Star Witness - By Mallory Kane Page 0,61
not letting anybody see him right now.” Lucas looked past her at Roebuck and nodded.
“Ma’am?” Roebuck said. “We need to get going.”
Dani couldn’t tear her gaze away from Lucas. “Please don’t lie to me,” she said. “It’s too important.”
He glanced at Officer Roebuck and nodded toward the door. The officer walked toward the exit door to wait. Once he was out of hearing, Lucas stepped close to her.
“Harte is unconscious. They’re taking him to surgery any minute now. It’s going to be touch-and-go. If the bullet shifts, it could go into his heart. My parents are there with my sister, waiting.”
Dani pressed her lips together, working to stay calm. Her heart was threatening to burst again. She could barely breathe, her throat was so tight. But she heard Lucas loud and clear.
Harte is in critical condition. He needs his family.
“I understand,” she said hoarsely, then grabbed his shirtsleeve. “Please, when you can, have someone call me?”
“Okay,” he said gently. “As soon as I can.” He turned and walked toward another detective who was obviously waiting to talk to him. She saw him rub the back of his neck as he spoke to the other man.
Dani squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn’t wipe away the vision of Harte’s soft, dark gaze as he’d lowered his head to kiss her, or the pinched pallor of his face as he’d looked up at his big brother and tried to pretend he wasn’t bleeding to death.
They’d been on the run together for less than twelve hours. But she didn’t think she could live if he died.
* * *
ETHAN DELANCEY DIDN’T like hospitals. People died there. He paced back and forth between the window and the door of the private room where his youngest brother lay—too quiet, too pale, too still.
He stopped and looked at Harte for what must have been the twentieth time. How the hell had this happened? He and Lucas and Travis were the ones who flirted with danger. It was cops and soldiers who took their lives in their hands, who went out there day after day to try to make the world a safer place. They understood the risk. They dealt with it.
Harte hadn’t followed in his brothers’ footsteps. He’d taken a different path—the path of their dad and their notorious grandfather. He was a lawyer. Lawyers didn’t get shot.
Ethan walked over to the bed. He felt so damn helpless. Reaching out, he straightened the tubes that fed oxygen through Harte’s nostrils. Then he brushed thick dark hair off his brother’s forehead.
Behind him, he heard the room door open. He turned. It was Lucas. “Hey,” he said.
“How is he?” Lucas asked, closing the door and coming up beside Ethan.
Ethan shook his head. “No change. Didn’t the doctor say he’d be awake by now? It’s been almost twenty-four hours since the surgery.”
Lucas nodded. “The surgeon said they wanted him to sleep as much as possible. That’s why they kept him in the ICU for twelve hours.”
Ethan rubbed his temples and flopped down in a hard vinyl chair near the bed. Lucas leaned against the wall near the window. He crossed his arms.
“You look pretty scruffy,” Ethan observed. “What’s the latest?”
Lucas sighed and rubbed his jaw, his palm scraping like sandpaper across the stubble. “When did I talk to you last?”
“Yesterday, after you got Dani to the hotel.”
“You mean Saturday.”
“No, I mean yesterday. You’d talked to Paul, but you said Stamps had lawyered up.”
“Right. After I got Paul’s statement that it was Stamps who’d shot him, I talked to Stamps’s lawyer. That was a massive waste of time. She claimed he was sedated after the traumatic events and couldn’t be questioned.”
Ethan laughed. “Seriously?”
“I’m thinking she’s setting him up for an insanity defense.”
“What about Paul?”
“I asked her what their response to his accusation would be, and she wouldn’t talk about it.” Lucas shook his head. “I’m trying to get a court order to test for gunshot residue—”
“Talk about a waste of time,” Ethan put in.
“I know. Stamps, sedated or not, will have hosed himself down by then.”
“What do you think about Paul saying Stamps shot him?”
“That’s odd too. Paul was nearly hysterical at the scene, screaming that Stamps had tried to kill him. I’ve got several witnesses that heard him. But later, after he was discharged from the emergency room, he said it was an accident. Said Stamps was firing wildly.” Lucas sat on the small couch under the window and leaned forward, elbows on knees.
“I thought you told me—”
“That Stamps only fired