faster than was safe. The moon was high and silver now, an improvement over the sickly yellow it had been earlier, hanging on the horizon.
Don’t let the son of a bitch be dead, he prayed, with scant hope any prayer from him would be answered. He and God weren’t on cordial terms. He tried anyway. Faith can’t handle it. Shouldn’t have to handle it. Don’t let him be dead.
He didn’t pass a single car on the city streets or the highway. Long before he reached the farm, he saw the multicolored, rotating lights of police cars and ambulance.
He tore into the farmyard, heedless of potholes, and came to a skidding stop behind Faith’s SUV. The scene was nightmarishly similar to the other time he’d been called out here in the middle of the night, when Charlotte had been battered and slashed.
Please, not Faith, he thought. She was so fragile. Strong, too—more than he’d credited her with on first meeting. But gentle, not made for what she’d suffered.
If she’d really killed Rory Hardesty, that would be much worse for her than being hurt would have been.
Burgess was in the kitchen, along with two EMTs.
“Dead?” Ben asked, and got nods all around.
Burgess kept talking. Ben didn’t hear. He walked straight through the dining room to the living room, where he heard voices.
Faith was there, sitting on the sofa beside her father. Meagher, looking about eighteen in his blue uniform, had just asked if she had a license for her gun.
“Yes,” Ben said hoarsely. “She has a license.”
She looked up at him, but not as if she were glad to see him. Not as if she felt anything at all. He had seen eyes like that, too often in his years in law enforcement. Utterly and completely empty, as if tonight she had lost her soul. He wanted nothing so much as to sit down and cradle her in his arms, but he had a feeling that if he did he’d be holding a mannequin, not a living breathing woman.
Her father was watching her, his face drawn. He wasn’t touching her, and Ben suspected she’d rejected his embrace. She sat with her back straight, her hands quiet on her lap, as if she were a guest not quite comfortable in this home but determined to hide it.
Brushing by his young officer, Ben laid his hand against her cheek, marble cool, and took an icy hand in his. He felt his lips pull back in a snarl. “She’s in shock, damn it! Meagher, get her a cup of tea or cocoa or something hot. Now.” He turned and, not seeing an afghan, wrenched the comforter from the hospital bed. Her father reached for it and helped him settle it around her shoulders.
“I told you I’m all right,” Faith said, words belied immediately when a shiver rattled her body.
“Sure you are,” Ben said. He decided he didn’t give a damn how stiff she would be in his embrace. He sat next to her and lifted her onto his lap, tucking the comforter around her.
She began to fight him.
“Don’t,” he said, and tightened his arms.
She struggled for another minute, then subsided when he simply held her close. She shivered again, and her teeth began to chatter. Her father looked on helplessly.
What the hell was Meagher doing? Ben wondered in raw fury. How long did it take to heat water in the microwave?
Waiting, Ben pressed her face into his shoulder and pressed his cheek to her hair. It was damp, he realized, and when he groped under the comforter for her braid he found it to be wet. That wasn’t helping. Cheek against the top of her head, he murmured, “I’m sorry, Faith. God, so sorry. You shouldn’t have had to face this. I’m sorry, sweetheart.”
She didn’t say anything, only kept trembling against him, her nose buried in his throat as if she couldn’t resist seeking the warmth of his skin.
Ben looked at her father. “Has anyone called Charlotte?”
He started. “No. I’ll, uh, do that. I was too worried about Faith….”
Who probably needed her sister more than anyone else in the world. At any other time, Ben might not have liked knowing that, even though he had been very careful to avoid offering himself up as her rock. But right now, all he wanted was to give Faith whatever she needed.
Don Russell levered himself to his feet and, with the help of the single crutch that was within arm’s reach, shuffled over to the bedside stand where his phone sat.
Ben could hear his side of the conversation, punctuated with pauses.
“Gray? It’s Don. Hardesty got in the house tonight. No, don’t know. Faith shot him. She’s …” His sidelong survey of his daughter was uneasy. “If Char can come … Okay. Thanks.”
He ended the call and met Ben’s eyes. “They’re on their way,” he said, unnecessarily. Despite a tension between the sisters that Ben had never understood, he sensed that either of them would have gone to Siberia or the Congo or, hell, Timbuktu, for the other without any hesitation. He, who had been essentially alone all of his life, even during his brief marriage, wondered what it would feel like to have someone love you like that.
It was unlikely he’d find out, and seemed even more so with his fortieth birthday looming up ahead.
His body heat seemed to be helping her. Faith’s shivers came less often and she was warming up, nose, hands, cheeks. Meagher finally showed up with a mug of cocoa, flushing when he encountered his boss’s glower.
Ben shifted Faith, bundled like a mummy in the comforter, to the sofa beside him and helped her grasp the mug. She sipped, and let out a sigh of relief as the hot liquid reached places he couldn’t.
Ben stayed where he was, keeping her against his side and reminding her to drink, until a commotion at the back door announced the arrival of Char and Gray. Only then did he murmur in Faith’s ear, “Your sister’s here,” and stand up.
She looked at him for a moment, as if she couldn’t help herself. Her eyes were no longer blank, but rather filled with so much emotion, such horror, he almost wished he hadn’t stirred her to life again.
Involuntarily he reached out, but the movement was abortive because Char flung herself across the living room and enveloped her sister in her arms.
“Faith. Oh, God. Faith, honey.”
Ben backed away, leaving them to it. He had to do his job. He just wished his chest wasn’t so tight with anguish that every breath he drew hurt.
Turning to face Gray didn’t help.
Like Ben, Gray Van Dusen was a tall man, over six feet and broad-shouldered. A few years younger—maybe thirty-four, thirty-five—Gray had brown hair streaked lighter by the sun, a pair of level gray eyes and an easy, relaxed style that could morph into hard-ass in an instant. Right now, his pitying gaze shifted from his fiancée’s sister and went cold and hard when he looked at Ben.
“What the hell happened?”
“I don’t know yet. When I got here, Faith was in shock. I didn’t want to leave her until Charlotte could take over.”
After
