Fatal Response

by Jodie Bailey

  “I didn’t give him enough information. Didn’t—”

  “Erin.” Jason said her name and it once again carried the weight of a command that turned her toward him. His jaw moved like he was going to say something else, but then his mouth set in a tight line.

  “Say it.”

  “You have to stop taking responsibility for him. Wyatt and I talked earlier and—”

  Erin slammed her palms on the table. Whatever was going on, she was already tired of their buddy-buddy behavior. Jason had reappeared twelve hours ago. Had Wyatt seriously already forgiven him and charged straight back into the friendship they used to have? “You two have been talking about me? At what point did you find the time to—”

  “Ms. Taylor?”

  Erin whipped her head around to find a nurse leaning in the door to the snack area. “Your father is being moved upstairs to a room if you’d like to wait for him there.”

  The best place to be right now was in the room when her father got there. If she wasn’t, he’d have an earful waiting for her when she arrived.

  Without acknowledging the man who’d apparently conspired with her cousin to solve all of her problems without her input, Erin left her breakfast on the table and followed the nurse, praying whatever news waited for her, it wouldn’t derail the rest of her life.

  The nurse aimed a finger down the hallway. “He’ll be in room 382. I’d take you there but we’re shorthanded today.”

  “No problem. I can find it.” She’d been here enough to visit accident victims or people from church. Jogging up the hallway that led to the single staircase in this wing of the small hospital, Erin prayed her father was okay and that she’d make it to the room ahead of him. She hesitated at the elevator, fired off a quick update to Wyatt, then pocketed her phone and decided to take her usual route up the stairs. Her friend Jenna teased her about the way she ran stairs, but it was an easy way to stay in shape and to rehearse the routes in case she ever had to take them during a fire, when elevators would be off-limits. Today, with a small knot of people already waiting for the elevator, her way would likely be faster.

  Halfway to the second floor, the door a level lower crashed open, and footsteps pounded up the stark concrete and metal stairs. Erin hesitated and turned toward the sound. Someone was coming fast and that meant trouble. She backed up against the wall to make way for whatever doctor or nurse was rushing up the stairs.

  The figure that rounded the landing had on jeans and a shapeless gray hooded sweatshirt pulled low to cover their face. When they lifted their head, a ski mask obscured any features.

  Erin’s heart pounded from exertion and fear. She had to move, to get higher or get past the person who had fixed a hard gaze on her and raced up the steps toward her.

  As Erin turned to bolt up the stairs away from danger, a gloved hand clamped around her wrist and jerked her backward, slinging her down the half flight of stairs she’d just climbed. Her shoulder slammed into the wall. She tried to catch her footing and missed, tumbling to the concrete below. Her cheek cracked on the concrete floor.

  Pain flung stars spinning across her vision as voices echoed down the stairs from another floor.

  The figure hesitated, then leaped over Erin and disappeared down the stairs.

  SIX

  Jason stared in the direction Erin had gone. He shouldn’t let her out of his sight, but the risk of running into her father and setting off that explosion was too high. The fire blazing under his skin when Erin took responsibility for her father’s actions had almost seared away the tether on his tongue. They’d been down that road a thousand times, and it always ended in a fiery crash over a cliff. She’d never see what her father was doing to her, how he was destroying her.

  Or how she was letting him.

  Sitting across from her under the harsh glow of fluorescent hospital lights, he’d been able to see her even more clearly than in the bay of the fire station. She was thinner, her eyes sunken. Some of the problem could be attributed to the repeated shocks of the hours before, but some of it was chronic.

  He was two seconds from following her when Wyatt rounded the corner and caught sight of Jason standing in the doorway. Erin’s cousin was still wearing his uniform and looking as weary as she had. “Erin with her dad?”

  “She just went upstairs.”

  “She texted me as I was walking in. Told me the room number.” Wyatt’s eyebrow arched. “You deciding how safe she is if you don’t follow her?”

  “Wouldn’t want her dad to see me, would we?” The words were acid on Jason’s tongue. After all this time, it shouldn’t matter. But it did. Erin should be free. But she wasn’t. “Somebody needs to talk to her.”

  “You think I haven’t tried? Mom and Dad haven’t tried? Jenna hasn’t tried?”

  Jason lifted his head, his forehead creasing. “Who’s Jenna?”

  “She moved to town right around the time you and Erin got... Around the time things ended.”

  “It’s okay to say the D word, man. I won’t break down and cry.” Jason hadn’t in the past, and he wouldn’t start now.

  Wyatt shot him a withering look as they both sat at one of the tables. “They’re total opposites, but for whatever reason, Erin and Jenna clicked. Jenna’s her sounding board, her go-to for girl talk or whatever it is women do when they’re drinking coffee and painting each other’s fingernails.”

  There was something in the undercurrent of Wyatt’s voice... Jason jumped on it, more than willing to shift the focus away from himself. “Jealous?” Wyatt and Erin had been best friends their whole lives, being born two weeks apart and running barefoot together around their family’s land from the time they could walk.

  “It’s not that.” Wyatt’s eyes narrowed, and he seemed to be watching something Jason couldn’t see. “You know how you know when someone isn’t telling the truth? They’re hiding something big?”

  “Sure.”

  “Then you understand this thing with Jenna. The woman’s got more secrets than the CIA.”

  Jason choked on a laugh. The humor felt good, easing some of the tension in his neck. “The geek is still strong in you. So is your suspicion of every female who crosses your path.” Not that he could blame Wyatt. After what Kari Anders had done to him...

  “I trust Erin.”

  Jason wasn’t about to point out blood relatives didn’t count. Wyatt had his own issues to deal with, just like Erin did.

  Before he could change the subject, Wyatt pulled his phone from his pocket and read the screen. He shoved up from the table, his metal chair scraping against the tile floor. “I have to go.”

  Jason stood as well. “If this is about Erin, I’m going with you.”

  Wyatt hesitated, glancing from the lobby back to Jason. He tapped his finger on the side of his phone, then read the screen again as he headed for the hallway with Jason following. “They’re putting her dad in a room for observation. You might want to lie low.” At the elevator, Wyatt punched the button for the third floor. “I agree with you that we should keep an eye on her until we know what’s going on, but you and I are both beat. I’ll see if any of the guys want to make some money on their off time by coming here to keep an eye on things.”

  “I’ll pay for it.” This was his responsibility, his problem. The money wasn’t coming out of Wyatt’s pocket.

  “You don’t think you’ve done enough for her already?”

  Not even close.

  Jason stared at Wyatt until his former best friend backed down with a wave of his hand. “Fine. As soon as backup gets here, we leave. I’m off tomorrow and we’ll work out a game plan from there.”

  Jason nodded once. He liked plans. Thrived on them. They tipped the balance of control into his favor.

  The doors slid open on the third floor and Wyatt stepped out in front of Jason, narrowly dodging a man in scrubs who w
as pushing a patient on a gurney. “Sorry.” He muttered the apology then backed into the elevator, colliding with Jason.

  The man on the gurney turned. “Well, Wyatt. You showed up after all.” The voice was thinner than Jason remembered, but the harshness around the edges was impossible to forget.

  Recognition planted Jason’s feet to the floor and nearly dragged words he never said from his lips as the control he’d recovered wrenched from his grasp. Before he could disappear into the relative safety of the elevator, Kevin Taylor’s eyes found his.

  There was an instant of hesitation, a second of hope that maybe Erin’s father wouldn’t recognize him, but then those watery brown eyes turned to steel. His face reddened and he rocked up on his elbows, casting a look of disgust that ate through Jason like acid. “Barnes. What are you doing here?” Far from the weakened words aimed at Wyatt seconds earlier, these roared off the ceiling and echoed into the elevator, smacking Jason backward to the scrawny, unwanted kid who’d endured the wrath of his brand-new wife’s very unhappy father. There was no battle plan, only desperate self-preservation.

  “You bring him here?” Kevin turned his fury to Wyatt.

  “Calm down, Mr. Taylor. You don’t—”

  “Don’t tell me to calm down.” Bracing himself on his elbows, Kevin Taylor cast a hard look over Wyatt’s shoulder, his derisive gaze locked on Jason. “I told you years ago to stay away from my daughter. You’re not worth the air you breathe. And you ain’t taking her away from me. You hear me?” His voice cracked, and he swatted away the orderly who attempted to ease him back to the white pillow on the gurney. “Answer me, you—”

  A nurse appeared and stepped between them to cut off whatever was coming next. She held out her hand, easing Wyatt and Jason into the elevator. “I think you should go.”

  Neither man fought. His expression grim, Wyatt pressed the button for the lobby and kept his gaze straight ahead as the door slid shut.

  Jason stared at the floor. He couldn’t meet anyone’s eyes. All it did was highlight the truth of what Kevin Taylor and probably half of Mountain Springs still thought of him. A nobody. A nothing. Worthless. A failure at protecting Erin once again.

  Erin.

  Jamming his finger against the button for the second floor, he turned to Wyatt. “Where is she? Right now? Because she wasn’t with her father.”

  As the doors slipped open, Wyatt reached for his cell phone, his eyebrows creased. “I’ll check the room. You check the stairs. She always takes the stairs.” He pointed across the hallway at a heavy metal door.

  Jason was shoving through the door before the elevator shut again, pounding down the stairs and fighting the urge to call her name. Please, Lord, let her be in the room with her father. Please. If she wasn’t... If he’d let something happen to her while he was within shouting distance...

  It would be just like when Fitz was killed. The guilt of two people’s blood on his hands would kill him.

  He pounded down the stairs and rounded the landing, looking down toward the lower floor. His feet nearly slipped from under him and he grabbed the railing to keep himself upright.

  Erin lay in a fetal position on the floor, trying to push herself upright. A red welt marred her cheek and her temple.

  No.

  He was at her side without remembering how he got down the stairs. Dropping to his knees, he eased her up to a sitting position so she was leaning against the wall, then ran his hands along her hair to feel for swelling.

  She brushed his hands away. “I’m okay. I fell. Hit my cheek.” Erin winced as she spoke, reinforcing her pain. “I don’t think anything’s broken. Just hurts a little.”

  “You fell?” Jason rocked back on his heels and looked up to the landing about ten feet above them. “Did you break anything?” He picked up her hands, checked her wrists and was reaching for her elbow when she pulled away again.

  “Only a couple of steps. I was only a couple up when someone...” Erin stiffened and her eyes widened. “Someone pulled me down the stairs.” The words choked her and she reached out, balling the front of Jason’s sweater in her fists. “Somebody was here. Gray sweatshirt. Ski mask. Jeans. They grabbed me by the wrist and threw me into the wall and I missed the step and...” For the first time, fear whipped across her face.

  Wrapping one hand around hers, Jason pulled his phone from his back pocket and texted Wyatt to call for backup. Heart pounding, Jason tucked his phone away and took Erin’s other hand in his. Someone had attacked her when she was only feet away from him. Whoever was doing this was getting bolder. “They wanted it to look like you fell and were probably interrupted before...”

  Untangling her fingers from his, Erin braced herself against the wall and stood, wincing as she did. She needed to see a doctor, get checked out, make sure she really hadn’t broken anything.

  Meanwhile, he had to find who’d done this to her.

  He stood with her, but she edged around him. “I can’t think this has anything to do with last night right now. I just... I can’t. My dad. I have to get to him before he’s in his room.” She wrapped a hand around the railing and gingerly took the first step up.

  Jason braced a hand on her back and bit his tongue to keep from arguing with her. He could tell her this was insane until his face turned blue, but she’d never back down. In the moment, she was more afraid of her father than of any conspiracy Jason could ever try to convince her existed.

  Which meant he’d only have to fight harder to stay close and protect her from whoever had stepped out of his past to destroy the woman he’d once loved.

  * * *

  Every muscle in Erin’s body protested as she slowed the Bronco to take the last curve near her house, finally able to bring her father home after two solid days in the hospital. Everything hurt, including her wrist, which bore bruises she absolutely refused to think about. They were a pulsing complement to the purple haze on her cheekbone. She’d allowed the doctor to run a few tests to reinforce what she already knew—that nothing was broken—and that had quieted both Wyatt and Jason. The pair had stayed in the waiting room until one of Wyatt’s off-duty officer friends had shown up to stand outside the door.

  Her brain still couldn’t admit that everything was related. Angie Daniels’s death had nothing to do with her. The snake had been a natural occurrence. Her father had fallen victim to bad food.

  But the attack in the stairwell? Maybe Jason was right and she was someone’s target.

  Erin pressed her fingertips to the pulsing pain in her cheek. There was no way. Normal people from tiny towns didn’t become the targets of killers. There had to be another explanation. A colossal coincidence. Anything but a series of targeted killings with her as the next target.

  She needed rest, and then she’d be able to figure out an explanation. Her last shower was two days distant. The last time she’d eaten a real meal? No matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t remember.

  Erin silently thanked God for Jenna as she flipped the blinker to turn onto their long country dirt road. Nearly two days in the hospital with her dad while they treated him for food poisoning. Two days of him refusing to let her leave his side. Two days of him never noticing that her cheek bore a bruise or her movements were stiff and slow from her fall. He hadn’t asked. She hadn’t told.

  Without Jenna, there wouldn’t have been a change of clothes, a toothbrush or real food.

  But man, she was dying for a real meal right now. Something substantial. A steak maybe. With a baked potato. And a salad. Maybe some apple pie. Anything but a sandwich. Jenna made amazing sandwiches, true, but a woman couldn’t live on bread and fillings alone.

  “Soon as we get home, you can help me settle in, get me some real food, then get on the lawn mower. Yard was bad enough before you let me get stuck in the hospital. I’m for dead certain it’s harboring snakes by now,” her dad said.

 
Erin shuddered. Snakes. Why’d he even have to go there? He knew how much she hated them. She hadn’t told him about the one in the Bronco, but it was as though he knew exactly how to push the right button.

  And as for the yard itself...

  She needed sleep. Solid sleep. In her own bed. Chief Kelliher had someone covering her night shift for the next two nights so she could heal from her bruises and scrapes and care for her father, but afterward she’d be back on duty.

  The thought of skipping a shower, a nap or anything else to mow the grass almost made her hang a U-turn and check herself into the hospital this time. Maybe she’d get some rest.

  But when she turned into the driveway, her foot eased on the gas pedal. Her jaw slackened. She’d lost reality. There was no other explanation.

  The yard was pristine. Mowed. Edged. Even the weeds along the side fence were trimmed. What in the world?

  There was no one in the yard where the trees swayed in the light breeze. Who would...? Wait. The tailgate of a blue pickup peeked from the far side of the barn, almost out of sight from the driveway.

  Jason.

  Her skin heated with embarrassment and condemnation as she parked close to the house and killed the Bronco’s engine. A quick glance at her father showed him surveying the yard. He’d missed the flash of blue behind the barn.

  But... Jason? After the way she’d been rebuffing him and the way her father had acted at the hospital, he’d come to the house to do her a favor? A chore he hated above all others?

  Jason loathed yard work. His parents had put him behind a push mower on over an acre of land from the time he had enough weight to get the thing moving. When he was emancipated, he moved out of their rental house and into the apartment above the garage at Wyatt’s family home, where he did everything to help out except do yard work. She was certain he still lived in an apartment. He’d joked more than once about how, when they bought a house, he’d sell plasma if he had to in order to pay someone else to handle the lawn. Erin had told him she’d mow every day if he’d clean the bathroom and cook, the two chores she hated the most. They’d sealed the deal with more than one kiss.