Читать книгу Navy SEAL Rescuer - Shirlee McCoy - Страница 11

TWO

Please, go.

That’s what Catherine needed to say to Darius.

Two words that she’d said to all the news reporters, old friends and strangers who’d come around trying to get the scoop on the Dark Angel of Good Samaritan over the past two months.

She couldn’t manage to get the words out, and she stood silently as Darius preceded her into the garage.

No one was there.

She was as sure of that as she was that the sun would shine in the morning, but she let him look, because she didn’t want to be alone. Not yet.

Her neck burned and throbbed, but she didn’t touch the bruised skin, tried not to remember the feeling of fingers on flesh or think about what might have happened if Darius hadn’t called out. Another minute, and she would have been out of breath. All the fighting skills she’d learned in prison had been useless against someone double her size and strength.

Would she have died on the dusty old road?

She shuddered, taking a step into the dim garage. It smelled of gasoline and oil, mildew and wet wood. She’d have to tear the place down eventually, but she had too many projects on her hands already, and not enough time to get to them.

“It’s clear. Come on in,” Darius called out, and she hurried to the 1965 Buick, grabbing her purse from under the front seat. She took out her cell phone, shoving it into her pocket. Leaving it in the car had been a mistake that she wouldn’t repeat. From now on, she’d carry it everywhere.

Just in case.

She gave in to temptation, touching the swollen place on her jaw, the hot flesh of her neck. Raw and dry, her throat tightened, her breath catching.

Stop!

The last thing she needed or wanted was a panic attack.

“Are you sure you don’t want a ride?” Darius asked, his light green eyes glowing in a deeply tanned face. Dark hair fell across his forehead, silky and blue-black, but it didn’t make him look boyish or approachable. He looked hard and tough and capable, the gun she’d watched him take from his closet held loose in a broad hand.

Was he a cop? FBI? He had the look. All hard lean muscle and lithe movements.

“Catherine? Do you want me to drive you to the hospital?” he asked again, his hand brushing her shoulder, his touch so light she barely felt it.

“No. I’m fine. Thanks for all your help. You can leave.” There. She’d said it. Easy as pie.

“I’ll wait until you get this beast out of the garage. Think it’ll start?” He patted the hood of her grandmother’s rusty old car.

“It should.” But just like everything else around the farm, the car had seen better days. She got in the driver’s seat, turned the key in the ignition and heard nothing but a quiet click. She tried again and again with the same results.

Just once.

Just once, she wanted things to go her way.

She turned the key one more time, wrenching it hard.

“Sounds like you need a new battery or a new starter. Breaking the key in the ignition won’t change either of those things.” Darius reached in and pulled the key from the ignition.

“It started fine this morning,” she muttered, grabbing her purse and getting out of the car. Time was ticking, and Eileen was waiting. She couldn’t spend any more time fighting with the car.

“She’s an old car. She needs a little TLC.”

“Everything around this place does,” she responded, following him back out into the bright sunlight.

“My place is the same way, but I do have a truck that’s reliable. Come on. I’ll give you a ride to the hospital.” He led the way back across the yard, a hitch to his stride that she hadn’t noticed before. Slight, but definitely there. Had he been hurt while he hunted the guy who’d attacked her?

She wanted to ask, but the words caught in her throat as he tucked the gun into the waistband of his jeans.

It had been a long time since she’d made small talk.

She wasn’t sure if she still knew how to do it.

“Something wrong?” he asked, his eyes such a pure light green, she wondered if he wore contacts.

“You hurt your leg,” she said, finally managing to loosen her tongue and get the words out.

“Not recently.”

“You’re limping.”

“That happens when the lower part of a person’s leg is amputated.” He responded so casually, she almost missed what he was saying.

“You’re an amputee?”

“My leg was blown off by a booby-trapped weapon cache. That’s why I’m stateside instead of with my buddies in Afghanistan.” Darius offered the information, knowing it would distract Catherine, ease some of the tension from her face and shoulders.

“I’m sorry.”

“I’m alive. Some of my buddies weren’t so fortunate.”

“Then, I guess I’m even more sorry,” she responded, surprising him. Most people who heard the story missed the part where he mentioned the bigger loss he’d suffered. Not his leg. His comrades. He’d give the other leg and both his arms to have any of them back.

“It was rough.”

“What happ—?”

“How about we save the question-and-answer session for another day?” He cut her off. Sharing some information to take her mind off what had happened was one thing. Talking in depth about his loss, that was something else.

“I thought you were heading to the hospital,” Logan called from the porch, and Catherine stiffened, her tension flooding back.

“The Buick wouldn’t start.”

“Not surprising. You need to trade that rust bucket in for something reliable.”

“The car is fine, Logan.” She sounded weary, and Darius had the urge to slide an arm around her waist, let her lean on him. He doubted she ever leaned on anyone, though, and he kept his distance, watching as she brushed dirt from her faded jeans and avoided Logan’s eyes.

“I noticed you had some vandalism on the porch. When did it happen?”

“Sometime after I left to bring Eileen to the hospital. The siding was vandalized, too, but I was able to cover that before...” She didn’t finish, and Darius imagined her out on the porch, covering paint with paint while danger stalked her.

“You didn’t report it,” Logan said, and Catherine shrugged.

“I reported the broken windows three weeks ago. I reported the slashed tire before that. I reported crank calls and people driving by the house at all hours of the night. It didn’t do me any good. I figured calling the sheriff about this was going to be just as useless.”

“I’m sorry you felt that way, Catherine. We’ve been working hard to identify the perpetrators of those crimes. It just takes time,” Logan responded with more gentleness than Darius had ever seen in him. Did he feel guilty for his part in Catherine’s conviction and incarceration? No doubt, he’d been with the sheriff’s department when she’d been accused of murdering eleven patients at the convalescent center where she’d worked.

“I know that, and I’m not blaming your office, Logan. It’s just...I don’t have time. Eileen is really sick, and I can’t have her stressed out and upset every other week. I figured I’d just clean things up before she got home and pretend nothing had happened.”

“Pretending won’t make trouble go away.”

“I know.” She touched the bruise on her jaw. “Look, I know you have a bunch of questions, and I’ll answer them. But I really have to get to the hospital. I don’t want Eileen waiting and wondering if something has happened to me.”

“Something did happen to you,” Darius cut in, and she frowned.

“Nothing permanent. We’ll talk when I get back, Logan,”

“We’ll be here. I called in a K-9 unit, and I’m hoping they’ll catch the perp’s trail. Want me to have an officer give you a ride to the hospital?”

“I don’t think I want to be seen in a police car, but thank you,” she responded, a hint of irony in her words.

“We can have an unmarked car—”

“I’m going to give her a ride, and I’ll make sure she doesn’t run into any more trouble on the way to or from the hospital.” Darius cut into the conversation again, and Catherine wanted to tell him that she’d be the one to make sure that she didn’t run into more trouble. That she’d take care of herself and her grandmother the same way she had for most of her life, but saying anything would take time and effort she didn’t want to waste.

“I guess having a bodyguard as a neighbor is going to pay off for you, today, Catherine,” Logan commented as he snapped several pictures of the porch and the red paint.

“Bodyguard?” Catherine shouldn’t have been surprised. She’d guessed Darius to be police or FBI. A bodyguard seemed an extension of those things. Somehow, she was surprised, though. She couldn’t imagine him escorting high-profile clients to high-profile events.

Or maybe she could.

Dress him in tux, slick back his hair and he’d easily pass for someone with money and looks to spare.

“Security contractor,” he corrected, and then turned to Logan. “You’ve got my cell phone number, Randal. Give me a call if the K-9 unit sniffs anything out.”

“I don’t recall you being part of this case, Osborne.”

“Catherine is my neighbor, so I’m making myself part of it,” Darius responded easily as a police K-9 unit pulled into the driveway.

“How about I decide who is going to be part of the case and who isn’t after Eileen is home?” Catherine tried to put some force into the words, but they sounded weak and shaky.

“You’re right. We’re wasting time. Call me, Randal.” Darius tossed the words over his shoulder as he hurried Catherine to the dirt road that she’d run along less than an hour before. Terror had fueled her then. Now, she felt nothing but tired. She’d known that returning to Pine Bluff after she’d been released from prison wouldn’t be easy, but she hadn’t expected it to be so difficult. She’d thought she could hide away in the farmhouse, tend to Eileen and ignore the people who whispered and pointed, but the townspeople didn’t seem willing to let her alone. Some of them simply wanted the story of her time in prison. Others were still convinced she was a murderer.

Apparently, one of them wanted her gone.

She touched her neck, then let her hand drop away. She didn’t want Darius to know how shaken she was. She didn’t want anyone to know it. Keep things close to the cuff. That’s what her grandmother had taught her, and it’s what she’d always done. There’d been a time in her life when she’d thought things might be different, that she could let down her guard, trust someone else with her emotions, but her arrest had proven just how foolish that had been. That was something else she kept close to the cuff...how much it had hurt to see her fiancé on local and national news programs saying he wasn’t surprised that Catherine had been arrested, that her compassion for the dying must have caused her to snap.

She shoved the memories away. For Eileen’s sake, she tried to live in the present and let the past go. That was easier on some days than on others.

Several officers stood near the curve in the road, crime scene tape marking off the area they were searching. They didn’t meet her eyes as she passed, but she hadn’t expected them to. The Spokane County sheriff’s department had issued an apology for the four years she’d spent in prison for crimes she hadn’t committed. She’d been paid a lump sum for the trauma and time the criminal justice system had cost her, but that couldn’t buy back her life or the time she might have spent with Eileen. They knew it.

Still, if anyone from the sheriff’s department had asked, she would have said that she didn’t place the blame with them. Didn’t really place blame with anyone.

“I tracked your attacker from the road, through the field and back to your place. He could have been waiting in the house when you got there, waiting anywhere along this road. The weeds and overgrowth are so dense you wouldn’t have seen him until he was on you. You realize that, right?” Darius said quietly, his hand resting on her elbow as he steered her onto his driveway.

“The police had already arrived. You were out with a gun looking for the guy who’d attacked me. Why would he stick around?”

“For the same reason he attacked you.”

“Because he’s a stupid kid who gets his kick out of scaring people? Kids have been coming around here since the day I got out of prison.”

“You think that’s what this was about?” He touched her throbbing jaw.

She flinched away, the movement as unconscious as breathing, and his eyes narrowed as he studied her face.

She kept her expression neutral, tried not to let him see her fear and anxiety. They were tools he might use against her one day, and she held them close, kept them hidden the way she had for years.

“I really need to get to the hospital,” she said, because she felt his gaze more than she should have, felt it settling deep, demanding more.

“Right.” He opened the door of an old Ford pickup. Repainted dark blue, everything shiny and new, it was probably as old as her grandmother’s car, but Catherine knew the engine would start and that it would probably purr like a kitten.

Darius seemed like the kind of guy who had all his ducks in a row, everything shipshape and in order.

He helped her into the truck’s cab, his hand on her back, then her shoulder, then her arm. Everything so easy and smooth, she barely realized it was happening. Gentling a colt. Only she wasn’t a colt, and she didn’t need to be gentled. She needed to be left alone.

She started to close the door, but he covered her hand, his gaze so intense she wanted to look away.

“Just so you know, we’re not done with our conversation. The person who did this meant business, and we need to find out exactly what that business was.”

He ran a finger across the welts on her neck, and she shivered.

“I told you, kids have been—”

“This wasn’t done by a kid who got carried away. He meant business, Cat.” His eyes had gone soft and gentle, his words quiet, and she felt herself falling into that gentleness. Allowing herself to believe that it was real.

“My name is Catherine,” she said, shoving everything else away and concentrating on that one thing.

No one called her Cat.

Not anymore.

“Yeah? I’ll keep that in mind.” He closed the door and rounded the truck, and she scooted to the very end of the leather bucket seat. The seat belt was an old-fashioned lap belt, and she buckled it as Darius got into the truck, trying to slow her heart rate and pull herself together.

She’d have to explain the bruises to Eileen, but Catherine wouldn’t let her see how terrified and shaken she was.

“Where are we headed?”

“Sacred Heart.”

“I know it. Downtown Spokane, right?”

“That’s right.” The hospital was twenty minutes away, a long time to sit in a truck with a man she didn’t know. She fidgeted in her seat, wishing she’d taken Logan up on his offer to have a police officer drive her to the hospital. So what if people saw her in a police cruiser and talked? They were already talking.

“Has your grandmother been ill for long?”

“I don’t know.” She felt his sideways glance, but didn’t offer more information.

“It must be tough on both of you.”

“It is.” Especially because Catherine felt responsible. If she hadn’t gone to prison, if she’d been around, maybe she would have noticed Eileen’s decline, forced her to go to the doctor sooner, given her a chance of surviving the cancer that was eating her liver.

“She’s pretty frail, your grandmother?” he asked casually, but Catherine doubted there was anything casual about Darius.

“Yes. Why?”

“You two live at the end of a dirt road, Catherine. The doors on your house are flimsy. The windows are single pane. It’s not safe.”

“It always has been before.”

“It wasn’t safe this morning.”

He had a point. With Eileen’s health failing and the juvenile pranks escalating, maybe security was something Catherine needed to look into.

“I’ll have a security company come out and install a system.”

“I can help you with that. I work for one of the largest security contractors in the country.”

“I’m not sure—”

“Tell you what. I’ll have someone go out and assess things. He’ll have an estimate for you when we get back. You don’t have to commit to anything.”

“Thanks, but—”

“Is there some reason why you don’t want my help?”

“I don’t want anyone’s help. My grandmother and I have been doing fine on our own for a long time, and we’re going to keep doing fine,” she said. It was the truth, but there was a deeper truth. She didn’t want help from a guy who looked tough as nails but who had gentleness in his eyes and his voice.

“We all need help sometimes.”

“I know, but I want to make sure that—” She couldn’t say what she was thinking. That she didn’t want help from someone like him.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“Good, because me making a phone call isn’t a big deal. It’s just a favor to a neighbor, okay?”

“Okay.” What else could she say? She needed a security system. Darius could get her one quickly. If the price was right, she couldn’t say no.

She had a feeling that she should, though, because she had a feeling that Darius would complicate her life if she let him.

“Great.” He patted her knee, the casual touch reminding her of the sweetness of being with someone who was comfortable and comforting and wonderfully familiar.

She’d had that a long time ago.

She’d lost it.

Her heart had finally healed, and she wasn’t in the market to have it broken again.

She shifted away from Darius, staring out the side window, watching the landscape speed by as he made his phone call.