Page 107 of Deadly Attraction
Mitch pulled back and got rid of the cup, coming back to sit on the edge of her hospital bed. Her hand instinctively found his again, some of the heaviness leaving her as she tried on a smile.
He smiled back and they stayed that way for a few moments. Behind his smile, she sensed sadness, regret. There were dark circles under his eyes. His jawline was covered with several days’ worth of beard.
How long had she been out? Why did Mitch look so sad?
“What happened?” she finally asked, dread threading its way around her heart.
His thumb rubbed the sensitive flesh of her palm. “You tell me. You were upstairs getting ready to go to the safe house. Next thing I know, I heard a gunshot. I found you sitting on your bed, Chris Goodsman at your feet with a bullet in his forehead.”
A sinking feeling filled her stomach. “I killed him?”
“You don’t remember?”
Closing her eyes, she willed her brain to work.Click, click, click…the sound echoed in her ears. In flashes, the scene came back to her. “I was in the bathroom. I came out and Chris was sitting on my bed. Linda took the bullets out of my gun.”
Her breath hitched, sending fresh pain through her system.
Mitch touched her arm. “Hey, it’s okay. We can talk about it later. You need to rest.”
“No.” Her voice came out firmer. She opened her eyes. “I need to remember.”
He nodded and waited patiently, letting her think it through. In her mind’s eye, she let the scene play out. “The bullets fell all over the floor. The gun was worthless.”
“How did you manage to shoot him, then?” Mitch asked softly.
“I jumped him. We wrestled. I ended up on the floor and I crawled under the bed and found a bullet. That’s where…” She swallowed hard. “That’s where I saw the army men. The Tom Monahan fighters. Like he’d been under there playing with them.”
Tears flooded her eyes. She felt violated all over again.
The same disgust she felt rolled through Mitch’s eyes. “Are you sure it was him? Might have been Brown.”
“I managed to get the bullet in the gun. Chris bent down and grabbed me by the foot and pulled me out, so I…”
She couldn’t finish the statement.
“You did what you had to do, Emma.” He squeezed her hand, letting her process her conflicted feelings, a sentiment he knew all too well, and continued. “Will found Goodsman’s hideout. He and Brown were camped in that abandoned ranger site. Coop said that must have been where Sean Gordon squatted as well. As we suspected, Gordon and Brown probably set the fire—there were dozens of files there, meteorology reports, past forest fire analyses, and detailed park security measures so they could figure out how and where to get in and out without getting spotted, and the best place to start the fires in order to send them in the direction of the public. Our guess is, that if your ranch got caught in the crossfire—no pun intended—Brown would have been quite happy about it.”
Her head hurt remembering. “Are the horses okay? Did Will get them rounded up?”
“The horses and the dogs are fine. Doc Jane is helping Will at the ranch. At least she’s trying to help him. They seemed to rub each other the wrong way a lot.”
“They’re perfect for each other.” The thought made Emma smile. “They just haven’t figured it out yet. I’m working on it—or at least I will be once I’m up and out of here.”
“Let’s not rush anything. Brown nearly killed you, Emma.”
The knife. Another flood of memories wiped the smile from her face. “How bad is it?” she asked, placing a hand on her ribcage.
“She sliced through your inferior vena cava. You were in surgery for fourteen hours.”
No wonder he looked tired and she felt like road kill. “You stayed here the whole time, didn’t you?”
His face was all hard lines. “It’s my fault Brown and Goodsman got to you.”
It wasn’t just sadness behind his eyes. Guilt lingered there as well. “Don’t do that to yourself. This is no more your fault than it is Will’s or mine or the man on the moon’s.”
He looked down, a muscle in his jaw flexing. “The other man has been identified as Roger Colfax. He’s the one who killed Carla and injured Danika. You might know him as—”
“Punisher.” The instant Mitch had said Roger’s name, Emma stiffened. The Punisher, a Marvel comic moniker that theMary Monahan Chronicleshad borrowed. A character whom thousands of fans had embraced because of his vigilante tendencies. “I’m quite familiar with him.”
