Heroes In Uniform (261 page)

This wasn’t a fall. The amount of blood, the tear in her shirt at the neckline. Someone had done this to her. Someone had hurt her on purpose.

John schooled his voice, ensuring that the anger building in him wouldn’t come through. “Hang on, honey, the ambulance will be here in a minute. Can you talk to me? Do you know where you are?”

“John?” she said and her eyes grew a bit panicky. He held her down gently, one hand on either shoulder.

“Shhh, honey. Don’t try to sit up. We’ll just wait here together. Do you remember what happened?” The look of fear in her eyes told him she was reliving it right in front of him. He heard the ambulance coming and focused on looking her in the eye. Keeping her talking, as calmly as he could. His mind raced as he tried to think of something to ask her that wouldn’t make her even more fearful.

“I’m here, Kate, I’ll stay with you. Tell me what day it is, can you remember?”
Idiot. That’s all you can come up with?
All his training and experience in handling a crisis seemed to have flown the coop.

“Friday,” she answered, and John smiled as the EMTs came up behind him. He shifted to let them in with a backboard, but didn’t drop her hand.

“That’s right, honey. Friday. You had lunch with the girls today, right? What wild things did Ashley have to say today? Anything good?”

He kept right on with the ridiculous conversation through the whole ambulance ride. He even laughed when Katelyn told him Ashley had talked about his butt at lunch and filled her in on all of his ex-girlfriends in town.
Great.

John knew when they got to the hospital he’d have to take her statement to find out who had attacked her, but for now, he just wanted to keep her calm until they could get her to a doctor. He didn’t think his heart had ever had the kind of scare it had when he’d seen that blood painting her hair red like that. John took a steadying breath as the ambulance pulled into the emergency bay. He needed to switch back into law enforcement mode, make the change to someone who would collect evidence, bag her clothing, question the victim, and find her attacker. But, damn if having Katelyn as the victim didn’t make that hard.

* * *

“Lean on me, sweetheart.” John said, wrapping his arm around her middle and pulling her close, as he walked her up the front steps of her father’s house. He had been nothing but sweet, and gentle, and solicitous since he found her unconscious outside her studio door.

He had stayed with her every minute at the hospital, and she’d seen him almost come out of his chair when the doctor asked if she’d been raped. She was weak with relief that she hadn’t been, but she’d never forget the fear of thinking it was possible as her attacker’s hands slammed her into the wall.

John told the doctor he’d spend the night with her, waking her every two hours to check for signs of concussion. And Katelyn had let him with no argument. She didn’t want to be alone right now. She had no idea what had happened, what the man who attacked her had meant when he’d told her it was time to leave town. But, she wanted to sink into John’s strong arms and imagine she was safe again.

“Thanks,” she murmured as he helped her down onto the couch. She’d already told him everything she could remember about the attack while they were at the hospital. She hadn’t seen the man who attacked her, hadn’t been able to identify him from his voice, which sounded like he had been masking it anyway. She doubted he really spoke in the gravelly voice he’d used to warn her off.

“Wait right here. I’ll get you some water and crackers.” They’d already given her pain medication at the hospital, and the doctor recommended lots of water and nibbling on crackers to see how her stomach handled food. She honestly felt like she could eat a cow. It had been hours since her last meal.

John returned with the water, helping her take a few sips before putting it on the coffee table in front of them and handing her a cracker. He sat down at the other end of the couch and lifted her feet onto his lap. His hands played up and down her legs and Katelyn couldn’t help but stare at them as they warmed her body. Was that friendly concern or something more? Before she could figure out what it meant, John was back in that cop mode she’d come to recognize. He wasn’t outright grilling her. This was his cajoling mode. The one where he tried to convince her she’d seen something when she was little.

“Kate, the only way this makes any sense is if someone is afraid you’ll remember something you saw when you were little. Something they can’t take a chance on you remembering.”

She sighed and tried to draw her legs up to her chest, out of his lap, but he clamped an arm across her knees and glared at her for a second, then went back to his slow exploration. An exploration that was making her head turn to mush, making it hard to focus on telling him he was crazy with his cold case theories.
Nope. Not a hint of friendly concern in that touch.
Those hands had a mission that had nothing to do with friendship. And if the warm heat building between Katelyn’s legs meant anything, her body was fully on board with that mission.

“Think about it, Katelyn, why would anyone tell you to leave town if you weren’t somehow a threat to them?”

Katelyn shrugged. She didn’t really have an answer for him and she was pretty sure she didn’t want to talk about this now. “Maybe they wanted to lease the studio space and Charlie leased it to me instead.”

That earned her a raised eyebrow.

“I doubt that. The space has been open for over a year. If someone wanted to rent it, they had plenty of time to do that before you came along.”

John’s hand traveled up her leg, running over her thigh, melting her resolve, along with her panties.
Good heavens
.
Katelyn sat up, swinging her legs off John’s lap and instantly winced, doubling over at the sharp pain in her head. Her forehead was black and swollen with a small row of six stitches she hoped wouldn’t leave a very noticeable scar. Her head was pounding, and nothing seemed capable of settling the storm of waves roiling and thrashing in her stomach.

John was right there, laying her back down again as she fought off the wave of nausea that hit as the pain began to subside.

“Take it easy, Kate. I just think we need to think about the possibility that your father sent you away for a reason and someone else knows that reason, or at least suspects it. Your mother’s killer may very well be living right here in town, and if they are, they’re not going to be happy about you being back if there’s even the slightest possibility you witnessed her death.”

Katelyn wanted to say she wasn’t there, that she hadn’t witnessed anything, but she hated the fact that the sentences wanted to flow from her as though she’d been trained to say them. John had at least succeeded in planting that seed of doubt. Instead, she mumbled, “Katelyn,” and fell back on the couch. Her mother had called her Katelyn. She didn’t like it when people shortened her name to Kate.

John simply watched her and waited. The man was infuriating. He set her body on fire with his stupid wandering hands going places they really shouldn’t be going, but then never actually following up on the promises they were making. Instead, he grilled her about her mother’s murder that she
didn’t
witness, and he sat back and waited as though he just expected her to crumble under his Jedi stare. As if she would confess some secret memory she’d never told anyone about.
Ha!

Well, it wasn’t exactly true. She’d tried to tell her father once, but he didn’t listen. He shut her down and told her he didn’t want to talk about some made up memory of her mother. She’d also tried to tell her aunt, whose reaction had been the same.

“Urrrr!” Katelyn grunted at John. “Fine. Whatever. I have a memory, but it’s not real. I already looked into it.” She felt his hand go still on her legs and she immediately wished they hadn’t stopped. She wished she could just ignore all the baggage that came with her coming home, all the complexities of her past. She wished she could just focus on the way her breath became more shallow the more John’s hands touched her.

“What do you remember?” he asked, so quiet and coaxing. She hated feeling like he was working her. She smirked at him. Maybe that’s what his attention was about. Maybe this was his “hands-on” attempt to get her to talk.

“I told you, it wasn’t real. I checked it against the details of the murder scene. It doesn’t fit.”

John raised an eyebrow, as if to tell her to leave the detective work to him.

“Fine.” Katelyn sighed but relented. “But I’m telling you, it doesn’t match the scene. I remember hearing my mother scream. That’s all.”

“And how exactly does that tell you it doesn’t match the scene?” John asked.

“In my memory, I’m in a pine forest. I can’t see anything. It’s completely dark, but I can smell the pine trees all around me. When I was fifteen, I looked up the articles covering my mother’s murder. She was found inside Charlie Hanford’s office at his house—”

“And, there’s not a pine tree or forest anywhere around there,” John finished for her. “And she was bludgeoned where she was found,” he mumbled to himself, most likely forgetting he was talking about Katelyn’s mother’s death right in front of her. Katelyn felt her stomach drop at the images his words brought to her mind. They were images she had long tried to keep out of her head and being home again had stirred things again. Stirred up emotions and fears and heartache she wanted to shut herself away again.

“Are we finished now?” she asked. “I want to lie down and nap.”
And forget. Forget it all.

* * *

John nodded, still thinking about what Katelyn had told him. He’d ask her more about it later, but she was right; it didn’t fit. John stood and picked Katelyn up in his arms, ignoring the yelp she let out as he lifted her. She felt a little too right in his arms. He fought the urge to cradle her closer, to let his hand slide a little further up her leg, to the soft curve of her ass. His body tightened and hardened in response, not something he wanted to deal with. Not something that should be happening with
this
woman.

Get it together, John.

Gritting his teeth and willing his body into submission, he carried her up to her bed and tucked her in. John slipped each shoe off her foot before covering her with her blanket and then turned out the light.

“I’ll wake you in a couple of hours, Kate,” he said as he shut the door. A couple of hours should give him time to get himself under control and remind his wayward dick that he couldn’t go there with Katelyn.

“Katelyn!” was all he heard in response.

Everlasting: Chapter Eight

“Hey Kit Kat, time to wake up.”

That wasn’t the sexy whisper that had woken Katelyn steadily every two hours through the night. When John had roused Katelyn, he’d done it gently, whispering in her ear, rubbing a warm hand down her arm as he sat on the edge of her bed.

She’d hated it. Every time he woke her, he built new fantasies in her head. Dreams where she and John were together and he was waking her for entirely different reasons than looking for signs of concussion. It drove her batty.

Katelyn opened her eyes to see Ashley staring down at her with a big smile on her face. “Hey there, sunshine! I thought you’d never wake up. I was about to call an ambulance, per John’s overly-obsessive and not just a little freakishly-cautious instructions.”

Katelyn pushed herself up slowly, wincing a little at the pain in her head. It was much better than the pain she’d felt when she’d gone to bed the night before.

“Ashley? What are you doing here? Where’s John?”

As much as he irritated her with all his touchy-feely, making-her-want-him-in-ways-she-shouldn’t crap, she realized she missed him when he wasn’t there for her. And that, in itself, annoyed her. She wasn’t a very needy girl. She liked her independence, her strength. But, she didn’t feel very strong right now.

Ashley put a cup of coffee on the nightstand and plopped down on the bed next to her as though they’d been best friends for years. It was a little…disconcerting, but somehow Ashley seemed to make it work.

“John had to go out on an emergency call. There was a car accident up on 190 outside of town. Four cars involved. It’s a mess. So, he called me to babysit you.” Ashley squinted her eyes and leaned in closer to Katelyn. “Wow, Kit Kat, that’s quite a bruise. John said it was bad, but boy did that man understate it.”

Katelyn raised a hand to her head and touched the bruised area tenderly. “I must look awful, huh?” Part of her wanted to look in the mirror and find out what she looked like, and part of her wanted to bury her head in bed all day and pretend nothing had happened. If she were honest with herself, the attack had scared her witless. She’d felt safe with John in the house and having Ashley here was preferable to being alone, but she didn’t know if she’d get over the fear all that easily. That moment of not knowing what her attacker was going to do to her…. She shivered, and drew the covers up around her.

“Nah,” Ashley said, shaking her head. “Not at all, honey. You look…. Aw, heck, who am I kidding? You look awful, Kat. Just awful. But don’t worry. John doesn’t seem to care. The way he went all caveman about you when Cora wanted to set you up with Justin the other night, I’d say you’ve got him hooked. Regardless of the whole.…” Ashley circled her hand around in front of her face as if that said it all.

Katelyn was speechless. She had a feeling Ashley was a bit of an acquired taste, but she felt herself fighting a smile.

“I’m not exactly looking for a relationship right now,” she said, and then asked herself silently why on earth she was telling this to Ashley.

“Uh oh. There has to be a bad story behind that one,” Ashley said.

Katelyn waved her hand in dismissal. “Not worth telling. Dated for two months, thought it might be going somewhere, he was a married scumbag, yada yada yada.”

Ashley’s eyes went round. “Oh, no! You had no idea? What a jerk.”

“That’s what I said. Well, that and a lot more. Anyway, I think I may want to take a break from men for a bit, you know? I’m pretty sure my man reading radar is broken so I’d rather just sit on the sidelines for a bit.”