Page 59 of Sean

She peeked through the window and saw him with a gun in his hand. She hadn’t even known he was carrying it. He was scanning their surroundings, then his attention focused to his right. He raised his gun, bracing to take a shot, but he didn’t fire. Instead, he held his focus on that point in the distance as he went around the front of the vehicle and got in. Faster than she would have thought possible, the truck was moving out of the parking lot and merging into traffic.

“What happened?” her mother asked in a quivering voice from next to Julia.

“Wilson took a shot at us,” Sean answered while keeping his focus on the road. “Definitely him—in person. I saw him, but returning fire would have been reckless.”

“He’s really trying to hurt us.” Charlotte seemed genuinely shocked. “He’s never been my favorite person, but I can’t believe…oh, Julia, you’re hurt. Sean, she’s been shot.”

“I know.” He glanced in the rearview mirror. She caught a glimpse of his face. It was completely devoid of expression, like he was a machine. “Put pressure on it. We’ll stop at a drugstore for first aid supplies as soon as we’re out of the city.”

Julia was in awe of how calm he was, how alert and aware of everything that was going on. That was some crazy level of training to get through that without breaking a sweat.

“Here, use this.” Charlotte pulled off the pink scarf she’d knotted around her neck before they left her room.

“It’ll be ruined, Mom.” Julia took the scarf anyway since she had nothing else to staunch the bleeding, and her arm was starting to truly hurt.

“Doesn’t matter.” Her mom was shaking and pale, but she had years of being a single mom, of responding to a crisis, to rely on. As for Julia, she felt her own confidence and strength starting to splinter. Just the day before, she’d been hopeful that all of this was nearly over. But now, it seemed the worst might be still to come.

THIRTY

A half hour later, Sean steered off the highway and found a drugstore. He parked deliberately off to the side, where it wasn’t likely anyone would choose to park next to them. “Stay in here with the doors locked—and lay on the horn if it looks like anyone other than me is approaching you. I’ll be quick,” he said before getting out and striding off.

The ride had been mostly silent except for the five times Sean had asked if she was still all right—and she’d confirmed that nothing had changed. Her arm both stung and ached, but the wound must not have gone very deep because the bleeding had stopped. Her mother had a tight grip on Julia’s hand which helped reassure both of them.

“Who is Sean exactly? Your boyfriend?” Charlotte asked when they were alone.

Julia fought not to blush. Her mom had always been able to read her irritatingly well, and it seemed the stroke hadn’t changed that. “No! He’s…um, well, he’s the friend of a friend. Or rather, the friend of my friend’s husband. When things got dangerous with Wilson, my friend got her husband to ask Sean if he’d help out. We’ve…I guess we’ve become friends, too, but he’s not—we’re not—” She cleared her throat and tried to gather her thoughts. “He’s a good man who’s helping to keep me and the kids safe,” she answered at last. Sean was so much more than that, but she didn’t want to get into it. Not when Charlotte still had so much to process.

“Hmm.” Charlotte’s little sound was typical of her mother. One of those “I see what’s really going on here” sounds that made Julia instinctively want to confess to taking the last cookie or sneaking home after curfew.

“What, Mom?” Julia tried to keep the fluster from her voice as she reminded herself that she was a grown woman and that whatever she got up to with another consenting adult wasn’t really any of her mother’s business.

“I’ve never been one to rely on a man to come to my rescue, but that one seems capable.” That was quite a compliment from her mother, who had always been fiercely independent.

“He is.”

“Good looking, too,” her mother muttered as Sean came out of the store with a bag in his hands. Charlotte grinned at her, and Julia saw a glimpse of who her mother had been before the stroke.

“Hey,” Sean said when he opened the car door on Julia’s side. He appeared to be all business as he unwound her mother’s pink scarf which she’d used to bind the injury. He tossed the bloodied material to the floor and studied the wound carefully. “Not too deep,” he concluded He reached in the bag and drew out a package of wipes. He got the box open but struggled with the individual package, which wasn’t like him. Then, she saw why. His hands were shaking.

“Let me,” she said, taking the package from him, tearing it open, and removing the wipe. “You’ll have to use it since I can’t see well enough.” The bullet had sliced through the flesh on the inside of her upper arm.

“Anything here?” he said, touching her rib cage gently after he’d cleaned the wound.

“No, my arm must have been raised.” The thought that the bullet had gone between her body and her arm was terrifying. She was okay. She had to keep that in mind. No one had been seriously hurt. “It’s not bad.”

“Could have been. If his aim had been the tiniest bit better…” Sean pressed his lips firmly together as he applied ointment to the wound and wrapped a gauze bandage around it.

She wanted to take his face in her hands and assure him that she was fine. The wound would heal. But with her mother looking on, she couldn’t do that. After he taped the gauze in place, his eyes met hers, and she could see his fear reflected there. How strange for a man who’d stayed so calm in the moment of crisis. He hadn’t flinched, hadn’t hesitated, and had known how to get them to safety. But now, panic was there behind his eyes. Had it been there all along?

“I’m fine,” she said, trying to convey to him the truth of her statement. “It hurts, but I’ve done worse to myself by crashing my bike.”

“That is true,” her mother confirmed. “Her knees were always scraped up when she was a kid.” If her mother had meant to lighten the moment, it didn’t work. Sean’s expression remained grim.

“You could have been shot through the heart,” he said. “I could have lost you.”

She tried for a smile. “I’m still here, Sean, and I’m okay.”

And then she saw the mask he’d worn when she’d first met him descend over his face. It was the expression that he hid behind. She hadn’t even realized how much it had faded away while they’d been on the ranch until she saw it come back. She wanted to cry no, don’t retreat from me, but she could see he already had.

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