Wyoming Christmas Ransom Page 16

  Then it exploded as a bullet smashed through it.

  And into her.

  * * *

  WILL COULD ONLY SIT, frozen and in shock that the bullet hadn’t hit him. He’d felt it whizz by him, and then heard the exploding crash of it smashing through the door.

  The door Gracie had just gone out of.

  He’d promised to follow her, but he’d known her best chance of survival—since Jesse had been specifically targeting her when he’d walked in—was to get her the hell out and let him and hopefully Cam stop Jesse.

  But a bullet had gone through the door Gracie was on the other side of.

  Please God, let Gracie be okay.

  Another gunshot went off, and if this one passed near him, he didn’t feel it. Instead, something on the other side of the room crashed.

  The lights suddenly flipped on, causing Will to wince and close his eyes on reflex. But he immediately forced himself to open them.

  Cam was standing there, his own weapon drawn and pointed at Jesse. Will turned his attention to the large man in the middle of the room, his daughter cowering behind him.

  Jesse smiled and Will didn’t think, didn’t hesitate. He got to his feet and ran full force at Jesse. He was more than shocked that a gunshot didn’t go off before he crashed into Jesse’s large, hard body.

  He swore viciously as they both fell down, trying to reach out for the gun or land a blow with his nonbroken arm. But it was all flailing limbs and painful landing on the hardwood floor.

  Jesse swore and threatened, but he must have lost the gun because he was using both hands to try to toss Will off him. Will managed to land a blow to Jesse’s gut with his knee, but the victory lasted only seconds before Jesse was twisting his broken arm.

  Will fought to escape that painful grasp, fought to land any blow. He got a few in, but still Jesse twisted his broken arm until Will was shaking and sweating.

  Will felt himself being nudged out of the way by a boot, but it got Jesse to let go of his arm so he could only feel relief flood him. Everything hurt and ached and Gracie...

  Will stumbled to his feet and looked at Cam, who had his boot shoved into Jesse’s neck and had his weapon pointed straight at him.

  “You can’t shoot me,” Jesse growled, attempting to spit on Cam. He missed his mark and his eyes searched the room, but Kayleigh had taken off through the back, as if she could escape.

  “Watch me.” Cam flicked a glance at Will. “Go see if the cops are here yet.”

  Will was already scrambling for the door, aching arm forgotten. Screw the cops. Was Gracie okay?

  He stumbled out the door, and there were two police cruisers. One had its lights on, the other was completely dark. Laurel stood talking to another deputy, while two other deputies stood on the porch, guns drawn on him.

  “That’s Cooper,” Laurel shouted, striding forward. “What’s the status?”

  “Cam’s got Jesse. Kayleigh went out the back.”

  “Mosely, Jackson, get Kayleigh Granger. Hart, go in and arrest Jesse Carson. Get statements from Cam and my father. I’ll handle Will’s.”

  The men moved at Laurel’s orders.

  “Where the hell is Gracie?”

  Laurel dropped her crossed arms, running a hand through her hair that was falling out of its rubber band. It was the way her arm shook that had Will’s stomach pitching.

  Laurel cleared her throat. “She...”

  “What?” Will demanded, and the only reason he didn’t reach out and shake Laurel was that every inch of his body felt like lead. Painful, cracked lead.

  “It was all his idea!” came a scream from the other side of the house. “He threatened me! You have to let me go.” The two deputies who’d gone after Kayleigh had her handcuffed and were bringing her toward one of the cruisers.

  “Where is Gracie?” Will demanded when Laurel turned all her attention to Kayleigh.

  “Will.”

  “Just tell me,” he said, and he didn’t have it in him to care that his voice broke.

  “The bullet that went through the door hit her. I had the first deputy on the scene rush her to the hospital.”

  “She was...”

  “Breathing? Yes. But it was not good.”

  “Why are we here? I have to go.” He started walking. God knew where. He didn’t have a car. Couldn’t drive. But how could Laurel just let her be taken away to the hospital alone?

  “Will, we have to handle this here.” She caught up with him and gripped his good arm. “We cannot go running off to the hospital. I know you’re scared. I’m scared, but we have to handle this.”

  “Like hell we do,” he returned, pulling his arm out of her grip.

  “Do you want Jesse Carson to go to jail?” she demanded.

  Will stepped forward, furious she’d even question it—that she’d still be standing here when Gracie was being rushed to the hospital. After being shot. “He will rot there if I have anything to do with it.”

  “Then we have to do this right. We need statements and proof and they need to be arrested on the complete up-and-up. We wouldn’t be with her in the hospital anyway. This is what we can do for her. This is what we have to do for her. Will. Us being in that hospital doesn’t change anything. Us making sure this scum gets everything he has coming to him? That’s something.”

  Will swallowed at the horrible tide of emotion rising in his throat. Somewhere in his brain he knew Laurel was right. Being with Gracie wouldn’t change anything.

  “How bad was it?”

  “I don’t know, Will. They’re going to call me the second they have any information and we’ll go to the hospital immediately once we get everything taken care of here.”

  Will nodded, looking back at the house where Jesse was being lead out the door. He struggled the whole way, trying to knock the deputies over, trying to land an elbow. But the deputies just kept pulling him toward one of the cruisers, Cam behind them, his gun still drawn.

  Jesse looked around the yard, then at Will and Laurel standing. He struggled more in the handcuffs and the deputies’ grips, but they didn’t let him go.

  “Where’s the little bitch?” Jesse called. “Did I get her?”

  Sucker shot or not, Will calmly walked over and punched Jesse right in the nose, satisfied by both the sickening crack and the howl of pain.

  “Oops,” Will said to both deputies who’d stopped pulling Jesse forward and were staring at him in shock.

  “He assaulted me! I want to press charges!” Jesse screamed.

  That got the deputies back into action and they struggled to get Jesse into the back of the car, Jesse fighting and yelling about Will and a broken nose the whole way.

  “It doesn’t solve anything,” Laurel said softly. “But that was satisfying to watch.”

  “Laurel.”

  “Come on. We need your statement.”

  So he went with her, back toward the gigantic Delaney house now glittering with light. Enough light he could see the pool of blood on the porch. Gracie’s blood.

  He wished he’d done a lot more than break Jesse’s nose.

  Chapter Nineteen

  You’re too strong to give up.

  We’re only getting started.

  All you have to do is open your eyes.

  I am sorry.

  Gracie couldn’t make sense of any of the voices that came or went. They all existed in a gray fog. She couldn’t isolate one from another, but they kept coming. Someone would take her hand, or whisper something to her, but she couldn’t open her eyes. She couldn’t even seem to breathe, though it wasn’t a struggle exactly. She just didn’t seem to have any control over anything.

  Grace. She hadn’t heard that voice in so long and it sent a weird, twisted pain through her side. Her mother’s voice. No one called her Grace nicely, lovi
ngly. She hadn’t been able to stand it after losing both parents, and only Uncle Geoff had refused to abide her wishes to go by Gracie. But he never said Grace kindly, not like this. It had been almost twenty years since she’d heard that voice.

  Grace. You’ll be all right.

  She remembered those words. Her mother’s last. You’ll be all right. She’d believed it. She’d always believed it because that had been Mom’s parting gift to her.

  When Gracie’s eyes opened, it was as if someone had pulled her straight out of the fog. She hadn’t made the choice to open anything, but suddenly her eyes were open and everything was a cloudy white.

  Nothing made sense about any of this. Where was she? Why did she hurt? She didn’t remember anything.

  “Gracie.”

  Except she did remember that voice, and even though it took a supreme effort she didn’t know she had in her, she turned her head toward it. Will’s face was a little blurry, but it was Will. Right there. Oh, thank God. “I remember you,” she whispered.

  He made a noise she couldn’t explain, but he leaned forward and pressed his forehead to the back of her hand. Because he’d been holding her hand.

  “Well, that’s something,” he croaked. “Are there things you don’t remember?”

  His voice sounded so scratchy. So...something. But her head was pounding too much to really figure it all out. Her throat was dry and she felt so incredibly heavy.

  “Hurts,” she muttered even though that wasn’t the right word for it. No throbbing pain or sharp discomfort. Just everything was too heavy, too hard.

  “What does?”

  “Everything.”

  “Oh, Gracie. Hell. I think you scared thirty years off all our lives. I’m supposed to go get everyone the second you wake up.”

  “No, don’t go.” She tried to hold on to him, but after the failed attempt she realized he hadn’t made any move to go. Will. Here. Hers. But she didn’t understand how she was in the hospital, and he wasn’t. Wasn’t he hurt? Jesse had hurt him. But after that? “It’s all a jumble. What happened?”

  “You were shot. Narrowly missed your spine. They say you were lucky.”

  “Shot.” She squeezed her eyes shut trying to make sense of that. Of anything. Shot. Lucky. “Who shot me?”

  “They’ve got you on a lot of medications. They said it’ll take some time to come out of it. Make sense of things. It’s okay if you’re confused. It’s all going to clear up.”

  “Will.”

  He kissed the palm of her hand, just a light brush of his lips. “That’s me.”

  She managed to move her arm, reach up and touch the bandage on his head. “He knocked you out. Jesse. Jesse Carson. He hit you with something and knocked you out. You’re okay. I didn’t think you were okay.”

  Will gave her hand a light squeeze. “Lead pipe. Managed to get both me and Cam. But we’re fine. A few stitches and a concussion for the both of us. I was given the extra-special warning that if I sustain another concussion my brain’s probably mush, but I’m mostly okay. Sitting here instead of lying there, huh?”

  “You pushed me out the door.” It was fuzzy, but starting to come together. Jesse had taken her to her uncle’s house and... Something she should remember. Something she should tell Will.

  “I should have followed you out that door,” Will said gravely, still holding on to her hand. “I should have done so many things differently. Like not listen to the psychopath in the first place. You’d be okay.”

  “No. I mean, first of all, I am okay, but he wanted me all along. It didn’t really have anything to do with you. He wanted to punish my uncle.” She tried to read through the fog. “I can’t remember.”

  “You don’t have to. Jesse is going to jail, and everyone else might be a little banged up here and there, but we’re all going to live and that’s what’s important.”

  “But you blame yourself.”

  “I should have—”

  “You can’t tell me being alive is what’s important and then tell me you should have done things differently. You can’t sit there and blame yourself. The only blame for today goes on Jesse’s shoulders.”

  “You’re going to have this same guilt fight with Cam and Laurel, just to warn you.”

  She closed her eyes, unaccountably exhausted. “I don’t want to fight. I want to go home.”

  “You’re not quite ready for that, but waking up was a start.”

  “Mmm.” She tried to open her eyes, but sleep seemed like a much cozier idea. Maybe in sleep she could find the answers.

  “Gracie?”

  “Hmm.” But she was floating away, and whatever he said after that never quite reached her.

  * * *

  I LOVE YOU.

  Will looked down at Gracie’s pale face, gut twisted into knots over how much strength had leaked out of her in just thirty-six hours. She hadn’t heard him say those three words, and maybe it was for the best. Probably shouldn’t utter them in a hospital room to a gunshot victim.

  The door opened and Laurel walked in, dressed in her uniform.

  “She woke up for a second,” he offered.

  Laurel rushed over to the other side of the bed, peered down at Gracie. “Why didn’t you come get us?” she hissed in a whisper.

  “She didn’t want me to leave.”

  “You could have used the nurse button.”

  “I didn’t think of that at the time.”

  Laurel scowled at him. “What did she say?”

  “She didn’t remember everything. Still a little mixed-up, but she knew who everyone was and had a little idea of what happened. What’s the update on Jesse?”

  Laurel moved back to his side of the bed, then pulled him out of the chair and back toward the door. In a low voice, she spoke. “Charges include attempted murder, aggravated assault, coercion. I could go on, but even if he pleas down, he’s going to be spending quite a bit of time in jail.”

  “What about Kayleigh?”

  “She’ll likely get off as she’s given us almost all the information to prosecute Jesse to the fullest extent.”

  Will frowned. He didn’t particularly like that Kayleigh wouldn’t suffer any consequences, but maybe she really just was a pawn in her father’s scheme.

  “Now, visitor hours are over, and if you make the same scene you made yesterday about leaving, I will have to arrest you.”

  Will scowled. “Someone should be with her.”

  “Jen’s in the waiting room. Since she’s family, they’re letting her spend the night.” Laurel frowned, something like concern in her eyes. “They kept you overnight last night. Where are you going to stay tonight and how are you going to get there?”

  Will glanced at Gracie, asleep in bed, an idea forming. He watched her as he lied to Laurel so the fib wouldn’t show on his face. “Gracie said I could stay at her place. I just need a ride.”

  “I can do that. Should you be alone with that concussion?”

  “It’s been over twenty-four hours. They said I was fine to be alone after that.” He turned to Laurel and smiled.

  “Okay. Follow me.”

  “Just one second.” He felt a little weird with Laurel watching him, but he couldn’t just walk out. He went over to Gracie’s bed and dropped a kiss to her temple, whispering a goodbye and those three idiotic words one more time.

  He walked back to where Laurel was waiting by the door. She had a speculative look on her face and Will hunched his shoulders against it.

  “What?”

  “I didn’t like you, Will. For two years, you’ve been nothing but a pain in my side and a constant worry because I knew Gracie had a thing for you and I thought you weren’t interested. But you were right, and you’ve been... Well, I’m glad you’re as head over heels for her as she is for you. Or I’d have to break some laws to caus
e you physical harm and probably lose my job.”

  “You could always have Grady do it and avoid the job loss.”

  “Smart. I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “I wasn’t not interested. I was clueless, and still healing I guess. So. It wasn’t like that. Just so you know.”

  Laurel smiled, slinging her arm around his shoulders. “Now that I know, I can mock you mercilessly. I am marrying a Carson after all, and mocking is their way of life.”

  “I think I prefer the Delaneys.”

  “I think you’re about to be dealing with a whole lot of both.” She took a deep breath. “I’ve talked to my father.”

  “Ah.”

  “The affair didn’t start before you guys moved here. There was no past connection. Do you remember Paula applying for finance officer?”

  “Vaguely. She didn’t get the job. That was only three or four years ago, right?”

  “Right. She didn’t get the job, but my father was the one who interviewed her.” Laurel pulled a face. “He said they hit it off. They started meeting for drinks in Fairmont. Then, well, it escalated from there.”

  Will didn’t know what to say. He supposed it was some kind of relief she hadn’t been cheating on him the whole time. A relief he’d been wrong about some things.

  “In addition to that, based on what Kayleigh told us, Jesse tampered with your car and burned down your house in the hopes you’d back off so he could arrange his revenge for my father.”

  “Why didn’t he just kill Cam and I back at the bar?”

  “He was trying to get my father in jail, not wind himself back there. Your saving grace, I guess.”

  Saving Grace. No, that was the woman in the hospital bed. The woman he was ready to build a future with. Because Paula, affairs and even this horrible incident was in the past.

  It was time to plan his future.

  * * *

  GRACIE WASN’T SURE she’d ever been so happy to see her little house in her entire life. It seemed like months or years since this had all started even though it had been only two weeks now.

  There was a dusting of snow over her Christmas lights lining the eaves, and thick clumps in the sparkling trees. The lights were on inside, adding another warm glow of welcome to the lights. No more white, sterile hospital. Home.