Emergency Reunion (2 page)

And Zeke's griping about how his nephew wouldn't have forgotten wasn't helping.

The second ambulance had arrived. As Sherri's partner briefed the paramedics on the patient awaiting transport, Cole cut her away from the group. “I need to ask you a few questions for the report.”

Her answering smile looked more like a wince. “It kind of hurts to talk.”

His chest tightened. If he'd just manned up and gone to Dad's place the day he'd pulled into town, he might have averted this whole incident. “You really were amazing back there. Held it together when most people would've freaked.”

Once again the compliment seemed to make her uncomfortable, or maybe it was him. Her gaze flitted from her partner to the police cruiser to the vicinity of his chin. “Would you have zapped him?”

“In a heartbeat. If I'd had a clear shot.”

Anguish flickered in her eyes, reminding him of the caring girl who'd nursed back to health every injured creature he'd brought to her doorstep.

He reached for her hand as naturally as she'd reached for his the day he'd been the injured creature on her doorstep. Her fingers felt like ice and remained coolly rigid. “I love my brother, Sherri. But your welfare comes first.”

Her surprised gaze jumped to his.

“I'm not going to stand by and do nothing while he hurts innocent people,” he added, needing to convince her for a reason he didn't want to examine too closely.

Her gaze dove back to the sidewalk as her hand slipped from his grasp.

Her retreat hurt more than it should have, considering she'd just been ambushed by his brother.

“Listen, I can come by the ambulance base later to get your statement. But I need to confirm a couple of things. Eddie took you hostage to coerce you into handing over narcotics?”

“Not at first. I surprised him when—” grimacing, she splayed her fingers over her throat and sank back to the porch step “—when he was trying to break into the cabinet.”

“Okay.” He hated to press her for details when talking was obviously painful. But... “One more question for now. Do you have any idea who the guy he referred to is?”

She shook her head.

Cole pocketed his notebook and hunkered down in front of her until she couldn't help but look at him. “I'll make sure Eddie never bothers you again. I promise.” The disbelief that flickered in her eyes at her nod pierced clean through his soul. “I'm sorry this happened.”

“Fat lot of good sorry does her,” her partner growled, stalking toward them. “You need to lock that punk up and throw away the key. He's done nothing but terrorize Sherri for weeks!”

“What?” Cole's heart couldn't have jolted harder if the guy had slapped paddles on his chest and zapped him. He jerked his attention back to Sherri. “Is that true?”

She shook her head repeatedly this time.

“
Someone's
doing it,” her partner hissed.

“Whoa, whoa. Back up a second.” Cole pulled out his notebook again. “These incidents, were they reported?”

“No, they've been little things. The kind of things that could happen to any paramedic. Crank calls. Getting sideswiped.” He motioned toward Sherri's black eye. “Assaults.”

“So what makes you think that Eddie's behind them? They all sound pretty random.”

“'Cause they only happen to her!”

The color drained from Sherri's face, her white cheeks a sickeningly stark contrast to the bruises around her eyes and throat. “Dan, leave it alone,” she whispered.

Cole's heart lurched. She was afraid. Anyone with two eyes could see it. So why didn't she want the incidents investigated? Did she know who was behind the other attacks?

Dan shot a scowl toward the rear window of the cruiser. “A kid like that doesn't hang around a neighborhood like this. No way did he just
happen
upon our ambulance. Not unless he's breaking into old folks' houses to grab their prescription meds.” His lips curled menacingly. “Either way, he needs to be locked up.”

“No argument here,” Zeke agreed, his rear resting on the cruiser's hood, his legs stretched casually in front of him, his arms crossed.

Cole ignored him, focusing instead on Sherri as he clasped her elbow. “When I come by I'll want details on every suspicious incident.” Her trembling reverberated through him, sending way too many unwelcome scenarios bouncing around his brain.

Her lips flattened into a silent line, and she stepped backward toward her truck.

“Okay?” he pressed. “I want to help you get to the bottom of what's going on.”

Zeke snorted. “Why don't you start by barking up your own family tree?”

Sherri wrapped her arms tightly around her middle and shook her head. “It's not your problem, Cole.”

“I'm making it my problem.”

 

TWO

“W
hat am I going to do with you?” Sherri's boss rested his hip on the corner of his cluttered desk. “Every time I turn around you're getting into trouble.”

The rain that had started soon after Eddie's attack now pelted the office window as fast and furiously as her heart pinging her ribs. The ambulance base was a three-strike operation. Not that any of the incidents that had happened to her lately could really be called strikes, no matter how much her boss liked to intimate as much. Yes, she'd left the ambulance unlocked, but not one of their paramedics would have thought twice about leaving it unlocked in that neighborhood. “I'm sorry, sir,” she said.

“I'd like you to take a few days off.”

“That's not necessary.” The last thing she wanted was free time. The busier she kept, the less time she had to think. To relive her dead partner's shooting. She swallowed and caught herself wincing at the pain still plaguing her throat courtesy of Eddie's stranglehold. “I'm fine. Really.” Or she would be if she could shut out the memory of Cole's concerned gaze searching hers and his husky declaration that he was making
her
problem
his
problem.

“
You
may be fine,” her boss scolded, “but the station's morale has hit rock bottom. One more incident like this and no one's going to want to work with you. You know what they call you?”

“Yes, sir.” She lifted her chin. Princess Dark Cloud was actually a step up from what they used to call her—Ice Queen.

He studied her in silence for an unnervingly long moment. “Your partner Dan has convinced one of the sheriff's deputies that the incidents haven't been merely unlucky coincidences. Is that what you think?”

Sherri pressed her sweaty palms against her navy blue slacks, debating her response. Her boss wouldn't want to hear what she really thought. But she heard the way her fellow officers still whispered about the shooting when they thought she wasn't around. They blamed her for letting Luke die. They didn't want her here and would do just about anything to drive her to quit. She was sure of it. But she was just as sure that God had let her survive for a reason.

She curled her fingers into fists. “I don't know what to think, sir. But I assure you I can handle whatever curveballs are thrown at me.” Because there was no way she'd let Luke down a second time.

“Unfortunately, some of those curveballs are turning into boomerangs that are beating us upside the head.”

Tension hummed along her nerves. “Pardon me?”

“Reinhart, the widower whose wife died of a heart attack last month, is demanding an inquest. Claims your refusal to come up to his apartment without a police escort cost too many minutes. Minutes that could've saved his wife.”

“Sir, I'm deeply sorry for his loss, but the building was flagged for multiple drug-related incidents. I followed protocol.”

“Yes,” he said, but didn't sound pleased about it. No doubt thinking if it hadn't been her in that ambulance, he wouldn't be facing an inquest.

“Any paramedic would have done the same. Did Dan say otherwise?” The men liked to be cowboys, but she'd thought they'd learned their lesson after what had happened to Luke. If she and Luke had followed protocol that morning, he might still be alive. Her chest tightened at thoughts of other choices that might have kept him alive.

Her boss shrugged. “Not in so many words.”

A rap on the door made her jump, but not nearly as fitfully as her insides trampolined when Cole stepped into view.

His gaze narrowed in on her cheek and his eyes darkened.

She finger-combed her hair over the butterfly bandage binding the cut his brother had given her.

“You must be Donovan.” Her boss beckoned Cole in. “You can use my office to question Sherri. Her shift is covered, so take as long as you need.”

Sherri nodded, straining to appear cooperative when everything inside her wanted to bolt.

He stepped through the door, and the room seemed to shrink, much like the crisply ironed shirt straining at his muscular shoulders.

She looked away, not wanting to notice how good he looked in a uniform. Not wanting to imagine that concern
for her
had etched those creases into his brow.

He might say her welfare came first, but she'd stopped believing in fairy tales long ago. Never mind how princelike he'd seemed today. He'd do the same for any innocent person. He was here to question her about the incidents,
not
to get reacquainted.

The sooner she told him what he wanted to know, the sooner he'd be on his way.

As her boss stepped out of the room, she sank into a chair and grasped for a light tone. “You're his dream come true. If everything that's happened goes on the record, he'll claim I should be put on administrative leave
for my own safety
until you can figure out who's behind everything.”

“Sounds like a smart move to me.”

“No,” she said firmly. “It's not.”

His eyebrow arched curiously. “Why's that?”

She tapped her fingers to her lips, fighting to rein in her galloping pulse. She couldn't tell him that her days off were worse. That she'd rather fight off a drug-crazed kid than— She cut off the thought and casually slid her fingers from her mouth to tame an invisible strand of wayward hair. “Because I need every shift I can get if I'm going to qualify for the next flight medic job that opens up,” she improvised with the same story she'd used on her parents to justify taking extra shifts. Once she got the flight medic job, things would get better. There wouldn't be so many reminders.

Cole smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling in that way that used to make her heart flutter.

She silently groaned at the realization that it still did.

“A flight medic, wow! I can't help feeling a little proud that you took my advice.”

The warmth in his voice did funny things to her insides. That and the fact he remembered his murmured, “You'd make a good paramedic,” that day she'd treated his swollen knuckles.

“It's good to see you doing so well.”

She pasted on a smile and nodded. “So what brings you back to Stalwart?” She glanced at his left hand, but his fingers were tucked out of sight. “You married? Come back to settle down?” Her cheeks heated. Why on earth had she asked him that?

His gaze darkened. “No, working law enforcement and marriage aren't a good mix.”

“Hah,” she scoffed. “I have several happily married uncles and cousins who would loudly disagree.”

“Appearances can be deceptive.”

Resisting the urge to massage her bruised throat, she sat up straighter. Yeah, she knew all about keeping up appearances. “Then you'll understand why I don't want these incidents blown out of proportion. Because, between you and me, I'm pretty sure I'm just being hazed.”

“Hazed?” Cole's eyes widened. “But you've already been on the job a couple of years. Haven't you?”

“Almost three.” She pressed her lips together, wishing she'd kept her mouth shut. Hazing had seemed like an innocuous way to say her colleagues didn't want to work with her.

Cole studied her too intently as he pulled a notepad and pencil from his shirt pocket. “How about you tell me what you remember about each incident?”

She exhaled, relieved that at least he hadn't pressed for reasons for her hazing suspicions. “I'm not convinced they can be called
incidents
. Dan is overreacting. Nothing has happened to me that hasn't happened to any other paramedic at one time or another.”

“Difference is they keep happening to you.”

Yeah, okay. There was that. “They were incidental things like being called to an address that didn't exist or being propositioned by a half-doped patient who claimed he'd never called an ambulance.”

Cole flinched as if the thought of some creep pawing her made him feel sick.

“Nothing I couldn't handle,” she stressed, trying not to squirm under the intensity of his troubled gaze. The reaction of the other paramedics, who'd slapped her on the back and complimented the Ice Queen for kneeing the loser in the groin, had been easier to handle. Ironically, their hazing probably had helped her tough it out when she'd felt like quitting as much as they wanted her to.

“When did the incidents start?”

“I can't say for sure.” The whispering had started first. Luke's death had been the tipping point for her colleagues. He'd been a good man, a true friend. And the only paramedic who hadn't griped about teaming with her after she'd gotten her first partner fired for drinking on the job.

“You did the right thing,” he'd said the first time they'd driven to a call together. He hadn't said what he was referring to. Hadn't needed to. She wasn't sure if he'd ever known how much those five little words had meant to her, because they'd never talked about it again.

“Sherri?”

She jerked her attention back to Cole. “Um.”

“Can you give me dates, addresses, descriptions?”

She stared at Cole, taking a moment to register his question. “I'd have to pull out my reports.”

“Are they handy?”

She rolled her eyes.

“Okay, we'll worry about that later.”

No, there couldn't be any
later.
With Eddie's attack, her boss's innuendoes and Cole's unexpected charge back into her life, she was scarcely handling
now.
She pushed to her feet. “Just a second and I'll grab them.” As she tugged the coil-bound book from the top shelf of her locker, her Bible toppled to the floor, spilling a month's worth of church bulletins and inserts at her feet.

She quickly stuffed all but one back into her locker and rejoined Cole in her boss's office. Handing Cole the pamphlet for Teen Challenge, a faith-based residential program that helped young men and women overcome addictions, she said, “I found this while I was grabbing my call journal and thought it might be something you'd want to look into for Eddie. Some of the men that are in the program spoke at our church last week. It's turned their lives around. If you could convince Eddie to go—”

“I don't want to send him away,” Cole said gruffly. He glanced at the pamphlet then slipped it into the back of his notebook. “I appreciate the suggestion,” he added, his tone gentler this time. “Helping him is the reason I came back to Stalwart.”

Of course it was.
Sherri glanced away, focused on the world outside, blurred by the rain streaming down the window. In the months after he'd left, her imagination had read too much into his surprise parting gift, let alone the gratitude that had been in his eyes after that world-tilting hug. But when months turned into years, the truth eventually had sunk in. Not that it would matter anymore now. She couldn't afford to let anyone get close.

“If I'd been here for Eddie in the first place...” Cole continued, but then shook his head and motioned to her call journal. “Tell me about the other incidents.”

She skimmed the entries and offered several examples, a few of which she had to admit that even she couldn't see the guys pulling. She closed her journal. A lot of them may have been purely random occurrences.

Cole looked up from his notepad. “Is that all of them? Your partner mentioned your ambulance being hit.”

She frowned. “That couldn't have been deliberate.”

“Where your safety is concerned, I don't want to take any chances.”

She gulped at the determination blazing in his eyes. Did he mean
her
safety in particular?

Bothered that she cared one way or the other, she glanced away. She just wasn't used to having an ally in her corner, at least not at work. Her family was great, but between the veteran firefighters and deputy-sheriff cousins and uncles, she preferred not to talk shop around them.

“Tell me about the accident,” Cole prodded.

“Oh, right. Um, it happened last week. A pickup sideswiped our ambulance as we turned on to County Road 15. There's a police report on that one.”

“Did they arrest the driver?”

“No. The pickup was stolen. They found it abandoned down the road.”

“Did you get a look at the driver?”

For the first time she realized what Cole was really asking, had been trying to get at all along—could this guy have been his brother? This wasn't about her at all. Not really.

“Sherri?”

“No, I didn't.” She squinted at the window, picturing that night. “He was wearing a hoodie. That's all I remember.” Was it any wonder the driver hadn't seen her turning off the side road with his hood up like that? The collision couldn't have been deliberate.

“Were you hurt?”

Cole's anxious tone didn't help her churning stomach, but she managed to shrug as if it was all in a day's work.

He looked over his notes, his eyes as stormy as the sky. “Can you think of any reason why someone would target you?”

I let my partner die.
She didn't say it, just shrugged again.

“A patient or maybe a family member of a patient who blames you for a death?”

She gasped.

“I take it you've thought of someone?”

“Rolph Reinhart has demanded an inquest into his wife's death due to delay in treatment. But he's over eighty years old. I can't see him doing any of—” she motioned to the notebook he was writing in “—those things.”

“I'll talk to him. Can you think of anyone else?”

She racked her brain, flipped through her call journal. “No, no one.” For the most part she'd been fortunate with outcomes. Not like Luke who'd been threatened by a shooting victim's fellow gang members when the victim hadn't survived. They'd claimed Luke was tight with their rival gang and had deliberately let their man die.