Lone Star Christmas Mission (Hard Justice #9.5)

Chapter Two

Because Kayla knew that Cash was watching her, she tried not to wince as the ER nurse continued to stitch the cut on her head. Cash no doubt already had enough concerns about her, and she didn’t want to add more.

She failed.

The wince came anyway, coupled with a sharp sound of pain, and, yeah, Cash noticed, thanks to his amazing ability to multitask. He was talking to two county cops while keeping an eye on both her and the door to the examination room. Judging from the way he kept glancing at that door, he seemed to be anticipating another attack.

Kayla prayed not.

One nightmare at a time was all she could handle, and she was still recovering from this latest one.

Recovery might take more than a while, considering she’d apparently killed a man. Of course, said man had been attempting to murder her at the time, so it wasn’t as if she’d had choice about doing what she’d done. Still, she’d killed a human being, and that wasn’t going away anytime soon.

Cash wouldn’t either.

Despite their pasts—and what a hell of a shared past it was—he had shown up to face down a kidnapper and rescue her. And he’d done that with no backup. He’d just charged right in, ready to save the day. Or rather the night. What he hadn’t known was that seconds earlier she’d already ended her kidnapper’s life.

Yes, it was going to take much more than a minute or two to process all of that.

She could still hear the sound of the knife stabbing into flesh. Could feel the hot spray of the man’s blood. She could still smell that blood even though she was no longer wearing the clothes she’d had on during the attack. The medical staff had taken those, bagging them for the cops to examine, and they’d helped her dress into a pair of green scrubs.

“All done,” the nurse finally said, and the woman immediately turned toward Cash and the two cops. “You can talk to her now, but go easy on her, okay?”

“How bad is her injury?” Cash immediately asked.

“Not too bad,” the nurse replied. “But someone obviously hit her pretty hard on the head. No concussion, but she’ll either need to be admitted for observation or someone will have to stay with her the rest of the night. Whoever stays with her will have to wake her up every two to three hours to make sure she’s all right.”

Kayla’s gaze flew to his, ready to plead for no hospital admission, but no pleading was required.

“I’ll stay with her,” Cash insisted before Kayla could speak. “She has this thing about hospitals.”

“I hate them,” Kayla spoke up. That put some alarm in the nurse’s eyes. and to avoid any kind of further examination, she added. “I had a bad experience as a teenager.”

Which was the understatement in the history of understatements. But the explanation seemed to satisfy the nurse, and she walked away, leaving Kayla to Cash and the cops.

“I’m County Deputy Aaron Anderson,” the older one said. He was tall, lanky and was sporting a little rhinestone Santa pin over his badge. “We’re gonna need a full statement as to what happened, but that can wait until you come into the station in the morning. For now, just give us the big picture for our preliminary report.”

Kayla nodded, gathering her thoughts. And her breath. It seemed to be lodged in her throat and wasn’t budging. Cash noticed that, too. Maybe because she had some panic on her face. He moved closer, sitting on the exam table next to her, and he took hold of her hand.

Which still had blood stains on it.

A sickening mix of hers and the man she’d killed.

She turned her gaze from the blood and focused on just Cash. Not the past. Not the shitty shared memories. Just Cash.

And she started that preliminary report.

“I was in my workshop behind my house. I make custom furniture,” Kayla explained. “And while I was doing a final polish on a table, I heard someone running outside. Labored breath, footsteps. My nearest neighbors are about a quarter of a mile away, but I thought maybe something had happened to one of them, so I threw open the door.” She paused. Had to. “There was a guy in Santa suit, and he immediately hit me with a stun gun.”

She used her free hand to point to her chest, and Kayla lowered the scrub top a couple of inches to show them the burn marks. Deputy Anderson used his phone to photograph it.

“I fell,” she went on once she had enough breath to speak. “And I hit my head on the doorframe.” Kayla pointed to the fresh stitches on her head, and the deputy photographed that, too.

“Did you recognize the man?” the second deputy asked. According to his name tag, he was Mickey Reeves. He was a good four inches shorter than his partner and looked considerably younger.

Kayla shook her head and winced again at the movement. “No. I didn’t know who he was. The beard and the white wig covered most of his face, and he was wearing tinted glasses over his eyes. While I was unable to move or speak, he put the plastic things on my wrists and covered my mouth with duct tape,” she spelled out, trying to tamp down her heart that was starting to race again. “Then, he hoisted me over his shoulder and carried me across the backyard and into my house.”

“Did he say anything to you when he was doing all of this?” Deputy Anderson asked.

“No. He never spoke a word, but once he had me gagged and cuffed, I saw a text that he was sending to Cash.”

“I received it,” Cash added, and he took out his phone and showed her the text. The deputies had apparently already seen it because they didn’t look at it or snap a photo of it.

Come alone. No cops. No Maverick Ops buddies. Bring 50K to 614 Shelter Lane by midnight or Kayla Morgan dies .

Seeing the words again felt like multiple punches to her stomach. It would have been so easy for her to slide right back into the fear and panic. So damn easy. But Kayla fought it. She needed to finish her statement so she could get the heck out of there and fall apart in private.

“After the man sent the text,” she managed to continue, “he started smashing things in my living room. Everything,” Kayla emphasized. “I still couldn’t move, so I couldn’t stop him, and I was bleeding a lot from where I hit my head. But slowly the effects of the stun gun started wearing off, and I saw one of the presents he’d smashed. A Bowie knife in a leather sheath. I grabbed it from the floor and managed to get it out of the sheath before he turned around and saw me.”

Once again, she had to stop. Had to fight the fresh nightmarish images that were playing havoc with the old ones.

“I tried to stab him, but he dodged me,” she said, just letting the explanation tumble out of her mouth. Say it fast. Get this done . “So, I ran toward my bedroom. I thought if I could get in and lock the door, then I could maybe get to a gun I keep it in my nightstand. I didn’t make it that far, though. He cornered me, shoving me in the closet, and that’s when I stabbed him.”

“Where did you stab him?” Deputy Reeves asked.

She motioned toward her own neck. “I must have hit his carotid artery because blood spurted everywhere. He fell almost immediately, and that’s when I got around him. I was still planning to get to my gun. But I collapsed. Couldn’t move.” Kayla glanced at Cash. “And that’s when he came in.”

Her gaze met Cash’s, and while she saw plenty of concern in his stormy gray eyes, she also saw something else. Something bad. Not the old forbidden heat that was always between them. This was something else that Kayla was absolutely certain she wouldn’t want to hear.

“No,” she muttered, making another attempt to steel herself up. “Other than the obvious, what’s wrong?”

A muscle flickered in Cash’s jaw. “The dead guy in the Santa suit is Alvin Parker. He’s Virgil Parker’s brother.”

“Shit,” Kayla blurted, and she bolted off the exam table, ready to run. Where exactly she didn’t know. But just hearing Virgil’s name gave her a jolt of pure, raw panic.

And memories.

“Cash filled us in on your history with Virgil Parker,” Anderson said, the tension loud and clear in his voice. “He attempted to kidnap you and your twin, Kira, when you were fifteen.”

“Virgil killed my sister,” Kayla heard herself say. Her voice sounded thin, as if it’d come from far, far away.

Both cops nodded. “I pulled up the case file on my phone while you were being examined,” Anderson explained. “Virgil was a handyman at your father’s construction company in San Antonio. He developed an obsession with you and your sister, but Cash stopped him from taking you—”

Kayla held up her hand. “Uh, I’d rather not hear the details repeated. I’m barely hanging on here,” she admitted.

“Of course,” Anderson muttered. He put away his phone and shifted his attention to Cash. “You’ll bring her to the station in the morning so we can get official statements from both of you?”

Cash made a sound of agreement, and added a thanks and a goodbye as the deputies walked away.

“Just sit here for a moment,” Cash told her, helping her back on the exam table. “We have to wait for some paperwork anyway, and that’ll give you some time to catch your breath.”

Good. Kayla wanted to wait. Wanted to do anything that prevented her from moving. Or thinking. Too bad there was nothing she could do about the latter. The thoughts were coming.

Mercy, were they.

They were coming right at her, slamming into her and weakening that fragile hold she had on the rising panic.

“Did Virgil put his brother, Alvin, up to coming after me?” she asked, trying to anchor herself with the question. And the sound of Cash’s voice.

“No. While you were being stitched up, I learned that Virgil died yesterday from injuries he got in a fight at the prison.”

Despite everything, the relief came. The wonderful relief of her knowing that her sister’s killer was finally dead. Virgil had at last paid for what he’d done. Of course, that hadn’t stopped more violence.

In fact, maybe it had caused just the opposite.

“Did Alvin come after me because his brother was killed?” Kayla had to know.

Cash sighed. Nodded. “Yes. I think that’s what triggered him.”

She laughed, but there was absolutely no humor in it. “Well, Alvin has harassed me over the past twenty years. His son, Harvin, too.”

Though Harvin’s harassment had only happened with a few ugly social media posts and not the phone calls and in her face visits that Alvin had made to her store. Those had been extreme enough for Kayla to buy a gun and get a restraining order against the man.

Her gaze whipped to Cash again, and Kayla felt yet a new round of the fresh alarm. “Harvin,” she managed to say. “Will he come after me now that I killed his father?”

Cash didn’t give her a BS assurance about that not happening. Because he couldn’t. “You’ll take precautions,” was what he said instead. “Ruby’s trying to track down Harvin now.”

Ruby, his boss, as in Ruby Maverick, the kickass leader of an equally kickass Maverick Ops team of security and protection specialists. She would have the resources to find Harvin, maybe before he could arrange an attack against her.

“I know that you being around me triggers the nightmares,” he said. “And the panic attacks.” Cash pulled in a long, weary breath. “But until we know Harvin’s intentions, I need to stay close to you.”

Yes, being around him had, and did, cause those things. And more. That blasted heat for one thing.

That heat had started from the moment her body had made her aware of such things when she was thirteen. It had continued the next two years, building and building as Cash and she had their first kiss. Then, more kisses, which had led to making out. They hadn’t gone all the way, but they’d been heading in that direction before their lives had been ripped to pieces.

The nightmarish memories and flashbacks had survived for almost twenty years. And so had that heat. Normally, lust was a fun, exciting thing, but not in their case. Because every moment was a reminder of that godawful night. A reminder of losing Kira.

Over the past two decades, Cash and she had attempted to resist the fierce attraction, but once—on her 21 st birthday—they’d gotten drunk and landed in bed for some incredible sex.

And her first full-blown panic attack.

That had happened shortly afterward and had been so horrific that Kayla had required hospitalization, and it’d convinced Cash and her that they should keep their hands, and other body parts, off each other. They had succeeded at that, for the most part, anyway.

Until tonight.

He was holding her hand now. Was right next to her. And evidently they were going to be sharing close quarters for a while.

“It’s sort of because of you that I got away from Alvin,” she heard herself say. She was babbling, and this was one notch above small talk, but she wanted to fill the silence. Because if she didn’t, Kayla had learned the hard way that the silence would fill itself with panic. “The Bowie knife I used is…it was supposed to be your Christmas gift.”

The corner of his mouth lifted in a near smile. “Nice gift. Thanks.”

“I’d planned on dropping it off at Maverick Ops’ headquarters first thing in the morning since Christmas is only two days away.”

She stopped, considered the time. It was already morning. Three AM to be exact, and since it was December 24 th , Christmas was tomorrow.

“I shipped your gift to your store,” he let her know, and that sounded like small talk, too. “I figured you’d go there before Christmas.”

She would have. In fact, Kayla went there nearly every day, even though she had staff to run the place. Still, she enjoyed just walking around, seeing her own finished work and the pieces of custom furniture that were on consignment from other artisans.

Kayla looked at Cash again, their gazes locking, and the silence returned. So did the wave of emotions, and while she tried to hold back the sob, she wasn’t successful. Tears filled her eyes, and her breath shattered.

Cash sighed and eased his arm around her, pulling her to him, but she felt his muscles stiffen. Felt the hesitation over what he was doing. However, no panic came. Only the comfort, and Kayla found herself sliding right into it. She dropped her head on his shoulder and let the tears fall.

They sat there with Cash holding her. He didn’t offer up any solutions. Didn’t try to fix this. Probably because he knew he couldn’t. He just let her cry it out.

With the fresh round of tears came the bone-weary exhaustion from the ordeal and the spent adrenaline. Kayla might have drifted off to sleep then and there, but his phone buzzed, the sound echoing through the room.

“Sorry,” he muttered, taking out his cell from his pocket. “It’s Maverick Ops’ headquarters,” Cash let her know.

He answered it, and while he didn’t put the call on speaker, Kayla had no trouble hearing what the caller said because she kept her head on his shoulder and right against his ear.

“This is Tammy at dispatch. Cash, someone just called here asking to speak to you. He says he’s Harvin Parker.”

That got her head whipping up from his shoulder. Kayla practically snapped to attention, and her gaze flew to Cash’s.

“I know Ruby’s looking for this guy,” the dispatcher went on, “so I’ll alert her about this.”

“Put the call through to my phone,” Cash instructed, and while he waited, he switched to speaker mode.

Kayla immediately started trying to steel herself up for what she might hear. But there wasn’t a lot of time to do that. Barely a couple of seconds before she heard the man’s voice.

“Cash,” he said, his voice tight with rage. “And I’m guessing that Kayla’s listening. If not, pass along this message to her. Soon, she’ll pay for what she’s done to my father. Soon, the murdering bitch will be dead.”