Heroes In Uniform (273 page)

She tried to pry his hands off her neck, but it was clear her efforts were futile. She flung her arms out and wildly felt the ground around her for anything she could use as a weapon. When her hands touched the cold hard surface of a rock, Katelyn grasped it and hit Charlie in the side of the head as hard as she could. Unfortunately, her best wasn’t very hard at this point. She was losing strength and consciousness more quickly than she thought she would.

The blow seemed to stun Charlie for a split second, making him ease up on her throat briefly. Katelyn sucked in a small amount of air and tried to twist out of his hold, but the pressure returned right away. Her arm was too weak to deliver a strong enough hit to get him off, but Katelyn didn’t stop hitting him—again and again. If he killed her, she’d make damn sure she went down fighting; make damn sure there’d at least be evidence of a fight that he’d have to explain away. She wouldn’t let him walk away free after killing her. She wouldn’t let him go on living without punishment, like he’d done to her mother.

* * *

“There!” Danny yelled pointing to the side of the road, but he didn’t have to tell John. John had spotted the tangled bodies of Katelyn and her attacker and was already racing that way in the cruiser. He was too far away to see if she was alive, to see if she still had a chance. They were still a couple of miles out from the construction site, so she must have run. She must have been trying to get away. He’d known Katelyn would fight back. John jumped from the car as he said a silent prayer that her fight had been enough, that he’d made it to her in time.

He gripped Charlie by the shoulders and threw him behind him, launching him as hard and as far as he could. Danny would deal with him, cuff him and get him in the cruiser before John hurt him. John needed to get to Katelyn.

She lay still on the ground, angry red welts and ugly bruises already starting to form on her neck. Berta had already radioed John on the way saying she had an ambulance following them to the site, but he radioed for its arrival time as he dropped to his knees in front of Katelyn.

He shook her by the shoulders, “Katelyn. Katelyn! Talk to me, baby.”

She didn’t wake up. John bent his head and listened. Shallow breaths. His fingers found her pulse.

Alive.
The rush of relief almost crushed him.

He raised her chin and made sure her airway was as open as it could be as he listened for the sound of sirens. John would have liked to think he kept his head and stayed calm but the truth was, when the EMTs arrived, they had to drag him away from her so they could work to open her airway and get her on a backboard. He knew better. He knew her spine had to be stabilized right away. He knew she needed oxygen and that her larynx might be crushed, blocking her windpipe. But he couldn’t help it. Letting her go almost killed him.

When Danny finally helped them pull him away from her, he realized he’d been yelling her name the whole time, calling to her to try to wake her up and bring her back to him. He had to, because the alternative…. The thought of living without Katelyn by his side, of waking up without her in his life tomorrow. That just wasn’t something he could even let himself think about.

Everlasting: Chapter Twenty-One

John watched Katelyn’s breathing. He’d been staring at the machines that monitored her vital signs and the rise and fall of her chest for hours as she slept. The cop in him wanted to be the one to question Charlie Hanford, to wrap up the case and tie up all the loose ends and unanswered questions, but he couldn’t leave Katelyn. He couldn’t let her wake up alone.

The door opened quietly and Danny poked his head in, a question in his eyes.

John nodded and stepped to the door, speaking in a hushed voice. “Anything yet?”

“Charlie’s not talking. Just asked for his lawyer, then shut up. I went on over to talk to Mrs. J. I thought maybe we might get something from her since everyone’s always thought Katelyn was with her when Caroline Bowden was murdered,” Danny whispered, and both men looked over their shoulders at the woman sleeping in the bed.

“She have anything new to say?” John asked.

Danny nodded. “A lot. Turns out, she’s been covering for Alan all these years. He asked her to lie and say Katelyn was with her so no one would ever guess she’d witnessed the murder. She said Alan told her he questioned Katelyn, but she was too traumatized to tell him anything. He didn’t see the point in letting anyone know she was a witness since she couldn’t tell them anything anyway. Said it would only harm her and possibly put her in danger.”

“It’s a good thing, since his best friend was the killer, with access to Katelyn,” John said, although a big part of him wished Alan had told him this years before. Maybe they could have solved this case with Katelyn’s help before her life had been put in danger.

“Mrs. J. agreed to keep it a secret and she’s kept it all these years. When I told her about Charlie and how he’d gone after Katelyn, she didn’t see that it would help to keep the secret anymore.”

Both men were quiet for a minute before Danny whispered, “How’s she doing?” with a nod to the bed.

“She’ll be fine, the doctors said. She won’t be able to eat solid food for a while, and her voice may be permanently dam…changed from the attack.” He’d been about to say damaged like the doctors had, but he didn’t see it as damaged. Katelyn was here and alive. She might sound different, but he wouldn’t care about that, and he didn’t want her feeling like there was anything wrong with sounding different. “She’ll be able to check out in a few days,” he finished, and then he heard a strangled sob from the bed and realized Katelyn had woken up.

Danny slipped out the door, letting it swing shut behind him as John went to the bed where Katelyn lay quietly crying. He slipped his hand in hers, threading their fingers together and squeezing gently.

“Don’t try to talk for now, baby. It’s going to be a few days before they even want you to try talking.” Katelyn’s eyes looked wild and panicked for a minute, but John leaned in and kissed her lips softly, whispering against them, “It’s all right. I’m here. I’m not going anywhere.”

John held her while she cried for a long time, and he knew why she was crying. She was crying because her father’s best friend had betrayed him. Because her mother had died at the hands of a man so close to their family. Because she was scared and didn’t want to feel the way she was feeling. He knew she was crying because of the way it felt to imagine never seeing John again, just the way it had torn at his heart when he’d had to imagine never seeing her again. She cried for her mother and for the time she’d lost with her father. She cried for all those things and more.

And John held her.

Everlasting: Chapter Twenty-Two

Katelyn woke in John’s arms and snuggled deeper. She knew the town was talking about the way he’d all but moved into her house, but she didn’t care. And, he refused to leave, telling everyone she needed someone there to take care of her while she recovered. He was the only thing holding her together when she woke up from a nightmare in a cold sweat, or worse, when she didn’t wake up on her own. He woke her and calmed her down and held her while she fell back to sleep. If she didn’t have John there with her, she knew the trauma would be worse.

She’d spent almost a week in the hospital with John sleeping in the chair next to her. The doctors watched her to be sure her breathing wouldn’t become compromised as a result of the damage to her larynx, or that she wouldn’t develop aspiration pneumonia or any number of other complications they’d rattled off to her. During the hospital stay, Katelyn had tried to avoid looking in the mirror. Her neck was marred with bruises, but also with the claw marks where she’d tried to pull Charlie’s hands off and ended up cutting herself. Looking at those marks reminded her too much of the feeling of struggling to take a breath and believing she wouldn’t make it out of there alive.

Katelyn had been stunned to have visits from Ashley every day, and from Laura and Cora several times during the week. Ashley lectured her about her laziness. She told her every day it was time to get up out of bed, but she said it with a grin that told Katelyn she didn’t really mean it. The visits made her laugh, which was painful, but they also kept her from sitting and staring at the wall wondering over and over again how everyone in the town could have been so fooled by Charlie Hanford.

The sharp pain in her neck when Ashley made her laugh was a fair trade-off for getting her mind off the man who’d killed her mother and tried to kill her. And, Katelyn had to admit, she’d been really touched when they’d all been so great about visiting. She’d expected one token visit, at best, not repeated visits that seemed to indicate they really cared for her.

“Mornin’, baby,” John said as he woke and began trailing his hands over her arms, her back. His touch always melted her, turned her to putty in his arms and set her on fire all at once. They hadn’t made love since she’d come home from the hospital, though. Her ankle was still in an air cast, and she had to whisper instead of speak, but with John’s hands touching her, all thoughts of protecting her ankle or taking precautions with her breathing flew out the window.

Katelyn moaned and shifted to align their bodies, drawing a deep growl from John, but he pulled back.

“Not yet, Katelyn. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“You’ll hurt me more by staying away,” she whispered, pulling him back with one hand to his shoulder while the other slid down his chest, reveling in the feel of the muscles that rippled under a threadbare Sheriff’s Department T-shirt. The feel of his body and what touching him did to her never ceased to amaze her.

His eyes were dark and dangerous looking as he watched her, clearly trying to resist her, but losing the battle as she let her hand drop lower. John rolled them so they lay side by side, then slipped their clothes off slowly, so sweetly and tenderly Katelyn almost laughed at the idea of big strong Sheriff John Davies being so gentle. Before she could finish the thought, he stole her breath and she melted into him, swept away with the sensation of their bodies melding as he took her to places no other man had ever taken her.

* * *

John braced his hands on his desk, leaning over it to be sure the lawyer standing across from him understood every word he said.

“She deserves answers. Hell, the whole town deserves answers. They’ve waited twenty-four years to know who killed one of our own, and it turned out to be a man we all trusted and respected.”

Reese Cutter stared at John, unspeaking for an awkwardly long pause, but John held the assistant district attorney’s gaze. He wasn’t going to back down until Katelyn had answers about her mother’s death.

Cutter relented. “I’ll give it a shot, but I have to prioritize getting information about Sol City out of him. Whatever they did to cut corners on the project could put peoples’ lives in danger. Sam Denton’s dead; the building inspector we suspect must have been in on it is dead. The only one with any answers is Charlie Hanford. I have to put the safety of the residents at Sol City ahead of getting answers for Katelyn.” Cutter raised his hand in response to John’s obvious rising anger. “But...but,” he said more emphatically, “I’ll do all I can to get answers for Katelyn, but that’s all I can promise you.”

John clenched his jaw as he followed Cutter down the hall to the room where Charlie Hanford and his lawyer waited. He stepped into the observation room as Cutter continued on to the doorway leading to interrogation. John would listen in to the conversation, but wouldn’t be in the room. It killed him to leave Hanford up to Cutter instead of being in there himself. It killed him to think Katelyn might never get the answers she deserved. But he knew, if he did anything stupid—like go after Charlie Hanford the way he wanted to—Caroline’s killer could walk and Katelyn would never get justice.

He watched as Cutter tossed down photocopies of the double set of books they’d found hidden in Charlie’s house. Then he listened as Cutter laid out the case against Hanford for Caroline Bowden’s murder, the fraud charges related to the building of Sol City, Sam Denton’s murder, and the kidnapping and attempted murder of Katelyn Bowden. That part still sent a cold rush through John’s blood.

Cutter threw in charges for Ken Statler’s murder. They could charge Charlie with Ken’s murder even if, as they suspected, Sam Denton had been the one to kill him. Because the murder happened as part of a plot to commit felony fraud, Charlie Hanford could be held just as liable for that murder as if he had been the one to hit Ken in the head and drown him. Then Cutter made their one and only pitch for getting the answers they needed. He took the death penalty off the table. Facing three counts of murder in Texas meant the death penalty was very much in play, and very much a realistic outcome of the case.

John held his breath, arms crossed tensely across his chest as he tried, but failed, to stop himself from grinding his teeth together. Hanford’s defense attorney was whispering in Hanford’s ear, but it didn’t take long for him to cave. As John watched, Hanford laid out the details of Caroline’s and Ken’s murders, that of the housing inspector years before, then Sam’s, before walking Cutter through the blueprints of Sol City, showing him step-by-step where they’d cut corners.

Hanford tried to tell Cutter that nothing they did would cause any harm to anyone, but John doubted that was true. More than likely, he planned to have retired and moved away before the repercussions started. If Katelyn hadn’t come back to town, Charlie would probably have retired and moved in the next few years, disappearing before anyone figured out there were problems at Sol City.