For the first time, the teacher appeared to be terrified.
Grabbing the woman’s arms roughly, Charley handcuffed her hands behind her back, running the cuff’s link through a breakfront filled with knickknacks that were badly in need of a dusting.
Done, she quickly turned toward Declan. Charley frantically stripped off her shirt in order to have something to try to stem the flow of blood before he bled out at her feet.
Barely conscious and lying on the floor, Declan looked up at her and said weakly, “This...is no...place...to have...your way...with...me, Charley.”
Tears were streaming down her face and she didn’t try to wipe them away. Something far more important was happening for her to be worried about her vanity. One hand pressing down on his wound, with her shirt between his skin and her hand, Charley had her phone in the other.
“Officer down,” she cried into her cell when someone picked up on the other end. “Officer down! I need a bus sent to 15073 Magnolia.
Now!
” she fairly screamed into the phone.
She dropped the phone and used both hands to press down on his wound. Her shirt was now all but completely red.
“Stay with me, Declan. Stay with me!” she pleaded. “Open your eyes and stay with me!”
“You’re wasting your time,” the teacher laughed. “He’s dead.”
“The second he is, so are you,” Charley promised the woman just as Yu, Callaghan, Sanchez and the rest of the backup team broke in through the front door.
Charley barely heard them. She was far too busy begging Declan to open his eyes for her.
Chapter 18
S
he never let go of his hand.
When the paramedics arrived, Charley insisted on riding in the ambulance with him.
Though he was unconscious, she held Declan’s hand tightly the entire trip to the hospital, afraid that if she let go of his hand, he would let go of life.
So she held on.
And prayed.
The moment the paramedics pushed Declan’s gurney through the E.R. doors, the physician on duty took over. Though every fiber of her system resisted, she had to release Declan’s hand.
“We have to operate and you can’t be in the O.R.,” the nurse told her gently.
Nodding, Charley released his hand, but not before she bent over him, brushing a kiss to his forehead. “You come back to me, you hear? I’ll never forgive you if you don’t. Never,” she repeated hoarsely.
“There’s a room right over there where you can wait for the surgeon to come out and talk to you,” the nurse told her, pointing to a room down the hall.
“I’ll wait right here,” Charley insisted, leaning against the wall some ten steps away from the swinging doors the orderly and physician had just gone through with Declan.
“A Cavanaugh tradition,” the nurse said with a weary sigh, apparently knowing that to argue with her was pointless. “You’ll fit right in.”
If Declan died, she would never fit in anywhere again, Charley couldn’t help thinking.
And then, before she realized what was happening, Charley found herself engulfed by off-duty police officers and detectives, all of whom shared her pain several dozen times over. Declan’s family, both immediate and extended, all congregated around her.
Still reeling from the shock of seeing Declan go down before her eyes, Charley looked at the people around her, stunned.
“Haven’t you gone home yet?” she asked, and then a cold chill ran down her back. “How’s the chief?” she asked Sean, the Cavanaugh standing closest to her.
Had the unthinkable happened? Had Andrew Cavanaugh become that damn serial killer’s latest and last victim? Was that why most of his family was still here at the hospital?
“Doctor said the surgery was a success and that that lucky son of a gun cheated death again. There’s every indication he’s going to be even better than new,” a very relieved Rose told her, joining her brother-in-law. “But why are you here?” Andrew’s wife asked. “And what are you doing wearing an orderly’s shirt?”
She’d forgotten that one of the paramedics had lent her an extra shirt that was in the rig. “I used mine to try to stop Declan from bleeding out. We got her, sir,” she said, turning toward the chief of detectives who had made his way to her.
“Her?” he repeated quizzically.
Charley nodded. “The killer turned out to be a woman,” she told him. “Donna Miller. Her husband killed himself after he was dismissed from the police department in disgrace—he was about to be investigated as a dirty cop. Something snapped inside of her and she started killing the people she felt were responsible for her husband’s termination.”
“She confessed?” Brian asked.
“In a manner of speaking. It was more bragging than confessing. She thought she was going to kill us both.” Her voice cracked and Charley paused for a moment. “It’ll all be in my report, sir,” she told him after a beat. Charley felt incredibly exhausted and nervously hopeful at the same time.
“That’s one report I want to read personally,” Brian said. “How did Declan get hurt?”
Charley pressed her lips together before beginning. Reliving the events was difficult for her. It was going to take time for the images she’d witnessed to stop haunting her.
“She had a gun. It went off while he was trying to get it from her.”
Brian looked at her knowingly. “Something tells me that there’s more to that than you’re saying.”
There was, but she just wasn’t up to talking about it yet. “It’ll be in the report, sir,” she promised again.
He nodded, accepting her excuse. “In the meantime,” he asked kindly, “is there anything any of us can get you?”
“A miracle would be nice,” Charley said, thinking of Declan.
Brian nodded as he slipped his arm around his wife, Lila, who’d silently come up to join them. The smile he gave Charley was one of encouragement. “It’s already on order,” he promised her. “By the way, Detective,” he said to Charley as she was about to return to her post by the swinging doors, “your brother would have been very proud of you.”
“My brother?” she echoed as if she didn’t know who the chief was referring to.
“Yes. Sergeant Holt. You did him proud.”
“You knew?” she asked him, stunned that he’d allowed her to continue the investigation if he knew her connection.
In response, Brian smiled at her. “I’m the chief of Ds, Charley. I know everything,” he cracked, tongue in cheek.
“Well,
almost
everything, dear,” Lila told him, patting her husband’s chest in a lovingly tolerant manner.
Charley didn’t know what to say. Fortunately, no one was waiting for her to respond. But she flashed the chief a grateful smile that was not lost on Brian.
* * *
It was, perhaps, the longest two hours Charley had ever been forced to endure in her life. Every minute seemed to lethargically drag itself by, limping into the past.
Each time she saw the doors that led into the O.R. as well as several other restricted-access rooms swing open, her heart began to pound and her pulse spiked.
But the hospital personnel who came and went through those doors had no news of Declan or how his surgery was progressing, and then her heart would plummet down to her toes.
After two long, endless hours of this, Charley wasn’t sure just how much more she could handle.
Concerned about how pale and haunted she looked, Sean walked up to her and took her hand. The iciness startled him.
“Your hand’s ice-cold,” he said. Then he rubbed it a little to return circulation to it. He treated her the way he treated all his children, with thoughtful kindness. “He’ll be all right,” Sean assured her, then added with a kindly smile, “After all, his life’s finally coming together. Declan now has everything to live for. That’ll help pull him through.”
She nodded in response, appreciating what Declan’s father was attempting to do, but knowing that sometimes positive thinking wasn’t enough. If it had been, then she would have been able to dig Matt out of that emotional abyss he’d allowed himself to sink into and who knew? Maybe that would have been enough to save her brother and he wouldn’t have provided that killer with a target.
The second the surgeon walked through the swinging doors, his surgical mask hanging about his neck, Charley snapped to attention. She was the first one to reach him.
“Doctor?”
Charley couldn’t bring herself to say anything beyond that, just his title. Every fiber in her being was silently pleading with the man to tell her what she wanted to hear.
When he did, she felt so giddy with relief, for a moment she was afraid that her knees were going to buckle. She grasped someone’s arm—Sean’s?—to keep from sinking to the floor.
“He’s young, he’s strong and the surgery went well. The next twenty-four hours are crucial, but there’s every indication that he’ll pull through,” he told the sea of faces that were all focused on him, listening to his every word.
A murmur went up around the surgeon that sounded very much like a cheer.
The E.R. nurse who had attempted to herd them into waiting rooms when Andrew had arrived appeared again, asking them, “
Now
will you people disperse or at least clear my hallway?”
They were far more accommodating now that there was hope.
But as they drifted into several of the opened surgical waiting areas, Charley asked the nurse, “Which room will you be putting Declan Cavanaugh into?”
The woman paused before the closest computer, typing something on the keyboard. The monitor left its sleep mode and became bright.
“Room 320,” she said. “But he’s not going to be there for another hour. The patient’s in Recovery now.”
“I’ll wait,” Charley replied.
“Why don’t you go home and come back?” Brian suggested. She looked as if she’d been through hell and he didn’t doubt that she had. “I’ll have someone drive you.”
But Charley shook her head. “Right now, this
is
home,” she told him just before she headed for the bank of elevators that were located a few feet to the left of the swinging doors.
She allowed herself to cry in the elevator.
Declan was going to be all right.
* * *
Declan struggled to open his eyes, somehow aware that there was a wall of pain shimmering just out of reach, waiting to begin closing in around him the moment he became fully conscious. His mind alternated between half-formed dreams he couldn’t quite make out and the scenario he remembered just before the world crashed into darkness around him while he was riding a red-hot flame comprised solely of pain.
What he recalled, beyond the burning pain, was someone holding his hand tightly, telling him over and over again that he wasn’t allowed to die.
Charley.
Charley had been the one who had forbidden him to die, he realized. Charley’s voice had pulled him back from the brink of oblivion even as he was set to relinquish his own slender hold on life.
Declan forced open his eyes and saw the slumped, sleeping figure sitting in the chair that was pulled up as closely as possible to his bed.
Charley.
She was still holding his hand, he realized, as if that was the last barrier between him and the jagged pain that was waiting to collapse in on him.
“Charley?”
The moment she heard the raspy whisper, her eyes flew open even as her heart began pounding wildly.
“Declan?” She moved to the edge of her chair, taking his hand in both of hers.
“What’s left of me,” he answered. “What are you doing here?”
“Making sure you don’t skip out on me,” she quipped. Her face clouded over. “Don’t you ever, ever do that to me again,” she warned, doing her best to sound angry. She couldn’t quite pull it off.
“Hey, are those tears?” Declan asked, trying to focus.
“No, I just sprang a leak,” she snapped, brushing the tears away. But it was a useless endeavor. The tears, born of relief, just refused to abate.
“You should do something about that,” Declan told her.
“Yeah,” she mumbled, still holding on to his hand, adding flippantly, “First thing in the morning.”
“Good,” he exhaled. Then, as events began to return to him, Declan asked, “How’s Andrew? The surgery, did it—”
“The chief’s doing well. He came through the surgery like a trooper. A full recovery is expected,” she summarized, her eyes all but devouring him.
She’d gotten regular reports about the chief’s progress in the past eighteen hours from Declan’s family. Different members came and went from the room, checking on Declan—and her.
“You’ve been here the whole time?” Declan asked her.
She shrugged, trying to dismiss her part in any of this. All that mattered was Declan. “Seemed like the place to be. I’d better go and tell everyone you’re awake,” she said, beginning to rise.
But this time it was Declan who was holding
her
hand, keeping her from moving. She looked at him quizzically.
“Not just yet,” he told her. His throat felt so dry, it was hard getting the words to come out. “I want to tell you something.”
She sank back down in the chair, a new nervousness undulating through her. She tried to brace herself—but couldn’t.
“Okay,” Charley said slowly.
She had no idea what he was about to say. Was he going to say something like it was her fault that he’d gotten shot? That if he hadn’t tried to pull that woman off her, the gun wouldn’t have discharged, nearly ending his life?
“When I opened my eyes just now and saw you there, I realized something.”
“What?” she whispered, afraid of hearing what he might have to say, that he felt she was getting too close to him, that now that the case was over, he was going to put in for another partner.
Her breath stood still as she waited for him to speak.
“I realized,” he said slowly, because uttering each word really hurt, but he wanted to get this out before he drifted off to sleep again, “that I wanted to go on doing that.”
“Opening your eyes?” she guessed.
“Yeah, that—and seeing you there when I did,” he said.
“So you don’t want to get rid of me?” she asked, trying not to sound as happy as she really was. She failed.
“Get rid of you?” he repeated, confused. Where would she get an idea like that? “I want to marry you.”
Charley’s mouth dropped open. When she finally found her voice, she told Declan, “Okay, you’re still delirious.”
“No,” he contradicted, “maybe for the first time, I’m clearheaded.”
“Except for the anesthesia and the pain medication they’re pumping through your veins,” she cracked drolly.
“That’s not it,” he argued. “I’m going to feel the same way tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that. I had an epiphany just before I was shot.”
“Did you, now?” she asked, humoring him. It was wonderful just to hear his voice, she couldn’t help thinking.
“I realized, when that crazy woman had a gun to your head, that I didn’t want to lose you. That I loved you and I wanted a chance to prove it to you. I’m going to keep on asking you to marry me, Charley, until I wear you down and you say yes.”
“This must be your lucky day because I’m pretty worn down already,” she said. And then she said one more word to make it official. “Yes.”
Declan grinned. He would have cheered if he wasn’t so weak.
“You’re going to have to lean over,” he told Charley, his voice beginning to fade as sleep began to slowly overtake him again, “so I can kiss you because I can’t sit up yet.”
She smiled, feeling another wave of tears coming on. “I guess I can do that,” she whispered.
And she could.