Chapter 21
The world is a blur as I come awake. Bright lights surround me, and the steady beeping of machines fills the otherwise silent room. My nose is dry, my throat scratchy, so I reach up to tug the oxygen tube away. Pain shoots up through my arm, and I groan.
“Easy,” a masculine voice says. Blinking rapidly to clear my vision, I focus on the blurred form above me.
“Shawn,” I choke out when my vision clears and I see him standing over me. He’s wearing blue scrubs, and his hair is a mess on top of his head as though he’s been running a hand through it.
“Hey.” He smiles down at me, then rests his hand on top of my head as his thumb gently caresses my forehead.
“I—what happened?”
“Do you remember anything?”
I close my eyes and focus on my breathing while I try to remember. It all hits me in rapid succession. Coming back to his house, getting shot, the ambulance. “I got shot. Oh no, Lauren, is she—”
“She’s fine. Safe with my mom right now.” He swallows hard. “You coded. Twice.”
“Coded? I died?”
He nods and takes a steady breath as he takes a seat on the bed beside me, taking my hand in his.
Shoulders slumped, he looks absolutely beaten down.
“The bullet nicked your subclavian artery and got lodged in your clavicle. By the time we got you here, you’d lost so much blood that your heart stopped on the table.
They gave you transfusions and finally managed to stabilize you so they could remove the bullet. ”
His expression is broken, his shoulders sagging. I can see the pain on his face, the ache over what happened. “I’m sorry.”
His brow furrows. “Why do you keep apologizing?”
“Since I showed up in your precinct, you’ve been led into one dangerous situation after another. I’m glad it was me who got shot and not you.”
“I’m not,” he replies without hesitation. “I would have gladly taken that bullet. It would have been preferable to watching the life drain from your body.” His tone is sharp, frustrated.
“Shawn—”
“Do you not get it, Beckett? Do you not see?”
“See what?”
He clenches his jaw, then releases me and stands. “When you were bleeding, all I could think about was what a coward I’ve been.”
“Coward? You’re a lot of things, Detective, but a coward is not one of them.”
“When it comes to you, I’ve been a coward.”
I try to read between the lines. Try to see what it is he’s getting at, but the drugs have me so groggy that thinking too hard makes my head hurt.
“From the moment you walked into my precinct that very first time we met, you’ve monopolized my thoughts. Even after that first date, I’ve been unable to stop thinking about you. And then...” He trails off.
My heart begins to race, something that has nothing to do with the pain radiating from my injury.
He turns back toward me. “You walked back into my life, and it felt like a second chance.”
“It was. For both of us.”
“I know I said I’d wait, and I will, but I need you, Beckett. I need your smile, your laugh, the way you call me out when you don’t agree with something. I need…you.”
My heart continues to hammer, and when he leans forward to rest his forehead against mine, all I can think about is how desperately I want to wrap my arms around him so he can’t leave.
So he’ll do what I know we both want and kiss me already.
Too soon, he pulls away.
“You said Lauren is with your mom?”
He nods. “They’ll be fine. Hit it off really well.”
“That’s good.” As I come fully awake, the familiar anxiety sneaks in, triggered by the sights and smells of a hospital.
The beeping of machines is deafening, and all I can hear is the sound they make when they flatline.
Lord, please take this anxiety from me. I know You are here and that I have nothing to fear. “When can I leave?”
“Did you not hear me?” Shawn demands. “You died. Twice. You need time.”
“I hate hospitals,” I reply as I take a deep breath.
Shawn reaches down and takes my hand in his. “Why?”
“My grandmother was chronically ill when I was a kid,” I reply. “I was in the room alone with her when she died, and ever since then, I’ve hated them. The sound of a flatline has haunted me my entire life.”
“Understandable. You’re not alone, though. I’m here.”
I open my eyes and stare up at him. “I know.”
The weight of this moment between us settles on my shoulders. The desire to find the truth is still there, but it’s fading more and more when compared to the knowledge that it could have been Shawn who got hit.
Him whose heart stopped.
“Your mom called. I was going to answer but wasn’t sure what you wanted her to know.” He offers me my phone.
“If I tell her, she’ll rush down here and right into the middle of whatever this is.” I sigh and close my eyes. “I’ll call her later so she doesn’t start to worry.”
He nods. “Beckett, I can’t lose you,” he says suddenly.
I open my eyes and smile up at him. “I’m not that easy to get rid of.”
“Nothing about this is easy.”
Before I can respond, my cell rings. I lift it and see Tucker’s name flashing on the screen. I hit answer and put it on speakerphone.
“Hey, Tucker.”
He pauses a moment. “What’s wrong?”
“Got shot,” I reply.
He’s quiet. “You got shot?” he snaps, anger lacing every word. “When? Are you okay? Sampson—”
“Is right here. It happened right after we hung up with you. They got her through the front windows of my house.” He clenches his jaw and stands, the guilt rolling off him in potent waves.
“Could have been either of us,” I reply.
“But it wasn’t,” Shawn snaps. “It was you.”
“You’re okay?” Tucker questions.
“I am.” Now. “In the hospital. They got the bullet out.”
“We’re going to talk more on that, but you guys need to know.
This is a major mess you guys stepped into.
” He sighs. “Like, a major mess. There were files even I couldn’t access.
Missing pieces and blacked-out memos where the only thing I can see is the heading.
Even the files the FAA and the NTSB have are missing pages. ”
“What were you able to find out?” Shawn asks.
“The two detectives with the WSP? Each of them deposited ten thousand dollars the day before Paul’s plane went down.”
“Before?” I ask at the same time Shawn does.
“Yeah, before,” he confirms.
Shawn’s anger fills the room, weighing down the very air around us. “Then someone knew they were going to be assigned that case before it even happened.”
“Pretty much,” Tucker replies to Shawn. “Since it was a cash deposit, I can’t trace it.”
“They covered their tracks.”
“Did you look into any of the other officers in that office or at the FAA and NTSB?”
“I did,” he replies. “The only suspicious thing I found was on a Cary Seymore with the WSP. He was a detective with Seattle PD but got transferred and promoted the week before Paul’s plane went down.
The previous captain retired early. It came out of nowhere, and a job opening wasn’t officially posted. ”
So he was moved into play like a chess piece.
My gaze levels on Shawn as he paces, taking a moment to formulate his response.
“You still there?” Tucker asks.
“We are,” I reply.
“I know Seymore,” Shawn finally says, stopping near my bed. “He’s the one we went to see right before Beckett got shot.” His gaze levels on mine.
“Then I’d say he’s the next place to start. I dug into his financials and didn’t find anything, but that doesn’t mean it’s not there. If he received cash, he may not have been dumb enough to deposit it.”
“But that means we have nothing to link him to the others.”
“No,” Tucker replies. “Not yet, at least. I’m still digging, but—” A baby cries in the background, and my heart twists, that familiar pang hitting me. “Sorry, baby’s fussy today. Um, yeah, I’m still digging. I just wanted to give you guys an update.”
“Thanks,” I reply.
“Of course. So, how bad was it?” he asks.
“Not too—”
“Bad,” Shawn interrupts. “She lost too much blood and died—twice.”
“You’re in good company then,” Tucker replies, but there’s no humor in his tone. “You’re okay now?” he asks.
“I will be once this is all over.”
“I’m not giving up. Also, I let Riley know you were dealing with something. He and Jules are in Seattle right now for some charity function honoring her grandfather. I’ll let him know what happened, but you really need to let him help where he can.”
“Let them focus on their function,” I say. “Please, Tucker, I’ll be okay. Now we have something to follow.”
“I’m still telling him,” he replies. “But I’ll let him know that you’ll call if you need something.”
“Thanks.” Relieved that I won’t be disrupting what he and Jules have going on, I close my eyes.
“Yeah. Hey, Sampson? Can you take me off speaker?”
“Sure.”
I eye him as he takes my phone and switches it off speaker.
Shawn presses it to his ear. “Yeah.” His gaze levels on mine. “Absolutely. Go ahead. Thanks.” He ends the call.
“What was that about?”
“He told me that you were being too stubborn and he was calling Riley in whether you liked it or not—unless there was a reason I didn’t think he should.”
“And you told him to go ahead?”
“I need you to be safe. I’d bring in an entire private security team if I could.”
“Actually, I know one,” I reply with a smile.
“Of course you do. You bail them out, too?” He smiles softly and takes a seat on the edge of the bed, taking my hand in his.
“A time or two. But mainly, it’s because one of my best friends from childhood is married to one.”
His gaze turns serious once more, and he leans forward to brush some of the hair out of my face.
“Thank you for saving me,” I say.
“I’m the reason you took the bullet in the first place,” he says, expression darkening. “I wasn’t careful enough. I assumed we were safe and—”
“I didn’t realize you could see the future,” I interrupt. “Because that’s the only reason you would have known I was going to get shot.”
“Beckett, I’m a cop.”
“And you saved me. So, I will continue to thank you even if you’re too stubborn to take it.”
He’s quiet for a moment, then the corners of his mouth twitch. “Stubborn?”
I smile softly. “It’s true.”
“Takes one to know one,” he retorts.
“What are you, five?”
He laughs, but that laughter fades quickly, and he runs a hand through his hair. “I thought you were going to die.”
“And how did that make you feel, Detective? Relieved you might finally get some actual sleep?” The joke falls completely flat, though.
“It made me feel terrified,” he replies. “I don’t know that I’ve ever been that scared in my entire life.”
“I need you.” His words from right after I’d woken up come rushing back to me.
“I need you, too,” I whisper. “I hope you know that.”
He smiles and raises the hand of my uninjured arm up to press a kiss to it. “Good. Because you’re not getting rid of me easily, Counselor. Not now. Not ever.”