As he had told Violet, his vehicle of choice was the Honda VTX motorcycle, and he was thankful that was what he had used to get him to the crime scene.
For the most part, he obeyed the law and practiced safe driving, except when he could find back roads where he could really cut loose and enjoy all the power the Honda had to offer. Now, he weaved in and out of Tampa traffic, went up on shoulders, barely stopped to check before he roared through intersections, cut the wrong way down one-way streets, and reached Tampa General's emergency room nearly nine minutes after he bolted from the Turner house.
It was breaking all the rules, and he didn't care. He flashed his badge as he went past the emergency staff. "The officer that was shot."
"Exam One," the nurse responded automatically, and Mac was around the corner and striding away before she could say anything further.
The curtain was pulled back about a third of the way, and so he saw her right away, sitting on an exam table.
She was wearing a hospital gown, her hair in a loose ponytail on her shoulders, her makeup gone. She looked tired, vulnerable, young. Doing her best to mask it, she was carrying on a half-hearted banter with the two troopers standing in the room, but he could feel her fragility. It wasn't just a resonance of his own fear. Where they couldn't see it but he could, her hand clutched the edge of the table. The rest of her was perfectly still, except for the slight alterations of her facial expression, as if she was concentrating all physical manifestations of what was going on inside her in that one hand, that one tiny tremor. The top tie of the gown was loose, so he could see the bandage. The bullet had taken a chunk out of the surface area between her collar bone and neck. An inch to the left, the slug would have torn through her throat. A few inches higher, it would have been her face. Few inches lower, through the chest.
It filled him with a fury for her, a fury he wanted to expel by breaking something, someone. But from Roscoe's report, there was no one to expend his violence upon.
Violet had shot and killed her assailant, a junkie who panicked when she stopped him for an expired tag, who had fired at her point blank out the driver's window.
He stepped through the curtain, and her head turned. The first thing he saw in her face was panic. Then her expression altered, and what he saw there made his heart squeeze up hard in his throat.
Relief. Overwhelming relief.
Tears welled up in her eyes, but she blinked rapidly to try and hide the reaction that Mac had a feeling had stunned her as much as it did him.
He was to her in two steps, taking that shaking hand in his, zoning in immediately on where she was holding in her fear. He squeezed it, reinforcing the message that he was here. He was here. He wanted to pick her up, cradle her, but she was a cop, and he understood what she could and couldn't do. But he wouldn't keep it out of his face, his anger, his fear, his desire to shake her and hold her both.
He tuned in enough to realize an awkward silence had fallen as he and Violet stared at one another. One of the troopers cleared his throat.
"I don't believe we've met."
Violet opened her mouth, something to deflect questions, protect his identity, he was sure, but Mac turned, still holding her hand, and extended his other. "Mac Nighthorse. Homicide Squad, Major Crimes Bureau."
"Well, goddamn. Rick Martinez." The man took his hand, some of his wariness receding. "Didn't know Violet had a guy. Didn't know anyone was brave enough to take her on toe-to-toe."
"Someone was brave enough today," Mac said shortly.
Why couldn't they see how shook up she was? Why was he the only one seeing it?
Another uncomfortable pause. "Well," the other man said, sizing up the situation with an even look. "Hank Ramm. We were talking about who was going to take Officer Siemanski home."
"I'll take care of her," Mac said.
Hank, older than Rick, old enough to be Violet's father, looked toward her for confirmation. Mac wanted to be insulted, but he wasn't. He was irritated with the delay, but glad that Violet had men who watched out for her, though he wondered where the hell they'd been earlier today. It was an unfair question, since he knew troopers patrolled alone, but what was rational didn't mean a good goddamn to him at the moment.
He waited a heart-thudding ten seconds.
"He'll take care of me," she said softly.
The men nodded, and a few minutes later made their goodbyes. Hank pressed her opposite shoulder as he moved past her. "You call if you need anything, Violet. You did real good today. You remember that. You'll be back on the job in no time. Consider it a well-deserved vacation."
Mac waited until they left, then turned to her. "They're putting you on desk duty until they close the file?"
She nodded. "I know it's standard procedure, but I can't help thinking it's also because I'm young, less experienced, and I could have..."
"Don't. You're alive. No matter what happens, that's never something to regret, because if he'd do a cop, he'd do anyone."
She nodded, held up a warding hand as he took another step forward. "Mac..." Her voice broke and she sucked it in, shuddered. "I can't - "
"Just let me hold you," he said. His arms went around her and she held rigid for a second, fighting it, and then she had her face pressed against his chest to muffle her sobs, her hands clutched in his shirt, clinging hard to the skin and muscle beneath, digging in painfully as she shook.
Mac looked over her head and saw Hank at the curtain. The man nodded, gave him a thumbs up. He turned, and really left them this time, apparently satisfied Mac would do as he said. Take care of her.
"It's okay, baby." He held her as close as he could, bending his head down over hers, brushing his lips over the bandage. Just a graze, a glancing shot that could so easily have hit its mark. "You're all right. You're alive."
"I was so scared, Mac," she said, mumbling against his shirt. "I've never been so scared. I've never had to pull my gun, then he was there, reaching beneath the seat, faster than I thought anyone could move, and training kicked in. I was telling him to stop, but he wasn't, and he jerked it up at the same moment I got mine out and there was this single moment when he shot, everything in slow motion." He'd gotten off the first shot while she was still shouting at him to stop. Mac's jaw tightened. Jesus Christ. It was as much prayer as expletive.
"And then, it was all so slow, I knew he was going to fire again. There we were, a foot away from each other, his finger tightening, and I fired. Right in his face. He's gone. I killed him. I took everything away."
"He took everything away." Mac caught her chin, made her look up at him, caught her tears on his thumb. "He made his choice the moment he made the decision to draw that gun. I'm taking you home. Let's get you dressed."
"I know what a lot of guys think, that women have no business on the force. And it's because of things like this. Look at me, I'm falling apart."
"No," he said firmly. "No, you're not." He lowered his voice, brought his face even closer to hers, so their foreheads were pressed together and she closed her eyes. "You said that I was a male chauvinist, that I didn't want my Mistress to be a cop. That's true, but it's not because I think you can't do the job. It's because I know you can, because you're brave enough to do what you did today, to keep your wits about you and do the job, and I don't want to lose my Mistress. You're a hell of a cop, Violet, and to the man who loves you, that's a terrifying thing."
She wanted to ride his bike rather than take a squad car home. She got on behind him and he gave her his helmet. When she slid her arms around his waist, and her body up against his, she was holding him a little tighter than necessary. He didn't mind. She could squeeze him like a python if she needed to do so. Before the painkiller wore off, he wanted to hurry and get her home. It was a flesh wound, but he knew she'd be sore all over tomorrow anyway. The first time you were in a gunfight, you tightened up every muscle, and your body stayed that way unconsciously for hours. He needed to get her into a hot bath, give her a massage.
"I want to go to your place," she murmured. "Please." He put his hand over her clasped ones on his chest. "We can be there in fifteen minutes."
He lived in a small bungalow on the marsh, one of Florida's prime pieces of real estate with the run down look of a fishing shack on the outside, a rambling, cozy interior and a breathless view of the marsh from the large back screen porch.
He parked the bike in a crofter on the side and took her hand to help her off. It wasn't a highly athletic maneuver, but he could tell she was still shaky, and the muscles were starting to stiffen, as he predicted. On a surge of emotion, he simply bent and scooped her up to carry her up the small path to his back porch door.
"Mac, I can walk," she protested. "It was just a graze, after all."
"I know. Humor me. I need to take care of you." That quieted her down, and she placed her hands on his neck, those fingers little bigger than a child's. Those tiny hands had held a service revolver steady today and blown away a man determined to kill her. He pushed it away, held her tighter as she rested her head against his shoulder, settling in with a little sigh.
Violet knew that not all male submissives were nurturers. She'd gotten a hint and a hope when Mac made her dinner. But a nurturing, straight male submissive cop with powerful alpha tendencies? It broke all the preconceived molds.
When he took her to the bathroom first thing to run her a bath, she could all but hear the plaster shatter and fall away. The thought almost coaxed a weary smile to her lips, pressed against his shirt front.
The bathroom was clean and had a deep, old fashioned claw foot tub. He set her on the commode and knelt beside her, one arm braced on the outside of her hip as he kept his other beneath the water flow. After it warmed, he took her hand in his, placed it beneath the stream, and she almost wept at the comforting heat of his touch combined with that of the water.
"Too hot?"
She shook her head. "Perfect."
"Okay." He dumped in some mineral salts from a vial on the shelf and tossed in a couple green bath beads. "The salts worked so good at Tyler's I went out and got myself some for daily use," he explained at her curious look, managing a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "The beads have got aloe, one of my Mom's remedies for scrapes and cuts. They've also got somewhat of a male aftershave smell, but nothing too overpowering. Do you have to keep the bandage dry?" She shook her head. "I can take it off. There's no stitches or anything."
"I'll do it." He took his hand out of the tub, released her, dried his fingers on a towel. "With your permission," he said quietly, and then began to slip the buttons of her ripped and bloodstained uniform shirt. As he took it off her shoulders, she watched his face when he ran light fingers over the bandage taped over the curve that joined her throat to her shoulder. He put gentle pressure on it. "Why they always use this goddamned hair-pulling tape... Take a deep breath, sugar." She did and he pulled it off so quickly, there was just a faint tingling burn.
"You could get a job doing bikini waxes," she said, trying for humor.
"Lucky me." he responded, laying his fingers over the welt that showed the track of the bullet. There was murder in his eyes, and she felt something rise up, threaten to choke her.
"Mac..."
"Sshh, it's all right." He shook it off, visibly. Gently taking the shirt all the way off her arms, he reached around her to unhook her bra. She pressed her cheek to that wide bicep a moment, letting herself feel her connection to him, the connection he had underscored with a deep black marker by showing up at the hospital to take her home.
He didn't have to do this, didn't have to be part of her life in this way, but after less than a week of having one another, he had chosen to do so. Had as much as said that's what he wanted when they made love after dinner less than three nights ago. This was one of the worst days of her life, or her best, depending on the perspective, and he had jumped in both feet to be part of it, no holding back.
Pressing a kiss to the top of her head, he brought the garment forward and off her body. He unlaced her boots, took them off, his hands sure and strong on her ankle, the arch of her foot, and then gently raised her to her feet, removing her trousers and the practical underwear beneath. She stood before him only in her delicate cross and her own fragile, mortal skin. He turned, took a wash cloth off the counter, dampened it and turned back to her. Bemused, she felt him raise the cross from her skin, touch it and her sternum with the cloth.
"Gun powder," he explained. "We'll take some silver polish later, give it a good cleaning, but that'll do for now." Then he tossed the cloth in the sink, bent, slid his arms around her, and lifted her again. The hard thighs, the buckle of his belt and the buttons of his shirt pressed against her. She welcomed them, the heat of his skin through the fabric. Though she didn't think she was cold, she was shivering.
"Shock," he said, as if reading her thoughts. He lowered her into the water, shut off the spigots. When the heat of the water enveloped her, she moaned in pleasure, and he smiled, kissed her fingers. He arranged a cushion beneath her head with his other free hand when she wouldn't let go of him.
"I'm going to scare you up some food. I'll keep checking in on you, so don't you worry about falling asleep. I'll take care of you tonight. "
"I know," she said, her eyes falling half shut. Her nose recognized the smell of the bath beads, smells that had clung to his skin from the first night she had met him. They comforted her, surrounded her, so she could find it in her to be an adult, let his hand go, but something in her chest tightened painfully as his fingers slipped from hers. She listened to his feet recede, was absurdly comforted when she realized the kitchen was close enough that she could hear the sounds of him moving around, finding her dinner.
The proximity worked for Mac as well, because he was able to see the profile of her head on the edge of the tub. Keeping his peripheral eye on her as he set some tea to brew, he pulled one of his Mundial cooking knives from the maple wood block knife holder and quickly and quietly chopped up some fresh asparagus and set it in a soup stock to cook. When a tremor ran through his hand, he stopped a moment, taking a steadying breath, tearing his thoughts away from the sudden image of a bullet fired at Violet's face, tearing through that pale, delicate flesh and ending her life.
He prepared the soup with extra care and precision, put some fresh baked bread in the warmer, keeping his mind in a culinary net so it couldn't go where he wasn't ready to let it go yet. He could have his mental breakdown later. She needed him to be the strong one right now.
A soft cry and a splash from the bathroom, and he was at the door before the knife hit the counter. She blinked wildly, and he knelt by her, drawing her to him.
"It's okay, sugar. Flashback. They happen a bit at first, whenever you doze off.
You're okay."
"God." She pushed her hands through her hair. "I am so pathetic."
"No, you're not," he said, tightening his hands on her. "You want to know what I did the first time I took a life?"
She nodded, her arms folded against her front. It was an unconscious gesture of someone trying to shield herself from a pain that was attacking her from the inside. He rubbed his hands over her wet bare back, fingers marking each bump of her spine, trying to soothe.
"At first, I tried to blow it off like it was any other day. You think, when you're a rookie, you're supposed to be as tough about it as the older guys. I pretended like I was fine, even got a little snappish when the vets tried to bolster me up, like Hank did for you. Later, I remembered the way they looked at me, not snapping back like they normally would. They knew I was going to break. They tried to get me to go for drinks with them. No way, I was fine. I went home because you know, that was standard, I didn't have any choice. They let me go for the rest of the day." He nudged his chin against her forehead, and she burrowed her head deeper into the crevice between his head and chest.
"I woke up at two in the morning in a sweat," he continued. "The perp's face, those shots, roaring in my head. I put on my clothes, drove a hundred and twenty miles and knocked on my mother's door at four in the morning. Not a smart thing for a guy to do when the woman in question has two sons who are cops. I probably took ten years off her life, making her think one of us had been killed.
"But she knew. She looked at my face and knew. I was too manly and old to let her undress me and put me in a tub of course." He smiled against her temple. "But she ran me a bath, fed me, sat with me, and held my hand when I finally fell asleep on her couch next to her. I know she didn't let go. Not until I woke up and felt I could face it, because I'd managed to get through the first night, thanks to her."
"You're not making that up." She lifted her head, looked hard at him.
"No, I'm not." He smoothed back her hair, kissed her brow.
"How many times...?"
"Seven times in twenty years," he said. "Once it was a woman. Once it was a fourteen-year-old kid." He framed her face in his hands. "Just some advice. Give yourself time to accept it, mourn it. Let it run around in your head awhile, wait a few days to analyze. In our line of work, there's no walking away. Sometimes the choice has to be made, and sometimes it's made for us. I can tell you from experience, the first way is a lot harder to live with than the second. It's that simple. Okay?" She nodded, thinking, and he brushed his thumb over her lips. "Let me get you something to wear, if you're ready to get out." Violet was, and she waited in the tub until he brought her one of his T-shirts. He didn't let her dry herself. He had her step out onto a soft floor mat, and then rubbed her gently with a thick terry cloth towel. A dark heavy cotton that had his musky smell, the T-shirt was so large it fell to mid-thigh and slipped off one shoulder. When he had it on her, he picked her up, carried her out onto the back porch where the sun was setting on the marsh in a glory of rose and gold, a confirmation of life, and miracles. She looked at him as he settled her, his face intent, and knew it was a confirmation of something else, something too clearly present in this past hour to be anything else.
Of love.