Protecting Plain Jane

by Julie Miller

  “Trip.”

  As she fell to her knees beside him, she heard the screech of brakes and a trio of clipped, angry shouts.

  “Get a bus here, now! Murdock, van! Sarge, I want those men in handcuffs, now!”

  Charlotte leaned over her fallen hero to wipe the rain from his eyes, nose and mouth, and to press a gentle kiss to his scraped-up jaw. “I thought you were dead.”

  “Not yet, honey.” Two long blinks and the fading focus of his handsome eyes revealed just how badly he was hurt, though. His fingers brushed against her thigh and she reached down, taking his hand between hers. “Are you hurt? Did they hurt you?”

  Three dark figures swarmed past her. “I’m okay. I’m scared again. For you. But I’m okay.”

  “Engine’s off!”

  “Drop your weapon!”

  “Get on the ground! I said get down!”

  “Go, captain—we’ve got it covered.”

  Michael Cutler was suddenly kneeling down on the opposite side of Trip, taking a quick assessment of his injuries and calling it in on his radio. “Officer down, I repeat, officer down. Gunshot wound. Vehicular strike. Where the hell is that bus?”

  He immediately pressed his hand against Trip’s shoulder, and Trip winced with a curse.

  “Gotta stop the bleeding, big guy.” The captain pulled a knife from his belt and reached across Trip’s chest to slice the tape from Charlotte’s wrists. “Are you hurt, Miss Mayweather?”

  She shook her head. “Trip saved me. If they’d taken me away in the van…they were going to kill me.”

  Was the captain smiling? “I didn’t think he’d let that happen.” Then he was by-the-book serious again. “Open your eyes, Jones. Stay with me. I need a report.”

  Trip’s eyes slowly blinked open. “Yes, sir.”

  Rafe Delgado knelt down beside Charlotte. “That looks like a bad break. We’d better not move him.”

  “You squeamish, Miss Mayweather?” Cutler asked.

  “No.”

  “Good.” He grabbed her hands and placed them over the bullet wound on Trip’s shoulder, pressing them down the way he had. “Feel how hard I’m pushing? Keep that same pressure there—no more, no less.” He shrugged out of a backpack and pulled out a first aid kit, ripping open a couple of giant gauze pads. “What’s the situation, Delgado?”

  Rafe reached down and braced Trip’s other shoulder to keep him from twisting with the pain. “Easy, big guy. You know, you’re supposed to jump out of the way when a vehicle comes speeding toward you.”

  Trip nodded. “If there wasn’t a lady present, I’d be flipping you off.”

  “Sarge?” the captain prompted.

  “Bus and backup are en route. We’ve got one dead body and two perps handcuffed on the ground. One of them tried to take out Murdock. He won’t be fathering children for the next month or so.”

  “Ouch.” Trip grinned, but his eyes were drifting shut again.

  She felt his blood seeping through her fingers, tears burning in her eyes and spilling over. “Trip? Don’t leave me now, sweetheart. Don’t leave me.”

  With a jerky movement, he lifted his hand and wiped the tears from her cheek. “Don’t do that, okay? That’ll really kill me.”

  Then his hand flopped down against her leg and his eyes drifted shut. “Trip!”

  “Get the blanket out of my truck,” the captain ordered. “He’s going into shock.”

  Trip murmured between his lips. “I got your back, honey. I told you I did.”

  “I know.”

  “I love you.”

  She knew that, too. “And you say I’m crazy.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Trip checked the clock on the wall and wondered how much longer he had to listen to Rafe Delgado and Randy Murdock debate who should be given the credit for arresting Kyle Austin and his surviving band of would-be kidnappers—SWAT Team One or Spencer Montgomery?

  The persnickety detective had probably been hassling Charlotte with questions about that night at the museum. Was there any connection to the Rich Girl Killer beyond the obvious copycat crimes? Did she see who’d shot him? He hadn’t. All he could identify was a man on the roof with rifle and scope—his guess was the RGK. His guess had become Montgomery’s leading theory when the lab’s ballistics check proved that the bullet the doctors had taken out of Trip’s chest didn’t match the handguns they’d taken off Kyle and his goons.

  Who was there to protect her from Montgomery? Or family members and staff she shouldn’t trust? Who was going to play fetch with her dog and keep her company in those lonely, isolated rooms where she didn’t belong?

  Nineteen hours. Nineteen hours without seeing Charlotte, and all these yahoos would tell him was that she was fine. That she looked good. That she’d asked about him.

  He’d been through surgery, had been hooked up to this pulley contraption to keep his set leg level and elevated. His leg itched like crazy inside its cast, and the stitched-up holes in his left arm and lung ached whenever he moved too far one way or the other. The nurse had offered him another round of painkillers, but why would he want to be drifting in la-la land when he could be refereeing a conversation between these guys?

  “Look, guys.” Murdock and Delgado stopped their bickering and Captain Cutler set aside the magazine he’d been reading in the corner. “I appreciate you coming to check on me and all—”

  Captain Cutler strolled to the bed. “The doctors say you’re here for a week, that you’ll be off for rehab for a good three months, and that you’ll need light duty for another month after that. I figure you can man the dispatch desk or drive the truck for us.”

  Delgado scoffed. “Hey, that’s my job.”

  “I’m losing my team by attrition here. I’m going to wind up bringing Kincaid back from paternity leave early or promoting someone new to the team, and I haven’t got this one trained yet.” He winked at Murdock.

  “Should I be insulted?”

  “No, you should leave,” Trip suggested. “You should all leave.”

  “My point is…” Michael Cutler was a man used to giving orders, not taking them. From anybody. “You’ve been beat up pretty bad, big guy. I want you back on my team. But I want you in one piece.”

  Trip’s frustration waned for a moment. These really were good people, good friends. “Are you being mushy with me, sir?”

  A light flashed out in the hallway, and all at once there was a buzz of conversations and another couple of flashes, and altogether too much hubbub for a place where patients were supposed to heal and get some rest.

  Michael Cutler squeezed Trip’s good shoulder and grinned. “I don’t do mushy. I’m stalling for time.”

  His friends stepped back as the noise outside in the hallway grew louder. Then a couple of familiar faces popped through the doorway. “Hey, shrimp.”

  Trip smiled as his best friend, Alex Taylor, came forward to shake his hand. “Good to see, big guy. I’m tellin’ ya, if I’d have been there, you’d still be in one piece.”

  “Oh, so now you think you’re funny?”

  “I think you missed me.”

  “Settle down, you two.” His fiancée, Audrey, leaned over and pressed a kiss to his cheek. That explained the flashing cameras. Pretty heiresses who’d gone into hiding because a killer wanted them dead tended to draw a crowd when they went out in public. Trip tucked away the wistful thought of Charlotte and fixed a smile on his face. “We brought you a present.” She turned to the door. “Okay!”

  The scrabbling of paws on the hospital’s slick linoleum floor might be the second-best sound he could have heard right then. “Max!”

  The black-and-tan torpedo ran into the room and launched himself onto Trip’s bed. “Whoa. Hey. Ow. Good to see you, buddy. We survived, you and me. We survived.”

  It took a moment to wrestle the mutt down to his good side, accept a friendly lick or two and then inspect the red vest he was wearing. “Certified Therapy Dog?”

  Captain Cutler w
hispered an order. “And now, we leave the room.”

  Audrey clicked her tongue and took Max’s leash. “C’mon, boy. Aunt Audrey is going to find you a snack.”

  One moment, his hospital room was in chaos, the next—it was serenely perfect.

  “Hey, Trip.”

  Charlotte Mayweather stood in his doorway. Her beautiful hair curling around her face, her high-topped tennis shoes on and her eyes smiling, beautiful, behind her red glasses.

  “Get over here.”

  She ran to his bed, was far too cautious about winding her arms around his neck, and gently kissed him. Screw that. He was hungry, he was needy, and his eyes were inexplicably tearing up. Trip snatched her around the waist and pulled her right onto the bed with him, claiming her mouth and pouring out his love and feeling with his one good hand that she was well and truly here with him and she was all right.

  When he let her come up for air, she touched his cheek, wiping away a tear. She stretched up to press the tenderest of kisses against his brow. “Don’t do that sweetheart. It tears me up inside to see you hurting.”

  She smiled wisely, gently throwing his one phobia back at him. “I’m okay, Trip. I just needed to see you. And now I’m okay.”

  “God, I missed you.” He grabbed a handful of her jacket and pulled her close again, kissing her cheek, kissing her neck. Her hands were on his face and in his hair as she returned the assault, kiss for kiss. “I was so worried something would happen to you. KCPD arrested your stepbrother, but the RGK is still out there.” He kissed her hair, kissed her ear. Stopped himself short. “Hey, look at these pretty little earrings.” He pulled far enough away to look her in the eye. “They’re beautiful. They fit your ear perfectly.”

  “It’s the new me. You said I could change. And I’m changing.” She turned in the bed, adjusting her position so that she could lie beside him, with her head on his shoulder and her hand splayed possessively at the center of his chest. “I’m not hurting anything, am I? I know I have an unintentional habit of—”

  “No.” He draped his right arm behind her back and claimed an equally possessive handful of her beautiful bottom. “Nothing hurts with you here like this.” A moment passed before he frowned and asked, “How did you get here?”

  He felt her smiling through the thin cotton of his hospital gown. “Audrey and Alex drove me.”

  “I meant, this isn’t your home or the museum. You’ve got Max with you, but, you’re out in the world.” He pressed a kiss to the crown of her hair. “You okay with that?”

  She nodded. “It’s a little scary. I’m not ready to drive myself yet or dive into the Plaza crowd when they turn on the lights Thanksgiving night. But I’m fine. I knew my driver, knew my destination—and I was so lonely without you. Like I said, I’m changing. I feel stronger now. I don’t want to be a shut-in anymore. I want to live. And love.”

  “That makes two of us.”

  They lay together for several minutes, and Charlotte’s bravery and simple willingness to break free from her mental bonds to be with him healed things inside him that no doctor could touch.

  “I hear you’ve got some time off coming up,” Charlotte finally whispered. “Any plans on how you’re going to spend it?”

  “Any suggestions?”

  She snuggled closer. “How about going on an archaeological dig with me? Unless I uncover another King Tut, I’m guessing the press won’t follow me into the middle of nowhere. And we’d be overseas, beyond the reach of Donny Kemp or whatever he’s calling himself now.”

  “The middle of nowhere can be a scary place.”

  “Not with you around. Nothing is too frightening for me to handle when I know you’ll be there to have my back.”

  “I always will,” he promised.

  “Digs can be pretty remote. It might be just you and me. Alone in a tent.”

  “Will it be dry there?”

  “We can go to a desert dig.”

  “Please. One sleeping bag?”

  “Yes.”

  Fantasies did come true. “Where do I sign up?”

  “I love you, Trip.” She pushed herself up to seek out his eyes. “I may be a little flaky around the edges, but I’ve never been a liar. I’m not too flaky, am I? I mean, not too much for you to handle, right?”

  “I see myself as kind of a ‘Charlotte Whisperer.’ I got you out of that house, didn’t I? Got you to stop attacking me with archaic weapons and kiss me instead.” He leaned forward and touched her lips to prove his point. “I think I can handle you.”

  “Are you sure you want to?”

  “You are one of a kind, Miss Mayweather.” Trip smiled and pulled her close. “And you’re all mine.”

  Epilogue

  The man showed his identification to the guard, emptied his pockets of anything suspicious and signed the chart to be admitted to the visitation room at KCPD’s Fourth Precinct detention center.

  He walked past a young pregnant woman and the lowlife in the orange jumpsuit who was lecturing her across the table. Other than the guard at the door and the man he was visiting, they were the only people in the room. Good.

  Once he spotted his quarry, he straightened his tie and lapels and headed to the table at the far side of the room. He slid onto the bench on his side of the plastic table and studied the weak-jawed coward sitting across from him.

  “Who are you?” Kyle Austin asked. “My court-appointed attorney? You look like an attorney.”

  He reached beneath the knot of his tie, into the lining of his suit and from the underside of his watch, and calmly began assembling his gift out of sight from the room’s security cameras.

  “Hey, c’mon, man. I’m as glad to get out of that cell as anybody, but I don’t know you.”

  “Really?” he finally spoke. Compulsion had cleared his mind, left him focused on his task. “I thought you claimed to know me quite well. That I served as some sort of inspiration for you.”

  He pressed the pad into the palm of his hand and glanced down at the drop of poison glistening off the sharp tip of the attached needle, carefully avoiding pricking his own skin.

  His father and uncles had taught him well. They’d taken him all over the country, all over the world, to learn their craft. They’d beaten him senseless when he hadn’t learned it right. So he was very careful, very correct, very precise in every task he set for himself now.

  “Wait a minute, are you…?”

  “I believe your stepsister knows me far better than you do.”

  “The RGK?”

  He held out his hand and Kyle was already instinctively reaching across the table to shake his hand the way any man would. He took Kyle’s hand, pricked his skin, held on tight when the other man flinched so he wouldn’t waste a drop of the precious potion he was injecting into him.

  Kyle Austin was already feeling the effects. His joints were locking up, his breath was constricting, his heart was stopping.

  The visitor stood, pulling out his handkerchief to hide the device and wipe the trace of the other man’s blood from his hand.

  “Never interfere with a plan of mine again.”

  ISBN: 978-1-4268-8835-9

  PROTECTING PLAIN JANE

  Copyright © 2011 by Julie Miller

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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  *The Precinct

  %The Precinct: Vice Squad

  **The Precinct: Brotherhood of the Badge

  ^The Precinct: SWAT