“What’s the word, Doc?” Gage asked.
He smiled at Mackenzie. She smiled back, and some of the aches and pains that still lingered magically felt better.
“You’re damn lucky, that’s the word.” The gray-haired man gave him a surprisingly stern look. “You came through the explosion surprisingly intact, but whatever accident you had recently caused a lot of damage. You have stress fractures to half a dozen bones, including two ribs and both bones of your right forearm. You shouldn’t even be on duty, much less raiding a meth lab.”
Mackenzie’s eyes went wide. “You were in an accident? When? What happened?”
Gage swore under his breath. Between punching his way through the kitchen floor and getting smashed into the basement, he’d done more damage than he thought. Of course his X-rays wouldn’t show much. Just a couple of two-week-old stress fractures—werewolves healed fast. If the doctor took X-rays again in a couple of days, they wouldn’t show anything at all. But Gage would make sure that didn’t happen.
“It was nothing. Just a training accident while rappelling. I didn’t even realize I’d hurt myself,” he told Mackenzie.
The doctor’s eyes narrowed suspiciously behind his glasses. He was probably wondering how a cop with all those stress fractures had walked around for two weeks without major painkillers.
“I’ll get some rest, Doc. Promise,” he added. “What about my team?”
“They’re doing as well as can be expected considering they almost got blown up. I’ll be keeping three of them…” He glanced down at the clipboard in his hand. “Becker, Lowry, and Riggs. They’re fine, but I want to keep them overnight to watch for signs of concussion. They should be able to leave in the morning.”
All three men would hate staying here, but it was actually a good thing. Cooling his heels for the night would give Xander time to calm down, not to mention keep him from doing something stupid, like inviting himself along when Gage confronted Walter Hardy.
After putting on the spare uniform Mike had brought him, Gage stopped in to see Xander, Becker, and Lowry before meeting up with the other guys. Mackenzie hovered beside him the whole time as if she was worried she’d have to catch him any second when he fainted from exhaustion. He had to admit, it was kind of cute.
When they reached the parking lot, he automatically followed Mike and the others, but Mackenzie darted in front of him and put a hand on his chest.
“Where do you think you’re going?”
“To the compound for a few hours to catch up on some paperwork,” he told her.
It wasn’t entirely a lie. He did have to write up the incident report for the raid on the meth lab that wasn’t a meth lab. But his main purpose was to find out where Hardy lived, then go scope out the place. One look at Mackenzie told him she wasn’t going to cooperate with that plan.
“No way,” she said. “You just promised the doctor you’d get some rest, and I’m going to make sure you do. Your paperwork can wait.”
He’d known Mackenzie Stone was strong willed, but he didn’t know she could be so fierce, too. But damn, she looked as if she could make a grizzly bear back down. He knew where she was coming from—he really did. She’d watched someone drop a house on him, and it had scared the hell out of her. But he needed to send a message to Hardy that the shit that’d happened today would never be allowed to happen again, and he needed to do it fast.
But as he stood there gazing down at Mackenzie, he realized something. If Cooper was right about them being cosmically connected—a possibility that was looking more and more likely by the minute—then he needed to make decisions based on what was important to her, too.
That was a big leap for him.
“Okay,” he agreed. “But I do have to brief the deputy chief on what happened today.”
She opened her mouth to protest, but Mike cut her off.
“I’ll brief the deputy chief,” he said. “Go home and get some rest. Don’t worry. I know what to say to Mason.”
Which was Mike’s way of telling him that he wouldn’t say anything about the bomb to the deputy chief. If Mason knew it was an assassination attempt, he’d want to put the entire SWAT team in protective custody until they could bring Hardy up on charges. Luckily, it would take a while for the arson investigators to piece everything together.
But Gage still hesitated anyway. Then he noticed that Mike and the other men were all grinning at him. Gage shook his head. He was outnumbered.
He turned his attention back to Mackenzie. She still had her hand on his chest as if she could hold him back with nothing more than her willpower. He was starting to think she could probably do it, too.
“So, Ms. Stone, what do you have in mind?” he asked. “To make sure I get my rest, I mean.”
She gave him that devastating smile. “Well, I did offer to make you dinner, so how about we start with that?”
“I don’t suppose we’re invited, too?” Cooper asked.
“No,” Gage said before Mackenzie could answer. “But since you’re being nice and filling out the reports on the explosion at the meth lab for me, I’ll make sure Emile gets you a table at Chambre Francaise the next time you want to impress a woman.”
That seemed to satisfy them. After a reminder to take it easy, they headed across the parking lot, leaving Gage and Mackenzie with his senior squad leader and her photographer.
“Mind if I talk to Mike for a second?” he said. “If I’m going to blow off work early, I need to make sure a few things are taken care of.”
Mackenzie regarded him suspiciously. “Okay, but don’t be too long. You need to get some rest.”
Gage wasn’t sure how much rest he was going to
