Pager?
I wasn’t aware they even made those anymore.
Holy shit.
I had all of his things, and if the way his phone was going crazy right now, I needed to get it back to him, pronto.
Or would have if the phone hadn’t been locked.
Pressing the home button, I smiled at the same little girl he’d had with him earlier stood on the hood of a truck with her arms raised.
Bennett stood in front of it, holding his hands up in order to catch her, and he had a huge smile on his face.
Then the picture disappeared when his phone started to ring once again.
James, the display read.
No picture or anything, only the name.
Knowing that the only way I would get this phone back to him was to answer it, I did just that.
“Hello?” I answered cheerily.
“You have my phone,” that familiar growl rolled through me like warm honey.
“Uh, yeah. I sure do. We’re still eating if you want to come back and get them,” I supplied helpfully, picking up a fry and tossing it into my mouth.
He growled again, and I couldn’t help the smile that spread over my face at his annoyance with me.
With anyone else, I would’ve felt bad.
But with the way he was being an ass, like the other day, I couldn’t find it in me to give a shit.
“I got a SWAT call. You bring it to me when you’re done,” he insisted.
“I don’t know where you live. And I’m tipsy. I’d planned on calling a cab,” I lied.
There went that growl again, making my hoo-ha do funny things.
“Well, have the cab drop you off at the station, and I’ll have someone take you home,” he tried.
I smiled. “I only have like five dollars. It’s just enough to get me home three blocks from here.”
He hissed, and I had to cover my mouth with my hand to keep the laughter from boiling out.
“Fine,” he said calmly. “I’ll just have to come get it from you.”
I squeaked. “No, you can’t do that!”
“Why not?” He asked, something rustling around in the background. Then a door slammed, followed quickly by the sound of someone moving fast through a hallway or something.
“Because I don’t want you to know where I live!” I yelled a little shrilly.
Melissa and Paxton started to laugh at my clearly uncomfortable state.
There were only two people, aside from family, who knew where I lived, and I was sitting with them right this second.
I didn’t want some guy that clearly didn’t like me knowing where I lived!
“You do know, right, that I’m a cop? Whether you tell me where you live or not, I can come get it. And what about that cab driver that’s taking you home? He’ll know where you live,” he said slowly.
Almost as if he was talking to someone slow who couldn’t quite comprehend the words that were coming out of his mouth.
“So? I’ll bring it to you,” I snapped.
“Too late. I’m coming to you. Later,” he said laughingly, then hung up without waiting for my reply.
“You know,” Paxton said a few minutes of silence later. “You had that coming. You shouldn’t have goaded him.”
“I couldn’t help it!” I seethed. “The man infuriates me. You saw what he did when I stitched him up. And what he said. I’m not some little girl that needs his directions. I’m a grown woman who has opinions and makes her own decisions.”
Paxton nodded. “You’re a maverick, and other mavericks recognize likeness. Just let what he says roll off your shoulders and let it go.”
I sneered at him. “Whatever.”
Forty five minutes later, sober as the day I was born, I got into my car and drove to my house, wondering if what Bennett had said about him coming over was true.
Surprisingly, it didn’t bother me that he’d know where I lived. In fact, it actually felt just fine.
When my first boyfriend had found out where I lived, and showed up randomly one day, I’d moved forty eight hours later. Once I was moved, I then broke up with him.
See, I had boundaries.
Huge, major, lined in barbed wire, boundaries.
My boundaries were warranted, too.
Big time.
When I was sixteen, I was attacked in my own home by my boyfriend at the time. Well, ex if you wanted to be technical.
Earlier that night I’d broken up with him because he wouldn’t accept ‘no’ for an answer.
He’d wanted sex, and I’d wanted to keep my virginity intact.
Not because I was a prude or anything, but because I didn’t want to end up like so many friends from my high school, sixteen and pregnant.
So I’d told him no when he tried to make a move on me, and then had further broken up with him when he wouldn’t accept that no.
Turns out, as I left that night, he’d followed me home and waited for my parents to go to bed when he broke into our home.
I’d woken up to Reggie’s hands down my panties, and so freakin’ scared that I couldn’t see straight.
I could, however, scream. Which was what I’d done.
He’d thought I was just ‘playing’ when I’d told him no. Something I was most certainly not doing.
Anyway, long story short, my dad had come into the room and threw Reggie through my bedroom window, nearly killing him because he was impaled on a piece of glass through the chest.
Paramedics had rushed to the scene and saved Reggie’s life.
Something my father probably could’ve offered Reggie, yet he was reluctant to use his abilities on someone that had just tried to rape his teenaged daughter.
It’d eventually been the reason I’d gone into nursing, and then furthering my schooling by becoming a physician’s assistant.
I found that I rather liked the trauma situations; in fact, I thrived during them.
“Hey, Missy,” Bob, the neighbor to my right, waved from his perch on his front porch step.
I waved back. “How’s the missus doing, Bob?”
He shrugged. “Cantankerous.”
I giggled. “I’ll tell her you said that!”
He winked. “That woman’s my world, girl. There ain’t nothin’ you can tell her that she hasn’t heard from me before.”
I smiled at my favorite neighbor, heart full of envy at their relationship.
I just wished that one day I could have something like they did.
Someone to spend my afternoons with rocking in my rocking chair. Someone to bring a glass of sweet tea to when he’d been mowing the lawn all morning. Someone who brought me home flowers every Sunday morning just because he saw them on the side of the road on the way home from church.
“I got another one of your packages for you. It’s on your front hall table,” Bob explained as I started up my front walk.
I tossed a smile at him.
“Was Cola good for you today?” I asked loudly over my shoulder as I stuck the key in the lock.
He made a so-so gesture with his hand. “Only one accident, but that was because she got too excited when she saw me. Other than that, she did wonderfully.”
Cola was my six month old Great Pyrenees that I’d gotten in Dog Alley in Canton, Texas during First Monday Trade Days.
‘Trades Days’ was what one would call a huge flea market.
Some of it was homemade, while other of it was obviously bought overseas. Food, clothes, furniture. If you wanted it, they probably had it.
“Thank you, Bob,” I said, smiling when Cola came barreling out of the door. “She looks happy to see me.”
I smiled and got down on one knee, allowing me to wrap my arms around Cola’s thick neck to hug her.
She was such a big, loving girl.
“Who’s that?” Bob asked, watching as a truck started to drive down our street at an extremely slow pace.
I sighed.
Bob was protective of me.
When I’d started to look for places, I was very particular in my tastes.
I wanted the house to be isolated, and at the end of a road that assured nobody had to pass my house.
If they made it as far as Bob’s house, they had to be there for a reason.
Something that I really liked knowing.
“Sure that’s why,” Bob laughed. “More like you stole it. You stole it, didn’t you?”
I gasped in affront. “I most certainly did not steal anything!”
Cola, sensing the man that had just stepped foot out of his truck, started barreling towards the newcomer in her happy, nobody’s a stranger, lope that would probably end up in a tackle.
Bennett, though, saw the dog coming and braced his legs.
Cola hit him like a battering ram, but Bennett didn’t even go back at all.
I would’ve ended up on my ass.
Shaking my head, I started walking towards Bennett.
“Why are you dressed like that?” I asked curiously.
Head to toe in black. He even had a mask on his head that was black. Although it was only partially covering his head more like a toboggan would.
“SWAT call,” he said simply, holding out his hand.
I took his hand and shook it firmly before dropping it.
His look of amusement had my eyebrows lowering. “What?”
“I wanted my phone, but a handshake works, too. Wasn’t aware women were into handshakes when they saw men, but I’ll remember your preference for next time when we see each other,” he said lightly.
My face flamed, and I reached into the jacket I was wearing, handing him everything that was in there.
“Thanks,” he muttered, shoving the phone into his pocket and hooking his pager on his belt.
“Umm,” I said, looking at the road as Paxton rolled up in his smart car. “Thanks for coming.”
It was obviously a dismissal, and the way his eyes flared with laughter pointed out that he knew that it was, too.
“Right,” he said, giving Cola one more good scratch behind the ear before he turned on his heel and headed to his truck. “Thanks.”
“You’re keeping the jacket?” Paxton asked in surprise.
I looked down and jumped. “Oh! Bennett!”
He started the truck, but rolled his window down to look at me.
“What?” He asked over the growl of the engine.
“Your jacket!” I said, thrusting my chest forward and lowering my arms to allow the jacket to slip free.
“Keep it,” he laughed. “You’ll need something to keep you warm at night. ‘Cause Lord knows nobody would want to do that job themselves.”
On my outraged screech, he rolled the window up and peeled out of his spot at the curb.
“Wow,” Paxton said, fanning himself. “That man was hot. I wonder…”
“He’s not gay, nor will he ever be gay. Fuck, but did you see that man? And the attitude? Jesus Christ, he’s got to have the worst sense of humor in the world. Ass,” I growled, walking inside.
Before I could walk all the way inside, though, I turned and glared at the two laughing men.
“Good night, Bob! Die, Paxton,” I growled.
Their laughter followed me inside. However, it was the deep timbre of Bennett’s voice, and the smell of his jacket, that kept me warm that night.
Something that would come back to haunt me later.
Chapter 3
I don’t mind going to work, but the twelve hour wait to go home sucks balls.
-Lennox’s secret thoughts
Lennox
“Oh, my God! It just keeps getting bigger!” I groaned, looking at the mirror in horror.
“Leave it alone and stop picking at it,” Paxton sighed in exasperation.
I glared.
“This is like…life or death. It’s massive. My face hasn’t broken out this much since I was sixteen! I’m twenty freakin’ six! I’m dying!” I declared, rather loudly, too.
“Mr. Beane? Can you hear me?” Melissa yelled loudly.
I looked up, as did Paxton and the rest of the nurse’s station, to see Melissa across the hall in room one doing a sternal rub on the patient.
A patient who had come to the ER because his children had been worried about him.
More like his children had forced him to come because he was acting funny, but then we’d gone in there to see him and he’d refused any and all treatment unless he could have a Vicodin.
Since we weren’t willing to give that to him without running some tests to see what he already had in the system, we were discharging him.
Melissa had actually walked in there to give him his discharge paperwork.
“Mr. Beane, open your eyes,” Melissa said loudly.
Mr. Beane didn’t react. Not to the yelling, nor the sternal rub.
Standing up, I walked over to the closest Pixus, or secured medicine storage, pulled some Narcan, and started towards the room.
Paxton was now leaning over Mr. Beane, doing his own version of the sternal rub.
However, since he was a man, it ended up being a lot rougher.
The man still didn’t flinch.
Then, surprising me, Paxton said, “If you don’t open your eyes, I’ll have my good friend over here give you some Narcan. That’ll take out every bit of narcotic in your system and you’ll be in pain again.”
Paxton always cracked me up when he tried to be a badass.
He was a very attractive man, but he didn’t have a mean bone in his whole body.
He had a love for all things living and hated doing harm, even when it was necessary to make someone better.
I’d met him during school, and we’ve stayed friends since. Even going so far as to move in together, at one point, before buying homes next door to each other.
Mr. Beane flinched at Paxton’s threat, but other than that, didn’t react at all.
Sighing in annoyance, I walked up to Mr. Beane, and pushed the Narcan.
He was fucked in the head if he thought we were joking.
Narcan really was my favorite drug.
It was always fun to see how mad the men and women would get when their high that they’d spend a grand on was swept away from them in a matter of moments.
Something that happened right then with Mr. Beane.
One second he was doing a bang-up job at ignoring us, and the next instant, when I went to do another sternal rub, he practically levitated off the gurney.
“Owww!” He yelled loudly. “You bitch!”
“Glad she’s not mean to just me,” a dark voice said behind me.
I whirled around and glared. “What are you doing here?” I hissed.
He lifted his hand in the air, waving it around slightly.
“What…how…what…why…shit,” I said in horror. “What are you doing standing? Sit down!”
He moved to the room where I guessed he’d been originally, and sat on the bed.
I snapped my fingers at Melissa. “I need the clutz’s chart.”
Melissa laughed, and moved to the cart where we held all the charts, spinning it around idly until she found what she was looking for.
Once she had his chart, she pulled it and walked it to me, all the while leaving a smirk on her face that I wanted to scratch off.
Best friend or not, I was not above sharing her secrets. Fighting wouldn’t work. Not with her.
I’d have to do something drastic to knock that smile off her face, and I wasn’t ready to pull that card yet, so I’d wait until she really stuck her foot into it.
Snatching the chart from her extended hand, I turned to Bennett’s room and stalked inside.
“So…how’d that happen?” I asked without preamble.
He winced, holding up his hand.
“Well…the first part was when I was following a suspect over a fence. A barbed wire fence,” he said, pointing to a large, mangled gash in his hand about an inch long. Then he moved to the knife that was sticking out of the webbing of his fingers. “And this happened when that guy decided to throw a knife at my face. I pulled my hand up just in time for it to lodge here.”
Indeed he did.
Holy shit.
I moved around his side, studying the wounds.
“The doctor’s going to have to look at the knife wound. And pull it out. I can stitch it up if there are no nerves that have been hit,” I said, squatting down so I could see the other side.
“That’s some zit you have there…” Bennett said, eyeing my forehead.
I slapped my hand over my face and stood abruptly.
“I know it’s there. You don’t need to point it out!” I snapped, spinning quickly to go wash my hands, then left the room.
I found Dr. Steven’s at his usual spot, pecking away at his charting.
“Dr. Steven’s, I’ll need you to come take a look at his hand. I’m sure I won’t have any trouble, but I want a second opinion,” I asked pleasantly.
Dr. Steven’s didn’t like me. Not even a little bit.
He didn’t like me because he thought I was ‘too young’ to be a PA, and that I should’ve never been hired. He liked to say that it was my father’s ‘handout’ that allowed me to be where I was.
Pretty much, he didn’t respect me and probably never would.
Which was fine with me. No skin off my nose if he didn’t like me. And I had no qualms calling him in for a second opinion.
“You can’t do something so miniscule yourself?” He asked, raising a surprised brow at my question.
“I never said that. I just think I’d like a doctor to look at it to make me feel better with my assessment. If you’re unable to do that since you’re so…busy…I can go get Dr. Milford,” I said sweetly.
He glowered at me.
He hated Dr. Milford more than he hated me.
And I kind of liked the way he glared at the mention of Dr. Milford.
Apparently, a few years ago, the two of them had fought over a woman, and Dr. Milford had won.
Which wasn’t really hard for me to see.
Dr. Milford was nicer, cuter, and younger. No wonder he’d won.
Kill Shot (Code 11- KPD SWAT Book 6) Page 3
