Chapter Twenty
There was still one thing that was bothering Rose, and for the life of her, she couldn’t catch the thought. It bothered her like a small pebble caught in her shoe. No matter how many times she tried to shake it out, it stayed.
It rubbed.
It annoyed.
She felt James’s gaze fall on her. After the elevator doors closed behind them, he finally asked if she was okay.
Rose couldn’t decide, so she did a half shrug and head tilt.
“I’m not sure,” she admitted. “There’s…something I’m forgetting? But I’m not even sure where there’s space to have forgotten something. We’ve gone over every question with an answer now or at least a confirmation that we still need an answer. Nothing has been left undone, right?”
She faced him full-on and took a tiny step forward. It put her close enough that she had to crane her head back to look up at him while he tilted his forward to look down at her.
If she hadn’t been so focused on trying to solve her problem, she thought she might blush at the closeness. Especially since James had been right—she was sore from their previous trysts between the sheets.
As it was, she gave him the most serious of expressions to know she meant business.
“Or do we have any other outlying questions? Things we were trying to answer before what happened out at the cemetery?”
James turned thoughtful.
“The only other thing I was wondering about was how much trouble was I going to get into for basically stealing a car from someone at this very same hospital last week.” He shrugged.
“But the car wasn’t damaged and the sheriff sweet-talked that guy into forgiving me since he knew him. So that’s that for me.”
Rose stifled a smile, despite herself.
The man whose car James had taken was bingo buddies with Liam’s newest father-in-law. Rose still was waiting for the time to ask him about how that conversation had gone. She bet Blake had also gotten a good kick out of it.
But Rose was still feeling bothered.
The elevator arrived at its destination. The doors slid open but Rose didn’t move from her spot yet.
“There’s something,” she reiterated. “And it’s really bugging me.”
James reached down and put a thumb between her eyebrows. He pressed the crinkled skin there, gently.
“Don’t worry, Little,” he said. “I believe in you. You’ll get there.”
It was a simple pep talk but it did the trick. Rose decided to try and shake off the feeling and come back to it later when she had the mental space for it. In her experience not every detail always shook out. Sometimes you had to eventually just walk away.
Or sometimes the thing that’s bothering you walks into your elevator.
No sooner had the doors slid open than a man nearly bowled her over.
Her reflexes were normally spitfire-fast, but James beat her this time. His large hand wrapped easily around her hip before tugging her back. She thudded softly against his chest, a wall of muscle she now knew in the most intimate of senses.
“Excuse me,” the newcomer offered. He kept his face on the control panel but offered a lackluster nod in their direction. Rose narrowed her eyes at him while James told him it was no problem.
That was when she saw the cast on his arm.
The rest of the details synced up.
Rose knew this person. At least enough to recognize him.
It was the reporter.
The man she had met the day of the explosion. Why had she never learned his name?
He didn’t make eye contact. Rose was grateful for it. The last thing she needed was to have to deal with the media at the moment. A member of the media who obviously had a distaste for her based on their last interaction.
James pushed her forward before the doors could close. Rose allowed it, eyes still narrowed. That bothered feeling stayed as they walked away and down the hallway toward Damon’s room.
She had bigger fish to fry, after all. With Damon being awake they could hopefully get some answers and find a new direction to go in to find who had actually been pulling the strings.
But nothing had been that simple so far and that theme continued on.
Deputy Cameron wasn’t sitting outside.
No one from the department was.
Wynonna also wasn’t there. Not at the bench and not in front of the vending machines.
“The vending machines.”
Rose stopped. That piece that had been missing. That pebble in her shoe.
The dang vending machines.
James’s eyebrow rose.
“The day that man came in and attacked me in the bathroom… We couldn’t figure out how anyone even knew I was with you.
We figured if anyone from our trusted circle told, it was an accident.
Or maybe someone from the hospital saw us leaving together or someone saw us in the car.
But there was one person I know for sure who saw us together that day. ”
She looked over her shoulder in the direction of the elevators.
“The reporter who was talking to me next to the vending machines,” she clarified. “The one you told me not to talk to again because you didn’t like him.”
Adrenaline surged within her. Along with a feeling of stupidity.
“The first time I met him was the morning before the explosion on the way to my car, then the next day here… He even called me an action hero. What if he’s the third person?
” Rose’s eyes widened as she turned back to James.
A more sobering worry hit her. “And if he is, then where did he just come from?”
Rose didn’t wait for an answer. Instead, she threw open Damon’s hospital room door.
The scene inside only confirmed her new theory.
“Oh my God, James, call for help!”
The missing Deputy Cameron was lying on the ground, blood pooling around him. The hospital bed next to him was empty. Rose, having learned her lesson over the last few attacks, did something she hadn’t yet done around James.
She pulled out her service weapon.
Then she was running back down the hallway.
“Sheriff’s deputy down in Room 214,” she yelled out to the nurses’ desk as they came up to it. Someone screamed at the sight of her gun but Rose yelled off the rest of her instructions. “Suspect just left. Shut the hospital down, now!”
Then Rose really kicked it into gear.
She slammed open the door to the stairs and hoped the elevators were as slow as usual.
James didn’t complain and instead ran down the two flights of stairs ahead of her. He hit the exit for the first-floor door before Rose even saw it. Which meant when she made it out to see the front of the elevators, she was already late to the fight.
The reporter pulled a gun up just as James swung around to grab her waist.
Rose could have flinched, ducked, dropped her weight and let James do the rest, but there was more than one reason that she wore the nickname Wildcard so well.
She actually had some skill to back it up.
James put his arm around her and pulled her along with him to the corner of the hallway. Rose let it happen but she didn’t turn around. Instead, she had her gun up and aimed.
Rose might have been known for running into danger without a plan but people often left out the part where, once she was in a situation, she didn’t back down. If her boots made any noise as they slid across the floor, she didn’t hear it.
The gunshot she let off was just too loud.
The reporter bellowed out in pain as her hit landed. The force and surprise must have offset his trigger finger to fire late. James was able to pull her the rest of the way around the corner before he could get a shot off.
The glass windows over the side parking lot exit shattered in response to the miss. Screams sounded in the distance. Someone cut in on the overhead announcement system, but Rose wasn’t paying attention to anything else.
She stepped out of James’s hold and yelled out to the reporter.
“Sheriff’s department, throw your weapon away or—”
He apparently wasn’t having it.
James cut her off.
“Listen! He’s running!”
Rose quieted in time to hear a heavy bang. It wasn’t a gunshot this time.
“He ran back into the stairwell!”
Rose led the charge to the door they had just come from and kicked it open. No shots or attack came their way.
There was blood, however. A trail ran up the stairs, dotting the concrete and giving them the direction they needed.
Rose peeked out between the floors and looked up. There was a small space between the railings. She could see all the way to the top floor.
The reporter wasn’t waiting to catch sight of her and shoot. He was climbing up without stopping.
Rose didn’t have a clear shot of him.
Which meant they chase was still on.
“Be careful,” James ground out, but Rose was already running.
* * *
THE RAIN HAD slacked off, but the roof was still freshly wet.
Rose burst out from the stairwell and nearly fell because of it.
James was at her elbow and caught her quickly by the back of her shirt. Like in the hallway downstairs, the change in gravity didn’t stop her. The instant her momentum swung back, she was on the man’s heels, yelling again for him to drop his weapon.
This time he didn’t turn and shoot. He also didn’t stop.
The roof that they were on was one of three different heights along the hospital’s main building. Right now they were on the middle height. It led to another roof that was a floor lower.
For a second, James thought the man would jump off their roof for the one below. It wouldn’t be a fatal fall but there was no way it wouldn’t hurt. It would also be hard for them to reach him without finding a ladder or going back inside to get to the stairwell that serviced the middle building.
He could try the escape, but it would cost him. And judging by the drops of blood they had been passing on the way there, he was already paying the price from Rose’s earlier hit.
The man must have run the risk himself. He stopped near the edge of the roof.
Rose yelled out again for him to drop his weapon.
He didn’t, but he did lower it to his side.
“Be careful,” James urged again.