Police Protector

“What?” He frowned over at her, both at the oddity of her question and the way her voice sounded like she was in a daze.

She gestured to her feet, and he looked down, realizing she was talking about the bottle of champagne on his floorboard, which was still miraculously unbroken.

“That was for you,” he replied, seeing her confusion before he yanked his attention back onto the road and drove as fast as he could through the surface streets toward the freeway.

“For me?”

“Put pressure on your wound,” he said, instead of explaining that he’d gotten it to celebrate her returning to work.

He risked a glance at her as her head dropped forward. As if she’d just realized how much blood there was, she pressed both hands down frantically against her leg.

She was coming out of her shock. He’d seen enough shooting victims to know what was coming next: panic.

He tried to stave it off as he merged onto the freeway and punched it up to ninety. “We’ll be at the hospital in three minutes,” he promised, keeping his tone calm despite the fear he felt. “You’re fine. It’s a flesh wound. I know it looks like a lot, but the bullet went through and you haven’t lost enough blood for it to be a problem.”

He’d seen enough bullet wounds to know when they were life threatening. But he’d also seen enough to know that sometimes they surprised you. He’d seen people operate on adrenaline, actually getting up and running, when their injuries said they should already be dead. And he’d seen minor wounds turn fatal.

Not for Shaye, he promised himself, speeding off the freeway. A few more too-fast turns and then he made an illegal turn into the hospital parking lot and slammed to a stop. He tossed his key at the valet and ran around the other side to open Shaye’s door.

An orderly was coming their way with a wheelchair, but Cole ignored him, reaching in to lift Shaye himself. If it was possible, she looked even more pale and terrified, reminding him of that day almost exactly a year ago and the drive-by at the station. Shaye had been caught in the middle of it all.

“Why does this keep happening?” she whispered, then promptly passed out.

Chapter Two (#u7ad02723-41b0-5f69-a36f-b1bc725b0b43)

Shaye woke in a hospital bed, a warm blanket pulled up to her chin and a frowning nurse strapping a blood pressure cuff to her arm.

“How are you feeling?”

She’d recognize that voice anywhere. Shaye turned her head, and there was Cole, perched at the edge of a chair next to her bed, his reddish-blond hair rumpled and concern etched onto his normally laid-back expression.

Embarrassment heated her. Had she actually fainted?

Okay, yes, she was a lab rat, and gun battles—except for the gang shooting that still gave her nightmares—were way outside her experience. But she’d managed to make a run for that second car, hiding until Cole had magically arrived. She’d managed to stay relatively cool until they’d made it safely to the hospital.

Yet she’d fainted in front of Jannis’s best detective, the guy who’d led the charge to bring down the entire gang’s network after that shooting. Cole was one of the bravest people she knew.

And she was most definitely not.

“I’m okay,” she said, surprised when her voice came out weak. She realized just how tired she was.

“We stitched up your wound,” the nurse told her, jotting something down and then taking the blood pressure cuff off her arm. “You were lucky—it went straight through and didn’t hit anything crucial. The doctor is going to want to watch your vitals for a few hours, but then we’ll send you home. You should be feeling fine in a few days.”

Shaye nodded, trying not to focus on the dread she’d felt as soon as the nurse mentioned leaving the hospital. Would she ever feel safe again? Or would everywhere she went become like the forensics lab, requiring her to psyche herself up to leave her house? Tears welled, and she shoved them back, refusing to show any more weakness in front of Cole.

Once she knew no tears were going to escape, she looked over at him, hopeful. “Did they get the shooter?”

He frowned, shaking his head. “Not yet. But we’re already reaching out to the news stations. We’ll be putting out a call for information on all the evening shows. Someone will know something. We’ll find him.”

She shivered, suddenly cold, pulling the blanket tighter around her. Would they really? The department was good. She’d seen firsthand how dedicated they were. But with nothing to go on but a vague description of a gunman? Especially one who’d managed to escape the police’s net?

Cole must have sensed the direction of her thoughts, because he said, “We’ve got officers at the scene now, pulling the slugs from your car. The security camera at the grocery store was just for show, but we’re canvassing the area, hoping someone saw the shooter running away. And we’re checking nearby traffic cameras, too. Unless he lives close by, he must have had a vehicle waiting. Once we find that, it’s over.”

There was a dark determination to his voice that told her he planned to be there to slap on the handcuffs himself.

And what he was saying made sense. Although her job was peripheral—she analyzed digital devices like laptops or cell phones that cops brought to her under the fluorescent lights in her lab—she’d seen how investigations worked.

Roy’s Grocery was in a safe area. There were a lot of independent businesses there, and it was close to family neighborhoods. People watched out for one another. They would report someone running away after hearing gunshots. Logically, that would lead to a location where the shooter had a car waiting, and a license plate they could run through their system to get a name. She’d seen it happen before. She’d seen it work plenty of times.

But she’d also helped with cases where they’d come up empty no matter how hard they tried, and she couldn’t shake the feeling that this was going to be one of those cases. Even worse, she hadn’t been any help at all. All she could say about the shooter was that he was male, probably white, definitely determined to kill her.

“Do you think it was the same people from last year?” She spoke her deepest fear.

Gangs didn’t give up. They didn’t forgive, and they held grudges.

The police had rounded up the whole group, killing some at the scene, then getting the driver from her identification. After that, they’d worked tirelessly to bring down the leadership, being creative by going after them on racketeering charges, using the digital trail she’d found before the shooting, before she’d quit. But was everyone behind bars, or had they missed someone? Had someone gotten out?

With gangs anything was possible, including someone new making a play to bring the group back, to make a name for himself by taking out the key witness in the trial that had brought down the old leadership. Last year she’d worried that she’d never be safe again. There had actually been talk of the Witness Protection Program.

But Cole and his partner had kept at it, even working with local FBI agents in one of the biggest task forces their small department had ever seen. She’d been gone by then, but she’d heard the rumors. Cole had ignored death threats. He’d kept going until he was certain every member was behind bars.

She’d seen the news headlines later that year, too, proclaiming the demise of the Jannis Crew gang. Her fear of returning to the station hadn’t gone away, but at the time, her logical brain had said there was no more reason for her to be scared.

“We’re looking into it,” Cole said, fury in the hard lines of his jaw. “But don’t worry. Chances are this is totally unrelated. You were probably a random victim, just in the wrong parking lot when he happened to be looking for trouble.”

“You think this guy was planning a mass shooting and the parking lot was emptier than he expected?” she asked. Or had Cole arrived before the shooter could head into the building to find more victims, she wondered, staring at the man who’d saved her life for the second time.

She flashed back to that moment when she’d flattened herself to the ground in a different parking lot, certain she was going to be killed. Back then, there’d been three other men in the lot with her, armed men, who’d each taken a bullet before they could unholster their weapons. She’d gotten as low as she could, with nowhere to run, bullets spraying over her head, and then Cole had run out the front door of the station, right into the line of fire.

“It’s definitely a possibility,” Cole said, and she refocused on their conversation.

Mass shooting. This was different from last year, she reminded herself. Except back then, she hadn’t been an intended target, either. Just at the wrong place at the wrong time. How many chances would she get before she ran out of them, or Cole wasn’t around to save her?

A shiver worked through her, and she spoke quickly to change the subject, knowing he’d seen it. “How long have I been here?”

He didn’t even glance at his watch. “A few hours.”

And he’d stayed beside her the whole time? She didn’t need to ask. She could tell from the way the nurse had maneuvered around him when she’d left the room without even looking, as if she’d been doing it repeatedly.

She had an instant flashback to the day she’d arrived in Jannis, having accepted the job as a digital forensics examiner. She’d walked through the station doors, thinking it was connected to the laboratory she was supposed to report to, her palms slick with nerves and her stride quick with anticipation. She’d turned the corner toward security and walked smack into Cole Walker.

She was tall, and in the heels she’d worn that first day with her carefully tailored suit, she’d been close to his six feet. But even in heels, she didn’t have slow or dainty strides. She walked with purpose, so she’d collided with him hard. Enough that the impact with his rock-hard chest had almost sent her to the ground.

The memory made her flush, warming her up, and Cole’s lips turned up at the corners like he could tell what she was thinking. Before he could comment on it, she blurted, “I’m not quitting.”

He looked surprised by her outburst, and, in truth, it had surprised her, too. She’d had no idea she was even thinking it until the words came out, but as soon as she spoke, she realized they were true.

A year ago she’d let the tragedy at the station derail her career. The fact was she’d let it derail her life.