Chapter 10
‘Connor…’ Bella was sobbing. ‘He’s trying to kill her.’
Connor didn’t even slow down as he reached the door. ‘Who?’
‘Her father.’ Bella was fumbling for her phone, trying to flip it open.
There was the sound of glass smashing within the lab. Connor pushed the door open with a bang and then stopped to get his bearings and see what was going on.
Kate was behind an island bench. The intruder was on the other side, using his arm to sweep a microscope and racks of glass vials to the floor with a vicious jerk of his arm. Then he saw Connor. ‘Who the hell are you? Get out. This is between me and my kid.’
‘Deal with Kate and you deal with me,’ Connor told him.
‘Ooh…’ The sound had an unpleasant, suggestive tone. ‘Fancy her, do you? You’d better watch out. She’s a bolshie little cow. Just like her mother was.’
Raising his arm, the man hit the side of the bench with something he was holding in his hand.
A bottle. Connor could see the jagged edges of the weapon like knives protruding from shreds of brown paper.
He waved it in front of him, jabbing towards Connor.
And then his head turned towards Kate, and Connor knew what he was planning.
‘Get down, Kate,’ he yelled. ‘Get on the floor.’
He couldn’t stop to consider her aversion to being shouted at or ordered around. This was for her safety, for God’s sake…
Except she wasn’t moving. She was staring at Connor and he could see the desperation in her face. Without thinking, he launched himself into a rugby-style tackle that would have earned praise on a football field.
He wasn’t tackling the angry, drunk man, however.
Connor launched himself at Kate. He reached her and caught her body, taking her with him for the rest of the fall, just as the half-broken bottle was hurled at the space she’d been standing in.
He felt the buttons pop off the white coat she was wearing and knew her glasses had gone flying.
He heard a howl of rage from the man and new missiles were being found and thrown.
Connor kept his body on top of Kate’s. Holding her still.
Something hard hit him painfully on one shoulder and he tried to curve himself to cover more of Kate.
She lay rigid beneath him. He would have to let her go so that he could get up and deal with their attacker, but not just yet.
Not until there was a pause in this ferocious onslaught.
And then Connor heard new sounds. Shouting and banging. He raised his head to see two burly security men storming into the lab. Bella was peering round the edge of the door behind them, her face as white as a sheet. It took only moments for the security men to overpower the man.
‘Who is this creep?’ one of them asked. ‘And how the hell did he get down here?’
‘It was my fault.’ Bella wasn’t crying now. She looked agonised as she crept into the lab. ‘Kate? Where are you? Oh, God… are you alright?’
Connor eased himself off Kate but didn’t take his weight completely off her body. He knelt over her, reaching for her face with his hands. Holding it so that she had to meet his searching gaze.
‘You’re safe,’ he said softly. ‘You know that, don’t you?’
She felt safe.
How ridiculous was that? Her worst nightmare had just happened, having to confront her father again in one of his blind, drunken rages.
He was still there, breathing the same air that she was.
Connor had yelled at her. He’d thrown himself at her and it should have felt like a physical assault, and yet Kate felt completely safe.
Because it had been Connor who had grabbed her. Because he was here. Because he was looking at her like… like her safety was the only thing that mattered in the whole world.
And you could only look like that if you loved someone.
As much as she loved him?
Kate let Connor help her up. He found her glasses, fortunately unbroken, and handed them to her to put back on. She didn’t want to lose the touch of his body so soon, though, so she stood close to Connor, pressed to his side, grateful for the arm that came around her and didn’t move again.
‘I’m fine,’ she told Bella, although she wasn’t sure how true that was. Her legs felt oddly shaky. Her hands were trembling. It had been quite a mission to settle her glasses into the right spot on the top of her nose.
‘So who is this guy?’ the security man asked again.
‘I’m her father,’ Kevin snarled.
‘No.’ Kate sucked in a jagged breath. ‘You’ve never been a father to me. I knew that even before you murdered my mother.’
‘Whoa…’ The younger security guard looked shocked. ‘This guy’s a murderer? Good thing we’ve got the cops on the way.’
‘You’ll find he’s probably on parole,’ Kate told them. ‘He was on parole once before, years ago, and got locked up again because he beat someone senseless in the first pub he went into.’
‘Doubt he’ll ever be getting out again, then,’ the older guard said. He jerked Kevin in front of him to start him walking. ‘We’ll take him outside.’ He looked back as he reached the door. ‘The police will be wanting a statement from you guys. Don’t go away yet, will you?’
He took another look at Kate. ‘Will you be okay? Want us to send someone else down to stay with you?’
Kate pressed closer to Connor. ‘I’ll be okay.’
‘She will be,’ Connor growled. ‘I intend to make sure of it.’
The pathology department was being sealed off with wide, bright red ‘Crime Scene’ tape stretched from one side of the doorframe to the other.
Bella watched with some dismay. She’d already been here far longer than she liked.
She should never have come in the first place.
She certainly shouldn’t have suggested that Kevin Graham come here to make contact with his long-lost daughter.
The sooner she could escape the better but, as far as she knew, that door to the main corridor was the only exit.
‘Aren’t we allowed to go home?’ she asked.
‘We don’t want anything moved until the scene’s been photographed,’ a police officer explained.
‘And some fingerprint evidence has been collected. That tape’s to keep people out, not to keep you in, though it would be better if we all stayed in this office until they’ve finished. It shouldn’t take long.’
‘All’ was two police officers, Bella, Connor and Kate.
There were only two chairs in Kate’s office.
Kate was sitting in one and Bella in the other.
Connor had a hip hitched onto the desk, and the leg touching the floor was also touching Kate’s chair.
Touching Kate, even? Bella tilted her head to try and see but, instead, she caught Kate’s glance.
A new wave of misery made her cheeks flush and her eyes sting. This was all her fault and if it hadn’t been for Connor happening to come along at the right moment, it could have been a tragedy.
‘So your father was found guilty of manslaughter?’ A police officer had been taking notes busily for a while now.
‘The jury had no hesitation in convicting him,’ Kate told them.
‘Not that I attended the trial, but my brother did. A neighbour from across the road heard the argument and could actually see him pushing Mum across the room. She fell down the stairs, hit her head and died two days later without regaining consciousness.’
Kate’s voice was remarkably steady, but Bella saw the way Connor reached down to squeeze her shoulder. ‘David also gave evidence about the abuse we’d suffered as children.’
Bella hung her head. If only she’d known.
She could understand now that kind of secret pact Kate and Bella’s father had shared.
And no wonder they hadn’t wanted to talk about it.
It was horrible to think that you were related to a monster like that.
An addiction to the alcohol that fuelled the rages was no excuse at all.
‘He got sentenced to fifteen years,’ Kate was saying now. ‘He managed to get parole after twelve by convincing the board that he was sober and he’d stay that way. He lasted two days, I believe, before he got into a fight at a pub and nearly killed someone else.’
‘He’ll never get out this time,’ the police officer assured her. ‘No judge is going to take a risk like that.’
‘Good.’ Kate looked up at Connor as though she could sense him watching her.
The eye contact held for a significant beat of time. Long enough to make Bella hold her breath for a moment. Was she missing something here? Were they…?
Kate’s gaze swung to meet her own and Bella blushed.
‘I’m so sorry.’ She’d lost count of how many times she’d said it, but she’d keep saying it for as long as she needed to. And she would never, ever, meddle with anyone else’s business again.
‘I’m still confused about how he found out where Kate worked,’ a police officer said.
‘It was me,’ Bella sighed. She told them all about the phone call she’d had from her grandfather that she’d kept secret from Kate and about her texted instructions for the meeting she’d set up.
‘He really sounded sorry,’ she said. ‘And I believed him. And I know that Kate’s always so fair and that if people deserve it, they will always get a second chance.’
They were looking at each other. Again. Kate and Connor. And this time there was more than a hint of a smile on both their faces. A private, significant sort of smile.
By the time the police had finished the interview, the photographer and fingerprint technician were also finished and they were told they were free to go home.
‘We’ll be in touch if we need anything more before the trial date gets set.’
Bella stood up to follow the police officers. When she turned to see if Kate was going to come home with her, she found Connor and Kate looking at each other. Again. And this time they were holding hands.
Bella had to clear her throat to get noticed.
‘You go on,’ Kate told her. ‘I need a minute or two to get my head together and maybe tidy up a bit.’
Bella hesitated.
‘Don’t worry,’ Connor said. ‘I’ll look after her.’