Shocked awake, Charlize lay still, heart pounding as she struggled to figure out where she was. What had woken her.
The bed, the sheets, the room were unfamiliar. She was alone.
A shadow moved by the bed. Riley.
He put a finger to his lips, telling her to be quiet as he slipped into jeans and grabbed his gun.
Memory came flooding back as she watched him hold his gun in front of him as he moved toward the door.
She’d fallen asleep in his arms. In his bed.
Every muscle in her body shook as she slid slowly, quietly, out of bed, pulled on her pants and a dark pullover shirt of Riley’s that was folded on a chair, leaving her underwear by his on the floor.
A board on the stairs creaked.
Someone was coming up and she had no idea how far up he was.
There wasn’t just one board, or one spot in those stairs that made noise when you walked up them. They were old wood. They talked.
Simms. He’d found them. It had to be him.
Unless, could it possibly be Brody come back in the dark of the night, with information for Riley? Would the man come upstairs?
With her eyes trained on Riley, ready to receive whatever silent message he sent her, she moved toward the wall, her chest tight, breath coming hard.
Should she hide? Under the bed, in the closet, behind the door...all places someone would look and when he found her she’d be trapped.
Was Ronny Simms in Riley’s home? He was after her. She knew that. He blamed her for everything that had gone wrong in his life. Laurene had told her so.
Because he had to blame someone besides himself.
What did she know about him? She tried to think, to know how to help. He lost it if he didn’t feel in complete control. Took stupid, irrational risks.
He was armed.
One shot could take Riley down.
But Riley was well trained. And moving toward the door. Alone in the home as they’d been, they’d left it open.
Where was Pal?
She had no idea what time it was.
Midnight? Three in the morning? Close to dawn?
The silence seemed too loud. She couldn’t tell what was going on. If the intruder was upstairs yet.
Riley had his back to the wall by the door. With his gun in front of him, peering through the doorway.
Could he see who was out there? Was it Simms?
She focused in the gloom, her eyes adjusting to the dark. She wanted to stay close to Riley. Slid a couple of steps along the wall toward him.
He shook his head and she stopped. Trembling so hard she was afraid she was giving them away.
A hand on her stomach, she feared for her baby. Had to keep it safe...
A step sounded in the hall...she could hardly breathe...stared at Riley...and...felt a surge of nausea as he dove out through the doorway.
A crash and thump sounded in the hallway. It must have been the table at the top of the stairs falling, the vase with artificial sunflowers inside it hitting the ground. She heard a thump, followed by a human-sounding deep growl. Bodies wrestled.
She heard fists hitting flesh and started to pray. Felt hopeless. A gun slid into the room, as though thrown or knocked away.
She started toward it, knowing fear as she never had before. Real fear. She heard another thump, grunts, was two feet from the gun when bodies crashed through the doorway, Riley on top. The guy on the bottom reached for the gun, grabbed it...
“Riley!” she screamed, but too late. The intruder had slammed the butt of the gun into Riley’s head and he lay slumped on the floor.
“Now you’re mine, bitch.” Simms’s voice wasn’t recognizable, filled with anger and evil and violence, but it was his face coming toward her. All she could see was that face. Those eyes shining a beam of hate.
Charlize wanted to fight, knew she had to fight, and wrapped her arms around her stomach instead, as though she could protect her baby from the bullet that was about to go through her. As though the baby could survive without her.
“You’re coming with me,” the man snarled, grabbing her by the hair. He could have her hair. He could pull every strand out of her head as long as he didn’t touch her belly. “You’re going to talk to Laurene, tell her that you were wrong. You’re going to tell her to stay with me, you got that?” He continued to growl at her as he hauled her toward the door.
She tried not to look at Riley’s supine body—all of the vitality gone. Prayed that he wasn’t dead. She couldn’t cry. Couldn’t lose focus. She had to save their baby.
It was all up to her now.
With the gun in one hand, Simms half pulled, half pushed her toward the stairs. Sunflowers lay scattered around the floor, the vase on its side in a corner. She stumbled; it was all she could think of to do to slow their pace. To give herself another second or two before she was forced down into hell. The man had a gun. Could shoot her at any moment. And he was out of his mind. She couldn’t afford to piss him off any further.
She stumbled a second time, started to lose her balance and reached out a hand to catch herself, grabbing at the banister. The movement took her sideways, putting a foot of distance between them. He was yanking so hard at the hair he held, tears sprang to her eyes.
And in that instant, Simms went down. Her head yanked once more, she felt hair ripping and Simms was on the floor, with Riley on top of him.
There was blood on Riley’s temple. And in his hand a gun—with the tip of the barrel pushing into Ronny Simms’s head.
“Call 911,” he said, his tone soft, menacing.
Without another thought she ran for her room, grabbed the cell phone she’d put on the charger before dinner that evening.
Saw that it was just past one in the morning.
And when the dispatcher picked up, she gave her information quickly. Clearly. She dialed Iglesias next, from the number he’d had her program into her phone the day Simms had tried to run her down. Told him what had happened, just as concisely. By the time she hung up, she could hear sirens. Ran downstairs to open the door.
That was when she saw Pal lying on her side in the dining room and started to cry.
Dawn was on the horizon by the time Riley had a moment alone with Charlize. He’d spent a couple of hours in the emergency room, being checked out for concussion, though he knew he was fine, and had just nodded when the doctor told him he had a hard head.
He’d only lost consciousness for a second or two, just enough for Simms to have a chance to get to Charlize, and then he’d lain in wait, knowing he was only going to have one chance to save her and the baby she was carrying for them.
By the time he got back to the house, the police crew was just leaving, having taken the samples and pictures they’d needed so that they could release the crime scene.
CI headquarters, his family home, a crime scene.
Pal had met him at the door, groggy, but wagging her tail. He already had an appointment at the vet when they opened that morning, made through the emergency number. The vet on call suspected she’d either been drugged, or hit on the head. There was no sign of a bump or cuts.
It was Pal’s initial bark that had woken Riley to begin with.
He was going to have to text his siblings. Phone calls would be better, but he couldn’t do five of those at a time.
Charlize, who’d been checked and deemed fine by medics at the scene, had wanted to come with him to the hospital, but he’d known that wasn’t a good idea. Iglesias needed her at the house, needed her statement.
She and Riley had had their night together.
And he’d allowed himself to get distracted. He’d known that he had to keep a close watch, and instead, he’d had sex. And done it so powerfully, he’d fallen into a deep sleep right afterward.
Had he been doing his job, he’d have been more alert. He’d have slept, as he always slept when in the middle of a big job, with one ear open. He didn’t know how he did, he just did. Always had.
Maybe it came from innumerable late-night details, babysitting four toddlers while his parents attended affluent parties and political functions.
In forty-three years he’d never screwed up on a watch.
And now he had.
His own child could have died because of it. The mother of his child could have died, too.
As everyone finally cleared out of his house, leaving him and Charlize alone in the main office, his mind was filled with the apologies he owed her.
Filled with his own mistakes. And with affirmation that he was a man meant to give his life to a job he did better than most. His “calling”—a term he pulled up from verbiage he’d heard his sisters use—was to find justice for others. Not to find a life partner.
“I’m glad you’re okay,” Charlize said, coming closer, but not as close as he’d have liked. He could see in the straight expression on her face that she knew their night was done. The sun was rising on a new day and they would go forth as the people they were destined to be.
Meeting an exceptional woman, even having mind-blowing sex with her, didn’t change who and what he was. Just as it couldn’t change the age difference between them.
“I knew the hospital trip was a waste,” he told her. But he’d gone. Partially because he was forty-three years old, not twenty-three, and figured he should just be sure. And...so he could get away from Charlize’s pull over him long enough to get his head on straight.
When he’d seen Simms pulling her by the hair, he’d wanted to murder the man.
And lock Charlize up someplace where he’d know she’d always be safe.
Neither thought was a healthy one.
You didn’t get everything you wanted in life just because you wanted it. And just because you wanted it didn’t mean you could have it. Or should have it.
Look at Simms with Laurene. Simms’s thinking that he had every right to have the woman he wanted had sent him over the edge.
And yet... Riley couldn’t tell Charlize to leave. He stood there with her, saying nothing, until he came up with, “How’s your head?”
He’d already asked, half a dozen times, before he’d left for the hospital.
“Fine,” she said. “I have a bit of a headache, but I think it’s tension more than anything else. I called my doctor, and based on what the medics said, she said there’s no reason for me to come in. She told me what to watch for, and to call her if anything changes.”
Simms had had a handful of her hair in his hand, but there were no discernable bald patches on her head. Riley had checked.
“You want some coffee?” He sure needed some. Before he contacted his siblings. Which he needed to do before Sadie got to work and ended up with evidence bags from her childhood home.
She shook her head. “I called Laurene,” Charlize said. “Iglesias agreed that I should be the one to contact her. There’s no way she could afford bail on an attempted murder charge, and maybe I could help her see the truth...”
Glad to have another minute with her, Riley settled his butt on the corner of Bailey’s desk. “How’d she take it?”
“She cried, but I think they were tears of relief,” she told him, her tone thankful. “She said that they were in the neighborhood yesterday so Ronny could kill me. Ronny was trying to force her to knock on my door, with him out of sight. She was supposed to cry, say she needed my help and then when she had me out there and distracted, he was going to shoot me from across the street. But she wouldn’t do it. That’s why they were fighting.”
Coldness swept through him, unlike any he’d known. “Is she willing to testify?”
“Yes. Iglesias is over there now, getting her statement. She said that after she got away from Ronny yesterday, she called her sister in Phoenix and she’s going to move out there. Get a fresh start...”
She wasn’t smiling. It wasn’t a smiling matter. But he could tell she was relieved.
And he was proud of her.
“Congratulations,” he told her. A job well-done.
In another world maybe they’d go out and get a beer together. If it wasn’t five in the morning. And she wasn’t pregnant.
“Well... I’m going to head out,” she said then. “I’ve already got my stuff together and an officer is waiting outside to take me home.”
He stood. Had had no idea someone was waiting on her.
Wanted to tell her he’d take her himself. Wanted to spend the day with her. Just to make sure everyone was okay.
But knew he wasn’t being rational.
Everyone was fine.
Including him.
“Take good care,” he said, nodding as he met that chocolate-brown gaze that absorbed him every time.
“You, too.” She smiled. Turned to go.
“Charlize?”
“Yeah?”
He didn’t know...just had said her name because he didn’t want it to end that way.
“I’ll call you in a few hours,” he said.
“I’ll pick up.”
Yeah. She’d pick up. She always would. It’s who she was.
He’d do the same, too.
And wondered, as he headed upstairs to shower and then text his siblings, if answering each other’s calls would ever help with picking up the pieces of the life that had never really been put together, but had just shattered, anyway.