Jamie-5 (20 page)

“No, I’m sorry, but Pi might know. She and Dane have been friends for a very long time.

Let me get her for you.”

Jamie walked into the kitchen and looked around. There was food everywhere. Sandwiches and pies, cakes, and a pot roast. There were Chinese dumplings and French fries, pancakes, and bacon. He could see one of the ovens was on and it looked like a whole turkey was in there. The stove was covered in pans, potatoes boiled in one, carrots in another. Rice was steaming on the back burner and there were chopped up vegetables in a large wok steaming. Along the counter under the window were gallons of tea, some with sugar, some without. A large coffee urn brewed in the corner and several cups along with cream, sugar, and spoons rested on a tray. But he didn’t see Pi. When he went to look in the pantry, he saw her outside with Morgan and the boys. He walked out to talk to her.

“Hello, Jamie,” Morgan said as she walked toward him. “We were just taking a break. Pi has been busy. We were just discussing the merits of inviting everyone here next Sunday. Your mother is fine with it so long as Pi cooks less food.”

“I go overtop, Mister Jamie. I cook when I tinsel. Missy Dane said it good thing I not have too much.” Her smile was sad. “She come back she be pissyed at me, I think. I don’t care, but she be there.”

“I have to agree. It’s not good to have too much tinsel. The police have a few questions for you, Pi. That man said he—”

“Lionel!” she said suddenly. “That it. The train. Missy Dane call him that too, freighter train. His name is Markus Lionel. I knew I’d rethink it. That help, Mister Jamie?” They all ran into the house and began talking at once. It took Cait a few seconds to catch up with them, but once she did, she called someone to do a search on him. When that didn’t turn up anything, Pi looked crushed. Jamie pulled her into his arms and held her again as she cried.

“Try it backwards. I mean, they’re both first and last names. Maybe he just turned it around,” Byron suggested with a shrug.

“Bingo!” Cait smiled. “Two hits on an M. Lionel. He rented a van the day before yesterday and he’s rented a house on Broad Street. I’ll get my men there in ten minutes. I’m going too.

Saddle up, boys, we’re going to have some fun.”

“Uhhh, O’Malley, you aren’t going anywhere. You just had a baby less than five days ago, by C-section I might add. And I nearly lost you. I can’t…you aren’t even supposed to be up and around this much.” Spencer looked ready to do battle. So did Cait.

“Spencer, I have to go. I’m alive because she told you I would be. I’m here because she said that she saw us holding our son. I can’t fail this woman again. I need to be there. I can’t sit on the sidelines again, not now that she’s going to be a part of my family.” Jamie didn’t know what to say. He wanted Cait to stay home too, but he wasn’t going to stay home either. He had to find his Dane and he figured Cait felt the same way. Jamie didn’t ask nor did he comment when the FBI agent raised his brow at him. He simply kissed his mother, slipped on his coat, and went to one of the many vehicles that were being loaded. Pi came out to speak to him.

“Missy Dane need you to touch her,” she told him softly. “She will need good touches, not hard. You don’t let nobody touch her who not love her. Tell her I have house ready when she come here.”

“I will, Pi. And thank you. I’m so glad that you’re here for us. We are both going to need you so much when we get settled.” Jamie kissed her cheek. “We’re going to make you a grandma. You’re staying right here with us.”

“I not going nowhere. I be here. You just bring my Missy Dane home, Mister Jamie. Bring her back here to me.”

By the time they left, there were nearly twenty more men with them. Vests that said POLICE, SWAT, and FBI were all around them. There were SUVs, vans, and large vehicles, Jamie had no idea what they were. There was even an ambulance and a medical team on standby.

~~~

The house was situated just where they thought it would be. Deep into the woods and no neighbors for miles. There was a single car out front that had been leased to an M. Lionel, and the house was lit up. Jamie and Cait were told to stay in the SUV until someone came back to get them. The men had silently left the vehicles and had fanned out over the area as silent as the wind.

As soon as they were out of sight, Cait reached behind them into the back of the seat and handed him a vest. He looked at her. The letters POLICE were bold across the back and the front. She started putting hers on.

“I’m not sitting here when she needs us,” she told him when he just sat there. “You can come or go, but if you go, you go hot, understand me? You fire to the chest if you have to. No more head shots for you. The last time you were damned lucky you didn’t kill anyone else or miss.”

“I didn’t though. And I’ll agree I was lucky. Both of us were. And bite me, girl. I saved Ta’s life.”

He pulled off his coat, slipped the vest over his head, and Cait helped him secure it. When he was buckled up, he reached behind him and pulled his gun, a Glock nine millimeter, out and racked one in the chamber. Satisfied, they both quietly left the car and moved to the house.

As they made their way to the house, staying behind the men who were going to hit the house first, Jamie thought about the last time he’d pulled his gun out for something other than target practice. Taylor had been in trouble and he’d killed a man.

She had been hurt by a man who she worked for. He and his brother, the law firm of Freedom Fighters of all things had been using Taylor as a fall guy in a huge multimillion dollar insurance scam. While visiting her in the hospital, Paul Freedom had come into her room and demanded that she tell him where his money was. When he fired at Taylor, Jamie fired too, and had killed him with a single gunshot wound to the head.

One of the men directly in front of them suddenly stopped and turned back to Cait and Jamie. Neither he nor Cait were under any delusions that the unit they were following didn’t know they were there. They had to have known from the beginning that they’d follow. He was talking in a headset when he started for them.

“They found the woman. The house is secure. They want you both in there now.” Jamie took off running. All he could think about was that he’d said they found the woman, not they had found a body. He knew deep down that it could be either way, but he couldn’t think that she was dead. Not now, not now that they had found each other.

~CHAPTER 21~

An officer nearly tackled Jamie as he came barreling into the room. If Cait hadn’t been behind him, he would probably have been hauled off to jail. As it was, he was escorted down to the basement by the guy who kept giving him an odd look. The door was blocked when he and Cait got to the bottom.

“We haven’t touched her except to feel for a pulse. We were told by her physician that under no circumstances were we to touch her unless it was life or death. We’ve contacted him and he is going to meet us at the hospital. Life flight is on their way. ETA is about three minutes.” He waited a few seconds before he continued. “Sir, she’s been beaten and her breathing is shallow.

Her pulse is weak but steady. If we can’t get her to respond, we will have to try something soon.” Jamie nodded. Beaten. Weak pulse. Shallow breathing. Life flight. He looked over at Cait, who nodded at him. When the medic moved, Jamie walked in.

Dane was still hanging from the ceiling, her shirt and bra missing. Jamie took off his coat and wrapped it around her. She was so cold, worse than she had been before. He looked over at the officer standing there with his gun pointed to the floor as he watched the room. No one was looking at Dane. Be he could see that they were concerned.

“Do you have a knife?” The agent next to him nodded and looked relieved. “We’ll need to cut her down. And do you think you can have someone bring us a blanket?” Jamie didn’t know where the calm was coming from, but he was glad for it. While the agent sawed through the ropes, he and Cait held her between them. Cait was crying, he saw. Jamie refused to think beyond what he was doing.

As soon as Dane was loose, her body dropped limply in his arms and he held her to him.

When the blanket arrived, he wrapped her up in it and carried her up the stairs. Her arms and legs swung with each step he took. When he got her to the kitchen and then outside, he rocked her gently in his arms. Someone, he assumed Cait, kept telling him that Dane would be fine. Then he heard the whop-whop of the chopper.

They wouldn’t let him ride with her. He nearly drew his gun and shot the man to make him understand how serious it was when a squawk of a radio pierced the night. The medic stepped away and an armed agent stepped in front of Jamie. He wondered briefly if he had orders to shoot him if he tried to touch the medic.

“He goes,” the medic said when he came back, and pointed at Jamie. “Not the detective. I don’t know who you know, but someone wants you on this thing. If you get in my way, I’ll throw you from the fucking chopper myself. Get in the front and don’t say a fucking word.” Jamie decided he could live with that. But before he could move, he felt a sting hit him in the leg and he fell. His first thought was that the agent really had shot him. Then he realized that the agent was holding him down with a knee in his back. Cait was shouting, but he couldn’t understand her either. Things got fuzzy after that. But he could swear he saw flames come from Cait’s hands. As he was fading out, he realized that she was shooting at something.

Jamie woke up in the ambulance. He tried to sit up, but was pushed back down with a firm hand. The woman sitting next to him looked like she could beat bear with a switch, as his grandfather used to say. He decided he might just ask his questions from the prone position.

“Dane? Where is Dane? And Cait, my sister-in-law. If I let anything happen to her, my brother will never forgive me.”

“The woman in the chopper is in the air,” she told him as she checked his eyes with a spotlight. “Nothing has changed with her status. Detective Grant? She’s filling out a report last I heard and stripping the hide off every agent on the ground. I wouldn’t want to work for her. She has a very low tolerance for mistakes, doesn’t she?”

Jamie didn’t point out that he was in an ambulance and because they had told them the area was secure. He also didn’t want to point out that Cait had just had a kid a few days ago and had been shot at as well. No, he wanted to make it there in one piece. A phone ringing behind him had him turn but not sit up. He wasn’t that far gone yet.

“There’s a woman on the phone. She says she’s your mother and if you’re hurt she’s going to kick your ass. Her words, not mine. Wanna talk to her?” He took the phone from the man offering it to him and listened as his mother ranted. She didn’t know he had been handed the phone and was still giving the driver a piece of her mind. He had to smile. The next time she fussed at them for their language, he was going to bust her.

“Wow, such language. You kiss your kids with that mouth?” he asked her when it sounded like she was taking a breath to continue.

“Jamie? Oh baby, are you all right? They told us you’d been shot. Are you shot?” She was crying now and he wanted to assure her.

“Honestly, Mom, I don’t know what happened. I’m assuming that I was. They have my pants cut off my leg and I can see blood on the padding. I’m not feeling like I’m in pain.”

“Shock. Tell her you’re in shock. It’ll wear off soon and you’ll hurt like a mother fucker.” She smiled like she was waiting for it to hit him. “You took a bullet to the left thigh. The bullet is still in there, but a surgeon is on standby when we get there,” the medic, Carol, said as she filled out something on a clip board.

“Did you hear that, Mom?” She said she had. “Are you there at the hospital? Has Dane got there yet?”

“Yes, I’m here now and no, not yet. They said ETA forty seconds—how do they do that.

Forty seconds? Cait said she’d been beaten again. Oh, Jamie, that poor girl. Pi is with me. I didn’t want to leave her alone. She’s taking it very hard. She wants to see you both. I told everyone she’s Dane’s mother. I hope that’s all right.”

“Of course. And she is.” And Jamie loved his mom all the more for thinking of Pi at a time like this. “Stay with Dane, Mom. I don’t want anyone to…I love her and I don’t want her to hurt anymore. She has to be…I need her to be all right.”

“I know you do, son. I won’t leave her side.” Jamie heard someone speaking before she continued. “Damon can’t treat you until you have the bullet removed. Cait is on her way in.

Spencer is fit to be tied. She killed him, though. Cait killed that Lionel person when he shot at you.”

Jamie remembered the fire now and Cait shouting. He couldn’t talk anymore. The “mother fucking” pain hit him hard. Thankfully, it took him into a black hole where it didn’t hurt so badly.

The next time he woke, Damon was in the room with him. His knee was propped up on a pillow and a harness was holding it up at the foot. His pain was sort of fuzzy, but he could tolerate it.

“How’s Dane? Can I see her?” Damon jerked as though he’d been asleep and Jamie smiled.

No rest for the weary.

“She’s in intensive care,” he said as he sat up. “They operated on her back and had to do quite a bit of removal of the old scar tissue. She’ll be sore, but she’ll not have those reminders anymore. A plastic surgeon was called in to do the work. She still hasn’t woken yet. Pi hasn’t left either of your sides for no more than it takes to go from one room to another. I’ve already cleared it to have you moved to her. Pi seems to think Dane just needs to be loved.”

“When can I go? I need to see her.” Damon looked…odd. He started to ask him, but his mother burst into the room.

“Oh thank goodness. I swear if one more of my sons get hurt, I’m putting you all in a padded room and posting a guard outside the room. How are you doing, baby?”

“Fine. Sore. Damon was just taking me to see Dane.” It took half an hour to get him rolled down the hall and another ten minutes to set him up. He was exhausted and in pain. But before he would let them give him anything, he had to touch her.

They had her lying on her back and there were all sorts of tubes running along her. She had two IV’s in her hand and he could hear the slow but steady beep-beep of another machine. She looked so pale and her lips were dry, lips he wanted desperately to kiss. Damon had pushed him close enough to touch her and that’s what he did now.