No!
“Watch out!” Reed’s voice boomed from somewhere behind her.
Morrisette was already swimming toward shore, but she looked over her shoulder and—
Bam!
With a terrifying crack, the boat’s prow rammed into the side of Morrisette’s face.
Blood bloomed across Morrisette’s forehead as she let out a sickening moan.
Morrisette didn’t move.
No. Oh, God, no!
Despite the pain Nikki kicked hard. Using one arm, she fought the current and swam toward the motionless woman. “Morrisette!” she yelled frantically, gulping river water and choking as she swam. “Hang on!”
But it was no use.
Before Nikki could reach the unmoving woman, Morrisette sank like a stone.
CHAPTER 5
“What the hell were you thinking?” Reed demanded, raking stiff fingers through his hair. He was seething, his eyes dark with a deep, underlying worry, as he stood at the end of Nikki’s hospital bed in the emergency room of St. Luke’s Hospital.
The last two hours had been a blur—an ambulance ride after he’d dragged her from the river, doctors and nurses in the ER, checking her, hovering over her while Reed waited impatiently for her diagnosis. He’d been worried sick when he’d pulled her from the river, had been scared out of his mind that she might not survive, but now that he knew she was going to recover, that she hadn’t lost the baby, his anger was rising. And he wasn’t bothering to hide it. A bad sign.
She slid her gaze away from his. “I told you, I was working on the story.”
“Not good enough, Nikki.” To his credit, he paused, looked away, attempted to contain himself, but he was failing. “I asked you not to go to the crime scene,” he said.
“There was no asking about it,” she shot back, her own temper rising. “You ordered me.”
“And you disobeyed.”
“I don’t remember the whole antiquated ‘obey thy husband’ in our wedding vows,” she threw back, staring at him again. “That wasn’t our deal, remember?” She wasn’t about to put up with his attitude. She felt bad enough as it was. Guilt, ever sharp, needled into her heart.
“No . . . hey, don’t play that game with me,” he warned. “I ‘ordered’ you as a police officer. I ‘asked you’ as your husband.” A vein started to throb near his temple. “And—big surprise—you ignored me.”
“Sometimes the lines get a little foggy, y’know. Indistinct. Blurred between the cop and the spouse.”
“Not this time,” he argued, jabbing a finger at the floor. “This time I was talking to you like a detective who is in charge of a crime scene where a homicide had been discovered, a place specifically off-limits to the public and,” he added before she could cut in, “the press. You know that, Nikki.” He glared at her, then threw his hands into the air. “I don’t know what I have to do to get through to you. And more importantly, you put yourself in danger. Not to mention the baby. And Detective Morrisette!”
Again she felt that painful prick of guilt.
He looked up to the tiled ceiling. “For the love of—What the hell were you thinking?”
“I told you, I was going after a story and . . . and . . .” She let out a long sigh. “Look, I’m sorry.”
“Are you?” He shook his head, his hair gleaming under the dimmed lights of her room at St. Luke’s.
“It’s my job.”
“Then quit. Okay? It’s too dangerous. No. No, that’s wrong. You make it too dangerous. You, Nikki. Not only for yourself, but for others.” He was beside himself.
“But, Reed. I saw something,” she said. “There was a boat under the willow tree.”
“What?”
“I think someone was there who shouldn’t be.”
“You’re right about that,” he said, and she knew he was talking about her.
“Just listen—”
“No . . . I don’t care if you saw a boat, or a yacht, or a damned submarine in the river, okay? It doesn’t matter!” He was shaking his head, his emotions raw. She’d known that he’d been worried sick when he’d dragged her from the river, had heard his voice crack with fear. “Nikki! Nikki, oh, Jesus, honey. Are you okay? Oh, please, God. Nikki!” He’d been kneeling beside her in the tall grass and the mud and had looked over his shoulder frantically. “I need an ambulance! Right now! For my wife! Can someone call an ambulance? Now!”
But once they’d made it to the hospital and she’d been diagnosed with only a dislocated shoulder, her pregnancy still viable, his fears had morphed into a quiet, seething rage as he’d heard from a deputy that Morrisette was teetering between life and death, on the edge and in emergency surgery.
All because she’d tried to save Nikki.
“How is Sylvie?” She hated to ask, but had to.
“Who knows?” he snapped, then quickly gained control of himself. “Still in surgery. But as far as I know, alive.”
She’d heard that Morrisette had suffered a broken jaw and not just a mild concussion but a serious brain injury requiring surgery.
Blowing out a sigh, he shook his head and stared at the ceiling tiles. “I don’t . . . I don’t really know. I mean, they’re not saying she’ll pull through.”
“Not saying?” she repeated, sick inside. “But surely . . . I mean . . .” She couldn’t, wouldn’t think that Reed’s tough-as-old-leather partner wouldn’t make it.
“She’s strong. A fighter. You know, she always says she’s ‘Texas strong,’ whatever the hell that means. But . . . well, we just have to wait.” He cast a look to his wife that was a little less caustic. “She took a bad blow.”
“I know.” Nikki cringed beneath the bedsheets and remembered the prow of the boat striking Morrisette with a horrid sharp crack. Blood had poured from Morrisette’s head, staining the river as the detective had lost consciousness and turned ash gray. Reed had dragged Nikki from the river while a female deputy had gone in after Morrisette and hauled her out of the water to start CPR on the muddy bank in the ensuing pandemonium.
The ambulance Reed had demanded had arrived within minutes, the EMTs taking over from the deputy who had started CPR on Morrisette on the muddy bank of the river. Within seconds Reed’s partner had been put on a stretcher and carried into the waiting vehicle. The second ambulance showed up seven minutes later. Reed had ridden with Nikki to the hospital and stayed with her during her examination in the ER. Her diagnosis was simple: a dislocated shoulder, the result of being rammed into by the unmoored boat lurching wildly in the swollen river. Thankfully, despite a feeling that something had broken while she’d been in the river, she hadn’t miscarried.
At least not yet.
She touched her abdomen with her right hand, consoling herself with the new life still growing tenaciously inside her. That, at least, was a blessing.
She thought about Morrisette’s phone call, the one Nikki had overheard while hiding beneath the rim of the bank. “So,” she asked carefully, as she knew Reed wouldn’t want to discuss his case. “Is it true that Bronco Cravens called in the homicide?”