Chapter Three
Memphis
Ilook down at the woman I’m sheltering in my arms. I recognize her! She’s friends with my brother’s crush and has classes with my little sister. Damn it!
I reach up and key my mic to radio this in. I got a call from my brother telling me he was at a party when he started hearing gunfire moments before I got the call from the dispatcher telling all units to respond to the address of the party he was at. Of course I was going to go to him.
I saw someone fall and start to roll down the hill, but I couldn’t tell who it was.
A part of me was hoping it wasn’t Boston.
Then my heart stopped as I realized someone was standing on the hill pointing what looked a lot like a gun down at the injured person.
Instinct kicked in and I realized I had to get to whoever it was.
Fuck! She’s young. She’s in college, so she has to be eighteen, nineteen at least. She looks like trouble, and I can’t help brushing her hair back from her face, which is streaked with dirt and leaves. She’s…beautiful.
Her dark hair may be tangled, and she may have a bruise forming on her cheek, but it doesn’t take away from her striking looks.
“Way to go, creep.” Noticing an injured woman’s beauty probably isn’t in any of the handbooks I’ve gotten over the years of my career in law enforcement…but damn, she is strikingly mesmerizing.
Even though it’s wrong, I can’t help but run my thumb over her soft bottom lip. She starts to fight me, but I cup her cheek and talk to her softly…well, as soft as I can since my voice comes out gruff and growly like I just gargled rocks.
“Shh, it’s okay. You’re safe. Everything is going to be okay now. I’ll keep you safe, sweetheart.”
Wide hazel green eyes open for me and hold me breathless as we look at one another for a heartbeat before she closes them again.
Those eyes…they capture a man and make him want to be a better person.
They remind me of the forest behind my mom and dad’s house where I spent hours of my childhood.
Happy memories of sun-dappled moss and cool evenings spent exploring before fireflies came out to play with me rush through my mind with just one look.
She’s small and bleeding, but there’s still enough fire in her that she was trying to fight with me when she didn’t realize I was going to be the one to take care of her and keep her safe.
“You rest, sweetheart. I’m here now, and I won’t let anything hurt you. I promise.”
I pull her closer to me and sit with her until my boss and an ambulance come up beside us.
“Wrath, where the hell are you?” The voice is deep and grumpy, and I'd recognize it anywhere. It's my boss, Chief Sinclare.
“Over here, Chief.”
He walks around the car and finds me still holding her in my arms.
“Well, son of a bitch!” He takes both of us in and pushes his fingers through his hair.
“My brother?”
“He’s alright, looking for you. He was one of the first kids to call it in.”
“What the fuck happened?”
“I’m still not sure. All I know is I got three kids with GSWs and about a hundred of them terrified and in a panic.”
Three people were shot! Three kids. The chief might use the acronym for gunshot wounds that we all use, but I can tell this is different from anything he’s ever seen before.
Usually, he's not flustered or out of sorts at all, but he’s sweating and raking his hands through his hair like he might be digging in there for an answer he isn’t going to find.
Definitely not the normal small-town violence we’re used to working with.
“Memphis!” I look up to see my little brother and the little blonde with him. When she spots who is in my arms, she takes off running faster.
“Oh my God! Waverly! Waverly!”
She kneels beside us, but I hold Waverly closer to me.
“She’s hurt.”
I don’t say it to the little blonde but to my brother so he can hold his girl back.
He takes the blonde in his arms but doesn’t break eye contact with me. “Someone came in shooting.”
“God damn it! Did you get a good look at who it was?” My boss starts digging for the answers again.
My brother’s cheeks turn bright red, and he and the girl won’t make eye contact with any of us. I have a pretty good idea what they were doing when it happened. If the look on the chief’s face is any indication, he does too.
“We were actually in the barn when it happened.” His girl finally says. “We heard it, but didn’t really see anything.”
“Fuck!”
The paramedics come to take her from me, but I stand and carry her over to the gurney. One of them looks from me to Waverly.
“You know her?”
“She goes to school with my brother.” Easier to say that than I think I just met the woman who will change my life forever.
“Shit, she’s hot, but has to be jailbait, right?”
“Shut your fucking mouth, man. She just went through some serious shit.”
“Yeah, but she can still be hot.”
I shove the guy up against the side of the ambulance before I can think.
“I told you to shut your fucking mouth about her!”
“What the hell’s going on, Wrath?”
I take a step back and let the guy take his first good breath since I planted my arm in his fucking throat. My eyes still burn with the promise of retribution if he says one more thing about the girl lying on the gurney.
“Nothing, Chief.” The guy wisely chooses to let his partner help me put her in the back of the ambulance. “I’d feel a lot better if I went with Waverly to the hospital. I think she saw something and might be able to tell us what the hell happened since someone was chasing and shooting at her.”
“Go for it! The last thing I want is for someone to come back and finish what they started.”
I climb in the back before he can finish and turn my complete attention back on the woman resting before me.
I meant what I said when I told her no one would ever hurt her again now that I am here to take care of her.
Somehow my sister’s friend has captured more than my attention, and she wasn’t even trying.