging around in the man’s body. Her mouth watered and she fought the need to throw up just thinking about what she was about to do. She caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and was surprised to see that she was just as pale and sweaty as Daniel. If it wasn’t for the blood staining his chest, she would have a hard time telling which one of them was hurt.

  Suck it up. The man took a bullet because of you. The least you can do is get it out of him without passing out or throwing up like some weak little girl.

  Leah’s mental pep talk was interrupted when she felt Daniel’s warm palms on either side of her face. “Hey, it’s going to be okay.” Daniel smiled, talking to her as if he was trying to calm a wild animal. “It hurts like hell, but the bullet hit my shoulder and missed anything important other than muscle. All I need you to do is take the bullet out.” He took her hand and wrapped it around his back near his arm pit. “Do you feel the bullet right there under the skin.”

  Leah snatched her hand back when she felt the hard knot under her fingers. “I can’t do this. What if I sever a nerve, or cut an artery? You could bleed to death and I wouldn’t be able to do anything to stop it. You could lose the use of your arm and it would be my fault.” Leah could hear herself babbling, but she couldn’t stop the words from spewing out of her mouth. “What about infection or blood poisoning? I saw a documentary about that on the Discovery Channel. This room isn’t sterile. You could get tetanus or the way my luck is going, you could get some kind of flesh-eating disease that no one has ever heard of before and the only way to stop it is to sever your arm.”

  Daniel chuckled, ending Leah’s rant, but she could tell there was no humor behind the laugh. The man was in serious pain while she was standing there listing all the ways things could go wrong. Sighing, Leah stiffened her spine and looked up at Daniel. “I can try.” It was the best she could offer.

  “You can do this. Just listen and follow my instruction exactly and it will be a piece of cake.”

  Leah doubted that, but she nodded anyway.

  “Open the bag and take out the rubbing alcohol and the bandages I put in there.”

  Leah did as he asked while he gathered the thin, threadbare towels and washcloths from the bathroom. They were going to be ruined by the time she and Daniel were done with them, but she had a feeling the motel wouldn’t miss them. Once she had everything gathered, she followed Daniel over to the bed and sat everything down. She gulped when he leaned down and pulled a large, serrated knife from his boot. The thing might as well have been a machete in her opinion. It certainly was large enough to be one.

  “This should do the trick. Just place a finger on either side of the bullet and cut directly over it. The bullet isn’t that deep so it should pop right out.”

  Leah’s hand trembled as she took the knife. “You remember that little thing I said about severing a nerve or artery?”

  “I have faith in you,” Daniel said as he turned his back to her and sat on the bed.

  I hope you have enough faith for the both of us. Leah took a deep breath before placing one knee on the bed so that she could get closer to Daniel. She resisted the urge to cringe when she did as he said and put a finger on either side of the bullet. When spots began to swim before her eyes, Leah realized she was holding her breath and quickly exhaled. “Here goes nothing,” she muttered to herself and lifted the knife. Using the tip, she ran it across his skin, but other than a small trickle of blood, nothing happened.

  “You’re going to have to press a little harder than that.”

  Clenching her teeth, Leah swiped the knife across his skin again. She heard a small thump on the bed, but she was too busy trying to keep the contents of her stomach down to look. When she was somewhat sure she wasn’t going to embarrass herself by throwing up on Daniel’s back, she opened her eyes only to panic at the blood freely flowing. Leah snatched one of the towels off the bed and pressed it to his back. The only sign that Daniel felt anything was the stiffening of his muscles.

  “Okay, that was the easy part, now comes the hard part.”

  Leah leaped off the bed at Daniel’s statement. “No way. Uh uh. Nope. If that was easy, then I don’t even want to know what hard is. I can’t do that again.”

  “You don’t have to. All I need you to do is clean the wound. You said yourself that I could get an infection. We need to make sure that doesn’t happen. Once it’s clean, I need you to bandage the front and back.”

  “Don’t you need stitches or something? I don’t think I can do that. Matter of fact, I know I can’t. I don’t know how to sew.”

  Daniel laughed. “Bandaging it is good for right now. That will hold me over until we get to where we are going, then I can get it treated better.”

  Leah wondered why Daniel said that cleaning his wound and bandaging it was the hard part as she climbed back on the bed. Most people would have considered having a hole dug into them to remove a bullet was harder, but as he handed her the bottle of rubbing alcohol and lay on his back, Leah winced in sympathy. This was going to be painful.

  “Pour this directly into the wound and then bandage it.”

  Leah could only nod. She could feel the lump forming in her throat as tears gathered in her eyes at what she was about to do. As she hovered over him, she got her first glimpse at where he had been shot. The bullet had entered on the left side of his shoulder slightly under his arm. Daniel had been lucky that it wasn’t a couple inches further to the right or he wouldn’t have been sitting there. The bullet would have hit his heart and he would probably be dead. Leah swallowed around the lump in her throat at the thought because she knew she would have never forgiven herself had that happened.

  “Are you ready?” At Daniel’s nod, Leah opened the bottle of alcohol and poured it directly onto the bullet hole. Daniel was unable to hold back, finally showing his pain as his back arched and he groaned through gritted teeth. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” Leah chanted over and over again as she pressed a clean towel to the wound. She pressed down to stop the blood from flowing as she rubbed her face against her arm to stop the tears running down her cheek. She was so focused on what she was doing that it took her a moment to realize Daniel had gone still and quiet
. Leah would have instantly gone into a panic attack had it not been for that fact that she still had her hands on his chest and could feel it steadily moving up and down. It seemed that Daniel had only passed out. Leah was concerned, but she couldn’t help being grateful either. It was killing her to cause him any kind of pain, so she bandaged the front as fast as she could before struggling to roll him over so that she could clean and bandage his back before Daniel came to.

  By the time Leah was finished, she was panting for breath and had worked up a sweat. She busied herself by cleaning up the towels and washing the blood from her hands. When she was done doing that, she resisted the urge to climb in bed beside Daniel. She wanted to snuggle next to him with her head on his chest, but she forced herself to turn away. Someone had to stay alert in case they were found again. In the meantime, Leah dug through the backpack and pulled out the satellite phone Daniel had told her was in there. He had told her if they needed help she was to use it to call his friend. Looking over at Daniel passed out on the bed and not having any idea when he would wake up, Leah figured it was as good a time as any to call for help. She turned the phone over until she found the power button and pressed it. Once it was on, she quickly figured out how to get into the contacts and scrolled through until she found the name she was looking for.

  After the second ring, the phone picked up. “Sir?”

  “Um, hi. Is this Chase Matthews?”

  “Who is this and where is Daniel?”

  Leah resisted the urge to hang up at the demanding tone on the other end of the line. “Hi, um, this is Leah, Daniel told me to call you if I needed help. Someone blew up his house and then we had to run to a safe house. Someone found us there and then Daniel was shot when we had to run again—”

  “Ma’am—”

  “—we made it to a motel, but I don’t know where it is. Daniel made me cut open his back to get the bullet out. I didn’t want to do it, but he forced me to—”

  “Ma’am—”

  “—then I had to pour alcohol on it so that he didn’t get some flesh-eating disease. Now he’s passed out on the bed and I want to lie down next to him, but I can’t because someone has to keep watch in case they find us again, but I don’t think I can keep us safe if they find us again. Daniel told me to call you if something happened and I needed you and you would come get us, so will you?” Leah took a much-needed breath when she finished and waited for Chase to tell her what to do, but all she heard was silence on the other end of the line. “Hello?”

  “I’m here,” Chase said. “I was just making sure you were finished.”

  Leah felt herself blush and was glad no one was there to see it. She was nervous and scared to death and that usually resulted in an uncontrollable urge to ramble on.

  “Leave the phone on. It has a tracking device in it that I can use to find you. Just stay put and I will be there as soon as I can. Oh and Leah…”

  “Yes?”

  “Don’t hesitate to call me if you need me or anything else happens. If Daniel wakes up before I get there, have him call me.”

  “Okay.” Leah agreed, but bit her lip to keep from begging Chase to stay on the phone with her until he got there. She forced herself to hang up and cradled the phone to her chest. She wasn’t letting it out of her sight until either Daniel woke up or help arrived. Leah looked over at Daniel again, lying on the bed so still. He had protected her and now it was her turn to keep him safe until help arrived.

  Chapter 9

  Chase hung up the phone and sighed. He knew what was coming and he needed to prepare for the fight he was about to have. The bad thing was, there was no way to avoid it. He wanted to rush and grab his gear and head out to help his former C.O. as soon as possible, but he knew once Kerri knew her dad was in trouble, she would want to be at his side in a heartbeat. Chase had all intentions of going to help the man who had saved his life too many times to count, but he didn’t know what kind of trouble he was heading into and he wasn’t putting Kerri in danger by allowing her to go with him.

  “Who was that on the phone?”

  Kerri’s sleepy, husky voice went straight to his cock and Chase grimaced. He couldn’t seem to get enough of the gorgeous, feisty woman, but no matter how much he wanted to roll over and climb between her warm thighs, he reminded himself that he needed to get moving.

  “Your dad needs my help. He isn’t that far. I actually think he was headed this way, but he ran into some problems before he could get here.”

  “What possible trouble could a retired man get into that he would need to call you for help in the middle of the night?”

  Chase could hear the panic rising in Kerri’s voice. He hated being the one to cause it, but she wasn’t going with him. She was just getting over her nightmares of having been kidnapped by a mad man and then having to kill him. Chase refused to be the cause of them starting again.

  Pulling Kerri onto his lap, Chase wrapped his arms around her. He always loved how well she fit there. “Your dad decided to take one last job before he retired. A young woman came into his office begging for his help. He hasn’t told me what the situation is, but whatever it is, it was enough for him to agree to help her. For them to be calling for my help means something has gone wrong.”

  “What did my dad say on the phone? Is he okay? Where is he?”

  Chase held on tighter when he felt Kerri trying to climb off his lap and tried to decide how much to tell her. “I don’t know what happened yet, but I do know your dad was hurt. It seems he told the woman he was helping to call me if anything happened.” Chase’s heart broke at the sight of tears gathering in Kerri’s eyes, but he sat her on the bed and stood. He didn’t know the extent of Daniel’s injuries, but from the urgency of the woman on the phone, he knew he needed to get moving. “You need to let me help him, Little Bit. Before you say it, no, I can’t let you go with me. I don’t know what I’m walking into and I won’t put you in that kind of danger.”

  Chase held his breath as he hustled around the room grabbing everything he needed and waited for Kerri’s protest to come. Her face was an open book to him and he watched her emotions as they played out on it. When her shoulders finally slumped and she nodded, he let out a sigh of relief, glad that she hadn’t argued the issue further. There was no way he was telling Kerri that her father had been shot and was currently unconscious. There would be no stopping her from going then. He knew there would be hell to pay when he got back for leaving that bit out, though.

  Not wanting to risk her changing her mind, Chase quickly kissed his wife before he retrieved his “go bag” that held his weapons and whatever else he might need from the closet before turning back to Kerri. “I’ll bring the old man home.” He didn’t promise, but he knew Kerri would understand that he would do everything in his power to bring her father home safe.

  * * * *

  “—up sleeping beauty.”

  Daniel groaned and tried to bat the hand away that was tapping him on the jaw. All he wanted to do was curl up and sleep some more. He had obviously had too much to drink the night before, and instead of letting him sleep off his hangover, he had some asshole trying to wake him.

  “If you value that damn hand, I suggest you get it away from my face.”

  “Daniel!”

  Leah. At the sound of her voice, memories of what happened came flooding back to him. Daniel tried to sit upright, but he quickly lay back down and gasped at the pain shooting up his left side. “Fuck, that hurt!” he shouted. He opened his eyes to see Chase standing over him with an amused smirk on his face. Leah was hovering behind him with a look of concern as she wrung her hands. If he had a choice, Daniel would take Leah’s concern over Chase’s amusement any day.

  “You ready to get out of here, or does your scratch need tending to some more?”

  Daniel held back a laugh when Leah glared at the back of Chase’s head like she was ready to attack the man for his comment. “It hurts like a sonofabitch, but I’ll live.” He didn’t miss Le
ah’s shoulders slumping or her sigh of relief, but he let it pass. He knew how hard it was for her to do what she had done for him, and he had every intention of thanking her. The thanking he had in mind needed to be done in private, though, certainly not in front of his son-in-law.

  Daniel’s second attempt to sit up was still a struggle, but he was a little more successful. He held in his groan when he caught a glimpse of Leah’s pale complexion. He had been the one shot, but from the look of it, patching him up had been a huge ordeal for her as well. Her reaction proved Daniel’s earlier thinking that she didn’t belong in his world. Too bad I have no intentions of giving her up. Guilt swamped him at the thought, but there was just something about the woman that he couldn’t let go. Underneath that gentle, meek exterior, she held a backbone of steel. It was something she was going to need if he was going to keep her. After only one night with Leah, Daniel was addicted. Even through the pain, his body was yearning for her.

  In the meantime, Daniel needed to get moving. They weren’t safe at the motel they were in and they had already been there way too long for his liking. “We need to get moving. I assumed you checked the place out before you entered.” It was more of a statement than a question and one that he was pretty sure he didn’t have to ask. Chase’s answer confirmed it.

  “Yes, sir. No one is watching the place so if you want to move, now is the time to do it. I’m parked a couple of doors down.”

  Daniel forced himself to stand and had to close his eyes to stop the room from spinning in front of him. Once he was sure he wasn’t going to lose what little he had in his stomach or pass out, he opened them again. Ignoring the pain, Daniel fell into a familiar routine. He took control of the situation. “I want you covering Leah at all times.” He ordered Chase, knowing following his orders was just as familiar to Chase as his giving them. “Get her to the car as fast as possible. I’ll be right behind you. Once we’re out of danger and no one is following us, I’ll explain what’s going on, but right now, we need to move.”