Читать книгу Police Protector - Elizabeth Heiter - Страница 11

Chapter Three

He wasn’t letting her out of his sight?

All sorts of inappropriate thoughts ran through Shaye’s mind until she was sure Cole could see exactly what she was thinking, especially when his pupils dilated, staring back at her.

She dropped her gaze to her lap, her heart thudding way too hard after the day she’d had, and pulled her hand free from his. She’d had a massive crush on Cole from the moment she’d met him. But if she hadn’t already known it, last year’s shooting had quickly shown her that they’d never work. While she’d turned in her resignation the very next morning—over the phone because she was too afraid to return to the scene of the crime—he’d gone right back to work.

They would never be equals. He would always be the brave detective with the badge and the gun, and here she was again, the terrified forensics expert. It couldn’t be more obvious, with her stuck in this hospital bed, in a hospital gown someone had changed her into—she hoped not in front of Cole—and him ready to dive right into solving the case.

But this time would be different, she vowed. Because she might be way too shy, way too awkward, way too boring for a man like Cole Walker, but she was tired of feeling like a coward. Two years ago she’d moved out to Maryland from Michigan, leaving behind her big, well-meaning family and the anonymity that came with being the middle child in a group of five. She’d dived into the unfamiliar, trying to break out of her comfort zone. She’d even bought a house, putting down roots right away, to force herself to stay if things got tough. And things had sure gotten tough.

She wasn’t going to let herself be driven out of the job she loved and the place she’d come to consider home a second time.

She clenched her jaw and looked back up at Cole, praying her cheeks would cool. “What do we know so far about the forensics? What can I do?”

Her specialty was computers, but she had plenty of cross-training. There had to be some way she could help catch this guy. And once they caught him, maybe she could get back to the task of putting her life back on track.

Cole patted her hand. “Right now I just want you to focus on healing up.”

“I’m fine.” She knew he didn’t mean to condescend to her, but if she wanted him to take her seriously as a professional—and not a victim he had to take care of—she needed to show him a reason. She shoved off the blanket and got to her feet, remembering too late she was hooked up to an IV.

The nurse ran in as her monitor went off, and Shaye clapped her hand over the crook of her elbow where she’d pulled out the line.

Cole stood, tried to steady her as she wobbled a little on her feet. “What are you doing?”

“Going home.”

“You need to be under observation,” the nurse stated, scowling as she slapped a piece of cotton over the blood on Shaye’s arm and taped it down.

“I’m fine,” Shaye said. “The wound on my leg is closed, right? My heart rate and blood pressure have been pretty normal the whole time I’ve been in here.” She’d been peeking over at her monitor periodically as she and Cole talked. “You said you were going to release me today. I’m ready to go.”

The nurse frowned at her, but it was nothing compared with Cole’s expression, a mixture of worry, frustration and anger.

Shaye stood her ground. “Have the doctor look at me if you need to, but I feel okay. I want to go home.”

The nurse muttered something under her breath, then looked her over. “All right. But if you start feeling dizzy or your wound opens up, I want you to come back here—understood?”

Nodding, Shaye hoped she wasn’t making a mistake. But she couldn’t stay here any longer. She needed answers about who had shot at her—and why. And she wasn’t going to get them on her back in a hospital bed.

She was tired of letting things happen to her. It was time to fight back.

* * *

“EVERYTHING HAS BEEN quiet all night,” Marcos Costa told Cole as soon as he drove up next to the car.

Cole’s youngest brother may not have shared his blood—they’d met at a foster home as kids—but they’d formed a bond that went deeper than genetics. After Shaye had spent several hours in the forensics lab, Cole had driven her home and then promptly called his two brothers to see who was available to watch her house until he got off work. Their middle brother, Andre, was on a mission for the FBI, but Marcos had been free.

Now it was 3:00 a.m., and everything looked quiet on Shaye’s street. Her house was situated on a corner lot in a cute little neighborhood that boasted its fair share of picket fences and young families. The kind of place where a stranger skulking about would be noticed.

Still, it was Shaye. He wasn’t leaving anything to chance. And his youngest brother worked for the DEA, so he had plenty of experience spotting suspicious characters.

“Thanks,” Cole said through his window as his car idled next to Marcos’s.

“No problem. We all love Shaye.” Marcos glanced past Cole at his partner, Luke, in the passenger seat and nodded hello. “Is there a reason we’re doing this on the street instead of in her house?”

“She doesn’t know you’re here.”

“Yeah, I got that,” Marcos said with a dimpled smile. “I’m wondering why exactly.”

“She refused police protection.” Luke Hayes, Cole’s partner on the force for the past three years, spoke up. “Officially we can’t force her.”

Marcos frowned. “But if someone’s gunning for her—”

Cole didn’t have to turn his head to feel Luke’s glance as he replied. “No one is gunning for her. The shooting that happened earlier this evening looks random.”

“Ah.” Marcos nodded knowingly. “Got it.”

“It’s a precaution,” Cole said, not bothering to hide his annoyance at what Marcos and Luke were clearly thinking. That he was overreacting because it was Shaye. That no matter how far out of his league she was, he was still going to be there whenever she needed him.

“Don’t worry,” Marcos said, starting his engine. “I don’t mind. But right now I’m going to head home and get a little sleep.” He started to shift into Drive, then paused and asked, “Shouldn’t you get some of that yourself?”

“That’s why Luke is here.”

Marcos grinned again. “You’re going to nap while he keeps watch?” He peered at Luke and joked, “All that Marine training means you don’t actually need sleep?”

Cole’s partner had been in the Marines before becoming a police officer.

“Ha-ha,” Cole said. “We’re going to take turns getting a little shut-eye.”

“Good luck,” Marcos said. “Call me if you need anything, okay?”

“You got it.” As Marcos pulled away, Cole eased into the spot his brother had chosen at the corner of the street. It was a perfect vantage point since it gave him a good angle on the two sides of Shaye’s house that abutted streets. The remaining sides of her house were bordered by neighbors’ yards, and they would be trickier for someone to approach.

Cole shut off his truck. It was a typical November night, hovering near forty degrees, but Cole didn’t want the running engine to draw any attention from the neighbors, in case anyone was a night owl. Besides, he and Luke were used to working in uncomfortable conditions. Both of them had been patrol officers before being bumped up to detectives.

They sat in silence for a few minutes, checking the area, and then Luke asked, “Have we officially released her car yet?”

Shaye’s car was still at Roy’s Grocery, where the parking lot had been roped off so he and Luke, along with a handful of cops working with them on the case, could pull evidence. They’d finished an hour ago, but Cole figured he’d tell Shaye in the morning.

“Technically, yeah. I thought I’d take her to pick it up tomorrow.”

“Or just have it towed,” Luke suggested. “She’ll need that bullet hole repaired.”

The gunman had fired three shots. One had hit the driver’s door of Shaye’s car, another had hit the back tire of the grocery store owner’s car and the third had gone into Shaye. He’d asked the forensics lab to put a rush on reviewing the bullets, but they’d looked insulted he’d even asked. Shaye was one of them. They were already rushing it.

“We hear anything yet about those security cameras?” Cole asked. Although the camera at the grocery store wasn’t real, there were others nearby they were checking. He’d probably have heard if there was news, because he’d made sure everyone working the case knew they should call him at any hour with updates. But he’d also spent several hours this evening at the hospital while Luke headed up the investigation. It was possible he’d missed something.

“Not yet,” Luke replied, but he dutifully pulled out his phone and tapped in a text, then shook his head a minute later. “They haven’t found the guy on any cameras yet.”

Cole wasn’t surprised. The grocery store wasn’t in a highly commercial area, and it didn’t get much criminal activity, either. There weren’t as many security cameras as there would have been if the shooting had happened in another area of town. He wondered if that had been the shooter’s intent.

“Shaye’s got bad luck.”

“What?” Cole shifted in his seat to face Luke, who always looked serious, with his buzz cut leftover from the military and his intense greenish-blue eyes.

“That’s all this was. We went over her timeline. She was at work until eight, and then she drove straight to the grocery store, which she said she hadn’t originally planned to do. If someone was after her specifically, that means they would have had to watch the forensics lab from at least five and then followed her. And in three hours, sitting outside a police station, don’t you think someone would have spotted him?”

Cole nodded. He knew it was true. All the evidence said this had nothing to do with Shaye. Still, ever since he’d shown up at that shooting, his instincts had been buzzing the way they always did on a case when he knew something was off. And it was telling him there was more going on here.

“If it was random, meant to be a spree shooting, then why did he wait until the place was almost empty?”

Luke frowned. “Yeah, that bothers me, too. But he ran into the parking lot. Maybe he’d been coming from committing a crime and Shaye was in his way.”

“We didn’t have any reports that would match up,” Cole reminded him.

“Not yet. Or maybe he planned to keep going—run though the grocery store lot, taking out anyone there, then move on to the rest of the businesses on the street. There are a couple of restaurants that were pretty full.”

It was one of the reasons they didn’t have any witnesses yet. It seemed counterintuitive—the shooter had run toward businesses full of people—but on a Friday night, it meant the music was loud, the patrons were drinking and no one heard a thing. Except for Roy still inside the grocery store, who’d sheltered in place and called the police.

“That’s possible,” Cole agreed, but he still couldn’t shake the dread gripping him, saying Shaye had a direct connection. Because Luke was right about one thing: how unlucky could one woman be? Two attempts on her life in a year?

“Today is almost a year to the day of the shooting at the station,” Cole said, even though he knew Luke didn’t need the reminder. Luke had been there, too; he’d run out right behind Cole, firing back at the gang members, completely outgunned with their service pistols against semiautomatics.

“Yeah, and that’s why I’m sitting in this car with you instead of in bed at home,” Luke replied. “Because I think we got everyone in that gang. But they’ve all got families, too.”

Cole nodded. It hadn’t occurred to him that a gang member’s family member might be trying to get revenge on Shaye for speaking up as a witness in the trial earlier in the year. His thoughts had always been on the families of the three officers who’d died that day. But his and Luke’s bullets had killed two gang members at the scene, and four more had died in subsequent raids, because they’d pulled weapons instead of throwing up their hands when police came to arrest them. Any one of those men—or the ones who’d landed in prison—could have family or friends desperate for revenge.

“That theory has the same problem, though,” Luke said. “If Shaye was a specific target, someone followed her to that grocery store. And if we’re talking about someone affiliated with a gang, yes, they wouldn’t be afraid to stake out a police station, but I doubt they’d be subtle enough to get away with it.”

“True. And if we’re looking at that kind of revenge, wouldn’t someone want us to know it was them?” Cole added. “Or go after the station too? Both of us instead of just Shaye? I don’t like the timing, and it seems way too coincidental that she’s targeted by gunmen twice—”

“She wasn’t targeted before,” Luke cut him off. “They had no idea she was involved in the digital analysis that got us the lead we needed on the gang leadership in the first place. They were there because we’d been investigating. She just happened to be on our side of the parking lot.”

A fresh wave of guilt washed over Cole. He knew why she’d been by the station doors, when she should have been on the other side near the forensics lab, out of the line of fire. Most days they’d ended around the same time and stood outside chatting for ten or twenty minutes before going their separate ways. That day, he’d been late, caught up in paperwork. And she’d almost paid with her life.

“Well, still,” Cole said, hoping Luke didn’t notice the new tension in his voice, “she’s been shot at twice in just over a year. I don’t like it.”

“Me, either,” Luke said, then swore.

“What?”

“Here she comes.”

“What?” Cole said, spinning back toward the direction of Shaye’s house.

His partner was right. Shaye was storming their way, her injured leg dragging a little behind, her hands crossed over her chest and a furious look on her face. None of that stopped him from noticing she was heading toward them in a nightgown that was way too short and way too thin for this kind of weather.

His mouth dried up as he got out of his truck, rushing over to her side and slipping his arm behind her shoulders in case she was still off balance from her injury. Behind him he heard Luke step out of the vehicle a little more slowly.

Shaye shrugged his arm off. “What are you doing?”

“Keeping an eye on things,” Cole said. “Just until we catch the shooter.”

She scowled but didn’t look at all intimidating in her nightgown. It was just cotton, basically a big T-shirt, but on Shaye it somehow looked sexy. Especially with her hair spilling around her shoulders, loose and rumpled.

“I told the chief I didn’t need protection.” Her words lost some of their anger as he continued to stare at her, trying to keep his gaze on her face. As if she suddenly realized what she was wearing, she tugged the hem of her nightgown farther down her legs, her gaze darting to Luke and back again.

Then she spun around. Just when he thought she was going to demand he leave and call the chief about his unauthorized stakeout, she called over her shoulder, “This is unnecessary. But if you’re going to insist on being here, you shouldn’t sleep in the truck. Come on. You can stay with me.”

A million images rushed through his brain, most of them involving that nightgown on the floor, and Cole knew he should refuse and climb back into the truck with his partner. Instead he followed Shaye inside.