Buch lesen: «Cowboy Bodyguard»

ONE

Shannon Livingston ignored the splashes of blood on her scrubs. She shoved the mask off her face and dropped it into the waste container.

Her patient, T.J. Willis, was alive in Los Angeles Mercy Hospital—at least for the moment—a fall down the stairs having left him with a basilar skull fracture and internal bleeding. His rowdy biker clan was waiting for a report. Hospital security was already apprised. The nurses had done what they could to placate the members of the Scarlet Tide: easing off T.J.’s “colors” instead of cutting the clothing and making sure Willis’s entourage had a private waiting area for the more than two dozen biker brothers. They’d followed hospital protocol for the known “one percenters,” an ironic name to set apart the bikers who were outlaws from the 99 percent who weren’t.

The bikers gathered in the waiting area were not law-abiding motorcycle enthusiasts, according to the police bulletins. They were criminals, and they wanted only one thing from Shannon, something she could not give them: a guarantee that T.J. would be okay. She sucked in a breath and exited the recovery room and headed to the waiting area, past a nervous security guard.

The raucous conversation ended abruptly as all eyes slid to her. Shannon noticed a young woman, barely out of her teens, clutching a baby in a lace-trimmed blanket.

“I’m Cruiser. Talk to us, Doc,” said the largest biker, whose face was covered by a black beard.

Cruiser was flanked by several equally hairy individuals with similar tattoos. To his right stood a tall, lanky man with his hair in a long braid, who regarded Shannon with undisguised hostility. “T.J.’s gonna live, right? He’s gonna be all right?”

“I can’t give you any guarantees,” she said. “He sustained serious injuries in the fall.”

“We know what happened,” the braided man said, jutting his chin at the girl. “She did this to him, pushed him down the stairs.”

“I didn’t,” the girl said, swallowing convulsively. “It was an accident.”

Veins stood out on Cruiser’s jaw. “We’ll deal with her later.”

Shannon’s heart dropped. The woman’s dark eyes caught hers, wet with tears. “What’s your name?”

“Dina,” she whispered. “Dina Brown.”

“Not your business, Doc,” Cruiser snapped. “She’s ours to tend to.”

Ours? As if she was some sort of property. Shannon lifted her chin. “Are you threatening her?”

He walked closer, almost close enough that his wiry beard touched her face. She did not back down, though her throat went dry. “I don’t make threats,” he said. “Just promises.”

Shannon stood her ground until he finally backed away. She took the opportunity to swivel on her heel and make an escape, figuring this was a matter for the cops. She’d make sure they’d help Dina. On her way to place a phone call to fill them in, she was called in to assist with a cardiac emergency. It was almost an hour before she finally found her way to the break room. The door swung shut behind her, and her shoulders sagged, reminding her how long she’d been on her feet for another marathon shift. A slight figure stepped out of the shadows.

The slender brunette was clutching a bundle, tears rolling down her freckled cheeks in mascara-tinted rivulets. “Dina? What happened?”

The bundle wriggled.

“I said I had to go change Annabell, and I sneaked away. They’re all over the hospital, looking for me. I hid behind a laundry cart, and I heard them. They’re coming for me.”

Shannon pulled a corner of the blanket aside, relieved to see a tiny pink-cheeked baby, perfect as a porcelain doll, sleeping peacefully in Dina’s arms.

“She’s beautiful. How old?”

The girl smiled for the first time. “Four months. She was born on Valentine’s Day.”

“What really happened with T.J.?”

The smile vanished. “We were arguing. I told him I was leaving. He said we belonged to him, and we’d never get away.”

Shannon noted the faded bruises on the young woman’s arms, the round scar on her wrist. Her pulse ticked higher as Dina continued.

“He grabbed me and started to shake me. I shoved him as hard as I could. He tripped and fell down the stairs, but he was okay. I mean, he was moving and groaning and stuff. I ran to get help, but...” The tears came faster now. “The Tide thinks I did it on purpose. I have to get out of here. I was so stupid to get involved with them.”

Voices erupted in the hallway outside. Dina clung to Shannon’s arm, her nails digging in. Annabell stirred in her sleep. They had to find a quiet place where they could talk it over without running into any Tide members. Shannon grabbed her purse.

She pulled open the door and saw a man in a sport coat, a cop whom she recognized as Detective Mason. He’d interviewed her in the past about some gang-related injuries she’d treated. He’ll help. But then she caught sight of the man across from him: Cruiser. Cruiser handed him a thick envelope. Mason put it in his coat pocket. Shannon’s breath caught. Mason was on the take. How many others on the force were, too? Just as she closed the door, Cruiser glanced up and saw her. His eyes narrowed, and he took a step in her direction.

Panic roiled through her body as she shut the door and jammed a chair under the knob. She didn’t know if Cruiser suspected Dina of seeking out Shannon, but he clearly wasn’t thrilled to know she’d seen him with Mason. Goose bumps erupted on her arms. Whom could they trust? Time to triage. Biggest need first. Get Dina and the baby to safety. “There’s a back way.” Together, they hurried out the rear entrance, Shannon rifling through her purse. “I’ve got some cash. We’ll get a cab.”

They burst through the exit doors into a mild Los Angeles evening. It took only a moment to flag down a taxi, from the line waiting at the hospital, and hop inside. She gave him the address to a café located a few miles away. Shannon relaxed a fraction as the driver pulled from the curb, until Dina glanced at her cell-phone screen. Face gone bloodless, she turned the screen to Shannon. “It’s from Cruiser.”

There’s nowhere to hide.

The rumble of an approaching motorcycle deafened them. “Scrunch down,” she told Dina, trying not to stare out the window as the two motorcyclists drew closer, threading their way through city traffic. It was too risky to go back to her apartment. The noise and clamor of the city seemed to cage her in like prison bars.

“The police...” she whispered, too low for the cabbie to hear over his music.

Dina shook her head violently. “No. Please. The Tide has paid off some of the cops. They turn a blind eye to the drug deals for a cut of the profits.” Tears rolled down her face and splashed onto the baby’s cheek.

“They aren’t all on the take,” Shannon started. “Some of them...”

“You don’t understand,” she snapped. “The Tide is powerful. The cops are scared of them. If I’m found guilty of pushing T.J. down the stairs, the Tide has people in prison who will kill me. They’ll take my baby. I just need to find my brother. He has connections. He’ll help me.”

Shannon tried to calm her hysteria. “No one is going to send you to prison for an accident. Where is your brother?”

“Central California. I don’t know where exactly, but I can find him. I just need a few days. That’s all. Please,” she whispered. “Please.”

Central California. Unexpectedly, her memory dredged up the warm springtime breezes from her hometown, Gold Bar, where she’d left behind her old life, and her first love, her husband, Jack Thorn. Though Jack traveled regularly to his uncle’s farm in Santa Barbara, she’d never once reached out to see him. He was there now, according to her friend Ella’s latest text, not two hours away, probably eased into a saddle in that way that made her think he was born to be on a horse. She could call him. Just for advice.

No. Too much betrayal. Too much pain. She did not have the right, even if they were still technically married. That was a mess she had yet to clean up, the legal untying of a colossal mistake.

The motorcycle pulled up alongside the cab. Cruiser scanned the street. His look was filled with hatred as his glance swept the vehicle. She thought about the girls she’d treated in her volunteer work at the women’s shelter, terrified young ladies with few options and no resources. Desperate, just like Dina. The memory stiffened her spine and cemented a decision deep in her gut.

A few days, that was all. She’d escort Dina someplace safe. The cabbie made it through the light, leaving the bikers stuck behind a loaded semi. They made a move to edge onto the sidewalk, but the presence of two traffic cops was enough to dissuade them. It was the break she needed. “I’ve changed my mind. Take us to the nearest rental-car company,” she told the cabbie.

She stared at the phone in her hand. Again, the urge to call Jack nearly overwhelmed her. Her finger hovered over the buttons.

Call him, her gut said.

* * *

Jack Thorn replayed the voice mail, again, for the dozenth time, just to be sure he wasn’t losing it.

“Jack, it’s Shannon. I’m in trouble. I...I don’t know how to handle it. Meet me at the Park Motel, in Fairview, please, as soon as you can. I know I don’t have the right to ask, but I am. I need your help. Please.”

Jack stared at his phone again, trying to still the irrational thumping of his pulse as he contemplated the run-down motel from under the brim of his battered cowboy hat. Fairview was just an hour from his uncle’s Santa Barbara property, where they’d been negotiating the sale of a beautiful Dutch warmblood, which would fit perfectly into the jumping sessions at his family’s Gold Bar Ranch. Why had Shannon called? Why now, when he’d finally gotten things squared away in his heart, decided to make the divorce happen? Her call wasn’t because of sentimental reasons—that much was clear.

I know I don’t have the right to ask, but I am...

She’d gotten that part correct. She didn’t have the right, even if that dusty marriage license folded in his Bible said otherwise. Just a piece of paper, which he should have shredded seven years ago. Their union was born of a time when they were both vulnerable, him missing her so badly it hurt, and her overwhelmed by the ponderous weight of the medical training that stretched before her. The marriage was a mistake. That was all. They both knew it.

So why was he here? Fairview was a nowhere town, smaller even than Gold Bar, but with none of the beauty, squashed in the shadow of a warehouse district. At least it was near a small airstrip, which was where he’d landed the Cessna. Was that why she’d chosen the meeting place? Questions tumbled in his mind, along with the worry that she had not responded to any of his follow-up texts, just like she’d avoided his calls and declined to talk about the state of their farcical marriage in her first few months of medical school. He was a file she’d put away in the drawer and refused to open. She was a song that played endlessly in his ears and simply would not fade away. He’d finally driven to her med-school campus midway through her first year and waited four hours to speak with her.

“We can’t keep going like this. I know you want a divorce. We should end things, then. Legally.”

“I just can’t get into it, Jack. Not now.”

“When, then?”

Not ever, it seemed to him. So they lived in a legal limbo: married, but not. He hadn’t seen her in over a year, their last encounter being an accidental meeting when she’d come to Gold Bar to visit her mother. It was a hot-cheeked, goosefleshed, endless few minutes. She’d been talking to a man at the inn, and a flash of something had seared through him. It didn’t take any skin off his nose to live with a secret marriage, but what about when she met someone else?

His palms were sweaty as he approached Room Seven. He’d faced down wild horses, fires and floods, and recently a murderer bent on killing his twin brother Owen’s now fiancée, Ella, but he’d never had to battle his nerves so hard to get them to obey. He forced his legs into motion, wiped his clammy palms on his jeans, straightened his Stetson and rapped softly on the warped wood. The door opened, and there she stood, Shannon Livingston. Shannon Livingston Thorn, his mind amended cruelly. Her long dark hair, the heavy curtain he’d trailed his fingers through so many times, was loose and tangled, her eyes the same flecked gold of new-spun honey, but now they did not hold that gleam of cockiness, only fear.

And there he was, a six-foot tall, gangly limbed cowboy, struck completely dumb.

While he stood mute as stone, she took his hand, her fingers cold on his skin, and pulled him inside the minuscule room. As he automatically removed his hat, his mouth dropped open at the sight of a young woman, who was sitting on one of the twin beds, rocking a baby, of all things.

He swiveled his gaze back to Shannon. “Let’s hear it.”

She huffed out a breath, pacing the mud-colored carpet. Her words came out in a rush. “Jack, this is Dina Brown and her daughter, Annabell. She’s in trouble. I need to hide them for a few days. We’ve been driving in a rental car, and the men who are after her somehow caught up with us again. I lost them, I think, but I got scared and called you. I would have called home, to Gold Bar, but...”

Hide them? What happened? His eyes wandered over the faded bruises on the young woman’s arms, a shiny cigarette burn near the wrist. A stream of other questions coursed through his mind, along with the most important one. Why did you call me? Instead, he settled on, “Who and why?”

She held up a palm, once more the in-control, unflappable Shannon. “Let me help Dina get a bottle ready for the baby, and then I’ll tell you everything. Promise.”

To give himself time to process, he looked around. A grocery bag with a loaf of bread sticking out the top, a paper map, keys to a rental car. On the run, instead of calling the police? Scared enough that she would take on the protection of a young woman and her baby? Maybe it wasn’t so hard to believe. Shannon was the most fearless person he knew, except for his younger brother Keegan, and she would face down anyone to right a wrong...unless she was the one who had inflicted it. He smothered the flicker of anger.

Shannon shook up a baby bottle and handed it to Dina. “I know this is crazy, Jack, but I need to get her somewhere safe until she finds her brother. There’s a gang after her, the Scarlet Tide. You know of them?”

“Can’t live in this state and not know of them. The cops...”

“We can’t trust them, not now. They...”

Her eyes rounded as a rumble filled the air, so loud it became a roar that shook the walls. He strode to the window and pulled the curtain aside a few inches. Two motorcycles, Harley-Davidsons, similar to the one Keegan rode in his wilder days, idled in the parking lot. The guys were big, one bearded, the other sporting a bandanna around his head, a braid poking out from underneath it.

“Cruiser,” Dina said, mouth trembling, as she peeked past his shoulder, while the baby sucked contentedly. “And Viper.” The bottle shook in her hand. “They found us again, and now they’re gonna kill me and take my baby.” The last bit came out as a whimper.

Shannon pulled Dina away from the window and folded her and the baby into an embrace. The gesture made his breath catch, for some reason. Both women looked at him.

“Hide in the bathroom,” Jack commanded. Dina ran with the baby, almost closing the door behind her except for a crack.

Shannon’s eyes were unreadable, shimmering with tension and something else. Guilt, probably, though she wouldn’t let that trouble her for more than a moment. She must have been desperate indeed to call him up.

As Jack continued to peer out, the two bikers surveyed the row of hotel rooms, considering. They weren’t sure which one was Shannon’s. They would wait, take shifts, and eventually, they’d know. There was no time to get the women out a rear exit without being detected, unless they climbed out the high bathroom window, and that would be tricky with a baby. They were trapped.

He could tell by Shannon’s quickened breaths that she’d come to the same conclusion. Her look to him was one of barely contained panic. His brain said call the cops. His gut said there was no other way, but somehow, his heart overruled them both.

He turned around and handed Shannon his cell. “Tell Dina to lock the bathroom door and call the police.”

“But...”

“Do it, Shannon.”

“Dina,” Shannon called. She pushed her way in. Her gasp told him the truth before she emerged with the baby in her arms.

“She bolted. Climbed out the window and left the baby on a towel. The diaper bag is stashed under the sink.” Shannon fingered a piece of paper scribbled with a lipstick note. “‘I’ll be back in two days. Keep her safe for me. Don’t let them take her.’”

He met Shannon’s eyes, the iridescent pools that pulled him in. “How do you want to play this?”

“I promised to buy Dina a few days to find her brother. If we call the cops now...”

He nodded. “Baby goes into foster care, most likely.”

Shannon bit her lip. “If the gang takes the baby, Dina will never get her back...” She shook her head. “I promised. A few days, I promised.”

“A promise is a promise,” he said, trying not to choke on the irony.

She lifted her chin, voice gone hard. “I understand if you don’t want any part of this. It’s not your mess. I shouldn’t have called you.”

He didn’t answer. Then he clapped on his Stetson, threw open the door and strode out, Shannon on his heels, still clutching the baby. That hadn’t changed, anyway. Shannon had never shied away from trouble.

The riders approached quickly, coming up close, too close. Viper spoke first. “It’s her. The doctor.”

“What are you doing here, Doc? Saw you beelining from the hospital,” Cruiser said. “Sudden vacation?”

Jack straightened to his full height, a good four inches taller than either man. “Who wants to know?”

Cruiser cocked his head. “Who are you, Cowboy?”

“Name’s Jack Thorn. Yours?”

“Not here for a meet and greet.”

Jack stared him down. “Then why are you here?”

“I want the girl and the baby.”

Jack arched an eyebrow. “I don’t have a girl and a baby to hand over—not that I would anyway.”

“So, who do you think you are? John Wayne?” Cruiser glared.

Jack didn’t answer, just stared.

Viper spoke up. “Doc treated our brother T.J. back at the hospital. We think she’s hiding somebody who pushed him down the stairs. Girl Doc here is a liar.”

“First point, she’s not a girl,” Jack said, looping an arm around Shannon’s waist. She went rigid. Every cell in his body felt stunned by the physical connection, as if some deep part of him remembered the woman he ached to forget. He punched the feelings back. “This is a woman, a doctor, and she’s here with me, nobody else, so watch your mouth.”

Cruiser’s hands bunched into fists. Jack kept his palm relaxed on her hip, ready. Anticipating an animal’s reaction was nothing new for him. He could tell when a horse was about to bolt, to kick, to struggle. Cruiser was going to make a move and soon.

Cruiser’s brow furrowed. “I think you’re lying, too.”

“I don’t care what you think.”

“Who are you, Cowboy?”

His mind whirled, searching and discarding ideas.

If things got physical, it would probably end with the baby being taken and Shannon hurt. Best to talk his way out of it.

“Like I said, name’s Jack.” He held his chin high. “I’m her husband.”

Husband. The word seemed to flutter in the wind like a Fourth of July flag. Viper strode past them and pushed into the hotel room. After a moment, he returned. “No one else there.”

Cruiser’s eyes narrowed. “And I suppose that’s your baby?”

You said it. I didn’t.