Chapter 2
Chapter Two
“And this is the office area where we all…” Racquelle Leath, the CareFull Home Health clinical manager, let the sentence stall as she led Cillian Doherty around the corner. Probably listening to the high-pitched, female voice infused with what sounded like fright.
“Are you there? Victoria?”
The name pierced Cillian’s chest. Victoria. The woman who had brought him here.
“She just hung up. What should we do?” A young redhead standing by a long desk aimed her panic at a seated brunette, her eyes bugging out of her head.
“Ginny?” Racquelle hurried toward the two women. “What’s going on?”
“It’s Victoria.”
Cillian’s chest clenched. “What about Victoria?” The question launched as quick as a reflex. Why was the girl scared and talking about Victoria?
“I was on the phone with her, and then there was a loud noise and shouting.” Ginny wrung her hands as words tumbled from her mouth. “And she told me to be sure to file the yellow folder. Then a guy yelled, and she hung up. Or got cut off.”
“You’re sure she said the yellow folder?” Racquelle’s dark eyebrows dipped as her forehead creased.
“Is that your code for somebody to check on her?” Cillian looked down at the shorter woman.
“No. That’s the purple folder. Yellow is the code to call the police.”
“Did you?” Cillian transferred his gaze to the nervous redhead.
She glanced at the administrator, confusion mingling with the shock that shaped her features.
“He’s our new social worker. Cillian Doherty. Did you call the police?”
Ginny swallowed visibly, strangling her hands. “I wasn’t sure what—”
Cillian pointed at Racquelle. “Call 9-1-1 now.” He landed his gaze on Ginny as she started to back away. “Where is Victoria?”
“The Trents’ house…Um, 2401 Blackmore Lane. It’s on the West Side.”
Cillian had already swung away, breaking into a run to the exit. He wouldn’t need directions to that part of the city. Rough neighborhood. Not quite as bad as the one he’d grown up in, but enough to mean Victoria could be in serious danger.
Cillian reached his jeep and yanked the door open, jumping in behind the wheel and screeching out of the parking lot. He hadn’t come this far to have something stupid happen to her before he could even say hello.
At least she was close. With the shortcuts and ignoring the speed limit, he’d make it in five minutes.
He didn’t slow down until he reached Blackmore Lane. He checked every address, some on the houses and some on mailboxes.
There. 2401.
He glanced at the dashboard clock as he drove past the little one-story brown house. Four minutes, forty-three seconds. Not bad for not having driven these roads in sixteen years.
He pulled up to the curb beyond the house, far enough away that his jeep shouldn’t be spotted from inside. He got out, scanning the property.
A recent model gray Honda Civic was parked on the street off to the side of the driveway. Victoria’s? An uncomfortable pinch grabbed his chest.
The driveway held two cars. A dark blue nineties two-door Pontiac and less ancient Toyota Camry. But the Pontiac grabbed his attention. Because the driver’s door hung open.
Voices carried from the house. Shouts. A man and a woman.
The yelling woman wasn’t Victoria. But she was probably still in there.
Cillian walked toward the house, ears perked and head on a swivel.
The shouted words became clearer as he neared.
“I’ll see whoever I want!” The woman’s scream blew out the open front door.
“Yeah? I’m the last face you ever gonna see!” The man’s shout held enough hatred and anger to tense Cillian’s muscles as he slowed by the doorway. “The kid and then you!”
“No!” The terror in the woman’s shriek spiked adrenaline through Cillian.
“Hey!” He launched himself through the open doorway with the shout.
“What—” Expletives spewed from the loser who held a toddler dangled from one arm and an overly dramatic kitchen knife in the other.
A girl stood six feet away from him just inside what looked like a living room, her cheeks soaked with tears.
Two women were in the room behind her. One on a sofa and one standing near her. The elegance of the second woman couldn’t be missed, even in a split-second glance. Victoria.
Awareness surged Cillian’s pulse double-time, his gaze wanting to linger. But he jerked his attention back to the troublemaker who was endangering Victoria and three others.
“Who are you? You better get out of here while you can walk.”
“Wow.” Cillian straightened to his full height, several inches taller than the knife-wielding punk. “I’ve never seen such a show of real manhood.” He raked a derisive gaze over the guy and the toddler. “What are you gonna do after this? Beat up some old ladies?”
Anger flared the punk’s nostrils. “Maybe. If it’s your old lady.”
Cillian laughed. “What do ’ya know, he can make a joke. Guess that means you’re a brainy kid. No brawn.”
The guy’s eyes narrowed like a flinch. Another hit to the dude’s ego. One or two more insults should do the trick.
“That’s why you take on toddlers and women. Awesome flex, dude. Bet the bullies picked on you all the time, didn’t they?” Cillian laced his tone with exaggerated pity.
“You better shut your mouth, you—” The punk added a string of unflattering names and expletives.
Cillian grinned. “You sure talk a lot. I’m beginning to think you’ve never used a knife before, have you? Definitely not on a real man. Somebody your own size.”
“I’ll use it to cut out your heart, you—” More colorful words followed as Cillian met the punk’s gaze, keeping his grin.
“Go for it.” Cillian waited. Senses sharp, ready.
The guy would drop the kid for a better attack.
The toddler slipped a micro-inch.
The punk was starting to loosen his hold as he stared at Cillian. The fear in his eyes was a clear tell. He wouldn’t have the guts to go for a lunge. He’d try a slash instead.
There. His grip on the knife tightened, the shift of the blade giving him away.
Cillian kept his hands at his side, fingers loose.
A tiny movement, a slight lean in the punk’s torso.
Now.
The toddler fell to the floor as Cillian met the punk more than halfway.
Cillian darted around the predicted path of the knife, swiped the attacker’s hand away. Gripped his wrist. He twisted the arm around the punk’s back, ready to dislocate his shoulder.
“Ah, I give up.” The attacker opened his hand behind his back, letting the knife drop to the floor.
“And that’s supposed to make me not break your arm?” Cillian twisted a little farther. The punk deserved to feel a little pain. Might make him think twice before attacking women and children again. But probably not.
“Come on, man!” The punk twisted his head, trying to see Cillian behind him.
“Freeze! Police!” An officer stepped through the doorway, his gun raised.
“Looks like the cops are your friends today, pal.” Cillian murmured the words by the punk’s head before he met the officer’s alert gaze.
“This man used a knife to threaten assault and harm to the child and these women.” Cillian continued to hold the punk as he talked over his shoulder.
“I’ve disarmed him, and the knife is on the floor between us now. ”
The cop nodded. “Phil.” He angled his head to signal to the officer behind him, who walked around his partner toward Cillian and the punk. “You can let him go now and back away.”
Cillian did as the first cop instructed, watching until they had the punk cuffed and the knife in their possession.
Then he let his attention go where it had wanted to since the moment he’d entered the house. Since the moment he’d arrived in Chicago again. And long before.
Victoria. Man, the woman made even scrubs look gorgeous.
Her hazel eyes locked onto his across the distance of the small living room.
His heart crashed into his ribs.
He had come back to rescue her. But this wasn’t the kind of rescue he’d had in mind.
It couldn’t be him. Victoria stared across the cluttered room at Cillian Doherty. At least, she thought it was him, though the concept seemed like a scientific impossibility.
He told his version of what had happened for the third time to another officer who seemed intent on visually mapping out the events. Cillian’s voice—the deep, impressive tone he’d had as a seventeen-year-old—carried to her, fluttering her pulse in that way it always had.
Sixteen years. Sixteen years without seeing or hearing anything about him. And now, he’d suddenly burst into a client’s house during an altercation?
She’d nearly had a heart attack when he had appeared out of nowhere. Because it was him. Her first and only crush.
She’d thought she must be hallucinating for the first few seconds, until he’d quickly scanned the room.
The power of his presence, the intensity and heat, and those coal-dark eyes as they’d briefly touched on her were unmistakable.
But why was Cillian Doherty here? In Chicago, the place he’d been desperate to leave behind forever?
After sixteen years, he’d stepped into her client’s home right at that moment, in time to save her and the others from an attack. The implausibility of the situation was nearly too much for her to process or comprehend.
Shouts from outside the house pierced her confused stream of thoughts. Jamica. Already trying to plead for her boyfriend’s innocence, from the sounds of it. Never mind that the man had threatened to kill her and her young son only moments ago.
Delilah still sat on the sofa, now behind Victoria since she’d moved a bit closer to the entryway earlier to relate her version of the events to one of the officers.
Delilah argued for the opposite outcome than her daughter, demanding that the officer she spoke with arrest Jamica’s boyfriend immediately and throw away the key.
But the Trents’ family troubles, their high-volume complaints indoors and outside, sounded like white noise in the background of the moment.
Perhaps Victoria was experiencing some degree of shock. After all, this was the second hostage situation she’d experienced in only four months.