TWENTY-THREE
“You shouldn’t be smoking.”
Sitting in the visitor chair adjacent to Jo Nell’s desk, Marty frowned. “At this moment, that’s a very hypocritical statement.”
The older woman set her smoldering cigarette in the ashtray. “I didn’t just get out of the hospital.”
“Maybe we should both quit sneaking around like this.”
“Maybe we should.” Jo Nell flipped on the air cleaner fan and set the can of freshener on her desk.
Marty grinned. “But it’s so fun to piss off the chief.”
Jo Nell grinned back. “We’ll just have to find another way to do it.”
Six days had passed since that terrible day at the wind farm. Marty spent three of those days lying in a hospital bed, hitting the morphine pump, staving off nightmares, and trying not to relive any of it.
She learned from the nurses that Clay hadn’t left her side for the first twenty-four hours. The only time he’d left the second day was to spend time with Erica, who’d been understandably traumatized by the ordeal.
The doctor told Marty she was very lucky to be alive. She’d suffered a broken ankle, a concussion and too many contusions, abrasions and bruises to count. It could have been so much worse. The gunshot wound on her right hand had missed bone, but damaged at least one tendon. The surgeon had done what he could to repair it, but he couldn’t say for certain if she would regain full use of her hand. In typical Marty fashion, she argued the point. Only time would tell if she’d ever be able to shoot again.
Radimir Ivanov hadn’t been so lucky. The Russian national died from a gunshot wound to the head. Clay’s bullet, fired from a distance of almost eight hundred yards, had taken him out instantly. The Texas Rangers were called in to investigate the use of deadly force. Clay welcomed the Rangers, confident he’d done the only thing he could. Police procedure had been followed not only by the Caprock Canyon PD, but also by the Deaf Smith County Sheriff’s Office.
Katja Ivanov spent four days in critical condition in the intensive care unit under heavy guard at an Amarillo hospital. She was expected to make a full recovery. Marty wanted to be glad the woman would live to see her punishment; more than likely Katja would be convicted of multiple crimes and spend the rest of her life in prison. But Marty had looked into the woman’s eyes. And she’d seen pure evil. She wasn’t sure the world was better off with Katja Ivanov in it.
Clay had explained to Marty how the kidnapping happened. Radimir Ivanov had discovered where Clay lived by following him from the police station to his house. The Russian had then staked out the house. When Jett and Erica left for Tucumcari, Radimir was waiting and followed them. Just west of Vega, he shot out one of the tires, causing the cruiser to run off the road. Even though Jett had been knocked unconscious in the crash, the Russian had shot him and left him for dead. The bullet had entered his chest, but somehow bypassed all the vital organs. Jett had lost nearly half his blood volume, but he’d survived. He was recovering in a Lubbock hospital and already complaining about the food. Last Marty had heard, he would be released in a couple of days.
That brought her to Erica. The little girl had been severely traumatized by the kidnapping and subsequent treatment she’d endured at the hands of the Ivanovs. According to Clay, she suffered with nightmares nearly every night. She was afraid to be alone or sleep in her own bed. She’d been crawling into his bed at night, and he didn’t have the heart to make her go back to her room.
The counselor in Amarillo seemed to help. With time, he felt Erica would bounce back. Marty took comfort in the fact that the girl was in Clay’s gentle and loving hands. As far as Marty was concerned, anyone who could ride a horse as fearlessly as that girl would triumph over just about any hardship.
Marty knew she would heal, too, though not nearly fast enough to suit her. Her body hurt, a dozen different pains that were deep and dark and seemingly never-ending. Despite it, she’d already weaned herself off the painkillers the doctor gave her. He’d told her to use them; she had a long road ahead. Like most advice, Marty took it with a grain of salt. He didn’t know her. Didn’t know how fast she could heal or that much of it would be done through the sheer force of her will. Her ankle might be broken, but she’d already made a wager with Jo Nell that she’d be running inside of five weeks.
She took another drag off the cigarette, leaned back in the chair and looked around the small, cramped reception area of the police station. The tap of Jo Nell’s fingers against the computer keyboard mingled with the smooth-as-silk voice of George Strait floating from the radio on the sill. It was good to be back, she thought. It was good to be out of the house and with people. The normalcy of it fed something ravenous inside her. The need to work. To be who she was. A cop.
But Marty wasn’t so naive to believe the ordeal she’d gone through at the hands of Katja and Radimir Ivanov hadn’t left her with other wounds that weren’t visible to the eye. Like Erica, she suffered with nightmares. Every night since the ordeal, she’d wakened terrified, her body slicked with sweat, the threat of death like a fist clenching her throat. She dreamed of Rosetti, too. The horrific death he’d suffered. She’d traded places with him once or twice in those dark dreams. But like any other problem that cropped up in her life, Marty would deal with it. She would overcome it. Kick it. Trounce it. And in the end, she would prevail. Like Erica, she just needed a little time.
The front door swung open. Marty saw Clay’s cowboy hat, and she hissed a warning. Simultaneously, both women jumped to action, snubbing out their smokes, fanning the air. By the time he stepped inside, Marty was nonchalantly disposing of the evidence while Jo Nell went to work spritzing the air with citrus freshener.
“Oh, for Pete’s sake,” Clay growled.
“Morning, Chief,” Jo Nell said without looking up from her computer. “Early, ain’t ya?”
“This is a public building,” he said. “You’re not supposed to be smoking.”
When Marty and Jo Nell exchanged what-the-hell-are-you-talking-about looks, he shook his head and pointed at Marty. “You’re supposed to be at home, recuperating.”
Marty was trying to think of a comeback that wouldn’t reveal her frame of mind when Jo Nell spoke for her. “She can re-cooperate just as well here.”
“In that case.” Clay motioned to his office. “We’ve got some things to discuss.”
Swallowing hard, Marty grabbed her crutches and heaved herself to her feet.
“Don’t let him put you on desk duty,” Jo Nell whispered as Clay disappeared into his office.
“I heard that,” he called out.
Marty got her crutches beneath her arms and leaned. “With a broken ankle and a bum hand, I don’t know where else he could put me.”
“Tell him you’ll take Rufus duty.”
“I hate Rufus duty.”
“You’re the best Rufus we ever had.”
“Until I bite someone. It could happen.”
Jo Nell laughed outright. Marty chuckled as she made her way toward Clay’s office. He’d left the door halfway open. She pushed it the rest of the way with her elbow and peeked inside. He sat behind his desk with a file in front of him. A ripple of uneasiness went through her when she saw that it was her personnel file.
“Come in.” He looked up at her, his expression indecipherable. “Close the door behind you.”
Knowing that wasn’t a good sign, Marty shut the door, then shuffled in and took the chair opposite his desk.
“How are you feeling?” he began.
“Pretty good, actually.” She set her crutches against his desk.
Leaning back in the chair, he gave her his full attention and frowned. “Considering you were dragged behind a speeding car for a hundred yards six days ago, you have a broken ankle and a penetrating gunshot wound in your right hand, I would say ‘pretty good’ is a stretch even for you.”
“Maybe a little.”
“You’d tell me you were fine if your head was on fire, wouldn’t you?”
“I’d probably ask you for a fire extinguisher.”
“You’re not as tough as you think.”
“You should see me bite the caps off beer bottles.”
Clay smiled, but sobered quickly. “You saved Erica’s life. I want to thank you for that. What you did took guts.”
“It was also against policy.”
“Sometimes policies can’t cover real-world events. I think the Texas Rangers will see it that way.”
She thought so, too. But it was still a huge relief hearing it from Clay.
Silence descended, as thick and stifling as heat in the throes of a Texas Panhandle summer. Marty fidgeted. He was making her nervous. Looking at her as if she might break if he stared too hard or too long. Dancing around the real reason he’d brought her in here.
He tapped his pen against the file. “You having nightmares?”
She recoiled in surprise, and her mind scrambled for an appropriate answer that wouldn’t reveal just how shaky she felt. “I’ve had a couple of weird dreams—”
“Nightmares?”
She fixed her stare on her crutches and gave a reluctant nod.
“You’ve been through a couple of pretty traumatic ordeals in the last six months.”
She lifted her gaze to his. “You’re not going to give me the PTSD speech again, are you?”
He didn’t smile. “I’m working up to it.”
“Don’t.”
“Why not?”
“It makes me feel . . . vulnerable. I don’t like it.”
“I understand, but we need to discuss it. Deal with it.”
Looking into his eyes, she knew it was true, but it didn’t make the process any easier.
“Anything else? Anxiety attacks? Panic attacks? Anything like that?”
She lifted her shoulder, let it drop. “I have a little bit of anxiety at times.”
“Okay.”
“Sometimes at night, I wake up scared.” She tried to laugh, but didn’t quite manage. “That sounds stupid.”
“It sounds like a normal reaction to what you went through.”
For the span of several minutes, neither spoke. It was so quiet Marty could hear the switchboard ringing in the reception area. When she felt strong enough, she risked making eye contact with him, and she wondered if he had any idea how she felt about him. If he knew it was the thought of him that had gotten her through the worst of the last few days.
He’d been there for her, but she didn’t know if it was out of a sense of duty or something more. She didn’t know where she stood with him, and that troubled her almost as much as the lingering effects of what happened at the wind farm.
“I’ve got tendon damage in my right hand,” she blurted. “I can’t shoot. I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to use my hand again. I’m terrified you don’t want a cop on your payroll who can’t fire her weapon.” The words poured out before she could stop them.
He nodded. “I’ve known at least one soldier whose shooting hand was injured. He surprised everyone when he became proficient using his left hand.”
She blinked at him, surprised. And, even though his statement was designed to give her hope, she suddenly felt unbearably vulnerable, fragile. Not because her future with this department was in this man’s hands, but her heart. The realization terrified her so thoroughly that her good hand began to shake.
“So how bad are the nightmares?” he asked.
“Bad.”
“Flashbacks?”
“Sometimes.” She didn’t want to talk about this. But Marty knew he was going to force the issue. She tried to maintain eye contact with him, but her gaze skittered of its own accord to the window.
“Sometimes our minds need time to heal just like broken bones and bruised skin,” he said.
“You’re not going to fire me, are you?”
Clay smiled. “Hogan, this department wouldn’t be nearly as interesting without you in it.”
Deep inside she’d known Clay was too much of an upstanding guy to do anything so unjust. Still, the fear was inside her, eating at her like a cancer.
“I want you to call the psychiatrist we talked about,” he said. “I want you to make an appointment, talk to him.”
“Is that an order?”
He caught her gaze with his and held it. “It’s a request from a friend. In case you’re not reading between the lines here, I care about you, Marty. I care about you a lot more than I should. I want you to heal, inside and out.”
She hadn’t cried throughout the entire ordeal. She didn’t know why tears chose that moment to betray her. “I knew you were going to do this.”
“Do what?”
“Be nice to me. Make me cry. You can be such a jerk, Settlemeyer.”
“And here I thought I was being sensitive.”
Marty choked out a laugh, but the tears refused to stop. For the span of several minutes she stared down at the floor and struggled to rein in her spiraling emotions.
“I know you don’t want to hear this,” he said after a moment, “but I’m going to put you on medical leave for a little while.”
Meeting his eyes, she wiped frantically at the tears on her cheeks. “You’re right. I don’t want to hear that.”
“Just for a couple of weeks. That’ll give you time to start physical therapy and have a few sessions with the shrink.”
“I’m not very good at taking time off, physical therapy usually just frustrates me, and I hate shrinks.”
“I knew you’d be cooperative.”
She lowered her face to her good hand, rubbed at her temple with her fingers. Marty knew he was right. She needed time to heal. She wanted to believe the knot in her gut was because he’d forced the issue. But she was honest enough with herself to admit the tears had more to do with the man than anything else. Before that terrible day at the wind farm, they’d begun something that could have been special. Something that had been left unfinished. Something that had become a lifeline in the midst of a dark and violent sea.
Marty had been around the block enough to realize he was going to let what they’d started fade away. He would save her the embarrassment, the discomfort, of telling her there was no way a relationship could work. It would save her a lot of heartache. She should be thankful he was being kind and fair about it. She should be glad he wanted to be her friend. Even if she was never able to fire a weapon again, he’d all but promised her a place with the Caprock Canyon PD.