One Night Standoff - By Delores Fossen Page 0,68

moments, but then she hurried to Clayton to make sure he was okay. But the look on his face let her know that he wasn’t.

“You’re hurt,” Lenora said.

Clayton frantically shook his head. “No. But you are.”

Lenora had no idea what he meant, but then she looked down and saw the blood on the front of her shirt.

Oh, God.

Maybe it was the blood or something else, but Lenora suddenly felt woozy. The room started to spin, and she could barely make out Clayton’s face.

However, she heard his voice.

“I’m getting you to the hospital now.” He scooped her up in his arms and started running.

Chapter Eighteen

“She’ll be okay,” Clayton heard his brother Wyatt say to him.

Wyatt wasn’t the first family member to try to reassure him that Lenora would get through this. So had Harlan and Declan, who were now on the phone trying to get an update on the investigation wrap-up. Kirby, too, had tried to give Clayton some reassurance before the medics had taken him up the hall of the Maverick Springs Hospital to be checked out.

Even though Kirby had arrived in an ambulance, he thankfully didn’t appear to have any serious injuries. Ditto for Clayton’s brothers and Stella. No injuries.

But Lenora was a different matter.

She’d been in the examination room with Dr. Landry for what seemed an eternity now, but after checking the time, Clayton realized it had been less than a half hour.

Clayton would have gone in with them, but the doctor had said she needed to give Lenora a thorough exam. Yeah, Lenora and he had been intimate, twice, but he doubted Lenora would want him in there for that. And that meant he had to wait while everything inside was yelling for him to make sure she was all right.

He didn’t know how bad her injuries were, but there’d been blood, so Lenora had likely been shot. That meant both the baby and she could still be in danger.

How the hell could he have let this happen to her?

She’d put her safety in his hands, and he’d failed her in the worst kind of way.

Clayton cursed Quentin, and even though the man was dead, it didn’t lessen his anger. Quentin’s jealousy and need for revenge had caused four of his hired guns to be killed, it’d put Clayton’s entire family at risk and it would give him enough nightmares to last a lifetime. He’d never forget seeing that blood on Lenora’s shirt and the terrified look in her eyes when they’d come under attack.

Declan finished the phone call he was making, and all of them turned toward him to hear what, if anything, he’d learned.

“That was Agent James Britt.” Declan kept his attention nailed to Clayton. “They found the recording at Lomax’s sister’s house. Just where Lomax said it would be. It confirms that Quentin did indeed hire the gunmen to come after you and Lenora.”

Well, that tied up everything in a neat little package. Maybe. “Any signs that James had anything to do with this?”

Declan shook his head. “But he just rattled on about how sorry he was that Lenora nearly got killed. I don’t think he’s dirty, but I think he knows he did a lousy job with the way he handled things, including the time when she worked for him as a CI.”

A lousy job was right, but Clayton would take that over a dirty agent, and it was looking as if James was no longer a suspect in any of this. Later, when he saw the agent, he would apologize for suspecting him. And that brought him to the next question.

“Any chance that Melvin had a part in Quentin’s plan?” he asked Declan.

“Sorry, but no. I was looking forward to arresting him for something, but looks like we’ll have to wait. There’s no proof whatsoever that Quentin or Riggs hired Melvin to do anything wrong.”

Yeah. But Clayton didn’t know how hard he’d be looking into Melvin’s dirty dealings. If Lenora made it through this and both she and the baby were okay, then Clayton wanted to focus on them and not the man who’d been part of his past. Strange that it had taken something like nearly losing Lenora to put things in perspective.

Clayton again looked at the door to the room where she was being examined, and again he considered going in there. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could wait to learn how she was doing. And even though this conversation about the wrap-up of the investigation was important,