“Gee, thanks. Seems we’re going to have to work on your bedside manner, Nurse Ratched.”
“Call me that again, and I’ll stick my finger in there and twist. Slowly.” He croaked a short chuckle at the retort, and she let their banter soothe the worst of her terror as she examined both the entry and exit wound.
“You’ll be fine. I know it hurts like the inferno of hell, but the bullet caught all skin. You’ve got an ugly scratch, that’s all.”
“Will it need stitches?” He angled his head, trying to see.
“The gauge is too wide. Not enough flesh. We’ll let your buddies clean and bandage this, but at least you won’t have to take a ride. You okay?”
“Just feeling a little green.”
So was she. Three inches to the left and it would’ve severed his spine between his shoulders. A slightly different angle, an inch or two lower, it would’ve blown out his heart.
Someone had tried to murder Zack. Almost succeeded.
His eyes drifted closed and despite her assurances, keeping him talking would lessen her worry.
“What were you doing in the kitchen?”
“Talking to Six-Pack on the phone,” he murmured without opening his eyes. “Had to let someone know where I’m staying. Turned to hang up. Shot came through the window over the sink.”
So he’d been facing the shooter originally. Who’d probably had the center of Zack’s chest in the crosshairs.
“All right. Listen, I’m going to get a washcloth and towel. I’ll be right back.” She started to rise, and her wrist was caught in his iron grip. His serious gaze pinned hers.
“Be careful and stay low.”
His tone brooked no argument, not that she’d intended to give him one. Being independent and being stupid were two different things. Giving him a quick nod, she hurried upstairs, pulled on a pair of jeans. Last, she grabbed a washcloth, wet and wrung it, then a towel.
In less than a minute, she was leaping down the stairs two at a time, toward the figure hunched at the bottom. “Zack?”
“Hmm?” He was drifting, lashes fanning his cheeks like black lace.
“Sorry; this is going to sting.”
Cori cleaned his wound as best as she was able with the damp cloth, turning it red. Finished, she laid it on the step and pressed the towel to his torn flesh. He moaned and she talked to him softly, the way people do when they want desperately to sound reassuring and know it’s a total load of crap.
Because the picture beginning to gel was a terrifying one. For whatever reason, somebody had targeted her in a campaign to make her afraid. Now Zack was in the bastard’s way, and the would-be assassin couldn’t have made his displeasure clearer.
Well, the cops had to believe her now.
If they didn’t . . .
God help us both.
For the third time in one night, the chirping of the phone committed the felony of coitus interruptus, punishable by a lingering death.
Lieutenant Howard Paxton glared at the offending instrument, his luscious blond wife’s snorts of merry laughter ringing in his ears.
“Sonofabitch.”
Kat giggled. “It’s not going to stop, sweetie.”
“Is the damned answering machine broken?”
“I think so.”
“I’m buying us a new one.” Grumbling, he rolled off his new wife and snatched the phone, his trademark calm strained to the max. “What?”
“Lieutenant Paxton?”
Howard sat up, already tense. He didn’t recognize the voice on the other end, but he knew when a tone didn’t bode well. “Speaking.”
“Lieutenant, this is Captain Lance Holliday from Station Two.”
He slid out of bed, already reaching for his jeans. “You got a four-alarm on your hands?” He glanced to the bed, where Kat clutched the sheet to her bosom, wide-eyed, humor evaporated.
“No, sir. Nothing like that. But I thought you’d want to know we responded to a disturbing call tonight. One of your boys has been hurt.”
“Which one?” God, please not Sean. If he’d been drinking again—
“Your FAO, Zack Knight.”
He froze, trying to assimilate. “What? I just talked to him an hour ago. Was it an accident? A fall or something?”
“Shooting. Some lunatic scoped him with a rifle. Bullet came in through the kitchen window.”
He felt the blood drain from his face. The memory of his own ordeal was still much too fresh. “Sweet Christ, someone shot Zack,” he said to Kat, zipping his jeans and reaching for his discarded shirt. Her hand went over her mouth as he addressed Holliday again. “How bad?”
“Grazed his shoulder. We cleaned and bandaged the wound, and he didn’t require transport.” A weighty pause. “Knight got lucky. Cops said attempted murder, as if there was any doubt. If your man hadn’t moved when he did, well, he’d be dead. As it is, he’s resting at home, but I thought you’d want to know.”
“Thanks, Captain. I appreciate the call.” He hung up and tossed the phone onto the nightstand. His wife was out of bed, grabbing for clothes. “You don’t have to go, honey. He got clipped in the shoulder, so he’ll be all right.”
“I know, but I want to, Howard. You know how I feel about Zack.”
He did. Knight had been the first of his team members she’d met, and Boy Wonder had a special place in her heart. Hell, he felt the same way, not that he’d go around spouting off like a Hallmark commercial.
A world without Zack in it would be a pretty awful place.
He damned well intended to find out why someone had attempted to take him out . . . and what sort of trouble this lady friend had brought down on Zack’s head.
“Mr. Knight, you’re positive you don’t have any idea why somebody would want to shoot you?”
Zack stared at the grizzled detective—Bernie, if he recalled through his drug-induced trip—and wondered if the man was hard of hearing, or whether cynicism was a job requirement. “Not unless it had something to do with that body I helped bury last week.”
Six-Pack, Kat, and Cori worked to hide grins. Eve was not amused.
Neither was Dick Tracy. “Under the circumstances, you might try to take the situation a little more seriously.”
O-kay. Must be the painkiller loosening his normally civil tongue, because he’d had his fill of this little pinhead. He struggled to sit up on the sofa and fixed the man with what he hoped to be a lethal glare.
“No, sir,” he said coldly, as his friends goggled in amazement. “That would be
your
job. In the past week, I’ve survived drowning and being shot. Ms. Shannon barely escaped the bridge accident with her life after someone shot out her tire. Since then, she’s been followed on numerous occasions and terrorized at her own home.
Stalked
, Detective Bernie. You do know the definition of stalking, don’t you?”
The detective sputtered, his face reddening, and Zack went in for the kill.
“Then you also know almost ninety percent of stalkers are men, and of the women being targeted, some eighty percent either know their stalker intimately or have had some sort of contact with him. A vast number of these women meet with a sad fate because local law enforcement didn’t do a goddamned thing to help them. Is that serious enough for you, Bernie? Because if it isn’t, here’s one more factoid.”
“Zack,” Howard warned.
Zack seethed with anger, ignoring his friend’s voice of reason. “Start with Ms. Shannon’s badass brother Joaquin Delacruz of Atlantic City, and her deceased husband. Leave no stone unturned as to who’d want to hurt her, and find this sonofabitch. Find him, Bernie, because if you don’t, I will. And if I locate him first, there won’t be any need for a trial.”
“Shit,” the lieutenant muttered.
The ladies’ eyes were round, Cori’s face pale.
“You shouldn’t have said that to me,” Detective Bernie hissed, mouth tight with barely suppressed rage. “Especially in front of witnesses.”
“With all due respect, I don’t give a fuck. Scribble that down in your little notebook, and be sure you spell my name right.”
Casting a humiliated glare around the room, the detective stalked out the front door, leaving an uncomfortable vacuum of silence in his wake.
Eve broke it after a few seconds, giving a low whistle. “Wow, buddy. Where’d the baditude come from? For a minute, you sounded exactly like Sean.”
“Funny, I’m not as bothered by the comparison as I would’ve been a week ago.”
“I’ve never heard you hand anyone their ass before,” Eve said, frowning at him.
“Never had a week like this one before. Or maybe it’s the awesome drugs.” He gave Cori a hopeful look, gesturing to his pill bottle. “Do I have any refills?”
“Nope, sorry. Those will have to be enough, handsome.”
“Oh. Guess I’ll have to keep getting my warm fuzzies from you, huh?”
Cori blushed as Eve’s eyebrows shot up. Eve’s sharp gaze bounced between them, then narrowed as she got the drift.
Whoops. Note to self. Apologize to Evie.
Cori squeezed his hand. “I’m going to go upstairs and see if we have enough bandages. We might need to run to town.”
She was giving them time alone, and he appreciated it. After she’d gone, Zack held up a hand to forestall his friends’ third degree.
“Don’t even start with me. I can’t handle any more tonight.” Turning his head, he appealed to his fuming best friend. “Evie, I’m really sorry about this afternoon. I had no idea you were picking me up. Please don’t be mad at me.”
“Mad?
Mad?
” She slapped a hand to her cheek, looking unsure whether to hug him or strangle him. “I was insane with fear for days, positive you were going to die. We all were. Now someone’s trying to kill you the very same night you run off with that—that
woman
, and nobody knows where the hell you are or what’s going on!”
“She’s not ‘that woman,’ ” he said calmly. “Her name is Cori, and she helped me out of a tight spot.”
“Any one of us would’ve done the same if you’d given us the chance, Zack,” she replied, sounding hurt. “We can’t be there for you if you won’t clue us in. You’re keeping secrets from me, from all of your friends, and what? You’re sharing them with
her
?”
Eve rarely dropped the tough-chick facade, and to see her genuinely wounded over his keeping her out of the loop ripped at his guts.
“It’s not like that, I swear. I’ve had some heavy-duty problems these past few weeks, but I wanted to deal with them myself. Howard knows some of it,” he admitted, waving a hand at the lieutenant, who nodded. “Cori now knows part of it, too, but nobody’s heard the whole story. I guess I just thought . . .”
Kat spoke up with quiet understanding. “You wanted to handle your situation on your own, without burdening anyone. You thought you could, but it’s grown too huge.”
“God, yeah.” He sighed, knowing he had to level with Eve, at least about some of the story. “Here’s the part Six-Pack knows, and only because I had to ask for time off to deal with it. Remember when I took those two days off the week Howard was almost killed?”
Eve rolled her eyes. “Like I could forget? Sean stayed pissed for weeks, even threw it in your face the day you almost drowned.”
“What he doesn’t know is I didn’t have a choice. I . . . I lost my house, Evie. That week, I had to clear out.”
He’d stunned her. She gaped at him, letting out a soft sound of distress, her expression of pity and confusion exactly what he’d wanted to avoid. Moving to his side, she lowered herself onto the sofa beside him, laying a hand on his arm.
“But you’re still here. I don’t understand.”
“I’m getting to that part.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“I was
ashamed
,” he whispered, throat tight. “I didn’t want anyone to know, even you.”
She lifted her chin, piercing him with pale eyes, communicating her disappointment eloquently without voicing what a complete jackass he was. “You should at least tell Sean. He’ll lighten up on you once he understands—”
“No, you’re wrong. The captain’s curled up at the bottom of a bottle and doesn’t give a shit about our personal lives. Let’s not go there—I’ve already said too much.”
Sean and Six-Pack were tight, went way back. Zack hadn’t missed the big man’s flinch at his harsh words, and regretted speaking them.
“You’re the one who’s wrong. He does care, but we’ll drop it for now.” Sadness flashed across her angular face as it always did when the subject of Sean came up, but it was quickly masked by determination. “What does Cori know?”
“She gave me a ride to my apartment and was there when I found out I’d been evicted. The manager sold all my possessions while I was hospitalized to cover back rent, so Cori offered me a place to stay. I know,” he said, cutting off another round of protests from Eve. “I could’ve asked you and I would have, except Cori needs me. Someone’s scaring her and I needed to crash, so it’s an even trade.”