Turning Point (The Kathleen Turner Series) (16 page)

A pounding at my door startled me awake. Rubbing my eyes, I glanced at the clock and groaned. It was barely after three. These nocturnal visits were killing me.

Hoping it was Chance, I opened the door, only to be surprised once again.

“You called, princess?”

My jaw was agape, staring at Kade, and it took a moment for me to regain my bearings.

“Um, yeah, I did.”

“You going to let me in—?”

His voice faltered, a grimace crossing his face. I noticed that his left hand was under his jacket, holding his side.

“Kade? Are you all right?” I asked anxiously, grasping his arm.

To my horror, his knees began to buckle. I grabbed him around the waist, struggling to keep us upright.

“Kade! What’s wrong?”

He didn’t answer, but he wasn’t unconscious. Yet. I hobbled inside, Kade half-walking, half-leaning against me. He was heavy and I thought I was going to topple over any moment, but somehow I managed to get him to the couch and sat him down.

Breathing hard from exertion and panic, I hurried to turn on the lamp. When I got a good look at Kade, I was struck by the paleness of his skin. Beads of sweat stood out on his forehead even though it was cold outside. Falling to my knees, I pushed back his jacket, sucking in a breath when I saw blood on his hand and a dark stain on his shirt.

“Oh my God. What happened? Why are you bleeding?”

He let me pull his hand away from his shirt. I pushed it up to reveal a raw wound, oozing blood.

“Kade”—my voice was shaking—“have you been shot?”

“Bingo, princess,” he breathed. His eyes slid shut.

Reaching behind me, I grabbed my cell phone, but found my wrist in a viselike grip.

“No police,” Kade said, his eyes open again and clear.

“I need to call 911,” I argued. “You need to go to a hospital.”

“Can’t,” he rasped. “No hospital. They’ll kill me.”

Oh God. They were still after him, whoever “they” were.

“Who did this to you, Kade?”

He didn’t answer.

I was starting to panic. If he wouldn’t let me call an ambulance, I didn’t know what to do, how to help him.

Kade seemed to be losing consciousness now, his grip slackening on my wrist. Jumping to my feet, I hurried into the kitchen, rummaging through my junk drawer until I found what I needed. The blood on my hands smeared the pristine white of the business card, but I dialed the number, holding my breath and praying.

When I heard the voice on the other end of the line, my knees nearly buckled in relief.

“Dr. Sanchez?” I asked. “It’s Kathleen Turner. Blane’s… employee. Do you remember me?” Dr. Sanchez had been the doctor Blane had called to my apartment in the middle of the night when I’d been ill. He’d left his card on the table. I hoped he’d be as nice tonight as he’d been then. “I have a friend who’s been shot and can’t go to the hospital. Will you help me?”

Although he sounded surprised to hear from me, Dr. Sanchez readily agreed to come and assured me he’d be there soon.

I went back to Kade and dialed Blane’s number. It didn’t matter that we’d had a fight, Kade was his brother.

Blane picked up on the first ring. “Kirk.”

“Blane, it’s me. Kade just showed up at my door. He’s been shot. He won’t go to the hospital, so I called Dr. Sanchez.”

There was a moment of silence before “I’m on my way.”

The minutes dragged by. Finally, there was a loud knock on the door.

Kade’s eyes flew open and he grabbed my arm as I stood.

“It’s okay,” I assured him. “It’s a doctor. A friend of mine. He’ll help you.”

I opened the door to the familiar figure of Dr. Eric Sanchez. He was taller than me, but not by much; his dark hair blended into the shadows of the night.

“Please come in,” I said, stepping back to allow him inside. “Thank you for coming.”

The dark eyes behind the wire frames of his glasses gazed shrewdly at me. “I got here as fast as I could,” he said.

He moved quickly to the couch, assessing Kade’s injury. “Help me get him to the bed,” he ordered.

Kade was only semiconscious at this point, but the two of us managed to move him. Dr. Sanchez swiftly and efficiently cut through Kade’s shirt.

“We need clean towels,” the doctor barked. “Lots of them.”

I scurried to do his bidding, returning with a tall stack. In my absence, he had jerked all the sheets and blankets off the bed, save for the bottom sheet. He’d also removed an array of tools and needles from his bag, all encased in sterile plastic wrapping. When he pulled out a needle to inject something into Kade’s gaping wound, I had to turn away, bile rising in the back of my throat.

Standing uncertainly nearby, I fidgeted, not knowing what to do. Dr. Sanchez didn’t speak while he worked, and
the few times I glanced over, I had to quickly look away. The gloves he wore on his hands were now red and I could hear the ripping of plastic as he opened more instruments. Kade, thankfully, seemed to have lost consciousness.

I heard a knock on my door and rushed to answer, knowing it had to be Blane. Sure enough, he was waiting impatiently outside.

“He’s in the bedroom,” I said by way of greeting.

Blane gave a curt nod before hurrying past me.

When I returned to the bedroom, Blane was standing next to Kade, opposite the doctor. A combination of anguish, pain, and guilt was written on his face.

“There,” the doctor finally said. He discarded a small brass-colored object covered in blood.

He carefully stitched together the wound, then called me over. “I need to show you how to dress this, because it’ll need cleaning and redressing three times a day for the next couple of days,” he said, removing his bloody gloves.

“I can take him to my house,” Blane interjected, his voice rough.

Dr. Sanchez shook his head. “I’d rather he not be moved for now. For a bullet wound, he’s lucky, but he needs to rest and mend. It’s best if he stays here, Blane, at least for tonight.”

Blane looked at me. “Is that okay with you?”

I nodded, then watched as the doctor showed me how to clean and bandage the wound. After that, he handed me two pill bottles.

“This one is for infection,” he said. “He’s not allergic to penicillin, is he?”

“No,” Blane said. “He’s not.”

“Good. This is for pain. Both twice a day, with food.”

“Got it.”

Gathering his things, he asked for a trash bag and discarded the bloody gloves and towels, now stained beyond recovery. “I’ll take this with me,” he said, “to dispose of properly.”

Blane stepped forward to shake his hand. “Thanks, Eric,” he said. “I owe you one.”

“That’s actually two that you owe me,” Eric replied with a good-natured grin. “But who’s keeping track?”

Blane smiled tightly. I showed Dr. Sanchez out, giving him my own words of thanks for coming so quickly. When I returned, Blane still stood next to Kade’s unconscious form.

“Did he say anything when he showed up?” Blane asked, his eyes on Kade.

“No, nothing,” I replied.

“But he came to you,” Blane said flatly.

I flushed but didn’t know what to say, so I remained silent.

“When I find out who did this to him,” Blane quietly gritted out, his fists clenching, “I swear to God I’m going to kill them.”

Grabbing a tissue from a nearby box, Blane picked up the bullet Dr. Sanchez had left. He wrapped it and pushed it into his pants pocket. With one last look at Kade, he turned and left the room.

I followed him, closing my bedroom door quietly behind me. Blane stood in my living room, arms crossed over his chest as he stared out the window. I stopped a few feet away, unsure what to say, if anything. After a moment, Blane seemed to pull himself together and turned to face me.

“I’m sorry, Kathleen… for earlier.”

I shook my head, dropping my gaze to the floor. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

And I didn’t. I was tired, physically and emotionally, and couldn’t handle another heart-to-heart conversation—or argument.

Blane moved toward me, not stopping until we were mere inches apart. He studied the locket resting against my skin before looking me in the eyes.

“Take care of Kade.”

His lips pressed against my forehead and I squeezed my eyes shut.

Then he was gone.

I couldn’t think about all that had been left unsaid between us, didn’t want to dwell on it. I didn’t know what I should think or feel, but it didn’t matter right now anyway. I had a patient to nurse back to health. Kade needed me.

That thought spurred me to action, and I went to the kitchen, filling a glass with ice water and carrying it into the bedroom. Kade was still asleep. I set the glass on the bedside table, then curled up cross-legged on the bed, watching him.

His jaw was roughened and I could tell he hadn’t shaved in a few days. While the doctor had removed his shirt, he still wore his jeans. That seemed uncomfortable to me, but I wasn’t about to try and pull them off.

Kade moved restlessly, and the blanket covering him fell away. His chest lightly rose and fell with his breathing, which comforted me. He was going to be okay.

It was chilly in the room, and Kade’s bare skin bothered me. I reached over to drag the blanket back up.

A hand shot out to grasp my wrist, and I found myself flipped onto my back, with Kade’s arm pressed against my throat.

“Jesus, Kathleen,” Kade snarled, his face contorted in pain.

He released me, collapsing back against the mattress. “You’ve got to learn not to sneak up on people when they’re sleeping.”

“I wasn’t sneaking,” I groused, sitting back up. “I was trying to help.”

“What happened?” He touched the bandage on his side. “Did you do this?”

“No, and don’t touch it,” I admonished. “A friend of Blane’s is a doctor. He dug out the bullet and stitched you up.”

I grabbed the pill bottles off the table, dumping one of each into my palm. “Here,” I said, holding them out to him with one hand, the glass of water in the other. “You’re supposed to take these.”

“What are they?” He made no move to take them from me.

“One’s for pain, one’s for infection.”

“Just give me the one for infection,” he said.

“Don’t be an idiot,” I snapped. “Take the damn pain pill. I’ve had a shitty couple of days and I’m not going to deal with your macho crap.”

Kade’s eyes met mine and I held his stare for a long moment. Finally, he reached out and took the pills and water. I watched as he swallowed both of them.

“If you’re going to check that I swallowed them, I’ve got a great idea for that.”

I couldn’t muster the energy to smile at his wisecrack. Instead I turned and lay down on the bed, fixing my attention
on the ceiling. Kade settled back as well and we rested silently for a while, watching the room slowly brighten with the morning sun.

Kade broke the silence. “So why have you had a shitty couple of days?”

I thought about not telling him, since talking to either Blane or Kade about the other seemed vaguely tacky to me, but gave a mental shrug. “Blane and I had a couple of fights,” I explained.

“About what?” He adjusted his position on the bed, carefully turning onto his uninjured side to look at me.

“About this case he’s working. How he wouldn’t tell me why he’s defending that asshole. Then he gets this bright idea that the best way to protect me is to—”

I stopped, realizing I may have said too much.

“To what?” Kade prompted.

“To marry me,” I muttered.

Kade said nothing. He merely reached down to grasp my left hand. Holding it up, he said, “I don’t see a ring here. I’m guessing your answer wasn’t what he had expected?”

“There was no question to answer,” I said. “He didn’t even ask, just suggested we go down to the courthouse.”

“Ouch.” Kade lowered my hand back to the mattress but didn’t let go. “For a suave kind of guy, I’d have expected better.”

I gave a small huff of laughter despite myself. “Yeah. Me, too.”

There was a pause.

“So if he had asked, would you have said yes?”

The feel of his hand enveloping mine pressed against my senses. While it should have seemed weird to have Kade, of all people, lying next to me in my bed, it didn’t.

“I don’t know.”

The words fell out without my consciously having decided to speak them, and I realized it was true. I loved Blane, but the last few days had shown me that rather than growing more trusting of me as we’d been dating, Blane had instead gotten even more protective, more determined to not let anything harm me, no matter the cost.

Kade pressed my hand open until our fingers were threaded together, palms touching. I turned my head to look at him, but his eyes were shut. I pulled the blanket up and over us, and with a deep sigh, I closed my eyes as well.

A clap of thunder woke me. My eyes fluttered open and I saw that the bedroom was now dark. The sound of rain on the window confirmed that a storm had moved in.

Kade was still sleeping. He hadn’t moved from his position and I hoped the pain medicine would help him stay asleep.

The pain medicine.

I grimaced. Some nurse I was. The doctor had told me to give it to him with food. Crap.