Chapter 22
The SUV’s tinted window came down. A muzzle appeared. Shots were fired.
Chase dove into his truck.
Jules gasped her shock and ran for the cover of the nearest car, two down from Chase’s pickup. Something smacked into her, knocking her down as if pushed. She banged her head on the car fender as she tumbled down.
With another squeal of tires, the SUV roared away.
Kneeling on the hot pavement, Jules struggled for a breath, her brain trying to assess what had just happened. Her thoughts and the world around her seemed to move in slow motion.
She heard someone calling her name. Chase revved the engine of his truck and sped away. A grating ache bit her elbow and hip. A sharper throb pounded at her temple. And her side hurt, burned with a ferocious stinging.
Then Cal was at her side, all traces of his usual happy-go-lucky teasing and mild manner gone. His face was flushed with…what? Anger? Heat? Or was it…fear?
“Jules!” His eyes raked over her even as his hands gently rolled her over on the hot asphalt. “Oh, God! You’re bleeding.”
His voice sounded winded in a way she’d never heard before.
She tried to sit back up, stunned, her thoughts muddled. She had to do something…didn’t she? What had she been doing before she fell?
“Lie still. I’m calling help,” Cal said, even as she saw his shaking hand raise his phone to his ear. “Yeah, I need an ambulance at the Red Grove Food Distributors parking lot. GSW and other injuries.”
Jules blinked. GSW? Didn’t that mean gunshot wound? She frowned, an action that made her head hurt more. Touching her hand to her temple, she winced then looked at the blood on her fingers. She was bleeding?
Cal’s hand covered the stinging spot on her side, and she yelped when he applied pressure. She reached down to touch her aching side and found a sticky wetness there as well. More blood on her hand.
She was bleeding. She was bleeding. She was bleeding! Finally, her stunned mind began to clear, and the situation crystalized with frightening understanding. Now, the belated buzz of adrenaline and fear flooded her gut. Nausea swamped her. Her head throbbed.
She angled her head to look into Cal’s face. Her fingers reached for him and gripped a fistful of his shirt. “I’ve been shot?”
After tucking his phone between his ear and shoulder, he used his free hand to gently stroke the uninjured side of her face. “Hang on, Jules. Help is on the way.”
“Stay…with me. Please, don’t leave.” She put her hand on his, and he laced his fingers with hers, squeezing firmly.
“No chance, sweetheart. I’m not going anywhere.”
Tears puddled in her eyes for reasons she couldn’t explain. But when she closed her eyes, breathing slowly and clinging to Cal’s hand, an unfamiliar peace settled in her heart.
“CT doesn’t show any concussion or internal bleeding,” Dr. Ryan Palmer, the physician on duty at the emergency room, said a few hours later.
“The GSW in your side wasn’t deep, and the bullet only grazed you, leaving a flesh wound.
I’ll stitch it up in just a moment, but we’ll want to irrigate and disinfect the wound first.”
After a knock at the exam room door, Dr. Jonathon Colton peeked into the room. “May I come in? Cal asked me to check on you and give him a report.”
“He didn’t want to come back himself?” Jules asked, missing his hand to hold and his smile to reassure her.
“He does, but since he’s not family, permission has to come from you and your doctor,” Jonathon said.
“Please, send him back,” she said, glancing to Dr. Palmer for confirmation.
“Okay by me, now that your assessment is complete,” Dr. Palmer said, nodding to the nurse with an unspoken request to allow Cal access.
Dr. Palmer consulted her test results again. “I’m prescribing an antibiotic to prevent infection at the bullet wound. Also, plenty of rest for at least a day or two and someone to stay with you just in case that knock to the head proves more serious than the CT shows.”
She frowned, then caught her breath when the cut on her temple pulled again. Why couldn’t she remember to keep her face still? “That could be difficult,” she told Dr. Palmer. “I live alone.”
The nurse returned with Cal, who rushed to her side. “Hi. How are you? Geez, you gave me a scare!”
“And you promised not to leave me,” she said, hearing the petulance in her tone.
“The hospital staff wouldn’t—”
“I know,” she said, cutting him off and forcing a crooked grin at odds with her stinging tone. “I just…” Rather than voice the truth—that she’d missed him, wanted him—she laced her fingers with his and bit her bottom lip to choke back the rise of emotion.
Cal’s father said, “Ryan was just telling Jules that she needs rest and some TLC. What do you think of having her stay with us for a few days, since she doesn’t have a roommate?”
Cal’s eyes never left Jules’s. “I was thinking much the same out in the waiting room. For her safety as much as her recovery. If those drug dealers got a good look at her…” He cut the thought short.
“Well, I just want her where we can keep an eye on her, for several reasons. Like she said, I promised to stay with her.”
Jules grunted, reverting to grumpy-mode. Staying in control of her emotions was easier if she presented a stern, sarcastic version of herself. “You’re talking about me, deciding things about me, as if I’m not here and don’t have a say in the matter.”
“You object to the plan?” Cal asked, pulling a chair closer to the side of the hospital bed.
Jules opened her mouth, prepared to object to the men deciding a plan for her, but she caught the words before they slipped out.
She did want to stay with Cal and Jonathon.
Not only was their beautiful home way nicer than the motel, but the shooting had rattled her.
Deeply. The idea of going back to her lonely motel room, where the masked man had attacked her a few days ago, unsettled her.
She swallowed hard and twisted her mouth as if considering.
“What about Joy? I can’t leave my cat behind. ”
“Your cat? So you’ve decided to keep her, have you?” Cal said with a knowing grin that set her teeth on edge.
Darn him! Did he have to be so smug and…right all the time?
Cal sent his father a consulting glance. “I have no objections to a cat. Do you?”
Jonathon shrugged. “Why not? The more the merrier.”
“Are you sure?” Her pulse ticked faster, anticipating the move to the Coltons’ home.
What had she gotten herself into? Was she really going to live with these two bachelors, a large dog and a wild kitten?
She hadn’t cohabited with anyone since sharing her dorm room in college.
The idea both thrilled her and flustered her.
The grin on Cal’s face faded, and the muscle in his jaw twitched as he regarded her. “Positive.”
“Fine. I’ll stay with you. For now,” she muttered, adding an eye roll so he didn’t think she was caving to his will easily.
Thirty minutes later, she was leaving the hospital and climbing into Cal’s Jeep. After a stop at the motel to pick up Joy, the kitten’s supplies and all of Jules’s things, she was checked out of her temporary home and headed to another.
When they arrived at Cal’s house, Pilot gave the kitten a curious sniff and wagged his tail, looking up at Cal as if to say “hey, thanks for the new friend!”
Joy, on the other hand, hissed and swatted at Pilot’s nose, her fur standing on end.
“Huh. So it’s not just people she doesn’t like.” Cal headed upstairs with her suitcase. “Give her space, Pilot. She’ll come around.”
“You don’t think he’ll hurt her?” Jules asked, following him up the steps. “She’s so little.”
“Naw. I bet they’re friends by tonight. Pilot’s gentle as a lamb.”
Jules cast a last worried glance toward the animals, who were still sizing each other up uneasily, before she followed Cal. As it turned out, Cal was wrong…
Joy and Pilot had sorted things out before they came back downstairs.
Pilot was lying on his blanket at the foot of the stairs, and the kitten had climbed on top of the Labrador.
After turning around a few times, Joy tucked herself into a ball to sleep on Pilot’s side.
Pilot gave a contented dog sigh and closed his eyes.
“Well, I’ll be. Joy’s certainly made herself at home,” Jules said, a grin forming. “Clearly she feels safe with Pilot.”
Cal draped an arm around her shoulders. “I think they have the right idea. Want to snuggle on the couch? It’s plenty big enough for two, and there’s an afghan to keep your feet warm.”
“Don’t you have work to do? I’ll be fine by myself.”
He nudged her toward the living room. “For the rest of today, my official duty is protecting and looking after you. Ryan said for you to rest, so consider me your nurse for the next few days.”
She went to the sofa willingly. Her head hurt, and she was suddenly beyond tired. As she settled on the couch, she sent Cal a puzzled look. “Ryan?”
“Dr. Palmer. My dad has been mentoring Ryan for the last several months since he moved to Red Grove and just refers to him as Ryan outside the hospital.”
“Oh. Right.” Jules’s side gave a throb, and she eased back against the cushions. “Did he tell me his first name? It’s kind of a blur… And I’m so…” She yawned. “Tired.”
“That could be the pain meds. Or just the post-adrenaline slump.” Cal sat on the edge of the sofa next to her and helped her adjust a throw pillow behind her head. “Name your poison. Something to drink? Another pillow? A snack?”
She shook her head, then hissed as a sharp bolt ricocheted through her skull again. “I wish I could remember to keep my head still,” she mumbled as she settled in.
Cal stroked the uninjured side of her face with his fingers, carefully combing the hair away from her cheek. He sighed and in a gentle tone, asked, “What in God’s name possessed you to run at Hamilton like that?”
She let her eyes drift closed, concentrating on the soothing touch of his fingers in her hair rather than the scary images and sound from hours before. “Abby.”
“Your sister.”
“Mmm-hmm. When I saw him, walking free, knowing how he’d ruined Abby’s life, I just…”
She didn’t say more, and after a moment, Cal stretched out beside her and pulled her into his arms. “I’m going to get him off the street for you. For Abby and Zoey. I promise. You just have to be patient. Trust me. Listen to me.”
She curled against his solid strength and thought that maybe, just maybe, she had found someone she could count on to have her back, to give her faith to and believe in.
“I’ve been thinking…” she mumbled then yawned.
“Did it hurt?” When she groaned, he chuckled. “Fair is fair. You used that one on me. Go ahead. What were you thinking?”
“Masked man.”
She felt him tense. “What?”
“The one in my motel room.”
A growl rumbled in his chest. “You didn’t tell me he was masked. That makes his presence in your room seem more premeditated. Not just a casual break-in of a guy looking for money or valuables.” Cal was quiet a moment. She could imagine he was stewing. “What about the masked man? Has he come back?”
She shook her head. Hissed in pain. “Dang it.”
“Jules?”
“The second guy. In the hoodie. Last week when the guy was murdered.”
Cal shifted to lean over her. “Yeah?”
“He hid his face, too.”
“Go on.”
She pushed him off so she could sit up and blinked hard trying to shove back the drowsy haze. “If last week’s murder was drug-connected, as you suspect, and now we think Chase is hooked up with drug dealers who seem to want to kill him—”
“Then the drug dealers have seen your face twice.”
She frowned, her gut clenching. “That’s not what I was going to say, but…yeah.”
“What were you going to say?” he asked, stroking a finger along her chin.
“Just…the guy in the hoodie, the masked man in my room could have been in that SUV today. I thought that detail might help Wyatt solve the murder.”
Cal nodded slowly. “It very well could. I’ll talk to him. Meanwhile—”
He framed her face with his palms, his blue eyes penetrating. “It tells me you could be in danger. Forget a day or two to rest. You’re going to stay here, under my protection, until the murderer is caught.”