Chapter 25
He was never doing something that stupid again.
That was a realization he’d come to late in the night on that damned couch.
He wasn’t going to risk that ever again.
He’d wanted nothing more than to curl up next to her and hold her safe in the night.
Only that his father and her mother would be right on the other side of the wall had held him back.
Had kept him from making a damned mistake.
Nothing could come from being with her. All he would manage to do was screw it up—and then they’d have to deal with the fallout. How would that work with their family around all the time? He’d have to see her and know—no. It was best that he kept his hands to himself.
And concentrate on his damned job. Period.
It was mid-morning before Dom got the all-clear from the nurse working the charge station to go into Heather’s room. It was definitely a nurse he did not want to cross.
She was too terrifying.
His step-mother gave him a firm look when he approached.
He had seen her not even two hours ago—at her breakfast table, with his father, Max, and Madison already there.
He’d eaten the breakfast Cherise had made without protest. Otherwise, she’d have made him.
She was as small as her daughter, but she could be a bit fierce.
Especially when she was mothering one of them. It had taken Dom a while to get used to that. His own mother barely contacted him at all. And hadn’t really in years—since he’d moved in with his father as a teenager.
“What are you doing up here?” Dom asked.
He adored this woman almost as much—and in a completely different way—as his father did.
She usually worked the ER. She was a dayshift supervisor, on from eight until six each day, four days a week.
Similar hours as Dom’s father. But most of her time was spent downstairs. Where all the main chaos happened.
“The floor supervisor called off, so I’m covering.
I figured considering the TSP—well, someone you all know just felt more right up here today.
” Cherise looked at him for a moment, with that mom look she was so good at.
She wasn’t quite old enough to be his mother, but she was a damned good stepmother.
Most of all, she was a good wife to his father.
That was what mattered most—Dom’s father deserved a woman like the one in front of Dom now. “You still look exhausted.”
She’d told him that this morning, too. He didn’t think she knew he’d sat up in her living room almost all night, holding Madison in his arms. Just thinking…imagining. Listening to that woman breathing.
“I’ll grab some sleep in a few hours.” He’d been back at the precinct, going over everything they had on the OPJ case all the way back to the very beginning.
And he’d started digging, cross-referencing Heather Coleson and drug cases going back even further.
Trey Grundenman, the asshole who had created Opal Joy in the first place, had made it clear Heather had gotten close to the entire organization before.
Multiple times. So many times she’d been identified as a specific problem to be dealt with.
He didn’t think the problem-Heather was finished being dealt with yet, at all. He feared this was just the beginning. And those bastards weren’t getting to her again.
Dom was going to find out where her path crossed these assholes in the course of her job. Then…he was going to take over where she had left off. He was hoping Heather would give him a good place to start—as soon as she was awake and could talk.
Somehow, he suspected that beautiful monster held the key to everything going down at the TSP.
He just didn’t know if she knew that. Or if she’d share all her secrets.
“So what can I help with? I saw your name on a list of TSP we can update. Powell is sleeping—she’s in with Detective Erickson. He had a good night, and should be waking soon. Stable condition. Upgraded two hours ago.”
Dom felt the relief at that. Gunnar had a beautiful woman who adored him that he worshiped in return, a baby on the way. “And Dan?”
She hesitated. “It was a little rougher for him, Dom. He had a lot of injuries from whatever happened to him out there after he was shot, that Gunnar didn’t. He’s still under. He probably will be until tomorrow.”
Dom bit back a curse. He’d wanted to talk to the other man. See his friend for himself. “Anyone in with him?”
Daniel just had his father and a stepmother now. They were not close. Dom couldn’t see Daniel Senior sitting worriedly by his son’s bedside, that was for sure. Unless there was a camera nearby, anyway.
“I believe the Colesons are taking turns sitting with him—and Powell and Gunnar. Gunnar is in the same room—he gave permission for Heather’s family to stay in there.
The Colesons are making sure they have anything they need.
Cashlyn is in there now. She has a shift downstairs starting in three hours. So what are you after here?”
“I need to talk to whichever of those three stooges are awake. I have some questions about last night.” Everything was pretty well recorded, by the Colesons.
At least…they had all the audio. That, and security feed where that little monster Hope Coleson and her teenage niece had somehow virtually walked themselves right into the Barratt family’s security system to monitor what was happening inside.
Rumor had it Hope and her niece had done so in less than nine minutes. Terrifying, what those two had accomplished.
“That’s going to be Lieutenant Coleson. She’s in room 408. She woke about an hour ago, I believe.” She sent him that look again. “Don’t tire her out. She’s still recovering from last week’s injuries.”
When she and Powell Barratt had walked right into those bastards and barely escaped alive.
A pregnant woman who stood five foot tall, weighed one hundred pounds, and had nothing to do with the damned TSP at all, except through the man who loved her.
And Heather Coleson—a single mother of two who had been harassed, terrified, stalked and raped by a damned cop.
She’d been terrorized for four years. Only to barely escape last week with her life—and to take a bullet last night and near bleed to death.
When she’d been on suspension, in the first place.
Suspension—it should have been paid medical leave.
Dom didn’t truly understand why it hadn’t been. Only Daniel knew the answer to that. And he was currently unavailable.
The assholes out of TSP headquarters in Wichita Falls were going to make a big deal about that. Unless Finley Creek did something about the suspension first. Or the governor.
Which was a real possibility—and a cluster fuck. That was as problematic—Governor Marcus Deane was married to Heather’s niece, after all. Deane would be accused of favoring his wife’s family. Damned if they do, damned if they don’t.
All they could do was keep going until they got to the end of this, whatever it was.
Dom had read the headlines online a few hours ago.
Focus was on Heather yet again. Imagine that.
Heather Coleson and her demon women family—they drew attention. Every time they moved. Dom had yet to fully figure out why. Yes, they were beautiful. And yes, there were a lot of them—around a dozen. But the way the media acted, this family was as famous as the Kennedys or the Barratts.
Instead of a lower middle-class family of women living together in a mansion they’d inherited years ago that they could barely afford. Heather’s family struggled to pay their way in one of the richest neighborhoods in the state. Maybe that was it?
Cinderellas living amongst the princes?
The Colesons had come from millions through Heather’s father, lost those millions in mysterious ways, and were trying to claw their way back to the top?
Or were imposters amongst the elites? There had even been rumors, he’d heard from Gunnar, that the beautiful Colesons were in Hughes Heights trying to catch wealthy husbands or something.
Powell had heard that specifically. From what Dom understood, Powell had rather exploded at the person responsible for that one.
The media fascination with Heather’s family just didn’t make a damned lot of sense.
It would. Eventually.
Dom was going to see to it.
But for now…that woman held secrets. She might even be the key to cracking the organized crime ring Dom would bet his left arm was operating in a panic right now.
Major Crimes had identified a part of the crime ring already, circled right around Steve Wilson and his pals.
Wilson—the very cop obsessed with Heather, and father of both of her children.
They’d cracked open Gunnar’s OPJ drug trafficking ring, as well. And the two had been connected.
There was more going on out there. Dom would bet his pension on that. He just had to find it.
He rapped his knuckles against the door frame of 408, then peeked his head in.
A small, beautiful woman with wild blonde hair was near the door when he stepped inside.
She looked at him from big dark brown eyes and sighed.
“Well, look what the morning brings, Heath. A very beautiful man for you to talk to. How entertaining. Now you won’t be so bored. How fun.”
Heather’s sister was a handful. He’d heard a lot from Jake about her—the other man had practically been ranting about Heather’s twin.
Rumor also had it she had it bad for a doctor in the hospital—Jake’s ex-brother-in-law.
Dom didn’t know how much truth there was to that. But…it was all a place to start.
“Very beautiful, but…he has a very ugly badge attached. Hey, Acardi. How is it going? You have anything besides hospital food?” the woman in the bed asked. But it was weak. She looked like hell.