Stolen: A Novel of Romantic Suspense (44 page)

Shay smiled.

“I made a stop on my way here,” she murmured. “A few of them, actually. I visited my brother’s grave, my mother’s … and I spoke with the cop who arrested the guy you’re torturing.”

Leslie’s face spasmed. “The cop …” She blinked, shook her head. “The
guy
? Don’t you know who he is?”
She pointed the gun at his head. “That’s the fucker who cut you up! Don’t you want him to pay?”

Shay looked at the wheelchair, then looked at the skinny, scrawny man. He couldn’t even move, Elliot realized. Oh, he was trying. But there wasn’t much he could do. Even as she’d cut him, the man hadn’t been able to move his lower body, and it wasn’t because she’d tied him down all that well.

“I don’t think he needs to matter to me anymore,” Shay said quietly. Her lip curled and derision all but dripped from her words. “He’s helpless. He’s old. He’s weak. There’s nothing to fear from him. He’s no dragon, Leslie. I’m not afraid of him. I don’t need you to protect me … not from him. Not from anything.”

Leslie’s hand wavered. “You need me. You’ve always needed me.”

“Up until today, I didn’t even know
you
existed.”

“I’ve been taking
care
of you for two years!” Leslie shouted, her voice harsh and strident.

To Elliot, her voice sounded like it was coming through a long, endless tunnel.

It was one of those moments … he knew it even before it started to really unfold. One of those moments where everything could change in the blink of an eye.

Every time his life had ever gone to hell, it had happened in the blink of an eye.

I regret to inform you of the passing of your parents …

She’s accusing you of rape, Sergeant Winter
.

Yeah. Two brutal, ugly events … but they both paled in comparison to seeing Leslie lift the gun and point it at Shay’s head. “You fucking
need
me,” she snarled.

Not this time
, Elliot thought. Life, fate—nothing else was going to steal from him again. Not this time. Moving in front of Shay, he caught Leslie’s eye. “She needs you. You don’t want to hurt her, right? That’s not how
you fix things, not how you show her how much she matters.”

Her eyes darkened. “You shut up. Cocksucker! You shouldn’t be here. You fucked everything up.”

“I know. Look, maybe I should go,” he offered. The cops were out there and he knew they were listening. All he needed to do was make sure she kept that gun pointed away from Shay. “I can go, and you two can talk.”

“Yeah. You go, and tell the cops out there what’s going on in here … so they can get in my way,” Leslie muttered. “I don’t think so.”

She shifted the gun.

As he saw her finger tighten on the trigger, he lunged for Shay.

TWENTY-EIGHT

S
EEING THAT GUN POINTED IN HER DIRECTION WAS
nothing compared to realizing Elliot had just been hit—nothing compared to realizing he’d taken a bullet for her.

Trapped under his bigger body, feeling the hot, wet wash of his blood, Shay shoved upward with all of her strength.

She heard the door slam open.

Heard screaming.

Heard, distantly, the fire of another gun.

But none of it mattered.

Elliot was bleeding. Leslie had shot at her and he’d jumped in front of her.

She managed to wiggle out from under him, despite the fact that he was trying to grab her and hold her close. Shoving him onto his back, she crouched over him, staring down at his face. He was pale, lines of strain fanning out from his mouth and eyes. “Get … down,” he muttered.

Shay glanced around. They were surrounded by cops.

And there was a body on the floor.

Dark hair fanned out around Leslie’s head and there was a neat hole in the middle of her forehead, blood pooling out from the back of her head in an ever-widening
circle. “No need to,” she said. “You jackass, what were you thinking?”

The bullet had caught him in the right side of his chest. The heart was on the left. That was good, right? Except he was so fucking pale and his breathing was really, really weird. A strange sucking sound came from the area of the wound, too.
Cover it
, she thought.
He’s bleeding, cover it—that’s the smart thing, right?
She wiggled out of the long-sleeved shirt she wore over a tank and pushed it against his chest.

He closed his eyes. “I dunno. You …” He grunted as she applied pressure. “You were baiting a psychopath. I had to do something to keep up. Shit, that
hurts
, Shay.”

“Let me see him,” a gruff male voice said from over her head.

“Go away,” Shay snapped.

Then, as somebody knelt down in front of her, she looked up and found herself looking into a pair of familiar, faded blue eyes. “Shay, you trusted me once. Trust me now.”

She eased her hands back as Hilliard bent over Elliot’s body. Nerves bit into her. It was one thing to trust the cop to do his job—another to trust him with Elliot’s life.

“Of course, it might have been nice if you’d trusted me and just
waited
before you tore off into here to face a woman you knew was unbalanced.”

Unbalanced …
Shay shot a look in her sister’s direction. Did
unbalanced
even begin to touch it? Numb, she watched as Hilliard lifted the shirt she’d used to cover the wound on Elliot’s side.

“I think it hit a lung—ambulance is on the way,” the older man said quietly. “Just be still, okay?”

“I ain’t up to moving much,” he gasped out. But he did reach for Shay’s hand, holding on tight. His eyes
were glassy as he looked up at her. “Don’t go anywhere.”

“Not for anything.”

The waiting room was done in soothing colors of pale pinks, blues, and cream. Shay decided that if she had to stare at those walls for much longer, she was going to go stark, raving mad. Then an image of her sister’s insane eyes flashed through her mind. No. She wouldn’t go mad. She’d just rip her own hair out by the roots.

“You’re looking a little rough there.”

At the sound of Hilliard’s quiet, patient voice, Shay just sighed. She didn’t even bother to lift her head. He’d been in and out of the waiting room much of the night, which probably wasn’t too easy, since he had a crime scene to work. Jethro Abernathy had already undergone surgery, although Shay hadn’t asked for details.

She didn’t care. She just didn’t care, one way or the other, about Jethro Abernathy.

No, the only man she cared about was still in ICU. The bullet he’d taken for her had caught him in the lung, just as Hilliard had suspected. On the way to the hospital, he’d taken a drastic turn for the worse. They’d managed to get him stabilized in the ER. He’d needed surgery and he had a chest tube in place. Now he was in intensive care but he was stable.

Of course, Hilliard was the one who’d told her all of that—the doctors wouldn’t tell her
shit
. Couldn’t tell her shit.

Bastards
. Damn confidentiality laws. She wished she’d lied and said she was his wife. Then they would have talked to her.

Worse, they wouldn’t let her in to see him. She wasn’t family. Hilliard had managed to talk a nurse into letting her in, but that nurse had since gone and nobody else would allow it.

“Can you see if they’ll let me in to see him?” she asked tiredly.

“They won’t let you in?”

At
that
voice, Shay looked up. “Lorna.” She shot up from her seat, but halfway across the floor, she froze.

Lorna didn’t, though. Before Shay could so much as blink, the other woman had her caught up in a hug, one that nearly bruised her. “Damn it, Shay, what kind of mess did the two of you get into?” Lorna pulled back and stared at Shay’s face. “Aw, honey, you look like shit. Why in the hell won’t they let you in?”

“I’m not …” The sob caught her by surprise. Tears, deep and wrenching, choked her, and Lorna pulled her close.

“Shhhh …” Lorna hugged her, patted her back. “Now you need to hurry up and get that out, because Elliot will have my hide if he thinks I let you cry over him. Hurry up, because I need to see my brother and you’re going with me.”

“I can’t,” Shay whispered. “I’m not family.”

“Like hell.”

He remembered hurting. He remembered that a lot.

He remembered not being able to breathe.

And he remembered Shay.

He’d told her not to go anywhere and she said she wouldn’t.

He couldn’t tell where she was, but he knew she had to be there.

That was the one thing he held on to.

He was too fucking weak, and too fucking tired, but he held on to that. Shay had said she wouldn’t go anywhere.

All around him, he’d hear voices and he kept waiting to hear hers.

He thought he’d just heard Lorna’s.

She’s gonna be so pissed …

“You’re such an asshole,” she said, her voice shaking and soft. “Do you hear me?” Then she squeezed his hand.

He squeezed back. Wished he could figure out how to talk. He wanted to ask for Shay. She had to be there.

“Say something to him.”

Who …

“Hi, Elliot.”

Shay—

Lorna’s hand pulled away, but then there was another … Shay’s. He gripped it almost desperately.
Don’t go anywhere
, he thought. But for the life of him, he couldn’t find the strength to speak, couldn’t find the strength to open his eyes.

The darkness that had gripped him endlessly rose and he sank into it, helpless.

Shay …

TWENTY-NINE

“W
E SPOKE TO
S
ELENA
C
AMPBELL.
”

Shay stared at Captain Hilliard over a cup of lousy hospital coffee and braced herself. She knew whatever he had to say wasn’t going to be easy to hear.

“And …?”

He sighed and dumped what looked to be two quarts of sugar into his coffee, stirring it absently. “She was pregnant when they took Leslie as a foster child. They didn’t know. The lady was about five months along when they decided to tell the kid. When she was seven months along, she went into early labor. The baby didn’t survive. Something screwed up showed in her blood work—she was crying as she told me, and I couldn’t understand at first. But they found something in Leslie’s room a few days later. Leslie told them that they already had a child and they didn’t need another one. She killed that woman’s baby—dumped shit in her tea and fed it to the lady. Killed the woman’s baby while she was still carrying it.”

Shay closed her eyes and covered her face. “Dear God.”

“Yeah. They reported it, but nobody believed that the girl could do such a thing. Sounds like Mrs. Campbell’s doctor thought
she
had done it intentionally. Suggested
the woman get counseling …” He paused, took a sip of coffee, and made a face. “This crap is even worse than the shit they serve at the station.” He took another sip. “Damn. So the husband puts in for a transfer out of state. Leslie goes back into the system, stays there for a while. She ends up with three other families and one of them … there was another baby, this one was a foster child who died of mysterious causes. The official cause was SIDS, but there were doubts. One social worker tried to blame the foster parent, but another had worked with somebody who had heard of …”

He trailed off and Shay gripped a juice bottle in her hands, clenching her jaw until she thought she could speak without screaming. “My brother? Me?”

“Yes. This lady realized there were some problems and pushed for more intensive residential treatment. Leslie was only fourteen and there was nothing conclusive. Likely nothing could ever be proved even now. She was kept in the facility until she was eighteen.”

“Eighteen and no longer the state’s problem,” Shay said flatly, looking up at him. “Right? They just turned her loose on the world. She was a fucking lunatic and they just let her go.”

“Yes.” He met her gaze without flinching. “That’s exactly what happened.”

“Fuck.”
Remembering the terror she’d glimpsed in Selena’s eyes, the horror in her voice, she stared at Hilliard. “She said my sister followed them to Michigan. Did she do anything else?”