Her little car jounced over a couple of ruts in the drive. The patrol car continued across the pasture before the chicken houses.
That was not good.
No way would her low-slung car handle that rutted field. Leaving it before the house, she took off at a run, fear pounding with every step. She reached the clearing around the chicken houses just after the unit came to a stop and a sturdy dark-haired man stepped out.
Beyond the unit, what she saw stopped everything.
Ash, lying on the ground, not moving. Tick crouched beside him. The cop grabbed a portable medical kit from his trunk and jogged toward them. Swallowing against a wave of fear, she ran the final few yards.
“What happened?” the cop asked, kneeling next to them and slanting a look at Tick as she finally skidded to a stop just behind him, transfixed by Ash’s face, bloody, eyes closed, twisted in pain. “You push him?”
“Shut up, Cookie. That’s not funny.” Tick had Ash’s wrist in hand, fingers pressed to his pulse point. “Where’s the damn ambulance?”
“They’re both out on other calls—heart attack in Rayford and a wreck at the Greenough crossroads. Roger’s dispatching us one from Albany.”
“That’s twenty minutes away.” With tentative movements, Madeline went down beside them. The amount of blood on his face, the ragged way he breathed, the absolute stillness frightened her. The naked anxiety on Tick’s pale face made it worse.
“I’m a certified First Responder.” The cop shot a curious look in her direction, running assessing hands over Ash.
“Not…you, Cookie. God…help me.” Trying to grin, Ash opened one eye on a pained grunt. “Don’t…touch my…
fuck
!”
The agonized cry shattered through Madeline, bringing a wash of tears to her eyes. Ash’s chest heaved, his eyes scrunched closed. She laid a firm hand on the cop’s wrist. “Don’t touch him again.”
Thick brows dipped in a glower over sharp gray eyes. “Lady, I—”
“Cookie.” Tick’s firm voice stopped him. “I’ve already checked him out. I think he’s good until the ambulance gets here.” His dark eyes caught Madeline’s gaze, and the smile he attempted tried to be reassuring. “I don’t think anything’s broken. Ribs are tender, and he’s messed up his knee. No numbness, he can move fingers and toes, but the way he fell…I want him on a backboard before he’s moved anywhere.”
Madeline’s eyes jerked to the chicken house behind them—and the nearly twenty-foot drop to the ground. “You fell off the
roof
?” She turned on Tick, glaring. “You let him fall off the fucking roof? Don’t y’all know what a safety harness is?”
“Sure they do,” Cookie offered. “They just don’t use ’em. Tick-boy won’t wear a bulletproof vest either.”
Did she
ask
him anything? Madeline narrowed her eyes. “Shut up.”
“I know you from somewhere.” Unperturbed, he shook a finger between them and looked sideways at Tick. “Where do I know her from?”
“She’s Autry’s sister.” Fingers still on Ash’s wrist, Tick checked his watch. “And our interim investigator. Madeline, this is Mark Cook. Cookie, Madeline Holton.”
Ash grimaced. “Y’all…have to hush. Head hurts…like a mother.”
At a distance, a high-pitched siren wailed. Cookie’s handheld radio crackled, and he lifted it to his mouth, offering specific directions to the ambulance, which turned out to be from Chandler County EMS after all. The bus bounced over ruts in the field, coming to a stop beside Cookie’s unit. The driver, a lanky rusty-haired man, hauled equipment out of the back while the second medic, a woman with big dark eyes and short black hair, hurried to the small group huddled on the ground.
“Ash Hardison, what have you done?” Bent on one knee, she ran gentle hands over him, her eyes concerned. “Hey, Tick, Cookie. Jim, get the neck brace and the backboard. Ash, darlin’, can you talk to me?”
“Layla.” His lashes fluttered up. She grasped his lid and held one open, checking his pupil with a penlight, then the other.
“That’s me, sweetheart, filling in for Clark.” She smiled, gaze flicking over his face while she continued prodding. “Seeing me for stitches wasn’t enough this week? Did you miss me that much?”
His reply was a
mmphf
of amusement soon swallowed by a hiss of pain as she palpated his upper abdomen. Madeline cringed, wanting to wrap him close and absorb that pain. Her eyes burned, and she blinked to clear suddenly blurry vision.
“Oh yeah, that’s probably a bruised kidney. You’re going to be horribly sore. Tick, honey, get out of my way, would you? I need to get his pulse while Jim checks his blood pressure, and I can’t do that while you’re holding his hand.” She leaned forward, one eye on her watch, and lowered her voice to a conspirator’s whisper. “Feels guilty for pushing you off the roof, doesn’t he?”
Tick huffed, an exasperated sound. Ash mumbled and caught his breath. “Shit…can’t laugh, Lay. Hurts.”
“I know, darlin’. But it’s a good thing that you’re alert enough to want to.” She gave him a saucy wink. “Next time you want to see me, though, an invite to dinner would suffice. I’m flattered, but this is too much.”
“No dinner.” He flicked the fingers on one hand. “Mad.”
“Mad?” She did that head-tilt thing once more, watching his face while she moved down to assess his legs. “Are you angry with me?”
“Watch his knee, Layla,” Tick whispered. “He almost came out of his skin when we touched it earlier.”
“Not angry.” He moved those fingers again. “Mad?”
Madeline leaned forward, afraid to touch him. “I’m right here.”
“Oh, I see. That’s why I’m not getting any more dinner invites.” Layla grinned, carefully cutting away his jeans so she could see his knee. Madeline hissed in a breath as the bruised, swollen mess came into view. Layla gave her an encouraging nod. “You can hold his hand, hon. Probably make both of you feel better. Ash? We’re almost done here, and then Jim and I are going to take you to the ER and let them torture you for a while.”
“Can’t…wait.” His fingers moved in Madeline’s easy hold, and she stroked her thumb over his knuckles. God, she hated this, seeing him hurt, not being able to do anything. She’d worked a ton of medical calls in her career, but this was horrible. This was Ash.
“Yeah, there’s that sense of humor we know and love. Listen, Jim’s going to put the brace on your neck and I need you to be really, really still while he does that. Tick’s going to help by holding and lifting your head, all right? Let him do it, and you just lie there.”
The two men made short work of getting the plastic support in place.
“All right, almost there, honey. Backboard next, then on a stretcher and you’re out of here.” With professional ease, Layla guided the men through transferring Ash to the board and strapping him with a minimum of jostling. Madeline held his hand as long as she could, not even bothering to tell herself it was ridiculous to be this wound up over a guy she’d known four days.
Because it was Ash and that changed everything. He had changed everything.
“Here’s the deal,” Layla said as they loaded the stretcher into the back of the ambulance. “He’s going to the ER. Stitches, CAT scan, ultrasound, the whole shebang. Tick, do you want to ride along—”
“No.” Ash’s hoarse voice cut her off. “Want Mad.”
Madeline looked around at Tick, expecting to see resentment and censure on his face and finding neither. He jerked his chin toward the bus. “Go on. I’ll follow.”
She clambered aboard, snatches of Tick and Cookie’s conversation floating to her.
“Hey, Tick, who’s Allison Barnett anyway?”
Tick’s groan was laden with disgust. “Why?”
“She’s called looking for you three times today.” A patrol car door swished open. “Didn’t like hearing you were off all three times, either.”
Layla slammed the ambulance doors and settled into the jump seat at the end of the stretcher. Madeline rubbed stinging eyes. God, what was Allison up to now? Couldn’t she simply leave well enough alone?
“Mad.” Ash pulled her back. She leaned forward, stroking the back of his wrist. His eyes clouded with pain. “Gonna stay? Want you with me.”
“Of course.” She caressed his hand once more, a hard rush of emotion she didn’t want to identify curling through her. “I’ll be here.”
Ash blinked the fuzziness away from his vision, focusing on the white acoustic tiles of the hospital ceiling. Whatever painkillers dripped into him from the IV line kept the agony to a dull roar in his body but kept pulling him in and out of consciousness, so he didn’t know how long he’d been here or exactly what damage he’d done to himself.
He was out of the ER and into a room. Fluorescent light gleamed over his head; he turned to the left. The dark of night hovered outside. He flexed his fingers. All right, he could move his arms, although the sensation was sluggish and dull. Someone had rebandaged his hand. He lifted fingertips and touched his face. More stitches below his mouth; his lip seemed swollen.
His right foot twitched when he told it to. His left leg…he couldn’t move. Panic slithered through him. Why couldn’t he move that leg?
Refusing to succumb to the dread, he scanned the room. He was alone, and a twinge of another kind of pain joined the alarm. Where was Madeline? She’d told him she’d be here.
Maybe she’d changed her mind. Maybe he’d expected too much.
A click and the door swished open. He glanced to his right, hope and anticipation rising in him, only to be dashed.
“Ash?”
His brother Rob stood just inside the doorway, his face set in lines of anxiety. Shit, now why had Tick called Rob? His presence wasn’t a good sign. For Rob to come all the way from Houston… Hell, how bad was he injured? He closed his eyes, fear slinking over his nerves again.
When he tried to pull in a deep breath, pain exploded in his chest, cutting off his oxygen. His eyes snapped open as he struggled to get air into his lungs.
“Hey, easy.” Rob’s warm hand steadied his shoulder. “You’re all right. Calm down.”
Calm down. Sure. Easy for him to say.
“You look like shit.” Another deep male voice, cultured, familiar. What was
he
doing here?
Finally able to pull in a shallow breath without hurting, Ash flicked a glare over Rob’s shoulder at Vince Falconetti. “Thanks.”
Vince’s even white teeth flared in his predatory grin. “Anytime.”
“What’re you…doing here?” He stared at the ceiling again. He hated this, being flat on his back, being helpless.
“You took a twenty-foot fall, Ash. They were worried you’d broken your back.” A wry note tempered the concern in Rob’s voice. “Did you think none of us would come?”
Ash flicked a hand in Vince’s direction. “What about him?”
“Daddy has the Lear in Alaska, hunting. I needed someone with a private jet and enough clout to get me in the air as soon as possible.”
Vince smiled again, inspected his nails, buffed them on his shoulder. Ash would have rolled his eyes at the smug bastard if he hadn’t felt like day-old cow shit.
“What’d doctor say?” Rob would have cornered the medical professionals first, would have the whole picture. He’d give it to Ash straight.
“You’re lucky to be alive.” Mouth tight, Rob looked truly shaken. “Bruised your kidneys, broke a couple of ribs, tore the hell out of the tendons on your knee. You’re going to have to have surgery to repair it, but the swelling has to go down first. They’ve immobilized it.”
Relief ripped through him. That didn’t sound so bad.
“Messed up that pretty face of yours.” Vince narrowed his eyes, studying him. “Nothing a good plastic surgeon can’t fix.”
“Fuck…you, Vince.”
A rich chuckle rumbled from Vince’s throat, and he tagged Rob’s arm. “He’s fine.”
“You cut your chin open,” Rob said, ignoring their friend and business associate. “Eight stitches. Another three or four inside, where you probably bit your lip.”
On a nod, Ash closed his eyes. He was good. Not so much right this second, but he’d be okay. Obviously not working his farm for a while, but Tick would already have that covered. The weird half-sleep sucked at him, and he jerked to awareness, with a wild glance around.
“Time is it?”
“Almost eight. Why don’t you get some sleep—”
“Where’s Madeline?”
“Who?” Rob lifted his eyebrows and looked across the bed at Vince.
Then she wasn’t here. A different hurt settled over him. He shouldn’t be surprised, probably. Not like he hadn’t known she ran from her emotions, from the tough stuff. This definitely counted as the tough stuff, at least on his end. But he’d thought, hoped even, from the look in her eyes when they’d loaded him in the ambulance that…well, he’d been wrong.
Damn it.
“Madeline.”
At Tick’s voice, she turned from the vending machine, carefully cradling a cup of scalding hot chocolate. Her neck and back had stiffened after hours of sitting, watching Ash’s sleeping face, and she’d hoped a warm drink would settle the nervous worry jumping in her stomach. A fine film of what she suspected was marshmallow floated on top of the pale brown liquid. Maybe this had been the wrong beverage choice.
She frowned at the cell phone in Tick’s hand. “Are you supposed to have that in here?”
He waved a dismissing hand between them. “Just talked to Ford.”
“Well?” She resisted the urge to prod him physically, as she’d done Jack more than once when he’d teased with the same kind of gleeful reticence over a lead, with a well-placed jab to the chest. She wasn’t in the mood for this tonight, not with her mind tumbling over and over the possible implications of Ash’s fall. God, it could have been so much worse, but seeing him lying motionless in that hospital bed was bad enough. Almost as awful as seeing Jack, after.
“Our body?” Tick’s voice pulled her back. “Dental records match to Kelly Coker.”
“Oh, God.” She covered her mouth with one hand, appalled at the rush of tears stinging her eyes. Shit damn fuck, what was wrong with her? Hot liquid splashed over her wrist, scorching pain over her skin, and she stared with sick realization at her shaking hands.
“Hey, be careful.” Long fingers plucked the steaming cup from her hand and set it aside. He pulled her toward the water fountain and shoved her wrist under the stream of icy water.
Her palm still over her mouth, she blinked hard, the vision of those bones spinning through her head. Kelly, alone, under that house for years and years. “I didn’t want it to be her, Tick, I didn’t want it to be
her
.”
“I know. I’m sorry.” The quiet sympathy, combined with the horrors of the day, undid her.
Hot tears spilled over, dripping down her cheeks, a rough sob tearing at her chest. She covered her face, trying to stop the crying, each image her brain spun only making it worse. Ford’s initial examination had indicated a horrible death—stab wounds, head trauma. And it was Kelly, who’d never willingly hurt anyone, who’d even made Madeline stop her Jeep once to hop out and scoot a turtle off the road.
“Madeline, please don’t.” Awkward arms enfolded her, her nose bumping a cotton shirt. She buried her wet eyes into the curve of that shoulder and sobbed while Tick patted her back in self-conscious comfort. Something about that discomfited touch only made her cry harder. What was wrong with her? She hadn’t even cried when Daddy had been killed or when Jack had been shot, when Jack had
died
, and now she was bawling her eyes out over a girl she hadn’t seen in almost twenty years.
Maybe she was crying for all three of them: Daddy, Kelly…and Jack.
“I didn’t want it to be her. I wanted…” Shit, her nose was running, waves of tears assaulting her, sobs like little wails ripping up from her throat. She hadn’t cried like this since…since…
“Madeline. Come on. Don’t do this.”
Since that night she’d so royally fucked up everything.
“You’re going to make yourself sick.” Desperation tinged Tick’s words, and a laugh bubbled up, turning to bigger, gulping sobs. “Quit it, Holton. I mean it.”
Her knees threatened to give way, and she wrapped her arms around him, holding on and leaning in before she ended up on the floor. Finally, Tick gave up on the soothing words and shut up, simply wrapping her close and letting her cry.
She wept, crying it all out, until the tears slowed to a trickle and the sobs faded to breathless hiccups. Beneath her nose, Tick’s chest moved in a harsh sigh. She closed her eyes. Oh, God. She’d lost it for sure now.
His arms flexed, and he rested his chin atop her head. “Better?”
She nodded and sucked in a breath, tested her knees to make sure her shaky legs would stand alone. Breaking his hold, she stepped back, not looking at him. “I’m sorry, this is so weird—”
“Tell me about it.” The dry rejoinder struck her as funny, and she laughed, the shaky sound too close to the sobs she’d finally gotten under control. She sniffled.
“Oh no, you don’t. We’re not doing this again.” Tick stepped away and reached for his back pocket, a grimace contorting his face. “Hell, I don’t have a handkerchief. I used it earlier on—”
“You carry a handkerchief?” Did anyone still do that? Her grandfather had always had one in his pocket, ready to dry tears or mop up an ice-cream sticky face, but that had been her eighty-year-old Papa. The idea of Tick carrying one around struck her as funny too, although she didn’t know why.
“Yes, I carry a handkerchief.” He snagged a box of tissues from a table near the door and offered a handful. “Monogrammed ones, for your information.”
“Monogrammed?” With a helpless laugh, she mopped at her nose and face.
“Cait’s idea. She has this thing for monograms, and I have a drawer full of handkerchiefs with mine now.” A rueful grin lifted one corner of his mouth as he mopped at the damp spot on his shoulder, smeared with remnants of her mascara. “Surprised I haven’t ended up with her initials tattooed on my ass.”
“I wouldn’t give her any ideas.” Madeline blew out a shaky breath and swiped her wrist over her cheeks. “She’s a tad possessive about you.”
“Yeah, I know.” His expression said he didn’t mind. He gave up on trying to clean his shirt and tossed the wadded-up tissues in the waste can. “We’ve got a hell of a job in front of us with this one.”
She nodded. Following the investigator’s rule of twenty-four, delving into the periods of twenty-four hours before and after a death, would be wicked hard when they couldn’t be sure exactly
when
Kelly had died.
She should be raring to jump into this investigation. She always had been in the past—ready to go as soon as the call came in, chasing the leads, losing herself in the challenge and adrenaline.
Instead, she couldn’t shift her brain into gear, into cop mode. Too much of it was still focused on Ash, on willing him to be all right.
“Listen,” Tick said, bringing her out of the momentary reverie, “I know I should be all gung-ho and ready to go on this case, but it’s been one hell of a day and I’m running on something like three hours of sleep. I need some caffeine, a change of clothes and maybe some food before I can fire on all cylinders. Why don’t you check on our boy and I’ll bring you something to eat?”
She opened her mouth to correct that “our” boy, but who was she kidding? She nodded. “Sounds good.”
“All right.” He checked his watch. “Give me about forty-five minutes. I’ll stop by the station and grab whatever we have on this case, too.”
“Okay.” As he walked away, she lifted what was left of her hot chocolate—now lukewarm chocolate—and downed it quickly, grimacing over the powdery taste. Her wrist stung, and she rubbed an absent circle over the red spot.
A decorative mirror hung in the middle of the waiting area, and she took a quick glance, recoiling. Damn, she looked awful—hair tousled, eyes and nose red, all makeup gone. She smoothed her hair best she could, wiped away a smudge of mascara from under her eye. Straightening the hem of her T-shirt, she headed for Ash’s room. The hall was relatively deserted, a couple of nurses chatting over a chart, a man using the phone at the nurse’s station.
“I just left him. He’s fine, really.” The man’s voice wafted over her as she passed. “I don’t think it’s necessary for you to come…”
She slipped into Ash’s room without knocking. The television played softly, and she frowned. It hadn’t been on when she’d gone to the waiting area and—
He wasn’t alone. Madeline stopped just inside the doorway, clutching the edge of the door, sudden nerves flipping in her stomach. Her gaze jumped to Ash, who appeared to be still sleeping, and then to the tall man with flawless black hair sitting in the vinyl chair by the window. He looked up from the magazine he was idly paging through, and a wolfish smile touched his full mouth.
“Well, hello.” Gleaming eyes, a much darker shade of green than Ash’s, trailed over her face, dipped to survey her body, pausing over the length of her legs and again over her breasts, until she felt like he’d touched her. “May I help you?”
“I—” She darted another look at the bed and swallowed, running her tongue over her bottom lip. Ash’s brother, whom Tick had called earlier and was trying to get a plane out of Houston. He had to be. That explained why he looked familiar, despite the difference in coloring. She tucked her hands in the back pockets of her jeans. She looked a mess, not the first impression she wanted to give his family.
Shit, she was worried about impressing his family? She was in so much trouble.
“Yes?” The smooth voice was like honeyed velvet, with a hint of gravel underneath. Deep, a little raspy, a lot rich. She frowned. He didn’t talk like Ash, didn’t have the same cadence in his sentences, which didn’t make sense if they were siblings. Even she and Autry phrased sentences the same way despite their years apart. But something about his speech was familiar. His speech and those eyes.