Page 28 of Defender (Omega Sector: Under Siege #1)

The next couple of days went by in a blur for Summer.

It was amazing what money could do to ease the way when you wanted quick repairs done to a condo.

Especially when you were talking about the type of money Joe Matarazzo had.

By the time Summer got back home from the hospital the day after she and Chloe had been taken, the front window had been replaced and the entire place had been cleared out and cleaned as if the shooting had never happened.

Joe also had a new and much more advanced alarm system installed. One that still worked even if the house’s power was cut. Heck, it might work even after a nuclear holocaust.

Summer, Chloe and Ashton had spent last night in the hospital. Ashton had dislocated his shoulder getting them out of the house and had some burns on his skin that had been exposed—the back of his neck and part of his arms and hands.

Nothing serious. Unbelievably.

Summer and Chloe had been kept overnight just to confirm there was nothing in their systems that would cause any long-lasting harm.

Both of them were fine. There was no way Summer was going to allow Chloe out of her sight, so she’d been glad the hospital had worked with them, bringing a crib from the children’s ward so Chloe could sleep next to Summer.

Summer hadn’t liked being away from Ashton, but figured he could take care of himself. He probably wouldn’t wake up scared and crying like Chloe might.

Although he would have good reason if he did.

That was the second time Ashton had gotten her and Chloe out of a burning building safely. Summer just prayed it would never happen again.

She’d felt so helpless there on the couch, unable to communicate with Ashton, afraid he would walk too close to the couch and Damien would shoot him.

But Damien hadn’t been there at all.

Thank God Ashton had figured it out in time, because Summer sure hadn’t. She’d known Damien was playing Harper, using him, but she hadn’t thought Damien would actually try to kill the other man.

Although from what she understood, Damien hadn’t actually succeeded in killing Harper. Harper was still alive. Barely.

But Damien had killed young Tyrone Marcus in the explosion. Summer brought a hand up to her face to wipe away the tears at that thought. He’d been so excited about the possibility of joining the SWAT team.

“Hey, you okay?” She felt Ashton’s hand trail up her side, then along the arm she’d raised to her cheek.

She and Ashton had left the hospital together yesterday morning. Neither of them could stand the thought of being away from each other, so when they’d heard Joe had graciously rushed her condo’s repairs, Ashton had just come home with her.

He hadn’t really left since. They’d gone together to pick up a few of his things, for Summer to see where he lived—a confirmed bachelor pad in an apartment complex about five miles away—then returned home.

Chloe couldn’t be happier to have her precious Ah-ta around. Even if his arm was in a funny cast. She was now napping and they were taking advantage of the calm to do the same.

“I was just thinking about Tyrone Marcus.”

Ashton sighed. “Yeah, he’ll be sorely missed.”

More tears leaked from her eyes. “I thought they were going to kill you. That I was going to watch you die in front of me.”

“I’m amazed you even want to be here with me right now. Nobody would blame you if you didn’t want to be involved with someone who works in law enforcement. You’ve been privy to way too much personal violence in your life.”

Summer shrugged. “I wasn’t there when Tyler died, so even though that was horrible, I didn’t really experience it. When Bailey Heath kidnapped us a few months ago, she drugged us first. I was never fully conscious for that. Don’t even remember much, unlike Laura and Joe.”

She took a shuddery breath. “But this . I thought they would kill you and then Chloe and I would be at Harper’s mercy.”

He put his good arm around her and pulled her close. “Even if they had killed me, the team was out there. No way Curtis was going to get to you.”

“I can’t believe he thought you would actually come alone.”

He kissed her forehead. “If there’s one thing Curtis Harper seems to excel at, it’s deluding himself.”

She snuggled closer. “I might not ever be able to let you out of my sight again.”

“I know the feeling.” She felt his lips against her hair. “When Harper told me you’d been taken off the plane... When he had just enough details for me to know he’d somehow really managed to kidnap you and Chloe... I almost couldn’t function.”

So many things could’ve gone wrong. If Ashton had been five seconds later in figuring out that Damien had placed a bomb under the house, they would both be dead.

But they weren’t.

She kissed the side of his chest and, twisting around, pushed herself up until she was sitting across Ashton’s hips, straddling him.

“I say, since we’re both so dang grateful that the other is alive and relatively unhurt—and since the baby will be sleeping for another hour—that we should celebrate life. ”

“Sounds perfect to me.”

She saw him wince as he moved his injured shoulder reaching for her. She put a finger in the middle of his chest and pushed him back down.

“But in this celebration, you’re going to let me do all the work.”

The sudden flash of his bad-boy grin stopped her heart. He tucked his good arm under his head as he looked up at her, heat smoldering in his eyes. Had she truly ever thought this man shy?

“By all means, I would never turn down the request of a lady.”

She heard him suck in a breath as she pulled her T-shirt over her head, and felt him harden beneath her hips. She loved that she had this effect on him.

“That’s right, you save your strength for figuring out who this Damien guy is tomorrow. But right now—” she leaned down to kiss him “—right now is just for us.”

* * *

A SHTON DIDN ’ T WANT to leave Summer to go back to the hospital the next day, but he knew he had to.

Curtis Harper had woken up. The man had survived the explosion. If Lillian’s shot in his shoulder hadn’t propelled him across the room, he’d most definitely be dead now.

The rest of the Omega Team wasn’t so lucky.

Not only had promising young agent Tyrone Marcus died, but a few halls down, Roman Weber lay in a coma, back and arm covered in second-degree burns.

The locked door he’d found leading to the crawl space under the house—the one that had tipped Ashton off that they were all in grave danger—had blown off and hit him on the head.

For all the damage it had done, it had also probably saved Roman’s life, covering him and protecting him from much of the heat of the explosion.

Between Tyrone’s death and Roman’s severe injuries, whoever this mystery man was who’d masterminded the entire scenario had just jumped to the top of Omega Sector’s wish list. Not a comfortable place for any criminal to be. The mystery man had no idea who he was messing with.

But he was about to find out.

But for right now, they had Harper. He wasn’t dead, but he probably wished he was. He’d be in the hospital for a long time, recovering from the burns that covered a great deal of his body. And then once he did, he’d be going to jail.

The only advantage to Curtis Harper’s injured state was that his fury no longer directed itself toward Ashton. Harper had a much bigger enemy to hate now: the “partner” who’d left him as bait and planted a bomb directly under his feet.

So Harper was willing to talk to Omega. Wanted to tell everything he knew about his partner to bring the other man down.

“He only told me his name was Damien. I don’t know if that was his first name or last.”

Jon Hatton sat at Harper’s bedside, now three days after the explosion. It would be weeks, if not longer, before Harper was in any condition to be questioned anywhere but at a hospital. The man was handcuffed to the bed, although the chances of him escaping right now were almost nonexistent.

Jon was questioning the man, but Ashton watched from where he leaned against the window. He wanted to know everything there was to know about the unidentified man who had almost cost him everything. Cost him the woman he loved.

Jon pulled out a copy of the picture they’d gotten from the security camera last Friday when Harper had been caught talking with the other man.

“Is this Damien?”

“Yes. Bastard.” Harper spit the word out.

“How did you meet him?”

“I was in a bar, a place called Crystal Mac’s.”

Jon nodded. “Yes, I know the place.”

“We started drinking some beers and eventually we got around to talking about our dads. When I told him my daddy had been killed by someone in Omega Sector, Damien mentioned how much he hated Omega, too.”

Ashton’s eyes narrowed. So the unknown man, Damien, wasn’t a garden-variety psycho who just wanted to hurt or kill random people. He was targeting Omega, too.

“He told me he could help me get revenge on Fitzgerald—” Harper’s eyes darted over to Ashton “—for killing my dad.”

“So Damien had the plan from the beginning?”

Harper latched onto the idea that he wasn’t at fault for everything. “Yeah, it was always Damien’s idea.”

“The shoot-out downtown at the florist?” Jon asked. “That was him?”

“No,” Harper admitted sheepishly. “That was me. I followed Fitzgerald. And when I saw him stop at the florist, I knew the office across the street would be a good place to set up my hunting rifle. Just like hunting deer.”

“But you talked to Damien afterward. Once the police got there and you left.”

“Yeah, he caught me and pulled me into a building around the corner. Told me to let him help get Fitzgerald. He’s the one who told me about Summer Worrall’s place. That I could break in there and finish Fitzgerald off before he even knew what happened.”

Ashton turned and looked outside so he could resist the urge to go over to the hospital bed and beat the hell out of an already severely injured man.

Killing Ashton was one thing, but Harper had been willing to just rush into Summer’s bedroom and shoot them both, even though she had nothing to do with any of it.

That was why Jon was doing the interviewing and Ashton was a member of SWAT.

“And when that didn’t work...” Jon prompted.

“Then Damien showed me his planning room. Told me he had a plan to help me take Fitzgerald down. Bastard,” Harper murmured again.

But Jon zoomed in on the important thing Harper said. “Planning room? Can you tell us how to get there?”

“Maybe. What will it get me?”

“For one thing, it will get you the knowledge that you helped bring to justice the man who put you in this hospital bed. For another, it gives the District Attorney someone else to throw some blame at once indictments start being handed out.”

Harper didn’t even try to resist; he rolled over immediately. He gave them the address of Damien’s house. Harper had barely finished speaking before Jon and Ashton were heading out the door.

They rode together, calling it in to Omega on the way. This wasn’t a location that could be rushed. Only after the bomb squad deemed it clear—after searching meticulously for any booby traps or explosives—could anyone enter.

Even afterward, Glock in hand, Ashton made sure every room was clear. That no one hid in any closet, bathtub or under any bed. He made extra effort to look for any traps the bomb squad might have missed, anything that might not be an explosive, but still dangerous, but found nothing.

The house was clean, at least from danger.

Ashton caught sight of what Harper called the “planning room” in the midst of his sweep, but couldn’t take time to study it then. Couldn’t even wrap his head around something that complicated.

Then forensics came in to see if they could find anything usable. It was an important part of crime fighting, but waiting for them to finish seemed to take an eternity.

“When Harper said planning room , he wasn’t kidding, Jon,” Ashton told the profiler as they stood at the car waiting for the go-ahead from forensics. “Elaborate is not a strong enough word.”

When they were finally allowed in a couple hours later and Jon saw the room, he immediately turned to Ashton.

“Call Brandon Han. Tell him he needs to get over here right away.”

Brandon was a genius. Like, certified genius.

Two PhDs and a degree in law or something like that.

If anyone could make sense of the wall full of newspaper clippings, photos, drawings, police reports, Google search printouts, fingerprints and whatever other unknown pieces of information were on the wall in that room—with different colored strings connecting them all in mind-boggling, crisscrossing patterns—Brandon Han could.

“This thing is giving me a nosebleed just looking at it,” Ashton rubbed his forehead.

“Yeah.” Jon continued to stare at the wall and its massive amount of information. “Whoever did this is...”

“A nutcase?”

Jon chuckled. “Probably. But also a genius. Harper never had a chance against this guy. He was just a small measure of this man’s much larger symphony.”

“I don’t think I like what you’re saying, Jon. A symphony implies that there’s a lot more music yet to come.”

Jon looked over at him and nodded, gesturing to the wall with his hand. “You’re right. Whoever this is, he’s just getting started.”