But Wyatt rolled to his knees. A split second later, Wyatt was jabbing the barrel of an old Glock between Adam’s ribs, his finger on the trigger.
Wyatt was smiling. He’d had another gun, too, using the distraction to go for it.
“You won’t kill me,” Wyatt said smugly. “If you’d been capable of doing so, you’d have done it when you had the chance.”
That might have been true a week ago. Even a day ago. But not today. Wyatt had stolen too much from too many people. He’s not stealing Meredith’s happiness, too. And I am her happiness.
With no fanfare, Adam pulled the trigger. Wyatt jerked backward, his eyes wide with shock. But he didn’t go down. Shock gave way to hate as Wyatt’s gun began to lift.
Adam fired once more, the bullet making a neat hole in Wyatt’s forehead. Dead center. Wyatt crumpled, dead before he hit the ground.
Just like Andy Gold had. Just like John Kasper had. Vicious satisfaction filled him.
A movement caught his attention and Adam looked up to see Trip walking toward him, holstering his weapons. Trip bent down to pick up the gun that had fallen from Wyatt’s hand, only after he was dead.
“You okay?” Trip asked quietly.
Adam looked at Wyatt’s face. And nodded. “Yes. I am.” He really was. He pointed to the gun at Trip’s side. “You were going to shoot, but you didn’t. Why?”
“I thought you should do it. But if you couldn’t, I was happy to.”
Adam’s mouth quirked. “Thank you.”
“Not a problem. Sorry I got here late to the party. I stopped to check on Nash. Wyatt hit him hard with the butt of his gun. Nash was in some serious pain, but he was mostly worried about Meredith.”
Meredith. “Where is she?”
“I helped Deacon carry her up the hill. She’s in my vehicle, waiting for the EMTs.”
Adam tried to stand, but his leg buckled beneath him. He grunted, pain radiating throughout his whole body. Fuck. He’d forgotten about the damn knife. He reached back to pull it out, but Trip stopped him, kneeling beside him to examine the wound.
“Don’t touch it, man. The medics are coming. Let them do it. You’re not bleeding too much. Yank it out and you might gush like a stuck pig.”
Better do what the rookie says, Adam thought, then blinked a few times to clear his vision when little black dots started to encroach. It wasn’t panic this time. Somehow he knew that. It was probably . . . shock?
Holstering Nash’s gun, Adam pushed to his knees, rotating a few degrees so that he didn’t have to touch Wyatt Hanson’s body. He had to close his eyes against another wave of pain. When he opened them, he was surprised to see Isenberg standing just outside the underpass, on the same side Adam had entered.
“She came down the hill at the same time I did, but on the less steep side,” Trip said in a nearly soundless whisper. “She was ready to shoot him, too.”
Isenberg approached, reaching out her hand.
Right. The weapon. He’d fired it. And I’m not one goddamned bit sorry. He dropped the clip from the magazine and racked it to be sure there were no bullets chambered. He then placed the gun and clip on her palm. “Procedure,” he murmured. “Got it. For the record, I’d do it again in a heartbeat. You can put that in your report.”
Isenberg gave him a look that was equal parts compassion and exasperation. And concern, he thought. A lot of concern.
She dropped the weapon and the clip in her coat pocket. “It was self-defense, Adam,” she said. “Trip and I saw it.” She extended her hand again and he realized she’d been trying to help him up.
“Oh,” he said numbly. He gripped her hand, groaning when Trip took his other arm, hefting him to his feet. Reality poured in—the iron smell of blood mixing with the sulfur of fired weapons, the sight of Wyatt’s body, the sound of shouting cops and the sirens of approaching emergency vehicles. He hoped at least one was an ambulance. For Meredith.
Now that it was over, he felt the adrenaline crashing and the panic rising. She was hurt and he needed to help her.
“Need to get to Meredith,” he said. He turned too fast and stumbled, but Trip held him upright. He tried to yank free, but Trip held firm. “Let me go, Trip. Please.”
“I don’t think so, old man,” Trip said, his rumbly voice soothing in all the chaos. “Maybe you need to wait for the medics.”
“I think he needs to see Dr. Fallon,” Isenberg said quietly, and Adam wanted to thank her. He wanted to weep. He wanted to scream. But he did none of those things.
“Yes,” he gritted out, hanging on to control by a thread. “Meredith. Please.”
Isenberg squeezed his arm. “Come on, Adam. Agent Triplett, let’s get him up the embankment. And make sure he doesn’t fall backward on that fucking knife.”
The two of them kept him steady as he combination hopped/dragged himself around the wrecked van, straight to where Meredith lay in the cargo bay of one of the SUVs. Deacon had begun administering first aid, wrapping a bandage around the arm that still sullenly oozed blood.
“She’s lost a lot of blood,” Deacon said quietly and Adam’s heart stopped once more.
“How much?”
Deacon’s gaze told Adam that it was too serious to say out loud. “The medics are a minute out. Don’t move her other hand. I think it’s broken.”
“I can hear you, y’know,” Meredith whispered and opened her eyes. “You’re okay,” she whispered. “Tell me that you’re okay. He stabbed you. I saw him stab you.”
He was lowered to his knees, aware of Isenberg and Trip stepping back to give him some privacy. Leaning into the SUV, he rested against the rear bumper, cupping her noninjured cheek. “I’m more okay than you are.”
“I’m good,” she said lightly, but it was so forced that it hurt him to hear it. “The doctors’ll stitch me up and send me back into the game.”
Adam brushed a kiss against her temple. “As long as the game is checkers or dominoes. Nothing more dangerous than that.”
“Deal.” Her eyelids fluttered closed. “Tell Papa that I’m okay. That I love him.”
Fear speared him. She sounded so weak and her words had slurred. “You’ll tell him yourself,” Adam said firmly. “Meredith? Meredith!”
She wasn’t answering. She wasn’t conscious. His fear spread and a look up at Deacon told him the feeling was well-founded.
“Dani’s on her way to the hospital,” Deacon said. “She’ll meet us in the ER and walk us through whatever the doctor says and does.” He gripped Adam’s shoulder. “Meredith’s still here. And so am I. Don’t forget that.”
A sob rose in his throat and he battled it back. “I won’t.”
Chapter Thirty-one
Cincinnati, Ohio
Tuesday, December 22, 10:15 a.m.
“You need to go home, son, and get some rest.”
Adam didn’t look up, didn’t look away from Meredith’s pale face as her grandfather came into her ICU room and wearily dropped into the plastic chair beside Adam’s.
“I’m okay,” Adam said quietly. And he was. The knife had not hit anything major and he had not gushed like a stuck pig when it was removed, contrary to Trip’s dire prediction. “I’ll stay until she’s awake.”
She had woken once, shortly after her surgery. Her eyes had opened and she’d looked around wildly, settling only when she found Adam in the chair beside her bed. Her dry lips had mouthed, Love you, and she’d smiled at him. Then her eyes had closed as she slipped back into unconsciousness.
He gingerly held only the middle and forefingers of her left hand, which bore all the needles and IVs, as well as splints on her ring finger and pinkie. Her right hand was swathed in bandages that continued all the way up to her shoulder.
The bullet Wyatt had fired at her as he’d made his desperate getaway in the van had damaged the tendons in her upper arm, wh
ich was why her arm had hung so limply. The surgeon believed he’d repaired the damage, but the recovery would be painful. He had, however, been hopeful that she’d regain full use of the arm. Which was all good news.
That she was alive was Adam’s main concern. And she was. Her chest raised and lowered with regular, if shallow, breaths. The bastard had broken one of her ribs and two of the fingers on her left hand, but she’d fought him hard. She’d shot him twice and slashed his face twice—with her shoe and with her pretty pink tactical pen. With hearts.
Quincy had found the pen in the bloody snow and had brought it to show Adam, tagged in an evidence bag. Adam had seen her coloring with it, but he hadn’t known what it was at the time and his eyes had stung brutally when he realized how damn good his woman had been at protecting herself. Even though she shouldn’t have had to. Ever.
Still, Adam was going to buy her a whole case of pretty pink tactical pens and a closetful of high-heeled shoes when she woke up, because she was who she was, and as long as she helped children in need, she’d make enemies.
Other than that one moment after her surgery, she hadn’t woken again. She’d had a steady stream of visitors, because Meredith was well loved by everyone. That had not surprised him.
That they came in one at a time, not one of them disputing his claim on the chair closest to her bedside, had surprised him. And humbled him.
Clarke resettled his big frame in the small chair. “You need to eat, boy,” he said gruffly. “She’ll have my hide when she wakes up if you’re half dead from hunger.”
Adam’s lips curved, visualizing her locking wills with her grandfather. But his smile quickly dimmed. He didn’t have the energy to maintain it. “She told me to tell you that she was okay,” he murmured. “When we were waiting for the ambulance back at the crime scene. Oh,” he remembered, “and that she loves you. I’m sorry. I forgot to tell you before.”
The big man beside him shuddered out a breath. “Thank you,” he said, and there were tears in his voice. And on his face. The old man was crying openly and without apology. And without an iota of shame.
Adam nodded, remaining silent because he was no longer able to trust his own voice. He reached out a hand that trembled and stroked the inside of her left arm, over the faded scars, emotion welling up to choke him. He clenched his jaw against it, clenched every muscle in his body against it.
It always passed, the need to weep. But it wasn’t passing this time and he found himself impaled on it, stuck between breaths. Unable to inhale or exhale. And panicking.
A beefy hand thunked him heavily on his back and with a whoosh he expelled the breath that had been stuck in his lungs.
“You gotta breathe, son,” Clarke muttered. “It’s kind of a necessary thing.”
Adam expected the weight on his back to disappear, but it didn’t. It gentled, the old man’s hand spreading wide and rubbing his back in slow circles. And once again his eyes burned and his breath hitched.
“When’s the last time you let it all out, Adam?” Clarke asked in a whisper. “Let your guard down and just let it all out?”
Adam turned only his head to look at him. “What?”
Clarke smiled sadly. “When was the last time you cried, Adam?”
Adam blinked at him, thrown by the question. “I don’t know.”
Clarke sighed. “That’s what I thought. It’s okay, you know. To cry.”
Adam shook his head. “I know that. But . . . not for me.”
The big hand kept making those big, soothing circles on his back and Adam felt his eyes growing heavy. “I met your father,” Clarke said suddenly and Adam blinked awake.
“When? Where?”
“About an hour ago. In the waiting room. He’s . . . well, he’s an asshole, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
Adam huffed a shocked laugh. “No, I don’t mind at all. It’s true. What did he do?”
“Demanded to see you. All bluster and ‘me, me, me.’ He had your mother with him. I think she’s the one who wanted to see you, but your dad . . . ? Well, he kind of—”
“Mowed right over her,” Adam supplied sadly. “I wish I’d known she was there. She doesn’t deserve what he does to her, but she doesn’t fight back. I don’t think she ever could.” He frowned, turning back to the woman who lay in the bed, motionless except for the even rise and fall of her chest. “She’s no Meredith, that’s for sure.”
“No, she’s not. But she seems to love you. I could see it in her face.” He cleared his throat. “I offered to bring her back here to see you, but told her that only two people could be here in ICU and you weren’t leaving Merry’s side. In actuality, I never would have allowed him to come back here. You understand that, right?”
“Oh, I do. And I agree.”
“Good. Anyway, your father said he wasn’t allowing your mom to come back here without him. That you should come see your mom in the waiting room. She backed away from that, said that your place was next to the woman you loved.” Clarke drew a breath and held it for longer than necessary. “I thought he’d hit her. Does he hit her?”
“She says no,” Adam said uneasily. “I’ve never seen him hit her. He never really hit me, even. It was more emotional manipulation. He’s good at that. I tried to get my mother to leave, to walk away and come live with me. Well, I used to. I haven’t for a year or so.”
And I should have. I’m sorry, Ma.
“Since the girl was killed in front of you,” Clarke said, not mincing words.
Adam’s brows lifted. “How did you know?”
“It’s all over the news. The Ledger ran a piece on the girl, posted a photo of her taken from one of your Skype sessions. CPD is trying to find out where she came from.”
“Nash wanted to,” Adam remembered. “Right after it happened. I did, too. But Wyatt said the videos had been lost.” He frowned, then closed his eyes on a sigh. “I found a DVD in a pile of stuff on my kitchen table a few months later. I was drunk that day. Every day back then, actually. I was on mental health leave, but I made a copy and took it to my old boss in Personal Crimes. He promised me that he’d put a team on it. I guess they did for a while, but . . . priorities. They had live kids to save. I should have fought for her, should have asked Isenberg to take the case. But I couldn’t. There was this mental block whenever it came to Paula. And then when I got sober? My sponsor said I needed to distance myself. That every time I thought about Paula I was dancing close to the edge, and he was afraid if I fell over again that I’d never find my way back.” He rubbed his temples. “Now I’ll never know if John really believed that or if Wyatt put him up to it.”
“Either way, he may have been right,” Clarke said softly. “Sometimes you have to walk away and save yourself. Did you wonder where the DVD came from?”
“No. I figured I’d had it all along, that it had gotten mixed up with other stuff.” He winced. “My place wasn’t so clean back then.”
“But it is now,” Clarke said. “It was military clean when I went with Deacon to get you some clothes,” he added when Adam turned to him, surprised that the old man had gone out of his way. And touched. And feeling his damn eyes burn again. Goddammit.
“Thank you,” he managed. “That was nice of you.”
Clarke studied him. “I bet your father told you that men don’t cry.”
Adam huffed again, this time in frustration. He pivoted in his chair so that he could see only Meredith. Her face was blurry, but he refused to blink. The water in his eyes would drain back into his tear ducts or dry up or whatever it did when this had happened before.
Except he couldn’t remember the last time his eyes had blurred with real tears.
“Did he?” Clarke pressed.
Adam clenched his jaw. “Yes, he did,” he replied with a cold finality that he hoped told the old man to leave it alone. No such luck.
“Adam, he’s wrong.” The old man’s voice had softened, rumbling between them. “When I was Shane’s age, I was dropped into combat. Korea. I saw my best friend die.” He was quiet a moment. “He got his head blown off, just like Shane’s friend Andy. And your sponsor. Not something a man forgets too easily.”
Adam swallowed hard, not wanting to remember John’s head blowing apart all over him. And unable to erase the memory. “Were you injured?” He meant to ask it confidently, with compassion. But the words came out gravelly and rough.
“Yeah. Nothing permanent, but I needed surgery. I woke up to this beautiful girl. Thought I’d actually died and gone to heaven,” he said fondly. “It was my Essie. She was an army nurse then. I thought nurses were soft creatures, but I was wrong. She ripped into my hide when I refused to talk about my buddy. When I refused to write home and tell them that I was okay. When I shut down.”
Adam understood. God, he understood. He coughed past the blockage in his throat, keeping his face turned away. Because those tears in his eyes had spilled over to his cheeks. But only two. One on each side. The wetness would dry.
The heavy hand returned to his back and Adam realized he’d hunched over and gripped the bed rails so tightly that his knuckles were white.
“She did not let me get away with any shit. She made me talk about my friend. And when I cried, I tried not to let her see. I turned my face away, but she made me look at her. Made me talk to her. And told me that the tears were good things. I believed her. My pop had cried from time to time. I wasn’t personally averse to the notion, you understand. I just didn’t want to cry in front of her. Because I was nineteen.”
Adam said nothing, but it didn’t seem to matter. The back rub continued, soothing him. The words continued in that soft voice, tearing him apart inside.
“So we got married, Essie and me. Had a good life. I won’t say it was perfect. I won’t say I was perfect. I still had nightmares, and I still had periods of depression. I’m not saying that letting it all out and crying like a whipped pup was the magical answer that kept me from having the PTSD that a lot of my buddies brought home with them.”