Page 95 of Paranoid

“You don’t have to—”

“Yeah,” she said, cutting him off and pulling her sidearm from its holster. “Yeah, I do.” And with that, she opened the door and slid out of the car. “I’m over this.”

“What’re you doing?”

“Finding out if we’re wasting our time out here.” She closed the door and, in a half crouch, ran toward the house.

“No. Oh, fuck!” Frantic, he called for backup as he exited the car, closed the door, then took off after her. What the hell was she thinking? Not only might she blow their cover, but she was going to get herself killed in the process! And if these guys were cooking meth . . .

And they were. He smelled it, that acrid odor filtering through a crack in the windows somewhere. Maybe from the attic where one small dormer peeked from the dilapidated roof, the glass of the window nonexistent.

Kayleigh had made it to the broken-down fence of the backyard and was slipping past a leaning post when he heard the creak of a door.

Oh, crap!

A second later a scrawny man with thin, stringy hair stepped onto the porch to light a cigarette. Beside him, a beast of a dog, gray and bristly, wandered into the yard only to stop suddenly, turn, and bark wildly. A sharp, loud warning.

No!

Cigarette dangling from his lips, the man turned, peering in the direction of Kayleigh just as the dog spied Cade. Snarling, it leapt from the porch and the man twitched, his gaze shifting from the fence to the street. He raised his gun.

“Police!” Cade yelled. “Drop your weapon.”

“You heard him!” Kayleigh screamed. “Drop it. Now!” She was aiming straight at the back porch. Then, “No! Cade! Watch out—!”

Blam!

A gun fired.

Cade’s body jerked, then spun. He took a wobbling step backward before he stumbled, his pistol clattering to the broken pavement. His knees folded and he felt a sharp, burning sensation on his neck. He’d never seen the man on the porch lift his weapon, but Cade had gone down, the world spinning as more gunshots blasted and somewhere far in the distance the sound of a siren wailed through the night.

He found out later a second shooter had been in an attic window and had fired at him, while stringy-hair and the dog had backed down. The dude had dropped his weapon and commanded the dog to “stay,” rather than risk shooting an officer. Kayleigh had gotten off several shots, hitting the assailant in the window. Both of the suspects had been arrested, charged, and convicted and were now serving time, their small operation shut down, the link to the larger system never discovered.

Now Cade stared at Rachel’s house, dark again, Rachel having, he presumed, turned off the comput

er and returned to bed. Not that she would sleep; he knew better. When she had the nightmares she had trouble finding sleep again. He knew. He’d been there. Had held her and whispered that “everything’s all right,” and that she needed to “calm down” as he’d kissed the top of her head and felt her trembling in his arms.

He checked his watch and found it now after 4 a.m., the neighborhood calm. Not even the raccoon disturbed the stillness. He stretched the muscles in his neck by rotating his head, then settled back against the seat. That stakeout had been the beginning of the end, he thought.

When he’d opened his eyes, he’d found himself staring up at the can lights in the ceiling of the intensive care unit of the hospital.

A male nurse was in the room with him. His name tag read Ari Granger, RN. With stern blue eyes, a soul patch, and the brisk demeanor of a bartender, Ari checked Cade’s vital signs. Cade winced.

“What happened?” he asked, his voice gravelly and dry. For a second he wasn’t able to remember anything.

“EMTs brought you into the ER. Gunshot wound. You’ve been in surgery.” Another grave look.

Cade tried to shift in the bed and changed his mind when the pain flared through his back.

“How’s your pain on a scale of one to ten? I can give you something for that,” Ari said.

“Not . . . not good.” Cade stopped moving to help the agony subside. “My back . . .” The top half of his body felt raw.

“The bullet lodged close to your spinal cord. Another inch and I don’t think we’d be having this conversation right now. But if you rest and follow the doctor’s orders, in a few days, you’ll walk out of here a whole man. For now, you need rest. Here, let me give you something for that pain,” he said, and added a dosage into Cade’s IV.

“Point taken. Is my partner okay? Kayleigh O’Meara?” he asked as the memory of the scene at the meth house started to return.

“She’s out in the waiting room, I think. You thirsty?”