Protection Detail

A powerful engine revved and a beat-up white van raced out of the shadows, barreling straight toward the truck.

“Thomas!” Seamus shouted.

“Look out!” Jane ran toward Thomas. He was standing right in the van’s path. “Move!”

“Everybody back!” Thomas snapped his arm around her waist as she reached for him. “Get down!”

Thomas lifted her off her feet and dived for the sidewalk. Jane caught a brief glimpse of an open passenger-side window and several small flashes of light a split second before she heard an explosion of gunshots. Thomas grunted against her ear and they were falling, rolling. The points of her knee and elbow burned as she hit concrete. She heard people screaming. Maybe she was one of them. She slammed into Thomas’s chest when he came to an abrupt stop against the curb.

Then he was on his feet, pulling his gun, running after the car in his awkward, rolling gait. “KCPD! Stop the vehicle!”

He fired one shot, but the van skidded around the corner of the building into the street and sped away into the night.

Shouts of panic and crashes of dishes and furniture echoed in her ears as Jane pushed to her feet. Ignoring her own voice of panic screaming inside her head, she stumbled over the fallen walker and hurried to the bench where Seamus had collapsed on top of Millie. “Are you two all right?” She touched Seamus’s shoulder. Had he fallen? Had he been shot? Freddie’s killer had tormented him for weeks before the home invasion, threatening the people around him. Threatening her. “Seamus?”

“I’m all right.” He leaned heavily against her as she helped him turn and sit on the bench beside Millie. “We’re all right.”

Jane swept her gaze over them both to confirm his claim. “Millie?”

“It’s happening again, isn’t it? Why does someone want to hurt this family?” She sobbed once, but quickly pinched her nose and held off the threat of tears. Seamus pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and pushed it into her fingers. “I’m all right. I don’t understand, but I’m all right.” She pushed to her feet and swayed. “Where’s Thomas?”

“Millie?” Jane caught the older woman by the arm and urged her to sit before she fainted.

“Thomas?”

“I’m right here.” Jane turned at the deep voice behind her. His chest and shoulders expanding with deep breaths, Thomas strode up to them, pulling his badge off his belt as he stuffed his phone into his pocket. “Are they okay?”

“Yes. Frightened out of their minds. Millie is a little shocky, but no one was hurt.”

“Good.” He held his badge over his head and shouted to the crowd. “I’m KCPD. Detective Lieutenant Watson. I need it quiet.”

Except for a few lingering whimpers, everyone in the doorway or on the patio stopped talking to listen. Even Jane’s panic stopped. For a split second.

“I’ve already called the incident in. Officers are on their way. Is anyone hurt?”

There was a smattering of conversations as friends and family checked in with each other, but then the group quieted again. Thank goodness. No one had been shot.

“That’s good. I need everybody to take a seat.” While chairs were righted and people got up off the ground where they’d taken cover, Thomas spoke to one of the waiters. “I need everyone to stay put inside the restaurant, as well. Let me know ASAP if anyone in there is injured. And I need to talk to your manager.”

While the young man hurried inside to do Thomas’s bidding, Jane turned to inspect Millie again. She caught the older woman’s wrist and timed her pulse. Her heart was still racing, or maybe that was her own, but Millie’s color was better. Jane picked up Seamus’s walker and set it in front of him. She appealed to the cop in him. “I need you to make sure she stays seated. She’s a little light-headed and I don’t want her to pass out. Can you do that for me?” He took Millie’s hand and nodded. She wanted him to stay put, too, so he wouldn’t fall and injure himself, either. “I’m going to check around to see if anyone needs medical attention.”

She barely had time to finish her sentence when a strong hand clamped around her arm and pulled her away. “What are you...? Thomas.”

Without releasing her, he backed her against the door of his truck, his broad shoulders blocking out the lights and chatter of the restaurant behind him. “What the hell were you doing, running into the path of that van? I told you to stay back.”

“He was going to run you over!” She tugged her arm free of his grip and pushed him back a step. Into the light. Where she saw the red streak of blood seeping into the forearm of his soiled shirt. “You’ve been shot.” She unbuttoned his cuff and gently pushed the plaid chambray up his arm to inspect the graze across his skin. It wouldn’t need stitches, but it could still get infected if the wound wasn’t treated. The cloth at his elbow was torn and bloody, too, indicating he’d scraped up a chunk of skin when they’d hit the concrete. “I’m so sorry you got hurt. I never meant—”

As she turned the wounds into the light, their heated words topped each other’s. “You could have been run down. You could have been shot. When I give you an order, I expect you to—”

“Screw your order. I won’t let anyone else get hurt. He was after me.”

“—do what I say and stay safe. He was after me.”

Jane froze as they blurted the exact same words. She tipped her chin up to see the shocked look in his eyes that she imagined mirrored her own.

Of course. Duh. She’d overreacted. She’d nearly given her secret away.

This could have been a random drive-by shooting.

Anyone in this crowded restaurant could have been the target.

Tragic as any senseless violence might be, Freddie’s killer hadn’t found her. This incident wasn’t part of his sick game.

She covered the slip of the tongue induced by panic by falling back on the thing she did best. Healing people. She spun around to open the truck door and pull out the first-aid kit from the glove compartment. She opened the contents on the seat and ripped open a couple of gauze pads, buying herself a few seconds to regain her composure. Her voice sounded surprisingly normal when she turned back to press the gauze against Thomas’s open wound. “I’ll need to debride that gash on your elbow before infection sets in. But I’m more concerned about the blood loss with this graze. Millie’s right. This could be related to the shooting at your daughter’s wedding. Or could it be related to one of the cases you’re working? I know you’ve been consulting—”

“I’m a cop. Bad guys don’t like me.” Thomas spread his fingers over hers, stopping her work. He dipped his head to put his face in front of hers and demand she look him in the eye. “But why would someone want to hurt you?”

Chapter Three (#ue3a99c30-2bd9-5a84-9216-5ad6a9cdade1)

Thomas had never met a woman who could lock down as fast or as tight as Jane Boyle. The fear that had darkened her eyes, the confusion and concern dimpling her forehead, had suddenly gone blank. She wasn’t about to tell him anything. Fine. He didn’t need her sure fingers dancing over his skin, distracting him from getting the answers she refused to give, so he’d sent her over to have her own injuries checked at the second ambulance to arrive on the scene while paramedics from the first bandaged his wounds and cleared him to report to the officers taking charge of the incident.

Although he was the senior officer on the scene, he was also a witness to the drive-by shooting. He and the scene commander had agreed that a third party would be able to process his account more objectively than if he started listening to witness statements from the other patrons and restaurant staff who were still milling about the scene. So Thomas stood off to the side with the onlookers and flashing lights while other detectives conducted interviews, criminologists processed the parking lot and patio and uniformed officers directed traffic.

It didn’t stop his favorites of Kansas City’s finest from reporting to him, though.

His youngest son, Keir, was waiting to speak to him and hurried over as soon as the scene commander had left. “How’s the arm, Dad?” He nodded toward the white gauze bandages on his forearm and elbow. “Other than a panic attack leading to hyperventilation, you’re the only casualty.” Keir glanced over at the ambulance parked beyond the crime-scene tape to the hazel-eyed woman sitting on the back bumper, stoically turning her head away from the medic cutting off part of her sleeve to inspect the scrape on her elbow. “Well, you and Jane.”

“Is she okay?”

“Okay enough, I suppose. Superficial injuries. Main concern is infection.”

“That’s what she told me.”

“That’s what she told the medic, too.” Keir grinned. “I think she’s struggling to sit back and allow someone else to take care of her.”

She’d made that abundantly clear to him. Thomas must have been staring too hard at the woman in question, because she suddenly turned her head. Their gazes met across the parking lot before Jane visibly straightened and shifted her attention back to the EMT. She couldn’t avoid him and his questions forever, not when whatever the answers were had stamped that look of terror on her face. Jane was his responsibility. She’d become one of his own the moment he’d realized how much his father needed her—and Thomas Watson protected his own. If there was anything more to this concern for her that made his belly ache, he chose to ignore it and focus on someone who was willing to talk to him. He and Keir stood by the hood of his truck while a pair of criminologists documented the bullet lodged in the left rear tire. “What about Dad and Millie? I haven’t had a chance to check in with them.”

“They’re good. They’ve already given their statements and have been dismissed.” Keir must have just come off his shift before responding to the all-points call of shots fired. He’d unbuttoned his collar and loosened his tie, but still wore the tailored gray suit that would have allowed him to pass as an executive in the financial district if it hadn’t been for the badge and Glock holstered to his belt. “Grandpa’s still got blue running through his veins. He got a partial on the license plate and the scene commander will run it. I’ll give them a ride home. Millie’s keeping it together, but she’s scared. And Grandpa seems pretty tired.”

Thomas appreciated being able to trust his father’s care to someone else. “It’s been a long day for him.”

“You, too, I imagine.” With blue eyes like his mother’s, and that same driving intensity that had guided Mary Watson throughout their marriage until her death, Keir commanded authority, even though Thomas outranked him in both age and chevrons on his badge. “I was analyzing the shot pattern. Either that driver was nearsighted and couldn’t hit the side of a barn, or he was intentionally missing.”

Didn’t that sound eerily familiar. He glanced over at Seamus, now chatting amicably with Millie and a young uniformed officer. Probably regaling him with some story about how they did police work back in his day. Out of all the people at Olivia’s wedding, with all that gunfire, only one person had been hit. There had to be a reason Seamus had been targeted specifically that day. Or maybe the shooter had been targeting him, and his dad seated beside him had been collateral damage. If whoever had hired the hit man that day wanted to hurt Thomas, he’d inflicted far more pain by attacking his family than by putting the bullet in him. Maybe that had been the plan all along. But who hated him enough to want to come after his family like that? Had that man made a second attempt to hurt the people he cared about tonight?

“I noticed the same thing. The driver swerved at the last second when he could have hit us. And his shots were aimed down at my tires, not up into the crowd.” He lifted the sleeve the paramedic had cut up to the elbow. “In fact, I think the bullet that caught me was a ricochet. Janie could have been hit someplace a lot more vital if it hadn’t deflected off me first.”

“Janie?” Keir’s eyes narrowed as he geared up to ask another question.