until his fingers closed around the barrel of his Glock. He rolled over just in time to see Lauren’s head snap back. Blood spurted across the room, splattering over the sheets. Lauren’s body toppled sideways.
FUCK! Chad aimed his gun but Tom dragged Lauren to her feet and used her as a shield. “Stay back! I didn’t want to hurt her but I had to. You saw-she was fighting me.”
Lauren’s head lolled onto her chest and he couldn’t see her face properly, but from the blood trailing down her shirt, the bastard had probably broken her nose. Hopefully that’s all he’d done. “Set her down, Tom. Please. Let me look after her. Let me make sure she’s all right.”
“Uh uh.” Tom shifted Lauren’s dead weight to one arm and lifted the gun, aiming it at Chad. He tilted his head until his mouth was less than an inch away from Lauren’s ear, but his gaze never left Chad. “You shouldn’t have come back, Mrs. Miller. You should have stayed away. He was miserable when you left. I was sad too but at least I knew you were safe.”
Chad held his own gun steady but couldn’t fire without risking Lauren’s life. At least the gun was aimed at him, not at Lauren’s head. Though the rest of Lauren didn’t move, the fingers on Lauren’s right hand made the “OK” sign. It was all he could do not to heave a sigh of relief. She was all right. If they kept their heads, if he could get control of this situation, they could still get out of this. Maybe. Tom still had that fucking gun.
Tom’s eyes went unfocused, dreamy, his voice soft and distant. The arm holding the gun dropped a few inches but not enough. If Chad moved now, he’d still be gut-shot. “I loved you so much, Mrs. Miller. You were such a good mother to Emily.”
“She was; you’re right.” Come on, Lauren, move. Drop to the floor. Something that’ll get you out of the line of sight and give me a clean shot at him.
Tom’s gaze cleared and the black barrel of the gun stared at Chad again. From this distance, a two-fingered monkey couldn’t miss hitting him. “Don’t you talk to her. You’re not good enough for her. That’s why I had to keep her away from you. Keep her safe.”
Chad held up the hand he could move, spreading his fingers wide. “All right. Let’s just calm down.”
“I kept her safe from you. I checked your mail box every day so you couldn’t get any of the letters she sent you. I deleted all her messages from your answering machine. You didn’t even know I was there. You thought you were so good with your security system. But you couldn’t stop me.”
Shit, he’d given Tom the security code and asked him to check his mail and water the plants when he was away. The whole time the little shit was the reason Lauren hadn’t come home?
With a move so fast it startled even Chad who had been looking for a sign, Lauren dropped to the ground, taking Tom with her. As Tom swung around with a curse, aiming Lauren’s own gun at her, Chad aimed and squeezed the trigger.
Chapter Fifteen
“They’ve charged Jenkins with attempted murder and aggravated assault.” Sam glanced at Lauren as she settled onto the arm of the couch beside Chad. “He’s lawyered up, and isn’t talking, but from what Andy’s been able to find out through his sources his lawyers are seeking a psychiatric review while he’s still in the hospital.”
“They’re looking for an insanity plea,” Lauren surmised. “Or at least diminished capacity.”
“They’ll get it.” Chad covered her knee with his left hand. His right was bound to his side, the bandage where they’d operated on the bullet not as thick as it had been the day before.
“What I don’t get is why he waited this long to go after Chad.”
“I talked to his mom.” The petite woman who Chad had introduced as Rosalinda Ramos, Sam’s fiancйe answered Lauren’s question. “She said he’d had a breakdown at school, enough that the counselors there suggested he come home for the semester.”
Sam scowled. “Except he came home and found his mom with a black eye.” He held up a hand when Chad cursed under his breath. “Don’t worry, her rat-bastard ex didn’t give it to her this time. I checked. Patsy had been in a car accident and she got it from that. She’s fine, by the way.”
“We’re guessing that he saw the article in the Post on the weekend and that made him want to check up on you.”
“From there,” Sam picked up where Rosie left off, “we’re not sure if it was seeing you two together again that set him off. Or if he’d planned to go after Chad all along.”
Lauren suppressed a smile. The duo were completing each other’s sentences as if they’d been married for years.
“Almost forgot. Hey, Rosebud, you got those photocopies?”
Rosie reached into a voluminous purse and pulled out a manila file folder. “The police found these when they went through Tom’s apartment. I got Andy to use his connections to make some copies since they have to keep the originals as evidence.”
Lauren took the folder and handed it to Chad who placed it on his lap and opened it. Her breath caught in her throat when she recognized her own handwriting. “My letters.”
After a glance at her, Sam nodded and returned his attention to Chad. “Looks like Tom had been going through your mail for years.”
“I’d asked him to pick it up for me whenever I was travelling. I had no idea he’d been holding things back.”
The room was silent except for the sound of rustling paper as Chad flipped through the letters. He stopped at the final one, written two years after she’d left. The one pleading with him to phone her, to give her some sign that he’d give her another chance.
He stared up at her, his heart in his eyes. “I’m sorry, babe. I would have replied if I’d known.”
“It wasn’t your fault.” She covered his hand with hers and squeezed it. “But we’ve got a second chance now.”
Sam stood, holding a hand out to help Rosie to her feet. “Well, Rosebud, I think that’s our cue to leave these two alone.”
Leaving Chad to rest on the couch, Lauren showed them to the front door. “Sam, I owe you an apology. I know I blamed you for Jill’s death all these years. I was wrong. I’m sorry.”
He quirked his eyebrows up. “I know. I’d say we both owe each other some apologies. I’ve been blaming you for walkin’ out on Chad. I had no idea why you’d gone or what you were going through. If I’d known…” He nodded. “Yeah, we both had our demons to fight, didn’t we?”
“So…are we friends again?”
“Yup.” He grinned. “I heard you quit your other job. If you ever feel the itch to get back in the field, I know a good firm that’s lookin’ for people with your background.”
“I may just take you up on that offer.” Once she’d figured out the rest of her life.
“You do that.” His grin faded and his gaze drifted to the room behind her. “It damned near killed him when you left. He stopped going home, started sleeping in the office for months at a time. I was afraid I was going to come in one day and find he’d eaten his gun.”
“I didn’t know. I thought…I got some bad intel and thought he’d remarried within a year.”
“Mmm. Now I wonder where you heard that?” One dark eyebrow arched up, but when she didn’t answer, Sam sighed. “Don’t leave him again without telling him exactly why, you hear? Don’t disappear the way you did last time. Or I’ll come after you.”
Without waiting for a reply, he headed for his car. Lauren stood in the doorway, until the Jag disappeared from sight.
Once she’d shut the door and rearmed the security system, Lauren returned to find Chad with his head against the back of the couch, his eyes closed. “You should go upstairs and have a nap.”
He roused and smiled at her. The look he gave her was all heat. “You coming up with me?”
“Men! Even hurt and exhausted, all you can think about is sex.” She folded her arms over her chest and tried not to smile. And failed.
“The problem with that is…?”
“As tempting as your offer is, if I lie down with you, you’ll do anything but nap.” She helped him to his feet
