“It seems to me that you’re the one who’s insane,” his brother said slowly and darkly. “Did you just say you broke up with her to protect her?”
“Yes!” Heath started to sweat, tense all over. “Of course I did!”
Shane donned the mask of a soothing policeman who needs to calm a dangerous criminal. He nodded slowly before asking, “What kind of drugs do they dispense at the firehouse?”
“Do you think this is funny?”
“No, but you’re a real clown.”
“God.” Heath tore at his hair. “You’re a cop, Shane! You investigate homicides … murders! Any lunatic could shoot a bullet between your eyes!”
“Thank you for your concern.”
Heath didn’t reply, but stood and lumbered through the room, pacing furiously. “You could leave the house in the morning and never return. What then?”
“If you’re trying to tell me I should find another career, it’s a little late for that.”
Heath continued to pace, suppressing the urge to puke into his brother’s potted fern, and gesticulated wildly. “Cops and firefighters live a dangerous life. Anything can happen, at any moment. Just like with Dad!”
“Now you’re just borrowing trouble!”
“Hyden hates guns,” Heath murmured, as if he hadn’t even heard Shane. “I wanted to be a policeman, too.”
“What?” Shane blinked at him. “What are you talking about? You’ve always wanted to be a fireman!”
Heath shook his head brusquely. “Grandpa took me to the shooting range once, near the end of high school. For a few days after that, I thought about joining the police force. But … Hayden hates guns. I couldn’t have burdened her like that, not after her dad was shot.”
Dumbfounded, Shane crossed his arms. “I’m confused. You broke up with Hayden to protect her. You decided not to become a policeman because she hates guns. And you don’t want her to go out with a cop. Have I summed it all up correctly?”
“Yes!”
“Do you have any idea how paranoid that sounds? Is there some corrupt cop on your heels, or some drug dealer? Why do you think you need to protect Hayden from yourself? I really don’t get it.”
“I don’t want to protect her from me,” he growled. “Hayden’s father was a fireman, and he died on duty. Dad was like her surrogate father, and he also died on active duty. Am I supposed to risk making her a widow? What if something happens to me on a call, too? I can’t risk subjecting her to the same tragedy for the third time in her life, Shane!”
His brother was silent, merely studying him thoughtfully. So Heath raged on. “And now she goes out with a cop! With a cop!” He jabbed a finger toward the ceiling. “Someone up there must be screwing with me!”
“I think you’re in the process of screwing yourself, Heath, and you better stop right now.” Shane sounded unbelievably calm as he stood and patted Heath on the back. “Let me be straight with you. It’s my job as your brother.”
“You’re doing a hack job, if you ask me,” Heath grumbled, squirming under Shane’s touch. “And your psychology is a bunch of baloney.”
Shane nodded in agreement. “That’s why I suggest you follow your chief’s instructions and make an appointment with a real shrink. With Hayden.”
Heath scoffed.
“You’re about to fuck up your entire life,” Shane said carefully. “And despite the fact that you can be a major pain in the ass, you’re still my brother.”
Heath grumbled something unintelligible.
“Come on. I’ll treat you to a late breakfast, and you tell me what you’re going to do about Hayden.”
“But I don’t want to—”
“Oh yes you do,” Shane cut in impatiently. “And I’m not giving up the best future sister-in-law in the world. That woman can cook!”
Chapter 13
Hayden was in the middle of thoroughly cleaning her house. The realtor had called to ask if he could bring people by for a spontaneous showing. She had to work to suppress the awful feeling engendered by the idea of selling her house to some stranger. She loved this house! But after her encounter with Heath two days before, she knew she had to severe some important ties. When the doorbell rang, she was still deep in thought.
She didn’t want to lose the house, but she simply had to give it up.
She also didn’t want to move away and start over in another town, but it seemed as if she didn’t have a choice.
Feeling dejected, she threw the dirty rag into the cleaning bucket, picked up the spray bottle of Windex, and headed for the small mirror in the hall. When the doorbell rang again, she started. Frowning, she glanced at the clock on the wall. The realtor had said they wouldn’t be there for several hours.
But the bell rang a third time, so she pulled it open with a jerk. Someone shoved her backwards.
Hayden was pushed back against the wall of the hall, pinned by a stinking, sweating man.
Justin Miller’s father.
She coughed in surprise and disgust as she inhaled his smell of cigarettes and gin. His face was shiny with sweat and red with anger. He looked fit to murder.
“Mr. … Mr. Miller …”
“You! You’ve taken the children away from me—and my wife!” He rammed his fist into the wall next to her head. The mirror she’d been about to clean only a minute before fell to the floor and shattered into a thousand tiny shards. Fear constricted her throat, making it difficult to breathe.
“I … I’m sorry,” she stammered, trying to slide along the wall and out of his reach. “Really—”
“Shut up!” He thwarted her attempt to get away by grabbing her arm, hard, and shaking her so violently her teeth rattled. “You called the authorities on us! They took our kids away!”
“Mr. Miller. Please. Please let g-go of me.”
“You sick bitch!” He shook her again, and the back of her head hit the wall, making her see stars for a moment. “You’re going to regret this! Nobody’s taking my kids away from me!”
Oh God … Hayden gasped for air, and the tears welled in her eyes from the sharp pain at the back of her head. Panicking, she tried to come up with ways to defend herself, but then her hip hit the corner of the old hall table, and the pain took the wind out of her again. She was paralyzed with fear, her right hand desperately clutching the spray bottle …
Without thinking, she raised her hand and sprayed the glass cleaner into the man’s bloodshot eyes. His yell of pain was deafening, but Hayden wasn’t fazed. He doubled over and let go of her arm to claw at his eyes.
She seized the opportunity to kick him in the crotch with all the strength she could muster. She was rewarded with a frightening howl, and then he collapsed on her rug. Instinct told her to run to the phone and call the police, but suddenly, an irrational and unfamiliar anger welled up within her. He had toppled over the cleaning bucket when he fell, and now the dirty water was spreading across her beautiful wooden floor, splashes dotting the ivory-colored wall. For a brief moment, she couldn’t move. But then she snapped.
“Asshole!” she screamed, hitting him over the head with the half-empty spray bottle, regretting that it was made of plastic. “You ruined my floor! There are people coming to buy my house!”
“Help!” the man whimpered, clutching his testicles. “Call the police!”
“Oh yes, I will call the police, you cowardly bastard!” Hayden stepped over his prostate form, considering kicking him another time.
“Thank you,” he croaked.
It should have been downright funny, but Hayden was not in the mood to appreciate a joke. Feeling suddenly numb, she grabbed her phone and went out to the front porch, and called the police. As she began to sob, she explained to the operator what had happened and locked the door behind her, so Mr. Miller could not run—if he could even get up after the vicious kick she’d delivered upon him.
A few minutes later, two patrol cars, a civilian car, and an ambulance with the lights flashing converged in front of her house
. She was sitting on the porch swing, hugging her legs tightly, probably looking like a sad little girl.
Ryan ran towards her first, his face pale. “We got this report … What happened? Are you okay? Are you injured?”
Crying, she shook her head and pointed to the door. “The f-floor is ruined. And t-the rug, too!”
“Blinding by Windex?”
“It’s not funny at all,” Hayden murmured, allowing Kayleigh to shine a flashlight into her eyes.
“Is that a new discipline? Housewife self-defense?” Ryan tentatively patted Hayden’s back as he stood next to her like a bodyguard. She had to admit it was comforting to have a tall, uniformed policeman around right now. She was still sitting on the porch swing, where Kayleigh was examining her. Her friend had appeared out of thin air, after Ryan and his partner had come rushing over in their patrol car, another one right behind them. Shane had come in his civilian car, and Kyle had been in the ambulance that arrived just after the rest.
Even though Shane was a detective with the homicide squad, he’d insisted on being here for the interrogation of the attacker. He was still in the house, and everyone outside could hear his angry voice yelling at Mr. Miller. Kyle was inside, too, grudgingly examining the offender.
“I wish I could have seen you kick that jerk in the balls,” Kayleigh said. “Was there a cracking sound? Did he scream really loud?”
“Kayleigh, please stop with the gross details already,” her little brother demanded. He’d flinched at the mention of cracking balls.
Hayden pushed Kayleigh’s hand away. “I’m okay.”
“We have to record everything,” Ryan explained, using the authoritarian voice of a policeman who took his job very seriously. “You need evidence when you file charges, and—”
“What evidence?” Hayden shook off the hand that tried to feel her pulse. “I don’t have any injuries. He just shook me really hard. Before he could hit me, I fought back.”
“Yes.” Kayleigh barked out a dirty laugh. “With Windex. But what else is a girl to do if she doesn’t have a can of mace handy?”
Ryan cocked his head to one side, curious. “Is it really possible to be blinded by Windex?”
Hayden quickly looked to Kayleigh. She didn’t care if Mr. Miller was in really bad pain, or if he went to jail, but she didn’t want to be responsible for the loss of his eyesight.
“Unfortunately, no,” Kayleigh grumbled. She’d finally stopped prodding Hayden. “He would have deserved it, though.”
“Kayleigh!”
“Well, it’s true,” she snapped indignantly. “The bastard practically breaks into your house and then threatens you with violence. Ryan should have shot him!”
Her little brother rolled his eyes. “When I got inside, the guy was lying in a puddle of dirty cleaning water, clutching his balls and whimpering for mercy, with his eyes all red and swollen. At first I thought he’d wet his pants! I simply can’t shoot someone in that condition.”
“You could have fired a warning shot,” his sister protested. “In the foot, for example.”
Ryan crossed his arms. “And what reasoning would I have given afterwards? That he threatened me with his stinky feet?”
Kayleigh wrinkled her nose. “Surely you could have thought of something. Just think of the corrupt cops on TV.”
“Look to TV for inspiration? Great idea,” he teased. “And when I need an operation, I should look to an actor to perform it, right, Dr. Frankenstein?”
“Guys.” Hayden sighed and ran a hand over her tired face. “Please stop bickering. I can’t handle it. My house is a pigsty, the not-quite-blinded father of my worst student probably peed on my rug, and—”
“Your beautiful rug,” Kayleigh interrupted with a sigh. “I would burn it.”
At that moment, Kyle and Owen brought Mr. Miller out on a stretcher. Both his hands were tied to the frame with handcuffs, but that wasn’t much of a comfort to Hayden. She was still trembling with fright, and she would certainly sleep at Kayleigh’s place tonight. Seeing the intruder up close in his helpless and pitiful state, she idly wondered what exactly she was afraid of, but she simply couldn’t be on her own tonight.
As soon as the man spotted her through the narrow slits of his swollen eyes, he groaned and pleaded with the paramedics. “Help me! That woman wants to kill me!”
Hayden’s face flashed red with indignation, and she put her hands on her hips. “You invaded my house!”
Mr. Miller hunched sideways on the stretcher and whimpered. There was a big lump on his forehead, probably from her whack with the spray bottle. She flinched at the thought of what he’d look like now if the bottle had been glass. It was hard to believe how much damage a simple plastic bottle could do. The worst, however, was his face.
She was torn between sheer horror and the urge to laugh. His eyes reminded her of the red butts of the baboons she had recently seen with her class at the zoo. Swollen red skin rimmed two tiny slits, where a few blond lashes stuck out. He looked worse than little Billy with the peanut allergy after he’d eaten a granola bar earlier in the year and his face had swollen like a balloon.
“She came at me like a banshee and tried to kill me!”
Hayden gasped, and her mouth fell open in horror at that claim.
When Mr. Miller looked around, his eyes lit on Shane. “Officer, please …”
“Don’t ask me for help, man,” Shane dismissed him. “She’s my sister-in-law. And it’s ‘Detective,’ actually.”
“Don’t look at me, either,” Ryan added, his hands on his hips. He took a step toward the stretcher. “She’s my sister-in-law, too.”
Mr. Miller paled beneath the bruises and rashes on his face. He turned to Kyle and Owen, croaking, “Could you take me to the hospital, please?”
Kyle nodded cheerfully. “I’ll ask the guys in the ER to do a few urologic tests, so we can eliminate the possibility of a penis fracture. And I’m going to start an IV right in the ambulance, which might hurt and take a really long time, because it’s difficult to find the vein with all the rattling and shaking that goes on while we’re driving.”
“But—”
“Oh”—Kyle patted the man’s shoulder patronizingly—“just to let you know: she’s my sister-in-law, too.”
Mr. Miller screamed bloody murder as Kyle feigned innocence, nonchalantly pushing the stretcher into the ambulance.
“Miss O’Malley? I still need your detailed testimony,” the policeman said. The only policeman who was officially assigned to come here, that is. “By the way, you’re a dangerous woman. I’m sure that by tonight, everyone in the department will know about the Windex attack.”
She didn’t answer that, but instead asked tiredly, “Do I have to do this right now?”
“I’ll take care of this, Officer,” Shane cut in, authority lacing his voice.
The older colleague immediately nodded and backed down. Hayden thanked the patrolman, who got in his car, where another policeman was waiting, and drove off. Ryan patted her back once again before he, too, left with his partner.
But Kayleigh and Shane were still there, studying her with unmistakable concern.
“I’m fine, really.” She gave Shane a friendly nudge. “Can we get that testimony thing over with? I still have to call the realtor and cancel the showing.”
“What showing?” Shane asked.
She ignored his hostile tone, shrugged, and pushed past him and Kayleigh to get back into the house, where the chaotic effect of her fight with Mr. Miller was waiting for her.
“Hayden, what showing?”
“A showing of the house, what else?” She sighed and bent down to pick up the overturned bucket. “There are buyers interested in the house.”
“God, Hayden …” Kayleigh heaved a disappointed sigh. “Are you serious?”
“Yes, I’m serious.” She turned to face them, annoyed with their reactions. “I’ve been talking about this for weeks. Heath doesn’t want the house, and I don’t wan
t it either. So I’m going to sell it, and we’ll split the money. Game over.”
“Heath was suspended,” Shane announced abruptly.
Hayden’s stomach did a flip-flop, and worry began to seep through her veins.
“But I think he’ll be back on track again soon,” Shane quickly added. “Please talk to him.”
“Shane, please leave me alone,” Hayden said. She hadn’t heard about Heath’s suspension yet, but she refused to let the budding worry get to her. What he did or didn’t do was none of her business anymore.
But of course, Kayleigh chimed in, too. “Hayden, selling the house is a huge step. Have you really thought this throudgh?”
“Your brother and I are finished,” Hayden said purposefully. “That was his decision, and now we all have to live with the consequences.”
She didn’t miss the glance the siblings exchanged, but she didn’t acknowledge it, either. Instead, she focused her thoughts on the steps necessary to get her house back in order.
Just when she felt she’d calmed down sufficiently to tackle the mess, she heard something.
“Hayden!”
It sounded like … Dumbfounded, she turned around and watched Heath bolt across the lawn and up the front steps. He stopped in the doorframe and stared at her, panting and wide-eyed with fright.
“I only just heard the news! Are you alright?”
His sudden appearance and worried eyes were the very last straw. She was about to explode. Her whole body was tense as she stepped toward the door and shut it right in his face.
Then she drew in a huge breath and screamed at the closed door, “BACK OFF! GET OUT OF MY LIFE!”
Kayleigh and Shane both gasped in shock while Heath’s muffled voice spoke through the door. “Hayden! Please … I’m worried.”
She turned her head to his siblings, her face a contorted mask of rage. “Did either of you call him?”
Both hurried to shake their heads.
“No!”
“Of course not!”
“I was at the station,” Heath called from behind the door. “Sam told me Kyle and Owen were called here. What happened?”
The Heat Is On (Boston Five Book 1) Page 16
