by Julie Miller
“Are you following me today, Ms. Page?” Shauna asked, as the reporter slowed to match her pace.
Rebecca Page was ambitious and unafraid, a combination that always kept Shauna on her toes. “I called your office. Your secretary said you were having lunch at the station. I’m glad I caught you.”
“Oh?” Shauna kept walking. She’d have to have a word with Betty about keeping private lunches private.
“I didn’t want to wait for your weekly press conference to ask this. I think there’s a big story about to break at KCPD, and I want the scoop.”
If something big was about to break in the department, Shauna wanted to hear about it first. Maybe she was the one who should be fishing for answers from the press. “Everything’s business as usual. I can’t comment on any ongoing cases unless I clear it with the individual investigators. We don’t want to give anything away to the wrong people, you know.”
“What about to the people who need to hear the truth? The citizens of Kansas City who need certain knowledge to protect themselves?”
Certain knowledge?
Sidestepping a pair of moms and strollers as they circled the end of a line of parked cars, Shauna spotted Eli crossing between the vehicles up ahead. A glimpse of sky-blue farther down the row begged for recognition inside her. But Shauna had more immediate suspicions to contend with. “My people do an outstanding job protecting the people of Kansas City.”
Rebecca scoffed as if she doubted that statement. “Why hasn’t there been any detailed press release about the Cattlemen’s Bank shooting? Is that because you were involved?”
Beneath the excited chatter of schoolchildren, the hum of a car engine cranked to life, and the glimmer of recognition tried to register a warning inside her head.
But the younger woman, tall and slender as a fashion model, blocked Shauna’s path and forced her attention. She could take the wispy thing down to the pavement if she had to, but Shauna refrained from indulging the unprofessional urge. “We have the shooter, Richard Powell, in custody. He sustained an injury when he refused to cooperate with police, and he’s currently under guard in a secure hospital facility. A judge and the attorneys have already arraigned him at the hospital. He’ll be transferred to a jail cell as soon as he’s physically able.”
“And what about the new developments on the Baby Jane Doe case?”
Shauna almost flinched. The girl was good at the setup-and-attack tactic to catch an interviewee off guard. But Shauna was better. Years of practice at hiding her emotions allowed her to present a calm, confident facade with only the hint of a curious frown. “What new developments?”
“You actually said that with a straight face.” For a moment, Shauna reconsidered the take-down plan. “The word I have is that the task force who arrested Donnell Gibbs is now under investigation themselves. All of their personnel files were requested this morning. And the case file itself is in your hands now. So what’s going on?”
“My, my—you have been busy.” So had whoever it was at KCPD who’d leaked that information. “It’s not unheard of for higher-ups to review a case as important as the Jane Doe murder. It’s been such a concern to the community and to the members of KCPD that we want to make sure everything was done properly so that there are no surprises at the trial. It’s routine procedure for a high-profile case like this one.”
The car engine revved, showing off its souped-up horsepower. Absolute awareness slammed into Shauna with the speed of the car barreling toward them. Oh, God, no—not here!
She didn’t even hear the reporter’s follow-up question. “But to involve Internal Affairs? That speaks to suspected incompetence or cover—?”
“Rebecca—move!” Shauna shoved the woman between the cars and spun around.
Children. Moms. Strollers. Buses. In a split second, Shauna processed potential collateral damage—every individual, every location. The blue car picked up speed, rushing toward her and the crowded station entrance. A tidal wave of certain disaster was about to strike.
Already shouting, already running—thrusting her badge out before her—Shauna pulled out her gun and pointed it straight up to the sky. “Police! Get inside!” She fired two warning shots. “Inside, now! Move it! Move it! Move it!”
The screams and scatter of dozens of patrons, fleeing the gunfire before they understood the real danger, were only a momentary distraction to what she had to do. Changing direction abruptly, Shauna lost a shoe. But she ground her toes into the asphalt and charged toward the next lane of cars, praying the sadistic driver would alter course away from the loading zone, away from the parents and teachers and station employees scrambling to get the children to safety.
Her lungs burned. The horrible screech of brakes grated across her eardrums. The stench of rubber stung her nose.
“Shauna!”
The car slung around the corner and sideswiped one of the buses, crunching steel against steel. “No! Come get me, you son of a bitch!”
She shouldn’t have turned around. She shouldn’t have given the enemy that beat of time.
Crying children and panicked screams became background noise to the deadly cacophony of glass breaking and metal scraping clear down to the core as the driver floored the accelerator and forced the broken car back into pursuit. The afternoon glare off the windshield prevented her from seeing anything more than the silhouette of a man in dark clothes behind the wheel.
“Shauna!”
She had to run.
She lost the second shoe while lunging toward the parking lot’s exit gate. She felt the heat rushing ahead of the car, imagined the whoosh of air pushing her off her feet.
A wall of brown smacked into her from the side. Steel arms whipped around her. Recognizing Eli by scent, Shauna held on as they flew into the air. The car rocketed past in a vortex of blue heat as they crashed to the pavement. Eli rolled, hitting the ground first, absorbing the brunt of the impact, skidding until a crushing thud stopped them at the curb.
An “oof” and a curse and a searing heat all registered in the instant before he tumbled her onto the sidewalk.
Had they been hit? Or had the force of Eli’s tackle carried them this far? Dizzy from the fall, Shauna was slow to sort out answers. Eli rose to his knees with her gun and took a bead on the car as it crashed through the striped barrier gate.
“No, Eli, dammit!” Clarity returned and she pushed his gun hand down before he could take the shot. “I’m not the only target here!”
Then Eli saw them, too. Two terrified kids and their tour guide huddled against the wall just ahead. Any stray shot or ricochet might have had deadly consequences. The bashed-up car sped off toward the highway to the west.
“Hell.” His chest heaved in a monstrous release of tension. And then he was sinking onto the curb, letting his hand and the gun dangle between his knees, sucking in deep breaths as super-charged adrenaline worked its way through his system. But the deep gold eyes bored into hers. “You okay?”
Other than some new bruises to add to her colorful collection, she was fine. “My feet are a little tender,” she admitted, prying the gun from his unresisting hands and tucking it into her waistband at the small of her back.
Confident he was in the moment with her now and could be reasoned with, she raised her head to the frightened trio against the wall. “It’s okay now. Why don’t you move on inside the building?” She smiled a reassurance to them, then turned to take stock of the rest of the scene. “It’s all right.” She nodded to a bus driver who seemed to have his panic under control. “You. Call 911. Tell the dispatcher Commissioner Cartwright needs assistance at this location. Request paramedics and crowd control.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
Eli’s fingers feathered the hair back from her temple, drawing her attention back to him. “We’ve got matching bumps now.”
His touch was tender, concerned, and she reached up to pull his hand away. He couldn’t touch her like that. Not here. “Eli…” He winced. “Oh, my
God.”
Her fingers came away bloody as he pulled his left arm back to his stomach, cursing through clenched teeth. Her dinged-up hero had plenty to cuss about. His sleeve was shredded from shoulder to wrist, from jacket to skin, and blood seeped from the ugly wound.
“Hurts like a bitch,” he muttered, flexing his fingers to ensure that nothing was broken. “The shock must be wearing off.”
Shauna’s own aches receded when he tried to stand. With firm hands, she pushed him back onto his butt. “Stay put.”
“We need to get you out of here.”
“I said to stay put.” Eli’s eyes flared with interest as Shauna shrugged out of her jacket and unbuttoned the blouse underneath. “Shauna, I—”
“Keep it in your pants, Detective.” Even if she wasn’t wearing a sensible bra and slip to cover herself, she would have stripped to get to the cotton blouse.
Cool air breezed across her skin a moment before he touched a fingertip to the prickle on her shoulder. “But you have goose—ow! Damn.”
Shauna cinched the cotton around the worst part of his wound to staunch the bleeding. “You’re hard on my wardrobe, Detective. The least you can do is cooperate with me.” She used the sleeves to tie the blouse into place. “Sit here and take a minute to regroup. I need to take charge of this situation before we have a riot on our hands.”
He grabbed her wrist with his good hand and pulled her back down. “No. You saw that maniac. We have to get you someplace safe.”
“Maniac’s gone. I’m in charge. You don’t move. Are we clear, Detective?”
He glared. “You’re not gonna get a ‘yes ma’am’ out of me.”
“Eli—”
A bright light flashed beside them and Shauna blinked. Rebecca Page stood over them, clicking off picture after picture of the speeding car, the chaos and the two of them together on the curb.
Man, she hated reporters. Especially when they wore a cake-eating grin like Rebecca Page’s.
“Business as usual, my ass.”
Chapter Eight
Damn. The story was going to make the paper a lot sooner than Shauna had hoped. At least she’d convinced Rebecca Page not to run any of the personal photographs that would draw readers’ attention to her role in this afternoon’s events. A half-naked commissioner on the ground with one of her detectives could be easily misconstrued by the public and the police force. That she’d actually been the intended victim could stir up enough panic to completely undermine her authority, giving the naysayers and I-told-you-soers plenty of ammunition to put her into some kind of protection program and keep her from doing her job.
Plus, the young reporter had promised to stick to the facts she’d actually witnessed. A crazy driver endangering the lives of schoolchildren made headline enough. Shauna didn’t intend to give Yours Truly or the Baby Jane Doe case any publicity that could possibly drive her stalker and any evidence he could share underground.
Shauna rubbed her arms up and down the scratchy sleeves of her wool jacket and surveyed the quieting scene from one yellow crime scene strip to another. Two hours had passed since she’d buttoned her jacket over her slip and skirt, and taken control of the chaos.
She’d organized the adults present and gotten every kid accounted for. Fortunately, any injuries were minor, and those who needed a hug or a hand to hold were given the comfort they needed. She’d gotten the first traffic cops who’d arrived to cordon off the area and direct the frightened parents who’d come to pick up their children. She’d ended the press briefing as quickly as she could and deflected an attempted hug from a worried Austin. The ambulances were gone and the damaged bus had been towed away.
She had no sense of Yours Truly having her lined up in his sights anymore, and wondered if he’d injured himself in the crash. Or if the realization that he’d endangered the very children he claimed he wanted to protect had made him disappear. If this was his idea of punishment, then he’d just pissed off the wrong woman. If his intention had been to scare her into taking him seriously and force her to find the answers to Baby Jane’s murder even more quickly, he’d succeeded.
Though not in the way he’d probably hoped. Shauna was scared, all right. Scared for the innocent lives this bastard was willing to sacrifice. Scared for these children. Scared for anyone who happened to be in the neighborhood each time he struck.
She was scared for Eli.
It wasn’t hard to find the man who’d put his life on the line more than once to protect her. Though he’d kept his distance, Eli always seemed to be someplace nearby—close enough to exchange a glance if nothing more.
She spotted him now, straight and strong, sitting on the bumper of his Blazer, apart from the remaining circle of plainclothes detectives and uniformed officers, talking on his cell phone. His ruined jacket and her blouse had been pitched into the trash. His shirtsleeve had been cut off, and his wound had been packed with a gauze bandage that showed seepage at the elbow and triceps. She could see the purpling bruise that marred his sculpted cheekbone clear across the parking lot.
Shauna was weary and sore. She could head home to a hot bath right now and not one of those men would fault her for it. She could drive back to the office and chew Betty’s hide for letting Rebecca Page know how to find her. She could get on the phone herself and start tracking her own leads on the sky-blue Buick that had terrorized her twice.
She walked toward Eli instead.
His wounds had been cleaned up by paramedics, but he’d staunchly refused to get into an ambulance. To Shauna’s way of thinking, his raw skin needed to be debrided and checked by a full-fledged doctor. And she’d rest easier if he had something more than a shot of penicillin to combat the possibility of infection.
Her shoes pinched the abrasions on her feet, but Shauna held her shoulders back and tilted her chin at a confident angle as she approached the circle of men.
She addressed Mitch Taylor, the ranking officer in the group. “Thank you, Mitch. I know this isn’t your regular job description anymore, but I appreciate your help coordinating the scene this afternoon.”
The barrel-chested precinct captain shrugged off the gratitude. “It’s Fourth Precinct territory, and my wife and son are scheduled to come to Science City with his first-grade class next week. Trust me, I want this place to be perfectly safe.”
“I’m sure it will be.” Shauna thanked the others, then turned to Eli. He looked paler up close than he had from a distance, which alarmed her more than she cared to admit. “C’mon, Detective. You’re with me.”
Eli, who’d been watching the polite interchange with a curious indifference, ended his call. “Yes, Holly, I’ll have him check that. Don’t worry about me… I’ll talk to you later. You, too, sis.” He clipped the phone onto his belt and stood, cocking an eyebrow above the bruised, swollen cheek. “Am I going somewhere, boss—?”
Before Shauna could answer, Eli swayed into the SUV. What little color he had left drained from his face. “Eli?” Oh, no. When his knees buckled, she slipped beneath his good arm and braced her hands at either side of his waist. She felt herself falling as he sagged against her. “Mitch!”
The big man was there in an instant to take Eli’s weight and ease him back to his seat. With his arm still draped across her shoulders, Shauna sat right beside him, steadying him until the dizziness passed.
“I don’t need your help, Captain.” When he could sit up straight again, Eli brushed off Mitch’s assistance and took a couple of deep breaths. “I guess I lost a little blood.”
“Not amusing, Detective.” When he stood, Shauna moved with him, clinging to the reassurance of healthy warmth she felt in the taut muscles beneath his shirt. She led him around to the passenger side where Mitch opened the door. “Get in,” she ordered, though she couldn’t tell if it was the grateful boss taking care of her own or the worried woman who’d come too close to losing someone she cared about speaking. “I’m driving you to the hospital.”
“The paramedics said�
��”
“You ignored the paramedics’ recommendation, but you will not ignore me. We’re going to the hospital.”
He braced his hands against the open door, refusing to budge. “I can drive myself.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m not going to risk you passing out at the wheel when I’m perfectly capable of driving you.”
“The commish said to get in.” Mitch Taylor’s booming voice backed up her.
“I’m not Fourth Precinct jurisdiction.” Eli turned around, nailing Mitch with his coldest back-off glare over the top of Shauna’s head. “This doesn’t concern you, Taylor.”
“Detective Masterson.” Shauna’s tone was clipped and concise. Her hands were much gentler at the flat of his stomach, silently begging him to lose the attitude.
He dropped his gaze to hers, understanding the message. Play nice.
Though nothing about his stance eased, Eli pulled the keys from his pocket and dropped them into her hand. “Would you mind driving me to the hospital, ma’am?”
Raising her own eyebrow at his sarcasm, Shauna waited for him to get in, then hurried around the hood to climb in behind the wheel. The seat was a mile away from the pedals. By the time she’d adjusted it so she could reach the accelerator and start the engine, a good deal of tension had filled the car.
She looked from Eli to Mitch, still standing at the open door. “You two know each other?” she asked.
Obviously, better than either of them wanted to. Mitch was the first to answer. “You’ve been asking a lot of questions about my task force the past few days, Masterson.”
“And I haven’t been getting many answers, have I?”
She’d known Eli would take the brunt of any investigation into the cops who’d arrested Donnell Gibbs, just as he’d taken the worst of that dive into the pavement this afternoon. He’d never complained about being odd man out, about assuming such an unpopular role in the department. Oh, he’d argued the wisdom of her plan, sure enough, but he’d never once complained.
