Guilty as Sin (53 page)

Tommy was sprinting down the hill before Kate hit the deck.

“Excuse me? Sir?”

It took a few seconds to realize the doctor was speaking to him. “Yes?” Tommy looked up to see a lanky guy in his mid-forties dressed in scrubs. Tommy recognized him from around town but couldn’t place the name.

“You came in with Kate Beckett, correct? I’m Dr. Shreeve, her surgeon.”

Tommy nodded eagerly and shot to his feet. “How is she?”

The doctor’s mouth pulled into a grim line that sent Tommy stomach hurtling for his feet. “Because it took a couple hours for her to get treatment, she lost a lot of blood. And with bullet wounds there’s the risk of extensive tearing.”

Tommy’s vision swam, his throat so tight he couldn’t breathe as the doctor’s words sank in.
She’s dead. Oh, God, she’s dead. She’s dead and I never told her I love her.

He felt his knees go watery beneath him as the doctor continued to speak, his voice sounding like it was coming from the bottom of a well.

“… but with physical therapy should recover fully.”

Tommy snapped to alertness as the doctor’s words sank in. “Wait, she’s not dead?”

Shreeve’s bushy eyebrows knitted together over the bridge of his nose. “No. As I said, though the injury is serious, I expect her to make a full recovery.”

Again his knees threatened to buckle, this time with relief. “Here’s a tip, Doc: How about next time you lead with that.”

Despite the doctor’s reassurances, the sight of Kate, so pale and still in the recovery room, hit Tommy like a blow to the chest. With her eyes closed, oxygen mask over her face, and the sheets and blanket pulled over her, it was hard to believe she was breathing.

Logically, he knew she had to be, otherwise the half dozen or so machines she was hooked up to would be setting off all kinds of alarms. Still, he couldn’t draw a breath until he got close enough to see the shallow rise and fall of her bandaged chest, until he took her hand in his and felt her fingers curl slightly in response.

“Hey, sweetheart,” he said, his voice thick. The doctor had warned him that it could take awhile for her to regain consciousness, and even then she would be out of it from the morphine drip.

So he was surprised when her eyelids fluttered at the sound of his voice, and she murmured something that sounded like his name behind the oxygen mask.

His fingers curled more tightly around hers and he felt his mouth stretch into a grin even as his eyes burned with tears. “Katie girl, you’ve got to stop scaring me like this.”

Her eyes crinkled a little bit above her mask. And he couldn’t be sure, because it was muffled by the mask, but it sounded like she said “Keep you on your toes.”

Her little comeback sent a surge of tangled emotions through him—relief, joy, gratitude. And on top of it all, a love that felt so big it was going to swallow him up.

He bent his head close to where hers rested on the pillow. Through the smells of antiseptic, he got a whiff of pure Kate. He took a deep breath, filling himself with the scent of grass, flowers, and the sweet musk that was uniquely her. “I was so damn scared I was going to lose you,” he said. “When I saw you there…” The words choked off at the image of her on the boat, so pale and small, blood staining her entire torso crimson. “I don’t know what I would have done if I’d lost you.”

Her fingers squeezed feebly at his hand. It took him a few moments to realize she was trying to say something else. He lifted his head, moved his ear right next to the oxygen mask.

“Sorry,” he heard her whisper. “Sorry I pushed you away… told you that you ruin everything.” The single tear rolling from the corner of her eye hit Tommy like a punch in the gut.

“Don’t, it’s okay.” Tommy’s throat felt like it was being closed in a vice.

Her eyelids slid closed and when several moments passed he thought she’d fallen asleep. But then she whispered, “You don’t ruin anything. Only you make everything right.”

Tommy’s eyes burned as he brought her hand to his mouth and pressed his lips to her knuckles. “
We
make everything right,” he whispered fervently. “And I should have told you this a lot sooner, but I love you, Katie.”

The only reason Kate knew she was really awake this time was because of the pain. The grinding pressure started in the upper right part of her chest and radiated all the way down to her hand. Though the pain made her gasp, she resisted the urge to give herself an extra dose from her morphine drip.

She wasn’t sure exactly how long she’d drifted in and out of her drugged half sleep, plagued with strange dreams and visions so vivid it was hard to know what was real and what wasn’t.

She opened her eyes, and even through the pain she felt her heart surge with happiness at the sight of the man asleep in the chair next to her, his body bent in half so his arms and torso rested on the bed next to her. She had no idea when he’d come in—there was only a vague impression of a deep voice rumbling in her ear.

I love you.
Her heart clenched at what she hoped was an actual memory, not just a fantasy cooked up by her overmedicated brain.

Her arm felt like it weighed a thousand pounds but she willed it to move so her hand could come to rest on Tommy’s head, her fingers coiling in the short thick strands of hair.

He raised his head and greeted her with a smile so full of warmth she felt like the sun had risen right there in her hospital room.

“You’re here,” she whispered with an answering smile.

He took her hand in his, pulled it to his mouth, and pressed a kiss in the center of her palm. “I never left.”

Kate felt the burst of joy ebb as she dug back through her foggy memory bank and remembered the events leading up to her surgery.

“John?” she asked, her stomach churning at the thought of the man.

“Dead,” Tommy said. There was no missing the satisfaction in his voice. “Got him with a clean shot to the head.”

She must have been unconscious at that point, she thought with a shudder. While part of her was glad not to have the memory of John’s death, after all of the evil he’d inflicted on Kate, her family, and so many others, part of her wished she’d been able to see him take Tommy’s bullet to the head.

“You mean
I
got him with a clean shot to the head.” Kate turned her head and saw CJ standing in the doorway.

Tommy rolled his eyes and shook his head, a rueful smile tugging at his lips. “Whatever, Marine. You keep that fantasy alive as long as you want, but we both know the truth.”

“Acing sniper school and hitting a moving target are two totally different things, Ranger boy,” CJ retorted. Then, his expression serious, he continued, “I don’t want to intrude, but I just wanted to check in, see for myself you’re on the mend.”

Kate shifted in the bed, wincing at the shaft of pain driving through her chest. “It hurts like a bitch, but the doctors seem to think I’ll be fine.”

“I can’t tell you how happy I am to hear that. I also wanted to let you know that I spoke to Agent Torrance at the FBI. They’re going to formally reopen the Bludgeoner case with Burkhart as the key suspect. I’m going to reopen Michael’s case as well.”

At the mention of her brother’s name, Kate felt another wave of pain pour through her that had nothing to do with
the wound in her chest. All at once, the soul-crushing truth she had discovered came crashing down over her. “Oh, God,” she whispered, tears flooding her eyes as she clutched her free hand against her chest.

Tommy immediately sprang to attention. “What is it? Are you in pain? I’ll call the doctor—”

“No,” Kate whispered. “It’s not that.” The pain from her wound was nothing in comparison. “It was supposed to be me.”

“What do you mean?” Tommy asked. Her throat closed up over the words, as though somehow by not saying them, she could pretend they weren’t true.

“He didn’t come for Michael that night. He was coming for me.”

Though it made a weird sort of sense that Kate was the intended target—all of Burkhart’s other targets had been female—that didn’t stop Tommy’s mind from reeling as Kate repeated what Burkhart had told her.

“As soon as he realized he’d grabbed Michael and not me, he decided to kill him.” The pain reverberating in Kate’s voice felt like it was leaching from her skin under his own.

“So he grabbed Emerson Flannery and made it look like a murder-suicide,” CJ said through gritted teeth. “That sick fuck.”

Kate was sobbing softly now, the sound cutting at Tommy like shards of glass. He bent his head until it rested against hers on the pillow. “Kate.” He didn’t have the words to comfort her.

“It should have been me,” she sobbed. “If I’d only been there, in my own bed like I should have been, Michael would still be alive.”

“And you would be dead!” Tommy said, too harshly, but
even the thought of it was almost too much for him to deal with. “You think that would have been better?”

She turned so her face was buried in the curve of his neck. He could feel her tears soaking his skin, burning him like acid. “My family would say so.”

Tommy blinked back his own tears and threaded his fingers through Kate’s hair. “And I say they’re full of shit. I say the only person to blame for any of that is that sick fuck who took advantage of your family’s trust and then tore it apart.”

CJ excused himself. Tommy didn’t even spare him a glance.

“If he hadn’t been after me—”

“He would have been after someone else. He was a sick killer, and if it hadn’t been Michael, or you, it would have been someone else. You can’t beat yourself up for the rest of your life for what he did. You’re as much a victim as Michael or any of those other girls.”

“How can you say that when I’m alive and they’re not?”

“Barely,” Tommy snapped, “or did you forget the part where he put a bullet in your chest?”

She started to turn her face from him. He caught her chin, gently but firmly keeping her eyes locked on his.

He knew she was at a breaking point, that if he didn’t pull her back from the edge he was going to lose her again. For good this time.

“Don’t. Don’t push me away again. I know it feels impossible now, but you can get past this. I’ll be with you, every step. I’m not going to let you go through this alone.”

She started to open her mouth but before she could speak, he continued. “You wanted to know what I said in the letter? I said a lot of things, but the most important thing I said was that I love you.”