Love Under Fire. Frances Housden

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      Sure, the Armed Offenders Squad were on their way, but for now, they had to make do with two detectives, including herself, a senior sergeant and the helicopter jockey who had ferried them to the vineyard. Add to that four local cops, country cops, nervous as hell and excited to boot, who’d probably be about as much use as her Glock when it came to hitting a target in the gloomy light.

      “Ooh.” Darned if there wasn’t a bug crawling up her arm on the inside of her sleeve. She shuddered. Man, she hated bugs. She hated dirt, too, yet her fingernails had clawed grooves in the ground. Pushing up on the ball of her palm, she paid for her view with the fetid stench of wormy earth on a defrost cycle.

      Give her the city any day. She breathed easier with asphalt underfoot and streetlights overhead. This country stuff was a whole other world.

      She pushed up higher. Well, the view was better, but Max wasn’t part of it. Drat the man. She hoped he wasn’t doing something stupid.

      Glancing over her shoulder she watched Rowan. At least he was still in position, though facing toward the youngest of the cops they’d brought in to help. Knowing Rowan, he’d be doing his level best to calm the kid’s nerves. Something about his size was reassuring; the sergeant had muscles to die for, and didn’t have a nervous bone in his body. Always in control, that was Rowan.

      Turning back, she caught a glimpse of movement, a glimpse of black hair slashed with silver darting through the trees. Max.

      Anger and fear clutched at her chest, followed by guilt. She might have missed him by letting her attention wander. The urge to haul Max back screamed up her arm. As if he gave a snap of the fingers for her wants. Maggie, the woman Max loved, was inside the house. Nothing, absolutely nothing, she or anyone else said was going stop him acting the fool for love.

      “Is Max all right?” Rowan whispered as a movement at the window caught her eye. A glimmer of light slid down the dull-gray barrel of the rifle following Max’s trail like a heat-seeking missile.

      Everything she’d ever been taught about safety sloughed right off. Distract the gunman or Max’s as good as dead. “He’s gone!” she shouted to warn Rowan as she leaped to her feet. The rifle in the window swung, taking a bead on her position. She couldn’t move as fast.

      “Damn and blast!” yelled Rowan.

      A thud of feet and snap of twigs raced time, raced the swing of the barrel. No time to yell, “Stay down!” Although time appeared to stop, she didn’t have any. Then his hand gripped her shoulder.

      An inane thought that this was the first time he’d ever laid hands on her, struck at the same moment a shot cracked and the air beside them opened in a rush.

      Rowan lunged, his legs straddling hers. His large body barreling into hers dragged her down. She tasted dirt. The scent of dead leaves, grave-cold earth and the coppery tang of blood filled every breath.

      Blood? Who was bleeding?

      Though Rowan’s weight crushed her, she felt no pain.

      As the truth hit, she wanted to scream, “Noooooo!” And she did. “No, no, no,” she repeated the word, repeated the prayer.

      She squeezed out from under his lax body and struggled to her knees as if daring the gunman to try again. Blood and some other stuff she didn’t want to put a name to covered her shoes. “God, don’t let him be dead.” Groaning, she rolled him over.

      There was no need to feel for his carotid pulse. Proof of life pulsed in the fountain of blood gushing from a hole the size of a fist in his thigh. “You fool, McQuaid. What you want to go and do that for?” She dragged the sleeves of her jacket down her arms and flung it aside.

      “I don’t want you to die for me.” There were no other sounds in the world except her beating heart and Velcro ripping as she pulled at the straps of her Kevlar vest. Peeling the vest off, she started in on her shirt buttons. “I don’t need a stand-in. I’m quite capable of dying by myself.”

      “Is Sergeant McQuaid all right?”

      She’d forgotten that anyone but Rowan and her existed. Her shirt was off, and the kid Rowan had helped was staring at her underwear. “No, he’s not all right. We need an ambulance.”

      “I already called the paramedics.”

      He hunkered down at Rowan’s head and continued to stare. She knew he was waiting for orders, but her mind raced faster than her lips could frame the words. And no wonder. She was kneeling in the dirt, her hands fighting to staunch the flow of blood with her second-best shirt, while all she wanted to do was howl, to let her feminine side have its way and cry her damn eyes out. But there was no time. She didn’t know where Max had gone but Rowan was down and that made her in charge.

      “Press down on this, kid. Let’s hope the ambulance doesn’t take too long,” she told him and shrugged back into her vest, then jacket while he complied. She nudged his hand aside, replacing it with hers. “Now give me your shirt and your belt,” she ordered, digging her other fist into Rowan’s groin in search of the pressure point.

      Too busy now for tears, she’d save them for another day, praying that it wouldn’t be at his funeral.

      Chapter 1

      A little over two years later

      “Babe alert.”

      The shout jarred Jo out of a daydream. Her head jerked around in time to see the fierce concentration on Ginny’s face as a piercing, two-note twist of air whistled through the gap in her front teeth. Then awe threaded a breathless gasp. “Cooool.”

      Good grief, had she ever been so young?

      Thank heavens the air-conditioning god insisted on tightly closed windows; she’d hate anyone to think the wolf whistle came from her.

      Jo had been quite content to layer her own thoughts over her passenger’s prattle—prisoner was too harsh a word. Ginny sure could talk, and had started the moment she entered the car taking her to the station house. The constant stream of words laced with a mixture of nerves and relief, had settled into a comfortable drone in her ears when Ginny’s shout brought her out of her reverie.

      By rights, it should have been the owner of the Two Dollar Shop on the receiving end of all her youthful fervor. The suggestion to let Ginny off with a warning for shoplifting had come from him. Yet from the moment Jo had explained the conditions she’d been promoted to saint…well, let’s say knighthood.

      It was kind of nice, really.

      Half an hour later she was redundant. Ginny had found someone new to worship. Replaced by a babe no less.

      “Where? I can’t see him.” She might be twice Ginny’s age, and then some, but she wasn’t immune to an attractive male, so she let her gaze follow the direction of Ginny’s pointing finger. No use. The glare of late-October spring sunshine against the windshield blinded her. All she got for her effort was the impression of an elongated black shadow sliding across the white weatherboards cladding the Nicks Landing station house.

      Wasn’t that always the way? One bright spot in a mediocre day, and she’d missed it. Win some, lose some, usually the latter.

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