by Sophie Oak
His eyes caught on the body on the floor under Ty’s hands. A mess of bloated flesh lay there right in the middle of Stella’s. Red, swollen skin. Wearing the clothes Gemma had tossed on right before she’d run from him. Cade felt like his feet were planted in concrete.
This isn’t happening. Dream. This is a dream. You’ll be in the river soon. You always end up there.
He needed to wake up in Gemma’s bed and realize this was all a nightmare.
Asshole Lawyer’s nasally voice cut through Cade’s brain. “Strawberries. She’s allergic to strawberries. Even a little could kill her. She used my fork. I didn’t see it until she’d already done it. Who uses someone else’s fork? Oh my god. Tell me you can save her. She looks so horrible.”
The fucker winced as he looked down at her, like she was a plague he didn’t want to catch. Cade’s whole soul wanted to be with her. Bad or good. He would go with her. He wanted to hold her, but he was afraid. She looked so fragile.
Ty’s hands were working, lifting her up. “Where’s her purse? If her allergy is this bad, she should have an EpiPen. I need it.”
“She left her purse behind,” Asshole said, averting his eyes. “She was kind of in a hurry.”
She’d left her purse behind because she was eager to get away from him.
Ty’s hands tightened around her. “Gemma? Gemma, stay with me. Someone get my kit. I might have to trach her.”
Tracheotomy. Ty might have to put a hole in her throat and shove a tube in it so she could breathe.
Ty looked up, his eyes lighting with hope when he saw Cade. “Cade? Cade, get down here and help me.”
He felt like time sped up again. He’d been locked into place, but this was happening and he couldn’t hesitate. Ty seemed to think it was okay, so he could touch her, let her know he was there. She needed him. He dropped to his knees and put his hands on her. No matter what she looked like, she was his Gemma. She was beautiful.
Gemma’s eyes, her beautiful blue eyes were little slits. Her whole face was swollen. She turned toward his, her hand coming out. Red blotches covered her perfect skin. Gemma gripped his hand.
It killed him to see her this way. She always seemed larger than life, like nothing could really touch her, like she was deep down stronger than the world around her. But he was reminded that she was just human. She was just a woman who needed someone to coddle and protect her.
“Baby, baby, stay with me.” He’d sent her off with this fucker who hadn’t taken care of her. He’d done this. He was going to lose her, too. He would hold her hand and she would slip away. She would join the others. Tears blurred his eyes. Stay with me. Stay with me.
“What the hell?” Stella’s voice rang out. Her boots sounded across the floor as she ran. “Oh, god. Is that Gemma? Hal!”
“Someone needs to get my fucking kit.” Ty held his keys out. “This is serious. If I can’t get her breathing in two minutes, she’s going to die. She needs some fucking epinephrine.”
Asshole Lawyer just stood there, looking around like he was waiting for a servant to show. Beth McNamara plucked the keys out of his hand and took off running.
Stella yelled back to the kitchen, but everything was an incomprehensible mess to his ears. Blood pounded through his system. His vision shifted down to just one thing. Gemma’s eyes. They were so small when they were always so big to him. Those eyes that watched him with mocking affection seemed to shrink, her flesh crowding them out. As he watched, they closed, the poison in her system shutting everything down.
He would go down with her. He would walk out and be done. The Rio Grande was minutes away. The river had always wanted him. It was where he belonged. When Gemma was gone, he would find her again there. It would be easy. The easiest thing he’d ever done.
Hal ran out, a small object in his hand. His knees hit the floor. “I have an EpiPen! We got it when Gemma started working here. We wanted to make sure she was safe.”
Ty took the small syringe and had it in her leg before Cade could take another breath.
The door to the diner opened, and Caleb Burke ran in, Hope following behind him. “What the hell’s going on? Where’s my patient?”
Gemma breathed, her chest moving in a shallow but sweet symphony of life.
Ty put his head down, his breath sawing in and out like he’d just run a marathon. He moved away, his back against a booth. “She’s allergic to strawberries. Hyper allergy by the looks of it. She’s had a dose of epinephrine. Her pulse was thready but steady now. She’s all yours, Doc.”
Caleb Burke started looking at his patient. Cade took a long breath, forcing himself not to cry. Never once, even when death had seemed imminent, had she let go of his hand. Cade held on to hers, gently though he wanted to squeeze tight. Anything to try to keep her here with him.
“Wow. She still looks horrible. When will that go away?” Asshole stared down at her.
And Cade lost it.
Chapter Thirteen
Jesse looked down at the letters Cam laid out in front of him. They were protected by plastic evidence bags, but it was easy to read the typewritten letters—and way too easy to see the intent behind them.
“Has she gotten letters like this before?” He had to check himself. What he wanted to do was beat the shit out of someone, anyone. It would make him feel better. Maybe not anyone. Maybe Patrick Welch, who had run off with his girl. Yeah, that would really make him feel better. Patrick came from that world. From the world that had brought this crazy man into her life.
Nate sat down at the table in the interrogation room. He stared down at the letters, his brown eyes shrewd. Despite the fact that he was now the sheriff to a tiny county, Jesse heard he’d spent years undercover with the DEA. When Nate Wright’s eyes got that steely gaze in them, Jesse could damn well believe that was true.
“Apparently it’s a job hazard in her former occupation.” Nate nodded toward the door as Cam walked in with Rafe Kincaid and Laura Niles.
Rafe looked down at Jesse, a rueful smile on his face. “I wanted to tell you. I think the whole ‘getting in her pants’ thing is overrated. If you care about a woman, you care about her whether or not you’re sleeping with her.”
Laura’s lips turned up in a little smile as she sat down beside Jesse. “I heard Rafe was outvoted. The rumor is the men all got together a couple of months back and banged out an agreement on how to act. I would love to get my hands on a copy of that agreement.”
Cam huffed out a little laugh. “Rumors. Do you honestly believe if the men of Bliss got together for a guy’s weekend, we would do anything other than drink beer and fish? Well, except for Trev. He drank a lot of coffee and sat around with that perpetual look of amusement he has on his face. I swear that man’s blood count must be half caffeine.”
Rafe’s shoulders moved up and down in a negligent shrug. “Besides, if we did have some sort of agreement, we would never be so foolish as to write it down. We would memorize it.”
Nate reached for his coffee mug and grimaced. “Cam made the coffee this morning. I was kind of hoping Gemma would come in with you. She’s the only one who can work that thing. Is she with Cade? Tell me you weren’t too hard on her.”
He didn’t think he’d been hard at all. He’d cajoled her into admitting she belonged to him and then he’d given her a crazy strong orgasm and explained just how easily she could get out of her punishment. He’d been a total pussy. He should have immediately put her over his knee, but he’d wanted things to go easy with her. “She left. Her ex showed up and she took off.”
“She’ll come back. She’s not a girl to just up and run without a really good reason. I would also be very surprised if she got involved with her ex again. I heard what he did to her. She would be far more interested in her old career than in reclaiming him,” Laura said.
That career shit scared the crap out of him. He agreed with Laura. Gemma had seen an opportunity to make a point and she’d taken it. But why was that asshole here in the first place? Jesse had to hope
Patrick was trying to win her back. That wouldn’t work. If he’d come to talk to her about going back to work? That was another story entirely.
Nate groaned a little and scrubbed a hand through his hair. “Yeah, well, Bliss rules or not, I shouldn’t talk to you about this at all without Gemma here. I’m going to because I think Gemma overestimates her ability to take care of herself. Now, Rafe and Laura and Cam have been working up some ideas about this guy.”
Jesse didn’t care about ideas. “Do you have a name?”
“Paul Johnson. Before you hop on your Harley for some of that vigilante justice you and Cade seem to like so much, you should know we’ve already tried to locate him. The last report we could find had him living in Kansas City two years back,” Nate explained.
Rafe opened the folder he’d walked in with. “According to his ex-wife, he took off sometime after the case was over. She said he’d decided to leave the rat race behind and get in touch with nature.”
Jesse stared at the hate-filled letters again. “Looks like he’s ditched that plan.”
Laura put a sympathetic hand on his arm. “I don’t know about that. Do you know what Rafe, Cam, and I used to do?”
Most everyone in town had a story. Laura, Rafe, and Cam’s was a violent one. “You profiled for the FBI.”
They had worked for the BAU. They knew their stuff, and Jesse was willing to listen.
“I’ve profiled criminals for years and often with far less than I have here.” She gestured toward the letters. “What I find interesting about these letters is the complete lack of passion behind them.”
“I don’t know about that. Putting a fucking heart in a box seems a little extreme.”
Rafe picked up one of the letters. “I know it seems that way, but really look at these letters. They’re precise. He says the same things over and over. You’ll pay the price for what you did. Lawyers are bad. Gemma is the worst of them all. But the wording is almost polite.”
“Men who are truly angry don’t mince words.” Cam pressed a couple of buttons on the laptop in front of him and turned it around so Jesse could see. “These are some of the transcripts from the depositions prior to the trial. They’re expletive filled. He was truly angry. He had to be restrained at one point.”
Jesse looked them over and had to agree. But talking and writing were two different things.
Rafe cut that pass off. “We also have copies of the letters he wrote to Giles and Knoxbury, the law firm Gemma worked for. Again, he’s very vitriolic. There’s no politeness in these letters. They’re full of bile and rage and centered squarely on what he lost. Most of his rage is directed at the firm, not Gemma herself, though he calls her out.”
“If you’ll note,” Cam began, “he doesn’t actually threaten her in a physical sense. He calls her morality into question.”
Jesse skimmed through the notes. Sure enough, they were filled with a “woe is me” attitude that didn’t completely jibe with the latest batch of letters.
“And there are some phrasing inconsistencies that bother me.” Laura placed the second of the letters in front of him. “See here where he says this is ‘all your fault’ but over here in the next one, the phrasing is ‘this is your entire fault.’ I know it sounds odd, but the second one is the way Word corrects a document. If he’s that angry, why is he letting his processing program fix his grammar? And then in the third we’re right back to ‘all your fault.’”
Jesse wasn’t sure what changing the wording had to do with anything, but they were the experts. And he did trust them. They were friends. They wouldn’t steer him wrong. “So what does all this add up to?”
Rafe and Laura exchanged looks, a whole conversation occurring in silence. Rafe finally nodded as though agreeing with her.
“I think it’s a game. And I don’t think Paul Johnson is at the heart of it. If you asked me, I would say if he’s involved, he’s just a pawn.”
“Why would someone do this?”
Laura shrugged, an elegant movement of her shoulders. “To scare her for some reason? To set up a potential lawsuit? I’ve been going through her cases. She had her fingers in some really big cases when she left the firm. Tremon Industries, a lawsuit against a biochemical plant, two intellectual property cases. She wasn’t lead on any of them, but she was crucial.”
“I talked to some FBI friends in New York,” Cam said. “There’s a rumor that Giles and Knoxbury is being investigated. I’ve gone over this with Gemma, but she can’t think of anything she knows that could hurt the partners. And according to those same friends, this kind of harassment is typical for a lawyer who works the kind of cases Gemma does. So we could be totally wrong and this guy is just expressing his anger.”
He calmed just a little. “The heart shit still scares me.”
Rafe’s fingers drummed along the table. “It smacks of showmanship. It wasn’t human. We suspect he bought it from a supply store.”
He widened his eyes because that didn’t sound right.
“Cadaver hearts are used for research purposes and for training surgical residents, though many hospitals are moving to more technological methods. If there had been blood on the heart, I would be worried. I actually think it was a very sterile warning.”
It still seemed awful to him, and he didn’t want them to brush this off. “I would be happier if I knew where this guy was.”
“Cam’s looking into it,” Nate said.
“If he pokes his head up, I’ll find him. I already have access to all of the e-mail accounts he’s used in the past and I found one his ex-wife didn’t know about.” Cam smiled. “Hey, I wasn’t always a straight and narrow fed. I’ve done some hacking in my time.”
“I want to be kept in the loop,” Jesse said. “Even if Gemma won’t talk to me.”
It was a real possibility. She’d been surprisingly mad this morning. He wasn’t sure exactly how to handle her. He just knew he had to figure it out. There was no other option. He couldn’t let her go.
She was it. He’d suspected it that first time she’d turned her tart mouth on him, known it last night when his heart had nearly broken at her deep vulnerability. He’d cared for women before, but he’d never just longed for one. Gemma was inside him now, and he didn’t want to get rid of her.
The door to the room opened, and Holly rushed in. Holly was manning the phones on Gemma’s day off. The beautiful redhead was flustered. “Nate, we have a big problem at Stella’s.”
Her eyes trailed to Jesse, her mouth firming, and he just knew.
“Gemma?” He stood, his heart threatening to thud out of his chest. “What’s happened?”
Nate and Cam were already on their feet, heading out the door.
“Just tell us all,” Nate said as they moved toward the front of the station house. Nate picked up his Stetson and settled it on his head.
“Gemma went into anaphylactic shock. Caleb is prepping her to go to the hospital, but a fight broke out. Caleb is pissed. If you don’t get down there right now, I worry he’s going to do something stupid.”
Laura sat down at the desk. “Go, Holly. Go help Caleb.”
Jesse didn’t wait to hear another word. He’d heard Gemma and shock and hospital and someone was stopping her from getting the help she needed. They shouldn’t worry about Caleb doing something stupid. They should worry about him.
He ran. He heard Nate curse behind him and then both Nate and Cam were catching up to him.
“You try to remember that Gemma needs you,” Nate said, his voice even though he was sprinting. “You help Caleb get her out of there, and you leave everything else to me and Cam.”
All that mattered was getting to Gemma. What the hell was anaphylactic shock? What had happened? She’d been fine this morning. More than fine. She’d been perfect. What else was she hiding from him?
Nate made it to the door first, shoving his way through. Jesse’s heart nearly stopped at the scene in front of him.
It was complete chaos. A man was th
rown bodily right across the diner, and then there was a loud roar as another man launched himself.
“Stop him!” Fuck. Gemma’s ex-fiancé. His nasally scream seemed to echo in Jesse’s head.
He looked at the other man and nearly joined in the fight. Cade. Cade jumped on Patrick Welch, his face red with fury. Cade’s fist flew back and he started pummeling the smaller man.
Caleb Burke hadn’t gotten his trusty tranquilizers out yet. He was leaning over a prone body, protecting it with his own. His face came up. A truly wrathful expression played across his features. “Get that shit shut down now, Nate. I swear to god, if she comes to harm because of that, I will kill them both.”
Jesse didn’t give a shit about the fight. His eyes were on Gemma. Small. Vulnerable. Hurt. What the hell was Cade thinking?
“Holly, hold the door open.” Caleb bent over to lift Gemma up, but Jesse moved into place.
“Doc, please.”
Caleb nodded and allowed Jesse to bend over and lift her up. “I think she’s breathing well enough that we can move her now.”
Nate and Cam were breaking up the fight, throwing their bodies in between the combatants and forcing them apart.
“Jesse?” Gemma’s voice sounded harsh, forced out of her throat.
She looked like hell, and yet he’d never seen anything so damn beautiful as those eyes opening up. “Baby, you’re going to be okay.”
“Gemma, you’ve had an allergic reaction,” Caleb said. “We’re taking you to the hospital. Ty has his truck ready. He has sirens on his truck. We’ll be there in no time at all.” He looked at Jesse. “When we get her to the truck, you can ride along, but I have to be in the back with her. I don’t know if she’s had enough epinephrine. Do you understand? I need to monitor her and make sure she doesn’t have any cardiac problems.”
As it seemed the doc had had enough people getting in his way today, Jesse nodded. “All that matters is her safety.”
“Cade?” She tried to look around. Her face was still swollen, red blotches all across her skin.
Jesse looked over at Cade, who had blood running from his lip. He seemed to be coming down from his volcanic rage.
