Protecting Plain Jane (19 page)

And skidded to a stop.

Her mouth dropped open, she was breathing hard. For one split second she flashed back in time.

White van. Danger. “Don’t hurt me…”

She started to mouth the words that had haunted her since that fateful night ten years earlier.

But she blinked the rain from her eyes, blanked the memory from her thoughts. She stayed in the moment.

Yes, there was a van parked in the alley next to Trip’s SUV. But it wasn’t white. And the man climbing out of the passenger side and hurrying toward her wasn’t her enemy. “Kyle!”

Charlotte ran forward to meet him. She threw her arms around his neck and hugged him, reassured to see the familiar face. “Thank God. Have you heard from Bailey? She wasn’t in her car. Please tell me she got out okay, that she’s someplace safe.”

Kyle patted her back, then left a brotherly arm around her shoulders as he started to walk. “Bailey’s at home. She’s fine.”

“Thank God. I was so worried. We need to get help, Trip’s hurt. Someone shot him. I’m not going to believe he’s dead. I can’t lose him.” She took several steps with Kyle, then stopped and twisted away from his arm as the initial rush of relief cleared and his words truly registered. “Wait a minute. Bailey’s at home? Why didn’t you call me? Trip risked his life to save her. Why didn’t you call?”

Kyle’s blue eyes squinted against the rain. “Someone shot your boyfriend? Lucky break for me.”

“What?”

“Get in the van, Charlotte.”

And then she saw the gun in Kyle’s hand. And the bruiser in a security guard uniform sliding open the van’s side door. Along with the uniformed man behind the wheel, they were all waiting. To take her.

“No!” She backed away, tried to run.

“Get in the damn van!” But rough hands grabbed her, kicking and screaming, picked her up off the ground and threw her inside. Once the door slammed shut, Kyle turned down the collar of his raincoat and sat on an overturned crate, facing her while his silent, oversize friend bound her wrists and ankles with duct tape. “You’ve already made this more difficult than it needed to be, so be a good girl and shut up.”

When déjà vu should have kicked in at this re-creation of her kidnapping, it didn’t. She was too angry at her stepbrother, too worried for Trip—too different a woman from what she’d once been to not want to fight back. She was firmly in this horrid moment, and fought back with the only weapon left her. Her words.

“You’re the copycat—the one who’s been aping the Rich Girl Killer, trying to drive me over the edge into crazy land. Why?”

He pulled a handkerchief from inside his coat and wiped the gun dry. “You can’t keep spending your money, Charlotte. Because it’s not there. I haven’t put it all back yet. And Jackson can’t find out.”

“This is about money?”

“Yes, damn it! Millions and millions of it. These fine young men work for a friend of mine and are here to help me get what I owe them.”

She flinched at the tearing of her wet skin beneath the tape. “How about asking for a loan, Kyle? Why resort to this? Why kill a man?”

“I didn’t kill anybody. Yet.” He slipped the gun into his pocket and pulled out a long scarf. “I’m just being resourceful. I thought I could take advantage of all your paranoia and the way you kept flipping out with this Rich Girl Killer after you. I asked Jackson to have you declared incompetent—to give me legal guardianship over your trust fund.”

“You stole money from my trust fund?”

“It’s called embezzlement, Char. I tried to live up to Jackson’s faith in me, but all my investments went belly up. So since you never pay any attention to the family business, I took your money to hide the losses and repay the man these two work for.”

She eyed thug one and thug two and got a pretty good idea of what was going on. “A criminal? You got involved in something illegal and lost Dad’s money and stole mine to hide your mistake?”

Kyle tossed the scarf to the man with the tape. “But you keep giving it away like it’s water. There’s no more to give away, Charlotte, you crazy bitch. I can’t afford to lose my job or Jackson’s support.”

“Or get on their bad side?” Thug one was wrapping the scarf between his fists. “You don’t think killing me is going to turn Dad into your enemy?”

“Me? But don’t you see the brilliant setup? The Rich Girl Killer is going to murder you. I copied everything he was doing to you—I intensified it by shooting at you when you were stuck in the middle of all those people, on display for the public and press. I poisoned your stupid mutt. It’s all leading up to your death at the hands of a notorious serial killer. I’ll be sure to say something nice at your funeral.”

Should she tell him that the RGK’s MO was to strangle a woman with his hands, not use a ligature like a scarf? “Did you kill Richard?”

“No.” Kyle tapped the driver’s seat in some unspoken signal. “But that day at his funeral, I saw how you reacted when he contacted you. I upped the ante by pushing you harder to crack.”

“I’m saner now than I’ve ever been, Kyle. More grounded. Looks like you failed at that job, too.”

Rage reddened her stepbrother’s face and he rose up, swinging his arm through the air and backhanding her across the face and sending her glasses flying. Charlotte fell to the floor of the van, her mouth tasting like copper, her head ringing. “You crazy Daddy’s princess. You screwed up your life, but I’m not going to let you screw up mine.” Kyle glanced over his shoulder to the front seat. “I don’t want to do this here. Drive.”

“I can’t.”

“What do you mean?” Kyle moved behind the driver’s seat.

Thug one took his seat on the overturned crate to spy out the front, as well. Charlotte spotted a blur of red and rolled toward them, praying they were her glasses. Victory. But as she put them back on her face, her success was short-lived.

“Run him down. We don’t need any witnesses.”

What? Despite the bonds on her hands and ankles, Charlotte scrambled to her feet to look through the windshield, too. Her heart sang and sank all at the same time.

Trip.

He was standing at the end of the alley, his chest heaving in and out with every breath, soaked to the bone. Blood was turning the left shoulder of his white T-shirt crimson. He stood with his legs braced apart, his right arm raised in the air, with his gun pointing straight at them.

“Drive, you idiot!” Kyle shouted, stomping on the driver’s foot atop the accelerator. “He can’t play chicken with a speeding vehicle and win.”

The van kicked into gear. The tires spun on the wet pavement, then found traction and lurched forward. Charlotte tumbled to the back of the van, screaming all the way. “No!”

T
RIP STARED DOWN THE
van. His muscles were shaking after a swim and a run and the sudden demand to be still. His chest ached with every breath, and he was guessing the bullet that had hit his shoulder had nicked a lung as well. His left arm no longer screamed in pain, but hung numb and, for the moment, useless at his side. He never wanted to be this wet again. But the rain was a good thing. It had masked his approach, and the chill of it hitting his skin kept him awake, alert, when every drop of blood seeping inside and out was pulling him toward sleep.

His gaze drifted once to Kyle Austin—now he understood why he’d never liked that guy. But then he turned his attention back to the business end of things and focused all his attention on the driver.
That
was his target.

He’d seen the scuffle in the van, had raged at the knowledge that Charlotte was the one being harmed. But he knew his training, knew what he had to do.

One man alone didn’t take on an entire army. Wounded and outnumbered, he’d be of no use to Charlotte if he charged that van. A smart warrior used his experience and his surroundings and whatever skills he could to obtain and keep his advantage.

He was the biggest, baddest cop on SWAT Team One—the immovable force who held his ground and intimidated his enemy. He had hands that he’d learned over the years were good for a couple of things—fixing what was broken, making what was needed, protecting what was right and loving a woman. Loving his woman.

“I’ve got your back, honey.”

The tires squealed on the wet pavement. By the time the stench of burnt rubber teased his nose, the van was racing toward him.

Trip stilled his hand and squeezed the trigger.

“NO!” C
HARLOTTE SCREAMED
as the van hurtled toward Trip. Milliseconds flashed by like eons. “Move!”

She heard a gunshot. The windshield cracked and the driver slumped forward. There was another gunshot and another.

“Get him out of there!” Kyle yelled.

The van lurched from one side of the alley to the other, careening off the bricks, narrowly missing a power pole. Every time Charlotte made it to her feet, she was thrown to the floor of the van.

“Get him!” Kyle had a hold of the steering wheel now, and Thug one tried to pull the dead driver out of the way. “You son of a…”

The van picked up speed. Charlotte was on her feet. Kyle turned the van straight toward Trip.

“No!” She hopped forward, then threw herself at Kyle’s back, knocking him into the dashboard before he could get into the driver’s seat.

The van veered to the right, Trip flew into the air and they slammed into the trash Dumpster and skidded to a crashing stop. Charlotte hit the floor one more time, but the Kevlar protected her from the crate and flying debris that threw her into the van’s side door.

She was woozy for the first few seconds her world was still, her stomach roiling from the killer carnival ride. Her body was bruised, but as soon as her head was clear, she shoved aside the debris, ignored the moans of her stepbrother and abductors, and pushed open the side door and tumbled out.

“Trip?” She clawed at the duct tape, but it held fast. So she crawled to her feet and hopped around the Dumpster. “Trip!”

He was lying in the middle of the road, scraped up, bleeding. His leg was twisted at a grotesque angle, telling her it was broken. But he was alive. She saw his chest heaving for breath, watched him trying to push himself up onto his right arm, heard him groan in agony and fall back to the pavement. “Charlotte?”

“Trip.”

As she fell to her knees beside him, she heard the screech of brakes and a trio of clipped, angry shouts.

“Get a bus here, now! Murdock, van! Sarge, I want those men in handcuffs, now!”

Charlotte leaned over her fallen hero to wipe the rain from his eyes, nose and mouth, and to press a gentle kiss to his scraped-up jaw. “I thought you were dead.”

“Not yet, honey.” Two long blinks and the fading focus of his handsome eyes revealed just how badly he was hurt, though. His fingers brushed against her thigh and she reached down, taking his hand between hers. “Are you hurt? Did they hurt you?”

Three dark figures swarmed past her. “I’m okay. I’m scared again. For you. But I’m okay.”

“Engine’s off!”

“Drop your weapon!”

“Get on the ground! I said get down!”

“Go, captain—we’ve got it covered.”

Michael Cutler was suddenly kneeling down on the opposite side of Trip, taking a quick assessment of his injuries and calling it in on his radio. “Officer down, I repeat, officer down. Gunshot wound. Vehicular strike. Where the hell is that bus?”

He immediately pressed his hand against Trip’s shoulder, and Trip winced with a curse.

“Gotta stop the bleeding, big guy.” The captain pulled a knife from his belt and reached across Trip’s chest to slice the tape from Charlotte’s wrists. “Are you hurt, Miss Mayweather?”

She shook her head. “Trip saved me. If they’d taken me away in the van…they were going to kill me.”

Was the captain smiling? “I didn’t think he’d let that happen.” Then he was by-the-book serious again. “Open your eyes, Jones. Stay with me. I need a report.”

Trip’s eyes slowly blinked open. “Yes, sir.”

Rafe Delgado knelt down beside Charlotte. “That looks like a bad break. We’d better not move him.”

“You squeamish, Miss Mayweather?” Cutler asked.

“No.”

“Good.” He grabbed her hands and placed them over the bullet wound on Trip’s shoulder, pressing them down the way he had. “Feel how hard I’m pushing? Keep that same pressure there—no more, no less.” He shrugged out of a backpack and pulled out a first aid kit, ripping open a couple of giant gauze pads. “What’s the situation, Delgado?”

Rafe reached down and braced Trip’s other shoulder to keep him from twisting with the pain. “Easy, big guy. You know, you’re supposed to jump out of the way when a vehicle comes speeding toward you.”

Trip nodded. “If there wasn’t a lady present, I’d be flipping you off.”

“Sarge?” the captain prompted.

“Bus and backup are en route. We’ve got one dead body and two perps handcuffed on the ground. One of them tried to take out Murdock. He won’t be fathering children for the next month or so.”

“Ouch.” Trip grinned, but his eyes were drifting shut again.

She felt his blood seeping through her fingers, tears burning in her eyes and spilling over. “Trip? Don’t leave me now, sweetheart. Don’t leave me.”

With a jerky movement, he lifted his hand and wiped the tears from her cheek. “Don’t do that, okay? That’ll really kill me.”

Then his hand flopped down against her leg and his eyes drifted shut. “Trip!”

“Get the blanket out of my truck,” the captain ordered. “He’s going into shock.”

Trip murmured between his lips. “I got your back, honey. I told you I did.”

“I know.”

“I love you.”

She knew that, too. “And you say I’m crazy.”

Chapter Thirteen

Trip checked the clock on the wall and wondered how much longer he had to listen to Rafe Delgado and Randy Murdock debate who should be given the credit for arresting Kyle Austin and his surviving band of would-be kidnappers—SWAT Team One or Spencer Montgomery?

The persnickety detective had probably been hassling Charlotte with questions about that night at the museum. Was there any connection to the Rich Girl Killer beyond the obvious copycat crimes? Did she see who’d shot him? He hadn’t. All he could identify was a man on the roof with rifle and scope—his guess was the RGK. His guess had become Montgomery’s leading theory when the lab’s ballistics check proved that the bullet the doctors had taken out of Trip’s chest didn’t match the handguns they’d taken off Kyle and his goons.

Who was there to protect her from Montgomery? Or family members and staff she shouldn’t trust? Who was going to play fetch with her dog and keep her company in those lonely, isolated rooms where she didn’t belong?

Nineteen hours. Nineteen hours without seeing Charlotte, and all these yahoos would tell him was that she was fine. That she looked good. That she’d asked about him.

He’d been through surgery, had been hooked up to this pulley contraption to keep his set leg level and elevated. His leg itched like crazy inside its cast, and the stitched-up holes in his left arm and lung ached whenever he moved too far one way or the other. The nurse had offered him another round of painkillers, but why would he want to be drifting in la-la land when he could be refereeing a conversation between these guys?

“Look, guys.” Murdock and Delgado stopped their bickering and Captain Cutler set aside the magazine he’d been reading in the corner. “I appreciate you coming to check on me and all—”

Captain Cutler strolled to the bed. “The doctors say you’re here for a week, that you’ll be off for rehab for a good three months, and that you’ll need light duty for another month after that. I figure you can man the dispatch desk or drive the truck for us.”

Delgado scoffed. “Hey, that’s my job.”

“I’m losing my team by attrition here. I’m going to wind up bringing Kincaid back from paternity leave early or promoting someone new to the team, and I haven’t got this one trained yet.” He winked at Murdock.

“Should I be insulted?”

“No, you should leave,” Trip suggested. “You should all leave.”

“My point is…” Michael Cutler was a man used to giving orders, not taking them. From anybody. “You’ve been beat up pretty bad, big guy. I want you back on my team. But I want you in one piece.”

Trip’s frustration waned for a moment. These really were good people, good friends. “Are you being mushy with me, sir?”

A light flashed out in the hallway, and all at once there was a buzz of conversations and another couple of flashes, and altogether too much hubbub for a place where patients were supposed to heal and get some rest.

Michael Cutler squeezed Trip’s good shoulder and grinned. “I don’t do mushy. I’m stalling for time.”

His friends stepped back as the noise outside in the hallway grew louder. Then a couple of familiar faces popped through the doorway. “Hey, shrimp.”

Trip smiled as his best friend, Alex Taylor, came forward to shake his hand. “Good to see, big guy. I’m tellin’ ya, if I’d have been there, you’d still be in one piece.”

“Oh, so now you think you’re funny?”

“I think you missed me.”

“Settle down, you two.” His fiancée, Audrey, leaned over and pressed a kiss to his cheek. That explained the flashing cameras. Pretty heiresses who’d gone into hiding because a killer wanted them dead tended to draw a crowd when they went out in public. Trip tucked away the wistful thought of Charlotte and fixed a smile on his face. “We brought you a present.” She turned to the door. “Okay!”

The scrabbling of paws on the hospital’s slick linoleum floor might be the second-best sound he could have heard right then. “Max!”

The black-and-tan torpedo ran into the room and launched himself onto Trip’s bed. “Whoa. Hey. Ow. Good to see you, buddy. We survived, you and me. We survived.”

It took a moment to wrestle the mutt down to his good side, accept a friendly lick or two and then inspect the red vest he was wearing. “Certified Therapy Dog?”

Captain Cutler whispered an order. “And now, we leave the room.”

Audrey clicked her tongue and took Max’s leash. “C’mon, boy. Aunt Audrey is going to find you a snack.”

One moment, his hospital room was in chaos, the next—it was serenely perfect.

“Hey, Trip.”

Charlotte Mayweather stood in his doorway. Her beautiful hair curling around her face, her high-topped tennis shoes on and her eyes smiling, beautiful, behind her red glasses.

“Get over here.”

She ran to his bed, was far too cautious about winding her arms around his neck, and gently kissed him. Screw that. He was hungry, he was needy, and his eyes were inexplicably tearing up. Trip snatched her around the waist and pulled her right onto the bed with him, claiming her mouth and pouring out his love and feeling with his one good hand that she was well and truly here with him and she was all right.

When he let her come up for air, she touched his cheek, wiping away a tear. She stretched up to press the tenderest of kisses against his brow. “Don’t do that sweetheart. It tears me up inside to see you hurting.”

She smiled wisely, gently throwing his one phobia back at him. “I’m okay, Trip. I just needed to see you. And now I’m okay.”

“God, I missed you.” He grabbed a handful of her jacket and pulled her close again, kissing her cheek, kissing her neck. Her hands were on his face and in his hair as she returned the assault, kiss for kiss. “I was so worried something would happen to you. KCPD arrested your stepbrother, but the RGK is still out there.” He kissed her hair, kissed her ear. Stopped himself short. “Hey, look at these pretty little earrings.” He pulled far enough away to look her in the eye. “They’re beautiful. They fit your ear perfectly.”

“It’s the new me. You said I could change. And I’m changing.” She turned in the bed, adjusting her position so that she could lie beside him, with her head on his shoulder and her hand splayed possessively at the center of his chest. “I’m not hurting anything, am I? I know I have an unintentional habit of—”

“No.” He draped his right arm behind her back and claimed an equally possessive handful of her beautiful bottom. “Nothing hurts with you here like this.” A moment passed before he frowned and asked, “How did you get here?”

He felt her smiling through the thin cotton of his hospital gown. “Audrey and Alex drove me.”

“I meant, this isn’t your home or the museum. You’ve got Max with you, but, you’re out in the world.” He pressed a kiss to the crown of her hair. “You okay with that?”

She nodded. “It’s a little scary. I’m not ready to drive myself yet or dive into the Plaza crowd when they turn on the lights Thanksgiving night. But I’m fine. I knew my driver, knew my destination—and I was so lonely without you. Like I said, I’m changing. I feel stronger now. I don’t want to be a shut-in anymore. I want to live. And love.”

“That makes two of us.”

They lay together for several minutes, and Charlotte’s bravery and simple willingness to break free from her mental bonds to be with him healed things inside him that no doctor could touch.

“I hear you’ve got some time off coming up,” Charlotte finally whispered. “Any plans on how you’re going to spend it?”

“Any suggestions?”

She snuggled closer. “How about going on an archaeological dig with me? Unless I uncover another King Tut, I’m guessing the press won’t follow me into the middle of nowhere. And we’d be overseas, beyond the reach of Donny Kemp or whatever he’s calling himself now.”

“The middle of nowhere can be a scary place.”

“Not with you around. Nothing is too frightening for me to handle when I know you’ll be there to have my back.”

“I always will,” he promised.

“Digs can be pretty remote. It might be just you and me. Alone in a tent.”

“Will it be dry there?”

“We can go to a desert dig.”

“Please. One sleeping bag?”

“Yes.”

Fantasies did come true. “Where do I sign up?”

“I love you, Trip.” She pushed herself up to seek out his eyes. “I may be a little flaky around the edges, but I’ve never been a liar. I’m
not
too flaky, am I? I mean, not too much for you to handle, right?”

“I see myself as kind of a ‘Charlotte Whisperer.’ I got you out of that house, didn’t I? Got you to stop attacking me with archaic weapons and kiss me instead.” He leaned forward and touched her lips to prove his point. “I think I can handle you.”

“Are you sure you want to?”

“You are one of a kind, Miss Mayweather.” Trip smiled and pulled her close. “And you’re all mine.”