In A Fix - Mary Calmes Page 0,92

Ingram hated me enough to shoot Dallas just to watch me suffer. And even if Ryder tried to protect Dallas, and shot Digby, he could still get caught in the crossfire.

I couldn’t have that.

And there was also Ella to consider. She could get up at any time and become a target. Murray wanted to kill me to hurt her, but if he saw her, and had a clean shot at her, that might change on a dime.

I couldn’t have that either.

It was a mess, and I had no idea how to keep the guy I loved, and my best friend, safe in the middle of—

Jesus. Worst timed epiphany ever.

Somehow or other, Dallas Bauer got in under the tripwire around my heart and made himself at home alongside Ella, who had apparently been there all along, just waiting for company.

Digby’s phone chirped, and he checked the display.

“He’s here,” he said, smirking at me. “Sorry you can’t say goodbye to Dallas.”

I wasn’t worried about that. My entire focus was on disarming the two men in the house with us. Andrew Murray, outside in a car, was not my most immediate concern.

Lunging for the stove, I grabbed a heavy professional-grade pan hanging from the pot rack above and turned and caught Digby in the side of the head, hard enough that he dropped like the proverbial ton of bricks. Whirling around, I heard a shot at the same time I flung the pan at Ryder.

My aim was off. I meant to hit him in the chest. I thought the surprise would give me a second to jump him, but he ducked at the same time I hurled the pan at him, and it caught him square in the nose. The gush of blood was instantaneous as he too went to the floor.

I could have looked for the gun, maybe should have, but he’d dropped it, so I rushed over to check on him and hit him in the head again, just to be safe. He was out cold. Rounding on Digby, checking quickly, I saw that he wasn’t moving. And that’s when I felt the burn in my right arm and saw the blood. I’d been shot once when I was a policeman, and once as a fixer; both had hurt much worse than I was feeling at the moment. Lifting my T-shirt, I was relieved to see that the graze on my left side, near my ribs, wasn’t a bullet hole. I sacrificed a dish towel to the stemming of my blood, absolutely certain that Dallas wouldn’t give a damn.

“Croy!”

Dallas’s yell was loud and high, and I could hear clearly how scared he was.

“I’m out here,” I called back. “It’s all clear.”

The fact that he came through the archway before I finished telling him that it was safe to do so, told me that he had already been rushing to me. His safety was of no consideration; he just wanted to see me. It made my stupid heart stumble just a bit.

His Glock was drawn as he bolted across the room to me, while at the same moment, the front door came crashing down and the FBI stormed through it in full riot gear.

My arms went up, as I’d been trained, still holding the pan I’d smacked Digby and Ryder with. That I’d got the chance to hit Lund twice was satisfying. Dallas started yelling, and I was not surprised that Assistant Special Agent in Charge Reina Montez was the fifth one through his obliterated front door.

“I knew he was overreaching,” I told Montez, who was standing at Dallas’s counter talking to people on her phone, on a handheld police radio and, I was guessing, on Skype—or whatever the FBI used—on her tablet. “I knew you’d double-check on Ella.”

“Your faith is gratifying,” she deadpanned, squinting at me as she continued to talk to people, but watching the EMT clean and bandage my side.

Dallas had taken the time to throw on some jeans so old and faded and frayed and ripped to hell that they left nothing to the imagination, and a T-shirt in much the same condition, and was standing with his arm around Ella’s shoulders, talking to Higa and several agents from the DEA. He didn’t want to leave me, but I needed him to stand with Ella and be her support, so I’d insisted.

“Was Murray outside?”

“He was, and now he’s on his way to Virginia to be interrogated.”

“People are going to be so jealous that your office caught him.”

I saw