A Good Kind of Trouble (A Trouble in Twin Rivers Novel Book 1) (44 page)

Tears streamed down her face. Her shirt was red with blood.
 

"Oh, Christ, Lindsey. Oh my God, you're hit." He reached out to her, grabbing her shoulders, desperate to find where she was wounded. His heart seized at the thought, his breath caught in his throat.

"No," she sobbed. "Not me."
 

She dropped back to the ground, kneeling over Steve’s body, his fur matted with blood. The dog panted and whimpered in Lindsey’s arms as his blood seeped into her clothes. It was impossible to tell where he'd been hit.
 

Matt knelt beside them, pulling his cell phone out of his pocket.
 

"He needs a vet now. I know someone," Matt said, already searching for the phone number to call. "I'll make sure Lindsey gets to a doctor. You get the dog to the Twin River Pet Clinic and someone will meet you there. You know how to get there?"
 

Ben carefully scooped Steve into his arms. The dog's body was shaking and Ben immediately felt the damp warmth of Steve's blood penetrate his clothes. “Yes, I know the place.”

"Who are you calling?" Lindsey asked.
 

"The vet who treats police dogs," Matt said. "If any dog ever suffered an injury in the line of duty, it's this one."
 

Lindsey struggled to her feet and winced as she tried to put weight on her left foot. She steadied herself and limped toward the door. “I’m going with you.”
 

“Lindsey, sweetheart, you’re hurt,” Ben said.

She shook her head. “I’m not leaving him.”
 

Ben looked to Matt for reinforcement, but the agent held his hands up in defeat. “Put some ice on that ankle and have it looked at as soon as you can. I’ll come by the vet clinic to get your statements later.”

Matt held the front door open and then helped Lindsey down the porch steps to the car while Ben gently placed the shivering dog on the back seat of his Jeep. The rain had increased and soaked his clothing through.
 

“We still don’t have Teri Schulman in custody yet,” Matt said, as Ben climbed into the driver’s seat. “Be careful.”
 

Ben nodded and pulled away from the cottage and the swirling red and blue lights on the Twin City police cars.

Chapter Thirty-Four

“Your father is having a fit,” Liz said, steering Lindsey’s car out of the parking lot from the veterinary clinic and onto the rain-slicked boulevard. “Not only did his daughter get shot at and nearly killed, she also scooped his highly trained team of award-winning investigative reporters.”
 

Lindsey shifted in the passenger seat to check on Steve. The dog was sprawled on the backseat, a neat square of gauze covering the graze wound on his side. A few centimeters to one side and it would have penetrated his heart. She reached back and stroked his soft head and his tail wagged in response.
 

“Dad thinks it’s a good story?” She could tell herself she didn’t need to impress her parents, but there was always going to be a part of her that wanted to do so. Might as well accept that.
 

She glanced down at the folded newspaper in her lap. The banner headline with her name below it made her smile. At least her job was safe for the time being. Margaret Tisdale and Sam had already been interviewed on all the local TV stations, talking up Lindsey’s heroism in reporting the story while she was being stalked, threatened, and even assaulted. It made her uncomfortable to be the subject of the story, but it would blow over soon enough.
 

“Are you kidding me?” Liz gave her daughter a stern look. “You know it’s a damn good story. Corruption at City Hall! The financial industry taking a small city for a ride!”
 

Lindsey and her mom shared a smile.
 

“How’s he taking it?” Lindsey asked.
 

“Not well. When I left, he was on his phone yelling at reporters. It’s helping him through his rage at that horrible man who tried to kill you,” Liz said. “Of course, he’s also very proud of you. We both are.”
 

The rain beat against the roof of the small car in a steady and soothing patter. The stifling heat wave had broken last night. Lindsey pulled her sweater tight around her, the fabric damp from the brief time she’d helped the vet tech load Steve into the car.
 

Liz fell silent, her eyes focused on the road. Her usually frenetic mother was unnaturally still. A worried knot grew in Lindsey’s stomach.
 

“Mom, are you all right?”

Liz pressed her lips together and patted Lindsey’s hand.
 

“I’m fine,” she said after a pause. “It’s just unsettling, being called in the middle of the night and told that your child is hurt.”
 

Lindsey remembered the midnight phone calls growing up. It wasn't unusual for the phone to ring late at night and then in the morning Lindsey would learn that one of her parents had been called out to cover breaking news. As West moved up the ranks from reporter to editor, it was increasingly Liz who slipped out of town in the middle of the night, stopping to kiss her sleeping kids before a car pulled up to take her to the airport. As Lindsey grew older and learned more about what her mother did for a living, a late-night phone call would cause her to jolt awake in fear, afraid that her mother had been hurt or kidnapped or worse.
 

"You're crying," Lindsey said, watching a tear slide down her mother’s face.

“I’m entitled,” Liz said, wiping the tear away quickly. “My darling baby girl was nearly killed.”
 

“Your darling baby girl is thirty,” Lindsey said. It was unfamiliar territory being on this side of the conversation. She’d never meant to worry her parents, but seeing their concern and love gave her more comfort than she’d expected. “And I’m fine. Just bumps and bruises.”
 

Liz sniffed. “And a concussion, a badly sprained ankle, bullet holes in your wall and the front window of your house. And poor Steve.”
 

Lindsey’s heart broke thinking of her brave dog, trying to keep her safe from Stanton and Lara. She reached back to stroke Steve’s soft ears, needing the reassurance that he had survived.
 

And what about Ben? Where was he? In the chaos after the police arrived, they’d raced to the vet clinic. Once Steve was stabilized, Ben insisted on taking her to the ER to have her ankle checked and in the chaos that followed, he’d disappeared.
 

Matt Pritchard had found her at the hospital and taken her statement. She’d gotten a few questions of her own in during his interview, but Pritchard was reluctant to talk on the record. He had let it slip that his partner was en route to Mexico where a private plane was heading after leaving Twin Rivers. As a nurse prepped her for an X-ray, she had called Sam with that information, the FBI agent standing to the side shaking his head. Then her parents arrived at the hospital. And she still hadn’t heard from Ben. If he was smart, he had run for the border when he realized how much trouble she had caused him in the last month. The thought of not seeing him left her with a hollow feeling, an empty pit of longing that she knew wouldn’t be filled anytime soon. She swallowed hard and pushed those feelings away before Liz caught her crying.

To distract herself, she picked up the newspaper from the passenger side floor and opened it to read the banner headline again.
 

Mayor, Councilwoman Arrested on Federal Corruption Charges:
 
Investigation Focused on Arena Costs, Bribery

The stories detailed the allegations of EFB payments to Darlington, Waters and Teri Schulman to push the bonds through, as well as Lindsey's exhaustive work to explain how the bonds for the arena construction and sewer plant renovations would have led to astronomical costs to Twin River taxpayers. She shared the byline with Daniella Carter.
 

Sam wanted Lindsey and Dani to get back to work immediately on the investigation into the property sales—or as soon as he could reasonably order Lindsey back to work considering her injuries.
 

"Look at that," Liz whispered. "You really should be proud of yourself, Lins."
 

Below the two top stories was an article about a
Beacon
reporter being held hostage in her house by two feuding local attorneys. Police said the man, Gregory Stanton, was also being investigated in connection to the stalking and harassing of the reporter due to her coverage of the arena proposal. Lindsey was proud that the
Beacon
was upfront that the other attorney was the newspaper’s own in-house counsel.
 

A photo of her from a press conference a couple months earlier accompanied the slim column of type. At least they hadn't used the photo of her from her
Beacon
press pass—a mugshot that made her look half-drunk. In this photo, she was looking intently at the person speaking, her pen poised over a notepad, looking like Girl Reporter Barbie. Looking an awful lot like her mother. A small bit of pride welled up inside her at that thought.
 

"It really is a good thing you didn't tell your dad what you were working on," Liz said, steering the car onto Lindsey’s street. "He would have stolen this story and run with it."
 

West would have stolen it. Not Liz. It just wasn’t her kind of story.
 

“It’s exciting for Twin Rivers. But it’s a far cry from Bosnia or El Salvador,” Lindsey said.
 

Her mother waved a hand in Lindsey’s direction. “How hard is it to cover that? One side shoots at the other. It’s not hard to report that and make it compelling. But the things that really end up meaning something to people, affecting them directly, is the day-to-day stuff like what you’re covering.”
 

“Yes, it’s the vegetables of the reporter’s cuisine options. While you cover the dessert tray,” Lindsey said.
 

Liz parked the car in Lindsey’s driveway and turned to her, her lips pressed together.
 

"Stop selling yourself short,” she said. Then she gave a deep sigh. “I wanted you to have it all—a fulfilling career, a family, a husband—I mean, if that's what you want. And not have to throw yourself in front of a bullet to do your job."
 

Lindsey smiled at her mother and opened the car door. “I never want to throw myself in front of a bullet again.”
 

“Promise?” Liz asked.

Strong arms helped her out of the car and Lindsey found herself looking into Ben’s warm brown eyes. His hair was damp from the rain and he had two days of stubble on his jaw, giving him a dark and dangerous edge that was usually kept under wraps by his suit and tie. Beyond the rough appearance, though, his eyes were worried.
 

Lindsey took an unsteady step toward Ben and felt his arms wrap around her. She rested her face against his shoulder.
 

“I promise,” she said. The hollow feeling eased at Ben’s touch.
 

Lindsey looked past Liz to the front porch of her house, where Jude Fields was pulling away the window frame with a crowbar. A new window rested against the porch railing next to a collection of tools that weren’t from her meager fix-it kit. At the end of the driveway, her dad paced and barked into his cell phone, apparently not yet done yelling at his reporters.
 

At the sight of her, West abruptly cut off his phone call and walked to the car to help lift the dog out of the backseat. Lindsey leaned into Ben as he helped her up the few steps, around the building supplies and into the chilly living room. The house had been open to the cool air all night thanks to Stanton’s stray bullet that took out the front window. She shivered, cold all over from the thought of what had happened last night.
 

“We’ll have the window up in no time,” Jude said through the opening where the window had been.

“I didn’t expect this,” Lindsey said, looking between him and Ben.
 

“I bought a fixer-upper a few years ago, so I had to learn a lot of new skills,” Jude said, giving her a warm smile.
 

“Thank you,” she said, and felt Ben’s arm tighten around her. She slid an arm around his waist, not for support this time. Leaning closer, she rested her head on his shoulder and dared to hope that Ben’s presence wasn’t temporary, that this could last.

West carried Steve into the living room and settled the dog on a new pillow in the corner, then went to get the food and water dishes. Liz followed with the bag of supplies from the vet clinic. Ben helped Lindsey get settled on the couch and then stood back as her mother draped a throw over Lindsey’s lap.
 

“Oh, I just realized you haven’t met my mother,” Lindsey said. “Mom, this is Ben Gillespie. Ben, my mother, Liz Allen.”

Ben extended his hand, but Liz lunged past the outstretched hand and hugged him tight. Ben’s arm slowly enclosed her as his face showed his shock at the sudden affection. When Liz pulled back, Lindsey saw that her mother’s eyes were red and filled with tears.
 

“Thank you, Ben. I can’t even tell you how grateful—if anything had happened to her—”
 

Lindsey stared from the couch, her own eyes starting to well up again. She couldn’t remember ever seeing her mother cry before today. Not real tears, not something that showed such vulnerability. She’d faced down armed guerrillas without shedding a tear. But here she was, wiping her eyes on her sleeve. Not a superhero, just a mom, worried about her child.
 

“I’m sorry,” Liz said, patting Ben’s arm. “I just got carried away.”
 

West walked back into the living room in time to see Liz dab at her eyes. “What happened? What is it? What’s wrong?”

Liz waved him away. “Give me a break, West. My baby girl was just shot at. She was nearly killed. I can’t get a little emotional?”