As Sasha screamed on, Kelly spread her fingers on the ground, feeling for the Taser that wasn’t in Sasha’s hand.
Sasha shook her head. “You can’t beat me, Kelly. I will steal who I want and you can’t stop me.” Her chest puffed between words. “So I need to make you understand. No man will want you over me. They’ll want me.”
She jabbed the gun at Kelly’s temple, the cold metal stinging her skin.
“But you can’t go on. You can’t steal what I always win and walk away. So I had to follow you. I had to take every man you had. Every man you want, I can take. Any man you desire will want me more because I’ll always be better!”
A faint groan came from Will and Kelly dared a glance at him. Sasha jerked her to pay attention.
“The others were mistakes. I thought they were your lovers so they had to be taken. Killed.”
Sasha fisted her collar tighter with a shake. “It took so long. You have no idea how long I waited to find a man to steal from you. So long. But I found him. And now you’ll watch me take him and kill him.”
Kelly’s heart thudded like a piston and she swallowed blood.
Sasha leaned up to train the gun on Will. “You can’t have him. You can’t have anyone. You see? This time, finally, you lose. Not me.” She moved her finger to the trigger and grinned at her. “Say good—”
Will jerked up to throw a jack-stand at Sasha, and her head twisted back at an unnatural angle. A faint oomph of air shot out of her lips as she clumped to the side, off of Kelly.
Will slouched to the ground with a wince and crawled towards Kelly. She scrambled on hands and knees to him.
“Will.” Her voice strained as he grabbed her and held her so fiercely she had to gasp for air.
He reached for the sledgehammer and she pulled back to check Sasha’s still body on the ground. She clutched his shirt and rested her forehead on his chest.
Footsteps came in the front bay. “The drunk bastard’s breaking in to stores now. Busting his own damn windows. He’s going in. Drunk and disorderly.” Eric’s sniggering voice neared. “Where’s that good-for-nothing—?”
“NO!”
Kelly spun her head from Will’s protective embrace at Sasha’s scream. She jerked up and turned the gun at Kelly’s face.
Will pulled her to his chest as Fred and Eric came in the room.
Three shots roared in the garage like thunder.
Chapter 52
“What the hell were you thinking?” Will’s question was a yell as he followed the stretcher to the ambulance on Main. Locals and tourists crowded the scene in front of the garage.
“Hey.” Her voice didn’t carry like his bellowing, but Kelly was tired of being talked over. Tired in general. Damn that’s a lot of blood. “Hello! Hey!” She smacked the closest EMT on the shoulder.
“Easy ma’am, take it easy.”
She gave the young EMT the finger and tried to sit up. Goddammit, I’m a nurse. I’ve tended to more gunshots wounds than he has.
“Hey!” She tried to get the EMT’s attention again as they wheeled her away. “He’s bleeding!”
Will’s angry frown hovered over her as they directed the stretcher to the back. “What the hell were you thinking?” he demanded again.
“Oh, shut up,” she muttered, swiping the gauze out of the EMT’s hand just before he pressed it to her shoulder. “Here.” She shoved it at Will. “Put it on your arm.”
He narrowed his eyes at her as they wheeled her further.
“You’re bleeding,” she said.
***
He was bleeding. But she was the one who got hit. Twice.
Eric’s a dead man.
“What the hell did you shove me down for?” He climbed in the back of the ambulance as they loaded her up.
Kelly pointed to the grazing on his arm, still nurturing him when she had been shot. He obeyed and held the gauze to the cut.
“Did he even go to an academy somewhere?” Kelly said, wincing.
Eric had come in, hopefully with the intent to disarm Kendra, but he had tripped on an oil pan and shot Kelly in the thigh instead.
And when Kendra aimed for Will’s heart, Kelly had shoved him down, taking the bullet through her shoulder, slowing it down before it grazed his forearm.
The love stuff. Kelly sure didn’t take it lightly.
“She shot you.” Will hated how her face seemed so lined with fatigue.
“He shot me!” Kelly argued. “A cop, my ass.”
Will’s lungs couldn’t catch up, and he was certain his heart never would.
He had thought he’d lost her. When Kendra sat up to shoot her, he had tucked her down to save her. Save her. No. Of course not. Not Kelly.
She takes the damn bullet for me.
“She shot you.” He frowned at her.
Kelly’s alive. Kelly’s alive.
He spun the idea in his head, trying to calm down.
“No. She was aiming for you. That’s what I was thinking. I knew she wanted to kill you. I was trying to save you. Leave it to the goddamn cop to fuck it up.” Kelly groaned and strained to inspect her shoulder.
***
Kelly relaxed back in the stretcher, replaying the blur of action in her frenzied mind. One shot, she felt a stab in her thigh. Another shot, she pushed Will down as fire burned her shoulder. Last shot, the gun fell out of Sasha’s hand.
At least Fred knew how to keep his feet and hit a target.
As Will argued with her in the ambulance, she let his words in one ear, out the other. He was alive. She checked her shoulder. I’m alive.
It didn’t escape her notice. As furiously as he argued and scolded her in the ambulance, he had yet to let go of her hand and lose the scared shitless expression that hid under his scowl.
Annoyed he couldn’t save me? Probably.
“And if I push you out of harm’s way then you obey—”
“Hey, Will?”
He faced her with his mouth still open mid-sentence.
“I love you.” She tipped the corner of her mouth up in a grin as the EMT shoved an oxygen mask over her face.
Sasha-Kendra-Betsy-Denner, whoever, is dead. Will is safe.
His death grip on her hand gave her hope he could forgive her for the refusal on the beach. She rubbed her thumb over his trembling knuckles.
Chapter 53
Commotion was a mild way to describe Kelly’s room at the hospital. At ten in the morning the day after Sasha had tried to teach her a lesson, the whole herd of her family had come. Heather had driven Dad down. Wade was trying to fly in from San Diego. Sean and Finn had flown in, and Grant had come in the middle of the night. They were the non-Churchston half. When Clay, Randy, and the Burns trooped in, Kelly protested and ousted them from her room.
Wanting explanations, she posted Grant as her sentinel. Only Will and Gannon were allowed in.
After receiving her voicemail, asking about the name Denner, the detective had driven back to Churchston—arriving an hour after Sasha had tried to kill Kelly and Will. She and Will had already given their statements. But it was too much to understand.
Her immediate worries were resolved. Her men were safe. After Fred had taken Eric’s gun and badge, he’d secured the scene at the garage. A bloodied bat was found in the Buick’s trunk, next to a single surgical bootie. An animal crate was found smashed in the back seat.
They found the person who had hurt her friends. But who that person was, remained ambiguous.
Kelly fingered the bandage on her shoulder. She couldn’t wait for answers from the crazy woman she had known as Sasha, as Kendra, after she came out of surgery, in custody, of course. It seemed too unreal of a tale for one woman to change identities so often.
“So her real name was Ruth Denner?” Will asked Gannon.
He gulped back coffee before answer. “One of them. Eight years ago she had married Richard Denner. CEO from Salt Lake City. She filed divorce three days after the marriage. I suspect she was also Linda G
rimes in Dallas twelve years ago. And five years ago, she might have been Wendy Smith.”
“She legally married them? Bigamy?” Grant asked.
“Yes and no. Maybe. Denner, we have records of her divorcing him. Grimes, he was killed in a car accident. Smith… I think she pulled a disappearing act on him,” Gannon said.
“She went from man to man, seducing them for money? And Kelly interfered with her plans to make big on this Norbert guy?” Will asked.
Kelly shook her head. Emily had screamed about power. About winning. It was the game of convincing people to choose her that motivated the sicko. “No. She said she ‘stole John from me’. John wasn’t loaded. He had money, but no wealth.”
Gannon nodded. “I think the money appealed to her. It was her income, if you would. We’ve found traces of this Denner money being used all over the country. It took a while to follow the pattern, but there were oddball slips in cold cases.” He consulted his notepad. “First time she showed up in records was a child’s thumbprint on a bloodied knife. Cold case from Tallahassee nineteen years ago. A prostitute by the name of Carmen Dunstan was killed in her apartment—she’d had a daughter by the name of Emily, but there was no further record of the girl. In school. Doctor appointments. Social Security Number. Nothing. Next, we’ve got her print on a gun in Miami. Drug dealer shot in his bed. It’ll take some time to piece it together, all these little tips in old cases. At some point, she must have gotten smart, careful to leave fewer clues. There’s a long gap where there aren’t any leads to her. Until this Denner name pops up.
“She must have anticipated Norbert leaving his money to her—his girlfriend, fiancé, whatever she was. But when Kelly found his daughter and reunited them, he choose his daughter to love, not Emily. Since her plans were botched, she killed Betsy in order to get in and kill Norbert. All speculation—” Gannon took a deep breath. “But we should get some answers as soon as the doctor clears her for questioning.”
“If John didn’t have money, why did she go from Norbert to John?” Grant asked.
“Revenge,” Kelly said. “She wanted to get revenge at me. For spoiling her plans with Norbert.”
“So she stole him,” Will said. “She got him to cheat on you. She broke up your marriage. Why’d she come down here and—”
“Because she didn’t really steal him,” Kelly said. “He had wanted me back.” Will must not have been listening to all of Emily’s confessions in the garage. “I was a threat somehow. She manipulated John, but she never really got him.”
Will glared at the tiles on the floor. “So every man you seemed to be with, she tried to take from you.”
Kelly leaned her head back to the pillow with a sigh. Gannon peeked at his phone. “I’m needed down the hall.”
“We’ll be in touch?” she asked.
“Of course.” He shook hands with Grant on the way to the door. “Where am I going to find you next? Atlanta? Here?”
Kelly wanted to shrug. She couldn’t answer those questions yet.
“I’m going to go find Dad, Kel,” Grant said as he moved to leave, passing Gannon at the door. “Get some rest.”
Gannon glanced at Will, staring out the window, then back to her. With a smile, he rocked on his heels and stepped out of the room.
Kelly closed her eyes, too exhausted to work on an answer to Gannon’s question. To her own. The only person to give her direction remained standing at the window.
“I know you’re awake, Kelly,” Will said.
Her smile turned to a frown as she opened her eyes. “I wouldn’t be if you’d stop harassing me.” She tested her shoulder.
“Why did you shove me down?” he demanded and set his huge hands on the bed.
For such a sharp man he could really be dense. “She was targeting any man I seemed involved with. You were the only one. I didn’t want you to get shot.”
“But you did!”
“Well, I can’t explain Eric’s piss-poor aim but I knew she was trying to kill you.” She gave him a one-sided shrug. “You know, I figured you’d be happier than this.”
“You could have died!”
“So could you. Goddammit, Will. I took the damn bullet for you. It doesn’t mean you’re less of a man!”
“You weren’t supposed to take a bullet for me.”
“Too bad.”
“I’m supposed to protect you.”
Like he was supposed to have protected Matt. It had to be hard for him. But she wasn’t going to be a burden on him. “Be my guest. But it doesn’t mean I won’t have your back too.”
Guilt had taken a toll on his life and if they had a future to share, it was going to be with more than guilt and worry.
“You’re a pain in the ass.” He stood up to pace again and wiped his face. “You could have died back there and…”
“Heather out there?” Kelly looked around him at the closed door. “She was supposed to bring me ice cream two hours ago.”
He stared at her speechlessly. Probably imagined she was dismissing him with her blunt dodge around the guilt trip he intended to ride through. “Yeah. She’s out there.” He moved for the door, and paused with a heavy breath. “Thanks for taking the bullet, Kelly.”
“You’re leaving?”
“I don’t have any ice cream.”
“Where’s my ring?” She sat up more and watched the cords of his neck strain as he grit his teeth.
“What ring?”
“You don’t want to marry me anymore? Oh, come on! Because I took the bullet for you?”
“Because you don’t want to marry me.” Will stormed back to the bed.
“I said no because I knew she was trying to kill you. Or me!”
His eyes steeled on her and she stuck her chin out. “You don’t want to marry me anymore?”
He fidgeted.
It was an old game and her patience thinned.
Now or never, she waited.
“Fine.” She looked out the window. “Nice knowing you, Will. See ya around.”
The silence was heavy until he cleared his throat. He tossed the ring box onto the bed and his voice cracked. “Please don’t scare me like that anymore.”
She eyed the box. “What’s this?”
“Your ring.”
“You’re tossing it to me?”
He rolled his eyes.
She whipped her focus back to the window and crossed her arms. “I changed my mind. I don’t want to marry you.”
“Yes, you do.” He leaned his fists on the bed, caging her in.
“Nope.” She refused to look at him, but the skyrocket of her pulse was likely to send one of the nurses in.
“Yes, you do.” His voice melted to a softer husky tone.
“Why would I?” She met his gaze.
His lips curved in a little smile. “You love me.”
You love me. Was he ever going to say it?
“Do you?” she asked.
Come on, Will, say it.
His lips twitched.
“You can’t say it, can you?”
“Give me back that damn box.” Will anted up to her yells. “Kelly, stop it—”
She tucked it further under the sheets. “Why do you want to marry me?” she insisted.
“Because you said you loved me.”
“Oh, you’re such a wimp!”
“Give me the box.”
“You can’t marry me if you don’t love me.”
“I do!” Will bellowed back.
“Wrong line. That’s what you say when you’re actually at the altar—”
He rubbed at the back of his neck. “You are the most—”
“You do what, Will?”
“I love you, dammit!”
“Was that so hard?”
“Oh, give me your hand. There. There’s the ring.” He slid it on. He lifted her hand to his lips and kissed her knuckles.
She smiled up at him. “You’re going to make my life a living hell, aren’t you?”
�
�Only as much as you’ll make mine.” He pushed the side bar of the bed down.
“Will. Stop. You can’t fit up here.”
“Hell I can’t.”
Kelly laughed. “Really, you can’t fit up here. Hey.” She quieted as he kissed her lips. “That’s my nightgown.”
“Mmm. It’s my fiancée’s nightgown and I say it goes.”
She squirmed to make room for him. “Will, where are we going to go?”
He laced his fingers with hers and thumbed the ring. Kissing her uninjured shoulder, he said, “I think you’ll have to stay another night.”
She shook her head. “Do you want to stay here, Will? In Churchston? Do you want to leave? You could have a garage anywhere. But I’ll start my EMS-1 classes online next week and—”
“Wherever you want to, Kelly. As long we go together.”
Let me know what you thought of Kelly and Will. Please consider leaving a review!
Acknowledgements
This work of fiction would not be possible without the encouragement and support from my friends and family. Endless thanks are due. Phil, for my very first critique. The dedicated and insightful critique partners and beta readers I’ve been so fortunate to find: JoAnn, Renee, Bruce, Carolyn, Christie, Emma, Tracey, Rhonda, and Liz. Amanda, you called dibs…you were my very first official “fan”. For professional expertise: Coty Sparks, Dr. John Herman and Cynthia Cummings. Michelle Josette, for her professional care and editing savvy.
Last but not least, this novel would’ve never seen the light of day without the staunch faith and patience my husband has in my imagination and determination. Here’s to you, for every time I said “just five more minutes” and typed away into the night.
About the Author
Amabel Daniels lives in Northwest Ohio with her patient husband, adventurous toddler and a collection of too many cats and dogs. Although she holds a Master’s degree in Ecology, her true love is finding a good book. When she isn’t spending time outdoors, she’s busy brewing up her next novel, usually as she lets her mind run off with the addictive words of “what if…”
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