Sworn To Protect

“You know I’m not going to do that, Martin.”

“Then, I guess this kid is going to die. Just like your buddy.” Martin’s eyes were cold, his tone emotionless.

“Put the knife down, let the boy go and we’ll get you the help you need.”

“I don’t need help. I need to get back what your friend took from me.” Martin nearly spat the words, his gaze suddenly sharp with rage.

“Please let me go,” the teen gasped, his eyes wide with fear, the thin trickle of blood staining the collar of his jacket.

“Once we’re out of the park and away from the police, you can go on with your day. If you cooperate.” Martin dragged the boy to the edge of the clearing, his focus on Tony. “None of this needed to happen. None of it. Jordan could have had any woman. He didn’t have to go after mine.”

“Katie was never yours, Martin. You know that.” Tony followed Martin across the clearing, Rusty close to his side.

“She was always mine. She will always be mine. She knows that. I know it. It is just the rest of the world that needs to understand.” Martin’s knife hand slipped away from the boy’s neck.

Tony lunged toward Martin, grabbed his wrist and dragged it away from the boy’s throat. The teen twisted free, shoving into Tony as he tried to run. He tripped, sprawling on the ground, his shoulders knocking Tony’s arm. Tony’s hand slipped, and the knife slid across his shoulder, slicing through fabric and flesh. There was no pain. Just the desperate need to regain control of the weapon.

Martin jerked back, the knife still in his hand. He swung, the blade arching through the air inches from Tony’s face.

“Back off!” Martin spat as he raised the knife again.

This time Tony was ready.

He gave Martin a two-armed shove backward, pulled out his firearm and aimed for Martin’s arm. He didn’t want to kill the man. He just needed to stop him. “Freeze!” he yelled, as the teen jumped to his feet and darted between them.

It was the second of opportunity Martin needed.

The knife blade dropped again, this time slicing across the boy’s cheek. He darted away, pushing through a patch of brambles and darting from the line of Tony’s gunfire.

Blood spurted from the wound in the teen’s cheek. He wobbled as Tony shoved past, ready to follow Martin.

“Stay here!” he shouted at the boy.

But, the kid didn’t seem interested in listening.

He followed Tony, rushing after him as he shoved through the patch of brambles and called in his location.

“I said, stay put!” Tony repeated, concerned for the boy, but more concerned that Martin would escape again. He had proven to be cunning and dangerous, and he needed to be apprehended before he hurt someone else.

“I’m not staying there waiting for him to come back for me,” the teen responded, his voice muffled and faint. One minute he was running behind Tony. The next, he was falling, his scrawny body knocking into Tony as he went down.

“You okay?” Tony asked, still moving. When the teen didn’t respond, he glanced back. The kid was lying prone, blood seeping from his cheek, eyes closed. He was clearly unconscious.

Tony itched to go after Martin, but he couldn’t leave an injured and unconscious teenager lying in the park alone.

Frustrated, he jogged back, crouching near the young man and feeling for a pulse. Every second he spent there was a second more of distance Martin put between them, but this wouldn’t be the end of the chase. As soon as backup arrived, Tony and Rusty would return to the hunt.

I’ll get you, Tony vowed. For Katie. For Jordan.

For himself.

THREE (#u25871cba-47df-5c4a-864a-ae6f4a390964)

Katie didn’t like hospitals. The scents and sounds brought back memories she’d rather forget. She had been ten when her parents died. An only child being raised by only children, she had had an idyllic childhood—a pretty house in the suburbs, nice clothes, good food and parents who’d loved her.

That had changed the night of her parents’ fifteenth wedding anniversary. She had been at home with a babysitter when a drunk driver had blown through a red light and hit her parents’ sedan. Her father had been killed instantly. Her mother had lived for nearly a week. Katie had visited her every day, standing alone in the ICU and listening to the whoosh and beep of the machines keeping her mother alive. She’d had no grandparents, uncles or aunts to support her as she grieved. Just strangers who had meant well but who had not been able to give her the only thing she had wanted—her parents.

Even now, all these years later, hospitals made her stomach churn.

She touched her abdomen, her fingers skimming across the fetal monitor that was strapped there. The baby was moving, her rapid heartbeat filling the silence of the room. The contractions had ended as abruptly as they’d begun, and for the past two hours, she had been lying in the hospital bed, watching the clock, wondering how Ivy was doing and if Tony and Rusty were all right. Worrying about what Martin might be doing.

He’d tracked her here earlier. Walked right into the clinic, donned a lab coat and fooled everyone he’d passed. He could do it again. Had he managed to circle back to the building? Was he inside right now?

Breathe, she told herself. An officer is stationed outside your room. Martin can’t get you. Or, hurt the baby.

She wanted the thought to be comforting, but Jordan had been tough, strong and smart. Somehow Martin had managed to get to him. If that could happen, anything seemed possible.

She had not heard anything from her father-or brothers-in-law since she had insisted they stay by Ivy’s side. They had left reluctantly, but they had left. Katie hadn’t expected or wanted anything else.

That didn’t mean she liked being alone.

For the first hour, regular contractions had distracted her.

Now, with the pain gone, her mind was spinning, her thoughts jumping from one thing to the next. She had spent nearly nine months preparing to give birth without Jordan, but the threat of an early labor, even just by a couple of weeks, had made her realize how desperately she still wanted him there.

He’d promised her a lot of things before they had married.

He had promised her even more when they’d stood in front of friends and family and spoken their vows. He had said he would love her always, that she would be first in his life after God, that he would put her needs in front of his own and be the family she longed for. That he would always be there for her.

She had believed him. But, even in the first few months of their marriage, she had known that her needs were secondary to the needs of the K-9 unit and the community. Jordan had taken his responsibilities to both seriously. He had worked long hours and devoted himself to justice. She had admired that more than she had resented it, but there had been a tiny bit of jealousy—a small part of herself that had wondered how they would both feel in a decade or two, after his job had pulled him away from anniversaries and holidays and birthdays a few too many times.

She frowned, shoved aside the blanket that covered her legs and got to her feet. She unhooked the monitor and set it on a table near the bed.

Lately, she had spent too much time looking at the past through a microscopic lens. As if, somehow, that could change all of the things that had happened.

But, of course, no amount of dwelling on her decisions, on the things she had believed and expected, could change the fact that Jordan was dead, that she was alone, that a man who had seemed as innocuous as a buttercup in a field of daisies had killed her husband and nearly kidnapped her.

Martin was deranged.

A dangerous man with a twisted obsession.

And, she was the target of that obsession.

She was the reason Jordan had been murdered.

No matter how much she wanted to, she couldn’t forget that, and she couldn’t forgive herself.

If she could go back to the days before she and Jordan had met, she would. Instead of being open to all of the new people in her life, she would have ignored Martin when she saw him at the church they had both attended. She wouldn’t have chatted with him when they ran into each other in the parking lot after service. She certainly wouldn’t have accepted his invitation to coffee the following Sunday morning. Nor would she have had lunch with him the week after that.