Dangerous Flirt (18 page)

“Come on, man, it's just me and I really need to talk to Beth.”

“You alone?”

Harris’ gaze never left his. “Yes.”

Hank closed the door, flipped the security lock and opened the it. Harris stood by himself. The man's right eye twitched and he gulped.

He opened his mouth to speak, but before a single sound emerged, a soft pop sounded and the right side of his head exploded outward.

Blood splattered
against the white doorframe.

Crimson rivers ran down the wood and puddled on the brown carpet.

Harris fell backward into the hall with a thump. Beth screamed.

Reflexively, Hank grabbed the door to slam it shut but a size twelve shiny, brown dress shoe blocked the move. Looking upward, he took in the black suit pants with sharp creases, two empty hands, the crisp white shirt decorated with a
discreet navy-blue tie and, finally, to the ice-cold blue eyes of the thug from the casino.

The man smiled, revealing a large gap between his two front teeth. “I was hoping to run into you again.”

Just like it had when he'd taken the field before a big game, the rest of the world disappeared. Hank focused all of his mind and energy on the snide little fucker who wanted to hurt Beth. Where was
the gun? The man's hands were free at his sides.

At least a head shorter than him, the man had only one advantage, his foot in the door. Hank wasn't worried.

“You and me both, asshole.” He slammed the door against the man's foot, holding it tight so he couldn't pull his trapped foot free. “Beth, get in the bathroom and lock the door.”

She made a squawk of protest. He snuck a glance over his
shoulder. She stood in a kickboxing stance. God save him from stubborn women. “This isn't your kick bag.”

The thug had put all of his body weight into pushing the door open enough to almost squeeze out his foot. Locking his legs, Hank leaned into the door, looking through the peep hole right in time to see the asshole pull the gun from his shoulder holster. Another soft pop sounded and a mirror
behind Hank shattered. That explained the location of the gun.

“Now, Beth!”

She hustled into the bathroom.

In the same breath, Hank released the room door and stepped backward toward the bed, his body as far away from the bathroom as possible in the tight space. He wanted the asshole focused solely on him.

Thrown off balance by the sudden release of pressure, the gunman stumbled into the room.
He recovered his balance in two large steps and rushed forward with his gun hand leading. Just what Hank wanted.

Sweeping his right hand up and across, he connected with the attacker's gun arm. The momentum twisted the gunman's body and forced the Glock to point toward the floor.

Swinging his body around, he followed the attacker’s awkward spin. With his left hand, he shoved the man's head down
while at the same time wrenching the gun away and tossing it onto the bed.

Helping gravity along, Hank shoved the asshole to the floor. Digging his knee into the man's upper back, he yanked the perp’s arm behind him in a grip guaranteed to hurt like hell.

The whole thing took about thirty seconds. Obviously, this guy was not a professional.

Amping up the pressure on the man's arm, Hank wanted
to keep going. Another twist or two and the arm would snap like a twig. After what the bastard had put Beth through, nothing would be more satisfying. The idea tempted him beyond reason.

Bloodlust ran high as he turned the thought over in his head. His fingers tightened on the man's arm, ready and eager to do it. But he couldn't. No matter how good it would feel, he couldn't betray his ethics
that way. He'd taken an oath he wouldn't break.

But this asshole didn't know that.

“What do you want?”

“Fuck off, you—” A quick twist turned the man's curse into a squeal.

He relaxed his grip. A little. “I'll only ask this one last time. What do you want?” In a dark place deep within, he hoped the gunman wouldn't answer.

“We were just going to grab her, scare her, but…” He dropped his head
and mumbled into the carpet.

Grabbing a fist full of greasy black hair, Hank tugged. “But what?”

“The old lady changed her mind.”

Sarah Jane. “What did she want?”

“She wanted her dead.”

Hank's insides knotted. He glanced back at the closed bathroom door. A world without Beth? He couldn't imagine it. After today, he didn't even want to think about a day without her. Old lady or not, Sarah
Jane was about to go down.

“What's her name?”

“I don't know.”

“Bullshit.”

“She never gave her name. I never even saw her. Only him.”

“Phil?”

“Who?” The perp sounded truly baffled.

“The guy whose brains are all over the hall carpet.”

“He brought the cash.”

“So why kill him?”

“Didn't mean to. The gun, it accidentally went off.”

An idiot with a firearm usually had that result. “Where's
your partner?”

“What partner?”

“Really? Do we have to do this the hard way?” He twisted the suspect's arm.

“Okay, okay!” He let out a small puff of air when Hank loosened his grip. “He got pinched last night. DUI.”

“You two sound like quite the pair.”

A ruckus sounded behind him. Before he could jerk his head around, a deep, booming voice echoed through the room. “Hands up!”

Two uniforms
stood in the doorway, guns drawn and in a firing stance. Shit. He could read their nervous thoughts from across the room. Calm. He had to bring the situation down before he ended up with a bullet.

“I'm Sheriff Hank Layton from Dry Creek, Nebraska,” he said in the same tone he used with skittish animals. “I've apprehended a suspect who broke into my hotel room.”

“I said, hands up!”

He did not
want to let go, but there wasn't much of a way around it. Putting his full weight into the knee grinding into the goon’s spinal cord, he unwrapped one finger at a time from around the man's arm and held his breath.

The asshole didn't move a muscle beyond letting his arm fall to the ground like dead weight.

Okay, this might work out. More confident, Hank raised his arms. “I have identification
in my wallet. I'm going to reach around—”

He didn't get any further before the bathroom door flew open and Beth rushed out with a war cry.

Cop number one pivoted and fired in the same motion.

The room went silent except for the thump of Beth's body hitting the floor and a half second later, the sickening thud of what must have been her head bouncing off the tile.

“You fucking idiot! You just
shot the victim!” Fear spiked so fast, bile rose in Hank's throat.

Taking advantage of the moment, the suspect jumped up and sprinted toward the door.

Hank didn't have time to process what had happened. Bounding up, he barreled toward the suspect, acting only on instinct and adrenaline.

Faced with a wall of blue in front of the open bathroom door, the man hesitated a foot outside of the uniformed
officers' reach.

Just the opportunity Hank needed. He wrapped his arms around the man, taking him down hard, grinding his face into the carpet's brown fibers. “God dammit, put some fucking cuffs on him.”

One of the officers hurried forward and clamped the metal closed around the suspect's wrists. The officer who fired stood in the doorway, a deer-in-the-headlights look in his dark eyes.

Blood
rushed so loudly in Hank's ear, he almost missed hearing his name. It came like a soft breeze from the recesses of the bathroom and sent chills down his spine. Not bothering to get up, he crossed the three feet to the doorway on his hands and knees.

She lay so still, he couldn't stop thinking the worst had happened. “Beth?”

Her quiet moan sounded like a roar in the unnatural quiet around them.

“Darlin’, I'm right here.” He stroked her soft hair, continuing down to her shoulder, hoping to comfort her, but when he brought up his hand, a warm liquid covered it. Blood. Panic grabbed him by the throat. “Call an ambulance,” he screamed, fear tight in his voice.

“It's on the way,” the officer said.

Beth lay on her back, her thick, dark hair like a curtain across her face. Brushing it back,
he sought the source of the blood. Though her eyes were closed and her face contorted with pain, he couldn't find a scratch. Drawing his gaze downward, he spotted the quickly widening circle of blood seeping through her suit jacket sleeve.

He grabbed a fluffy white towel from a shelf and pressed it against her right arm to staunch the blood flow.

She yelped and her eyes popped open, agony and
confusion clear in their dark-brown depths.

“Help's coming. You got shot in the arm. I know it hurts like hell, but you'll be okay.” God, he hoped so. He needed to say the words almost as much as she needed to hear them.

B
eth grazed her fingers over the goose egg on the back of her head. Testing, she pushed. A sharp pain made her gasp for breath. If she'd been a cartoon character, that's when colored stars would have started circling her head.

“I always wondered if you pushed hard enough on a knot like that, if the swelling would pop out somewhere else.” Chris Layton's head poked through the
olive-green curtains surrounding her bed in the emergency room. He had a goofy grin, but serious eyes. “Just wait until I tell Hank I saw you without your shirt. His head will explode.”

Automatically, her hands went to her chest, pressing the thin gown to her skin. At least it tied in the back. The EMTs had cut off her dress and bra right there in front of God and everyone in the bathroom. Not
her best moment. What a weird thing to be concerned with considering, she’d just been shot. Must be the medicine they'd given her for the pain.

“Chris, you're a tease.” Kidding him helped to cover her disappointment at it being Chris and not Hank. At least she hoped it did.

He wiggled his eyebrows. “I know, Mom says it's all part of my charm.”

Someone she couldn't see cleared his throat behind
the curtain. Chris rolled his eyes in an exaggerated motion and swung open the curtain to reveal Hank's other brother, Sam.

Behind them, nurses, doctors and orderlies buzzed around the busy emergency room. Beeps and squeaks from gurneys punctuated the constant murmur of people talking in hushed tones. The whole scene looked like something from TV, except when she watched
Hospital 911
in her living
room, she couldn't smell the antiseptic.

“Pardon my idiot brother, the home training didn't take.” Sam held out a white plastic bag from a drugstore. “I understand you, um, lost your dress. I picked up something for you to wear. Hope they fit.”

Tears pricked her eyes. Even though she was just their little sister's best friend, the Laytons had always watched out for her. “Thank you.”

“It's nothing
great. Just a tacky hoodie and sweat-pant shorts.”

“I wanted to get the hot-pink shirt that said ‘topless showgirl in training’, but Mr. No Sense of Humor vetoed it.”

Sam's jaw tightened. The two had been like this for as long as she could remember. Probably since birth.

“Thank you for that, Sam.” She didn't want to even imagine having to wear that on the plane ride home.

“The doctors released
you?”

“Yeah, I’m free to go.”

Chris stepped farther into her curtained-off area and peered at her head. “Wow, that is some bump. How's the arm?”

“The doctor said it went straight through, he just had to stitch me up. No sling or anything.” Just talking about her gunshot wound made it throb.

“What were you thinking?” Chris asked. “If I didn't know any better, I'd think you were Claire, going
off all full-on banshee like that.”

Chris put his question out there bluntly, but it wasn't as though the thought hadn't gone through her head a million times since she’d opened her eyes to find Hank's worried face inches from hers. A few months ago, a killer had targeted Claire, and when he set her Jeep on fire, she'd chased him down like a woman possessed—and that wasn’t the worst of it. She
and Claire had been best friends forever, but Beth was the reserved one. Attacking someone was not her style.

It turned out gunshot wounds weren't all that unusual in Las Vegas, so she’d had plenty of time to ponder after the triage nurse declared her several rungs down the priority ladder.

The fact was she hadn't thought first. She'd been huddled in the bathroom, hearing all sorts of grunts,
bangs and harsh words. Everything had quieted, but when she heard a new voice, she'd known Hank was outnumbered. Her Hank. She couldn't leave him to face that on his own; as long as there was breath in her body, she'd fight for him.

So she'd flung open the door and got herself shot.

Not that she'd tell Hank's brothers that.

“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

“You hang out with Claire
too much if you've started thinking like that.” Sam delivered the line dryly, but the undertone of love for his sister couldn't be missed.

That was the Laytons for you. Always in each other’s business and giving each other a hard time, but she couldn't imagine their family working any other way.

Family. The word made her gut twitch. She'd always known how important having his own family was
to Hank, but having him confirm it solidified her decision to keep her distance.

“So, where's Hank?”

“Still at the police department.” Sam shrugged his shoulders. “Did you talk to the cops?”

“Yeah.” Her mouth dried at the memory. She'd told the investigators about the threats, being drugged and everything else that had led up to today. When she'd told them her suspicions about Sarah Jane, she
couldn't get over how surreal the whole thing was. From scrapbooking to murder-for-hire? It didn't seem real.

“What did they say?” Chris asked.

“That the guy who busted into Hank's room had confessed, but he swore he didn’t know the name of the person behind it all. The detective confirmed Sarah Jane had checked out of the hotel, bought a ticket to Mexico and, hopefully, is gone forever.” She
couldn't stop herself from shivering.