Troublemaker Read online

  “Wait,” Bo said, lifting a hand toward him. She was surprised to see blood on her arm, her hand. “I’m not critical, right?”

  He hesitated, his expression still fierce and set as he stared down at her. “Right.”

  “Get in touch with Axel first. That’s more important.”

  Morgan’s jaw set, then he started tapping the screen of her phone. “I’m sending him a text. If the hacker is capturing all his calls and hears my voice, he’ll know it’s all gone to hell and bolt, alert Congresswoman Kingsley. ‘Ha ha, big brother, I was right,’” he read to her. “He should be able to figure that out, because you’d never call him big brother.”

  After the zipping sound that signaled the text had been sent, he tapped the screen some more. “I’m calling Jesse direct, instead of 911. I want to keep this as quiet as possible, give Axel time to throw a net over his hacker,” he said to Bo, then, “Jesse, this is Morgan. We’ve had some trouble at Bo’s house. One man dead, Bo’s injured, not critically. Get some people out here, but keep it quiet. Nothing over the radio. This is all tied in with why I’m here.” He listened for a minute, then said, “Okay,” and thumbed off the call. “Jesse’s getting everyone rounded up,” he said, then eased down to sit on the edge of the sofa with his hip against hers.

  “I almost had a heart attack,” he growled. “I heard Tricks bark, looked out the window, and saw him jab that barrel against the base of your skull. I grabbed my weapon and went out the back door, but I expected to hear a shot every second.”

  “I had some use as a shield,” Bo said drowsily. Her neck burned and throbbed, but overall she just felt sleepy and very fuzzy. “That was the only reason. Thank goodness it wasn’t Yartsev.”

  “Yeah. He’d have had a better plan.”

  She would likely never have seen Yartsev, she thought. She’d have driven off, he’d have killed Morgan as soon as Morgan stepped outside, then perhaps he’d have waited for her to return. Probably not; she’d have simply returned home to find Morgan’s body, and she would never, never have recovered from that. Kingsley, on the other hand, hadn’t had the skill or the experience to pull it off. But she was tired of thinking about it, tired of fighting to stay awake. “I’m so sleepy,” she mumbled, and closed her eyes.

  “Baby, no, you can’t go to sleep.” He put his hand on her shoulder and shook her.

  Her eyelids cracked open just enough for her to give him a baleful look. “Did you just call me baby?”

  His lips twitched. “I did. And you can’t do anything about it.”

  She managed a smirk. “The joke’s on you. I don’t mind at all. Just let me rest, okay?”

  “You are resting. You’re flat on your back.”

  “But you keep talking, and I want to take a nap. Just a short one.”

  “No dice.”

  “Then get a washcloth and get some of this blood off me, okay?”

  As soon as his weight left the sofa and he disappeared, Bo closed her eyes and went to sleep.

  She was roused by the slow slide of a warm, wet washcloth over her arm. “Tricked me, didn’t you,” he said without heat, his touch firm but tender.

  She didn’t feel guilty. “Just for a minute. I’m so tired.”

  “Adrenaline crash and blood loss.”

  “Where’s Tricks?”

  “Lying right here. She’s fine.”

  Her phone signaled an incoming text, and Morgan picked it up. “He said, ‘Gloat, why don’t you? 10-4.’ He understands.”

  She didn’t see how he could tell that, but he was the one who worked with Axel so she took him at his word.

  She was silent for a while as he carefully cleaned as much of the blood off her as he could. She’d have loved to change out of her bloody clothes but didn’t feel like going to the exertion of taking them off. No doubt she’d be taken to the nearest hospital where they’d be cut off her anyway. She didn’t care; she never wanted to wear them again.

  Despite her fatigue she began thinking of practical matters. “I’ll need some pajamas and fresh underwear,” she murmured.

  He gave her a startled look. “Right now?”

  “In the hospital. There’s no way I can get out of going, is there?”

  “None.”

  “Then gather some things together for me. Pajamas, underwear, robe, toothbrush and toothpaste, hairbrush. Also some jeans and sandals, a shirt and a bra. Make that two pairs of underwear, just in case. And anything else you see that might come in handy.”

  He leaned over and kissed her. “Now I know you’ll be all right.”

  “Yeah? How?”

  “You’re giving me orders, just like when I first showed up here.”

  “Someone had to. You weren’t taking care of yourself.”

  “And you aren’t taking care of yourself now. I think I’ll wait until reinforcements get here before I get your things,” he said, proving that he was smarter than the average bear.

  “I’m lying here, aren’t I?”

  “Yeah, but I can’t tell the difference between asleep and unconscious, so I need you to be awake.”

  “All right, all right.” Her neck was hurting worse by the minute; she wasn’t certain she could go to sleep anyway.

  “I think I’ll get a tattoo of a bull’s-eye on my neck,” she threw out to see what kind of reaction she could get out of him. Given that she currently didn’t feel like doing anything, not even sitting up, that was about the limit of her entertainment.

  “Bullshit,” he said, frowning down at her.

  “Hey, you did.”

  “I got the tattoo before I got shot.”

  “I can pretend I did, too.”

  “All right, so ‘Mom’ on my triceps would have been less in-your-face, but the GO-Teams are an in-your-face group of guys. One time we—” Whatever tale he was about to get into was halted when he lifted his head at the distant sound of sirens. Tricks jumped up but didn’t run to the door as she normally did whenever she heard something unusual. Instead she stood by the sofa and gave her tail an uncertain wag; the expression on her face was the same one she’d gotten as a puppy whenever she broke something and didn’t know exactly what had happened but figured she was guilty anyway. She whined softly.

  Bo cautiously shifted enough that she could touch Tricks, slide her fingers deep into the soft fur. “It’s okay, princess. I smell bloody, but I’m fine.” To Morgan she said, “I expect you’ll be heading to D.C. as soon as I’m hauled off, right?”

  “It’s my job,” he said, not even hesitating.

  She hadn’t expected him to stay and wouldn’t have asked that of him. What was going on was a lot bigger than what had just happened here, despite the dead man lying in her yard.

  The sirens rapidly got closer and louder. Morgan stood to look out the windows as the parade of vehicles roared into the yard. “Jesse’s leading the posse,” he said. “Medics right behind him.” He opened the door to let the medics in and went out to meet Jesse.

  From that minute on, Bo had no control at all—not that she’d had a lot before. Within a minute her house and yard were swarming with crisis personnel. Medics surrounded her, their bodies preventing her from seeing anything other than them. Morgan’s tee shirt was cut off from around her neck, but part of the fabric stuck and they left that, bandaged over it. It said something about how she felt that she made no protest at the blood pressure cuff, the light in her eyes, the IV line that was started almost immediately. Jesse came in to see her, his face that combination of carefully blank eyes and nothing-going-on-here expression that cops used to keep events at a distance so they could function.

  “You’re leading an interesting life lately, Chief,” he said.

  “I keep interesting company.”

  “Tell me about it. He filled me in. We’ll handle things on this end. Don’t worry about it. Nothing will hit the news until he gives the okay.”

  She managed a truncated nod because the thick bandage kept her from moving her head very