Chapter Thirty-One

A bead of sweat tickled Leah’s spine, but she didn’t dare move from her seat on the floor at the end of her bed. Hardly dared to breath. Rick was so taut with nerves she didn’t want to give him any reason to snap. She watched his every move, afraid to take her eyes off him. He paced the length of her bedroom for a long time, occasionally looking at the phone still clutched in his hand.

The phone rang, startling them both. Rick stared at it like he didn’t know what to do with it. “Hello?”

“Rick, it’s Marcus.” Leah could clearly hear Marcus’s voice, but it wasn’t from the phone. It was from the hallway. She glanced toward the door but realized Rick hadn’t heard the same thing and quickly averted her gaze. She didn’t dare draw his attention.

Rick’s hand tightened on the phone, his knuckles going white. “Something happened. What happened?”

“I’m going to come in and talk to you.”

“No!” He raised the gun and pointed it at her face. “I don’t want to see you. I’ll kill her. I swear I will.”

“Okay.” Marcus’s voice faded and his shadow under the door disappeared. She could hear only Rick’s side of the conversation after that, but she knew Marcus had bad news. Why else would he not want to talk over the phone?

“No, no, no,” Rick said over and over again. He hung up the phone and started pacing again.

This wild-eyed man was not the kind man she’d come to know, the man who played video games with her boys and had celebrated birthdays and holidays with her family for the entire four years he and Danny were partners.

Except that wasn’t entirely true. Now that she thought about it, he hadn’t been around for the last year before Danny’s death. Toward the end, he’d become a scarce sight and Danny hardly ever mentioned him in conversation. He never showed up for Maya’s birthday party the month before Danny died, which she’d thought was odd because he always at the very least brought the kids a present on their birthdays, but she’d been busy, distracted, and had shrugged it off. Had he known then that he was going to have Danny killed? Was that why he hadn’t wanted to show his face?

She understood wanting to save your child. She’d never been so terrified in her life as she was when he pointed that gun at her babies. She would have thrown herself in front of a bullet for them without a second thought. But to throw your friend and partner in front of a bullet?

She swallowed back the burn of rage. He ripped her family apart, traumatized her and her kids—not once, but twice counting tonight—all for the vague hope that a crooked man would keep his word. All for nothing, because Rick was in no better position now than before Danny died.

As if sensing the heat of her gaze, Rick stopped pacing and spun to face her. He studied her expression, and his shoulders slumped. He deflated before her eyes like a sad balloon leaking air, but he still raised the gun. “I have to kill you now, Leah.”

“Like you had to kill Danny.”

“I’m sorry. I have no choice.”

“That’s a load of shit.” The venom in her voice surprised even her. Probably stupid to talk that way to the man pointing a gun at you, but she couldn’t hold it back. “You took my husband from me. You took him from his kids. Now you’re going to make them orphans?”

“So my kid can live.”

“No,” she said softly. “I’m sorry, but no. Something happened to the lungs, right? Hayes is never going to let you have them because as soon as Noah is better, he loses his hold on you. Don’t you see that?”

He opened his mouth, but no sound emerged. Instead he sagged against the wall, slid down until his butt hit the floor, and drew his knees up to his chest. He still held the phone in one hand and the gun in his other. He pressed both to his forehead and let out a ragged sob.

Leah took the opportunity to inch around the edge of the bed. She still had Danny’s gun in a locked safe under her side of the bed. All she had to do was get close enough to press her finger to the lock.

Rick didn’t seem to notice, so she turned around to crawl. Her heart threatened to burst out of her chest in terror, but she couldn’t sit around waiting for him to kill her on a crazy whim. If she was dying tonight, it wasn’t going to be without a fight.

Each movement of her arm sent a lava flow of pain sizzling along her nerve endings from her bullet wound. At least the blood had slowed to a trickle down her arm. She vaguely thought it didn’t hurt as much as it probably should, recognized the lack of pain was a sign of shock, but disregarded that knowledge as unimportant. She’d worry about going into shock later.

She was just reaching out to press her finger to the pad on the lock when the creak of a floorboard outside in the hallway had Rick bolting to his feet. His gaze darted around the room as if he was disoriented.

Now was her chance.

She lunged for the gun safe, shoving her finger against the pad. The lock clicked and the door popped open. She grabbed Danny’s gun as Rick let out an inhuman sound and barreled toward her. She rolled to her back, aimed, and squeezed the trigger—

Nothing happened.

Oh God. It wasn’t loaded. Of course Danny wouldn’t have kept it loaded. There were kids in the house.

The weapon dropped out of her numb fingers. This was it. She’d taken a chance and had only succeeded in angering him. She saw nothing human left in his eyes as he straddled her and wrapped his hands around her throat.

“Rick,” she gasped and pulled at his hands. “Please—”

He released her abruptly. With her vision graying at the edges, she wasn’t entirely sure what had caused him to let go. She knew only that he was there one minute and gone the next like he’d been picked up by a tornado and swept off to Oz.

Wait. That made no sense. That was lack of oxygen muddling her thoughts.

Someone had knocked him off her. As her brain clicked back online, she became aware of the sounds of a fight—shoes squeaking against her wood floor, the crash of something falling off her dresser, the muffled sound of fists hitting flesh, grunts of pain as those fists landed.

Marcus.

It had to be.

She coughed and swayed to her hands and knees then used the bedpost to pull herself to her feet. “Stop!”

But they couldn’t hear her. Not with her voice a strangled croak of sound. Marcus was trying to shove Rick over to the window. Rick grabbed Marcus around the middle and drove him back against the dresser. More of her things crashed to the floor.

“Stop!”

Rick had dropped the phone but still held the gun, and he fully intended to use it. He turned it toward Marcus.

No. She’d already lost Danny to this man. She was not losing Marcus, too.

She found Danny’s gun where she’d dropped it. She heard another crash from the other side of the room and flinched, nearly fumbled the gun.

No. No. No.

She was too panicked. Marcus was going to die because she couldn’t focus, couldn’t make her hands stop shaking. She sucked in a breath, her sore throat burning from the rush of fresh air—and a strange sense of peace settled over her. She swore she heard Danny’s voice again patiently explaining how to work the weapon.

She listened.

Her hands stopped shaking. She chambered a bullet and only then realized she couldn’t fire at Rick without the risk of hitting Marcus, too. She pointed the gun at the ceiling, covered her left ear with her free hand and pulled the trigger. The bang reverberated through her arm and left her ears ringing.

Rick flinched at the sound and Marcus took advantage of the moment of distraction. He used the dresser as leverage to kick Rick in the stomach. Rick stumbled backward—right in front of the window. The glass shattered. Rick’s eyes bulged in shock in the nanosecond before his legs collapsed out from under him.

Leah very deliberately set down her gun on the bed as her hands started to shake again. “What—what—happened?”

“Seth.” Marcus staggered over to her. He was bleeding from several cuts on his lip and eye, but otherwise seemed to be in one piece. He scooped her into his arms and held her tight. “I thought I was going to lose you.”

She held him just as tight. “Me, too.”

They were still clinging to each other when a chorus of booted feet pounded up the stairway.

Jesse was the first through the door. He assessed them with a quick glance, then dropped to the floor beside Rick. “He’s alive.”

“Bullshit.” Marcus stiffened and let go of her as Rick’s eyes fluttered open. “Don’t waste your time, Jess. The bastard deserves to die.”

“Yeah, well. Whether or not he deserves it, it’s my job to keep him alive.”

“Please, no…” Rick’s voice was a reed of sound. Blood pulsed from the neat hole near the top of his forehead and drizzled down his face in a dark line. “Need to—die. Just keep heart—pumping until hospital. Same blood type—as Noah. Could match. Please…” His eyes rolled back in his head and he started convulsing.

“Jesus,” Jesse said and tore through his medical kit. “We’re losing him. Someone start CPR.”

Nobody moved.

Leah took a step forward.

Marcus grabbed her hand. “Don’t. He killed Danny.”

She sent him a cool, even glance over her shoulder. “And we’re not like him.”

With a muttered curse, he let her go. She knelt next to Rick’s body and fisted her hands over his chest, starting compressions. Each downward thrust of her hands had shocking little fireworks of pain bursting behind her eyes.

Marcus swore and pulled her back. She opened her mouth to protest, but she didn’t have to. He took her place next to Rick and continued compressions.

She cradled her arm against her body to keep from further irritating the wound on her shoulder and watched the men while they worked. She saw the exact moment Rick died. She couldn’t say exactly what changed, but he was no longer there. She hoped he found peace now. And also hoped with all of her heart that his lungs were a match for his son.

Something good had to come from all this.