They all froze when the crash happened. It was loud and very close to where the speaker was. Tucker had picked up the mike to call in the troops when they heard the shouting. It was not Cait; that was all the three men could conjecture.
They waited for what seemed like an eternity for something to happen. The gun shots were not what they had hoped for.
~~~
Martinez flipped his gun at Cait to indicate that she should precede him down the stairs. Cait wasn’t sure she wanted the man behind her, but figured if he wanted her dead; he would have killed her or let one of his men do it. She didn’t look at the clock, hoping that Meggie stayed where she was for a little while longer.
About halfway down the stairs, she saw that the table in the middle of the hall had been crushed from the man she had thrown over the railing. Glancing at the other table, she was glad to see that the little receiver she had put there had not been disturbed. When she was close enough, she tripped and landed against the table. She grabbed up the little thing and attached it to the front of her jeans pocket.
“In there.” Martinez pointed to the room she’d heard them in earlier. And if you try anything stupid, or stupider I should say, I will shoot you. David, call one of those idiots in the yard and tell them to be on the lookout for a little girl.
Tell them if anyone needs to shoot her, so be it.”
“I’ve been trying to raise them since you went upstairs,” Hunter said to them as he laid down the two-way. “No one is answering. You think there’s something wrong with their reception?” Cait giggled and earned a hard slap in the back of the head from Martinez.
“How many of his men did you take out, Caitlynne? And who is helping you? Should I be worried that someone is going to come crashing through the door now that the kid is gone?”
“Three idiots and the two dogs. And you really should be worried, Martinez.
I’m going to kill you both before I leave here.” Cait hit the floor when she was kicked in the ribs again.
“You really think I’m afraid of you? I mean, look at you. You look like someone has beaten the shit out of you several times already and you’re about ten minutes from your own death. And I do believe your hand is broken. Carl kicked you pretty good and if I’m not mistaken, that was your shooting hand.
You’re lying here on my floor bleeding to death and no one gives two shits if you live or die. You’re responsible for the death of your entire family and you’re going to die all alone.”
Cait sat up on her hand and knees and took a couple of breaths. She knew that at least two of her ribs were broken and he was probably right about her hand. A couple of her fingers were bent at an odd angle and it was swelling.
Blood was dripping from her nose onto the carpet beneath her and probably her lip as well. Running her tongue over her teeth, she realized that at some point they had loosened and she had bit her tongue. Moaning, she moved to her knees and looked up at the two men. She hoped that Tucker got all the information he needed because she was not going to make it much longer.
Raising her hand to her face, she scrubbed the blood from her forehead and smiled at them. Anthony had a gun, but it was hanging loosely in his hand.
Hunter had never taken his from his holster. She swayed slightly and grabbed for the floor again. Taking another short breath, she pulled the Glock that she had taken from the guy in the yard and fired at Martinez first.
He moved when the gun came up and she hit him in the throat, but he dropped the gun when he grabbed for his neck. The next shot hit Hunter in the forehead. He dropped back hard against Martinez and both landed on the floor.
Cait knew that she didn’t have much time, her body was starting to want to move less and less, and she painfully stood up and staggered to the desk that they had fallen behind.
Martinez was staring up at her and his arms lay limply out from his body.
Moving toward the two men, she kicked the weapon away that he had used to kill the men upstairs and then she opened Hunter’s jacket and tossed his gun a foot or so away.
She had had enough and fell back on her ass and leaned against the chair as Martinez died. She nearly closed her eyes when she remembered Tucker and Meggie, and she pulled the headset from her pants and put it into her ear.
“Tucker? You there?” She closed her eyes; the room spinning was making her sick again. She knew that she had nothing left to sick up, but she still felt like she needed to.
“Caitlynne? Christ, where are you? We’re coming in and I don’t want to hear another word—”
“Please, listen. Dead, they’re all dead. Meggie is in the clock at the top of the...there is a clock up there and I put Meggie...Tucker? Are you there?” She was drifting out and she knew that she was barely hanging on to consciousness. She knew she was not dying, not yet at any rate, but her body was telling her
“enough already, let’s rest a minute.”
“Meggie is in the clock. Yeah, we’re coming. Hang on, help is on the way.
Caitlynne, do you hear me?”
“You promised. Remember? I...don’t have...tell Spen...Doctor Grant that I...her lip is hurt. I’m sorry.” Closing her eyes this time, she saw her uncle Paddy.
“Hi there. Have you come to get me?” She wanted to reach for him, but nothing worked anymore. But when he touched her cheek, everything faded out and she let it.
~CHAPTER 22~
Spencer stood next to the cruiser and paced. They had told him he could go and get Meggie as soon as they cleared that there were no more men inside.
Tucker had left him a radio so that he could hear when the all clear was given.
He was also supposed to let him know if Cait was all right.
“Doctor Grant? It’s clear. There are a set of stairs right as you come in. At the top is a clock. None of my men have gone near it, only to guard it until you get here. Go.”
Spencer did not have to be told twice. Taking off at a run, he went up the stairs three at a time and stopped in front of the clock. There was a bullet hole in the glass where the chime had been. His heart skipped several beats as he dropped to his knees in front of the clock and slowly reached for the door.
When he opened it slowly, Meggie was resting her head against the back of it, playing with a set of keys and holding a small piece of paper. When she looked over, blinking rapidly from the unexpected light, she tumbled out and fell on top of him, kissing and hugging him. Spencer felt the tears streaming down his face and didn’t care who saw them. He had his baby girl.
Her hands were between them and she struggled against him to get them out. He didn’t want to let her go, not even for this, but also needed to hear what she had to say. He had to slow her down twice, but he got what she wanted. He picked her up and they descended the stairs to where the gurney was being taken.
“Doctor Grant, you don’t want to take the little girl in there. It’s not a sight I want to remember, much less subject to a kid. Life flight is on their way. They’re going to take her to OSU and there is a team there waiting for her. The medic has called it in. I’ll take you in the car. She’ll probably be in surgery by the time we get there.”
“I want to go with her. Please, I want to be with her. I won’t get in the—” Spencer stopped when Captain Tucker continued to shake his head.
“They have to have all the room in that thing to be able to move around. She is in critical but stable condition. Why don’t you take Meggie in the other room?
There is another cop in there who wants to ask her some questions and you could help out in translating for her. I need as much information as I can get from her, Spence. And I swear to you, O’Malley is in the best hands.” Spencer knew that he was right, but he needed to see her. He handed Meggie to him, told her to wait, and he walked into the study. All the blood nearly had him turning around, but he wanted to see Cait for himself.
The first things he saw were the medics and an empty gurney. There was a person using a camera and another with a video camera filming all around the room. He had seen the same kind of set up when he had been upstairs and didn’t realize that there were so many people involved in a crime scene.
One of the men moved over slightly and he saw her. Christ, she was a mess.
Even from where he stood he knew that she had not only taken a beating, but she had been shot as well. The left side of her face, all he could really see from where he stood, was puffy and bloody. He could just make out her lower lip; it was nearly touching her chin it was so badly beaten. Blood matted her hair and her arm. One of the medics had put something like a board on her hand and was gently wrapping the splint with some gauze. They had cut her pant leg open and there was a rapidly reddening pad there as well. When she started to shake, tremble like her body was chilled, the men laid her down on the floor and covered her with a blanket. They never stopped talking to her, he realized. They told her everything they were doing to her and when they were going to touch her. The older man kept telling her to hang on, she would be safe soon.
Spencer walked back out into the hall and Meggie reached up to be held. He took her and realized that if he didn’t sit down soon, he was going to fall. Donald must have sensed how close he was and suddenly, there was a chair under him.
It took Spencer several seconds to realize that he was talking to him.
“...broken, but the medic said it’s clean. Five ribs are either broken or bruised, but her lungs are fine. Her face looks bad, but the only thing broken is her nose and she’ll need stitches over both eyes and her lip. There’s a cut along her jaw, but he doesn’t want to speculate on where it came from and can’t tell me what is going to happen to it until they figure it out. The GSW in her leg is from this morning and she has lost a great deal of blood, but nothing that she won’t be able to naturally replace. They’ve tried to start and IV, but because of the extensive damage done to her arms, they can’t find a good vein.”
“Damage? That doesn’t sound good. What happened to them? And when will she be awake?”
“Damage might have been the wrong word to use. I should have said hurt.
She looks like she slid across the carpet and burnt them that way, then the broken hand, and her shoulder is dislocated like I said.”
“Captain, life flight ETA is two minutes. They want us to take her out into the yard. Officer Brown has circled the cars to make a landing pad and they said they can see it. They’re ready in here,” an officer said from the study door.
Spencer stood when Donald did. He knew he had to call his family. They would be anxious to hear that Meggie was safe and that Cait was on her way to the hospital. He pulled out his cell phone on the way out of the house.
When his mother answered the phone, all Spencer could do was sob. He could not say a word. She started crying too. He had to tell her and working around the huge knot in his throat, he said it all.
“I have her. I have them both.” He heard her tell someone with her and he had to pull the phone from his ear; the shouts were loud and immediate. He could hear his brother Nicky whistle and yelling, “hell yeah!”
“And Caitlynne, how is she? Please, Spencer, please let her be all right,” his mom begged.
“They’re taking her by life flight to OSU as a precautionary measure. I’m going to go over in a cruiser. Could you...will one of you come and bring Meggie something to change into and something to eat? She said she didn’t have anything all day.”
“Of course. I’ll meet you there. Tell Dan I love him. I love you too, son. She’ll pull through, you’ll see. Caitlynne is made of good stock.” He got off the phone a few minutes later and told Meggie what was going on. She had already told him she was staying with him, that she had missed him.
He was fine with that; he had missed her too.
Sitting in the cruiser waiting for Donald to finish up enough where he could leave, Spencer thought about the woman who, as they drove along the highway, speeding to her, was being prepped for surgery in the air. She had saved his little girl for him, saved her at great physical harm to herself not once, not even twice, but several times. And he wondered if she would ever forgive him.
He thought about how he had yelled at her, screamed at her about her not watching and keeping his daughter safe. He knew that Cait would have done more, had done more than anyone he knew to save her. Had it have been anyone else, he was sure they would not have survived even half of what she had.
The ride to the hospital took them forty minutes. The hospital had called while in route and said that Detective O’Malley had made the flight without incident and they were taking her to the surgery room right now. Spencer got a call from his mother when she pulled into a parking space in the garage and she would meet him on the second floor. Meggie had fallen asleep, for which Spencer was grateful. She looked exhausted.
The surgeries took almost two hours. They were able to repair her hand, but she would have problems with it for some time and would need physical therapy as it started to heal. Her leg was stitched up again and they had put a removable cast on it to keep it steady as it healed. Cait’s chest wounds were bruised, but the vest she had had on both times she had been shot had kept them intact. A doctor had stitched up her face; the two cuts over her eyes had required seven and nine stitches respectively and her lip another ten. Her ribs had not hit her lungs and they would need to heal on their own over the next several weeks.
Spencer now sat in an uncomfortable chair in Cait’s room, waiting for her to be transferred. The doctor was making arrangements to have a private room set up for them when she got out of recovery. Spencer smiled when he thought about Doctor Hamilton and his frustration at Spencer when he had first came out to talk to them.
“Are you with the officer? Her family?”
“She’s a detective and, yes, we’re with her. Did she make it all right? She’s sort of stubborn and I think she’d live just to spite me,” Spencer said. He was babbling, but he was suddenly tired and he wanted to lie down next to her.
“I can’t give you any information unless you’re her family. You understand, don’t you? Privacy and all. So...are you her family?”