SAVED BY THE SHERIFF’S DEPUTY

Paramedic Sherri Steele refuses to believe someone’s out to get her—until she’s held at knifepoint in her own ambulance. It’ll take her high school crush to convince her she needs protection—and deputy sheriff Cole Donovan is as persuasive as he is handsome. But when his brother rises to the top of the suspects list, Cole’s torn between family duty and the woman he’s never forgotten. With every emergency call to the paramedics turning into an attack on Sherri’s life, Cole’s convinced Sherri has a stalker. Cole needs to know whether his brother is the culprit before things spiral out of control. Survival—and a future with Sherri—depends on discovering who wants to cause trauma to this EMT.

Eddie’s hold around Sherri’s neck eased mercifully.

But she still struggled to pull in a full breath as her gaze clung to Cole. His soft gray eyes that had once sparkled with mischievous teasing now brimmed with a tangle of regret and despair.

“I wasn’t going to hurt nobody,” Eddie muttered.

“I know.” That telltale muscle twitch in Cole’s cheek gave Sherri an odd pang of reassurance. “But I can’t help you if you don’t drop the knife.”

“You don’t wanna help me!” Eddie shoved Sherri into Cole’s line of fire and ran toward the rear door.

Thrown off balance, she tumbled right into Cole’s arms. They closed protectively around her. And for a few blissful seconds she felt fifteen again.

“Thank you for getting me out in one piece.”

He cradled her jaw in his palm. “You were amazing back there.”

She stiffened, not wanting to acknowledge how something inside her came alive at his touch, at the admiration in his gaze.

“I’m sorry,” he whispered, and she had the uncomfortable feeling he was apologizing for a lot more than his out-of-control brother.

SANDRA ORCHARD hails from beautiful Niagara, Canada, where inspiration abounds for her award-winning novels. She’s passionate about writing stories that both keep the reader guessing and reveal God’s love and faithfulness through the lives of her characters. She loves to hear from readers and can be reached through her website, sandraorchard.com.

Emergency Reunion

Sandra Orchard

www.millsandboon.co.uk

MILLS & BOON

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But He said to me, “My grace is sufficient for you,

for My power is made perfect in weakness.” Therefore

I will boast all the more gladly about my weaknesses,

so that Christ’s power may rest on me.

—2 Corinthians 12:9

To Charlotte Cripps and Stacey Weeks. Thank you!

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

About the Author

Title Page

Bible Verse

Dedication

ONE

TWO

THREE

FOUR

FIVE

SIX

SEVEN

EIGHT

NINE

TEN

ELEVEN

TWELVE

THIRTEEN

FOURTEEN

FIFTEEN

SIXTEEN

SEVENTEEN

Dear Reader

Extract

Copyright

ONE

At the sight of her ambulance’s side door yawning open, Sherri Steele tripped to a stop. This afternoon was headed the same way as the unsettled June weather. Stormy. Again.

“What’s the holdup?” her partner groused from the other end of the stretcher straddling their patient’s threshold.

She motioned with her chin for him to pull the stretcher holding the elderly gentleman back into the small bungalow. “I think we have company.”

She’d closed the ambulance’s door, but in this quiet retiree neighborhood, locking it hadn’t seemed necessary. Before her partner could ask more questions, she whispered a quick prayer for protection, slipped out and padded toward the rig. Protocol demanded that a paramedic call the police if she feared for her safety, a practice she’d been a stickler about ever since her former partner had gotten himself killed, but the last thing she needed on her record was a nuisance cry-wolf call if it turned out to be nothing more than a curious kid inside. Maybe one of the neighbors’ grandkids. Or worse. No one at all.

Her finger tensed over the radio’s call button. She’d take a quick peek and if she saw anyone over four-six, she’d call it in.

“Get back in here with the patient and let me look,” her partner hissed from the bungalow.

She put her finger to her lips and waved him off as she melted against the side of the ambulance to shield herself from the view of whoever was inside. The guys would never let her live it down if she turned tail and it turned out to be nothing. Please, God, let it be nothing.

The hair on the back of her neck prickled. Someone was definitely in there. She drew in a deep breath and glanced through the opening.

A lanky teen with unnaturally black hair stood at the wall-mounted cabinet, jabbing at the lock with a screwdriver. He slammed his fist into the steel and cursed.

Sherri jerked back out of sight and fumbled with the button on her radio. That was no curious grandkid.

The next instant she was yanked off her feet and hauled inside the truck. The kid spun her around and pinned her to the wall, the butt of his hand crushing her larynx. Drug-crazed eyes locked with hers. “Open it!”

“Okay,” she mouthed, unable to get a breath past the pressure on her throat.

He slowly eased his hold, looking as if he wasn’t sure he trusted her. His heavy-lidded, gauzy blue eyes seemed vaguely familiar, which shouldn’t have surprised her in a town the size of Stalwart, Washington. But it rattled her more than ever. Maybe someone really was behind the bad things that only seemed to happen on her shift.

He shoved her toward the cabinet.

Making a show of thumbing through her keys, she depressed the call button on the radio and spoke as loudly and clearly as she could make her quaking voice cooperate. “We don’t carry narcotics on board the ambulance.”

“You’re lying!”

At least he didn’t seem to know that the four vials of morphine she carried for patients with extreme pain were on her person at all times. And she didn’t dare tell him that the rest of the good drugs were in the trauma bag, still with her partner and the patient inside the house. The last thing she wanted to do was give their hip-fracture patient a heart attack.

With any luck this kid was crashing so fast that in another few minutes he wouldn’t be able to put two and two together. By now her partner would have called the cavalry. She just had to keep the kid from going ballistic on her until they got here.

He grabbed her ponytail, twisted it mercilessly, and shoved her face into the cabinet. “Open it!”

Pain ripped through her scalp, exploded in her nose. Screaming, she rammed her boot heel into his kneecap.

He doubled over with a roar, but the grip on her hair only intensified.

Gritting her teeth against the torturous pull, she jabbed the keys between her fingers and swung. Her fist connected with his cheek.

Her partner charged up to the open side door. “Let her go!”

With lightning speed, the kid maneuvered her in front of him like a human shield. His arm tightened around her throat as he snapped open a switchblade. “Stay back!”

Dan, her six-foot, barrel-chested, former-army-medic partner, came to a dead halt at the foot of the door. His arms shot up, patted the air. “Okay, kid. Take it easy.”

Straining to pull in a full breath, Sherri stopped struggling.

Blessed sirens split the air, the sound screaming closer. But the sound made the kid shaky. Real shaky. “Tell them to stay back or I’ll cut her. I swear I’ll cut her.”

A whimper escaped her throat as she winged a desperate plea heavenward.

“Look at me,” Dan said in a soothing tone. “You don’t want to do this.”

“Don’t tell me what I want,” her captor seethed, pricking the tip of the knife into her cheek. “Nobody cares what I want.”

A sheriff’s deputy stepped in front of her partner. “I care.”

The kid’s hold on her neck loosened a fraction, and Sherri dared to breathe.

“You don’t care. You left.” The teen’s arm around her neck went rigid again, his knife poised dangerously close to her carotid. “You left and didn’t come back!”

The deputy pulled his stun gun and painted the teen’s shoulder with the laser beam. “Drop the knife and let her go, Eddie.”

“Or what? You’d shoot your own brother?”

Sherri’s heart jolted. This was his brother?

The deputy’s arm wavered. “I can’t let you hurt Sherri. You know that.”

Something about the way he said her name sounded achingly familiar.

His tortured gaze flicked her way, sending an unexpected flutter through her chest.

She gasped. “Cole?” When had he gotten back to town? Become a cop?

He winced at her breathless question and didn’t meet her eyes.

She hadn’t seen him since he’d left for college seven years ago. And never came back.

Not once. Not to see his brother. Not to see his father. And definitely not to see the three-years-his-junior neighbor girl who’d been nursing a colossal secret crush on him.

Eddie’s hold around her neck eased mercifully, but Sherri still struggled to pull in a full breath as her gaze clung to Cole. He was as tall as she remembered. But his brown hair was shorter and a shade darker. His chest broader. His voice deeper. And his eyes...

Those soft gray eyes that had once sparkled with mischievous teasing now brimmed with a tangle of apology, regret and despair.

She swallowed a rush of emotion.

“I wasn’t going to hurt nobody,” Eddie muttered, gesturing toward the cabinet with his knife. “He said the stuff was in here. Said it would be easy to lift.”

Cole edged closer, his stun gun still fixed on his brother’s shoulder, dangerously close to her own. “Who said?”

“The guy. The guy!” Eddie waved his knife as if Cole should know.

“Drop the knife, Eddie.”

“I just needed a fix.”

“I know.” That telltale muscle twitch in Cole’s cheek gave her an odd pang of reassurance. “But I can’t help you if you don’t drop the knife.”

“You don’t wanna help me!” Eddie shoved her into Cole’s line of fire and broke toward the rear door.

Thrown off balance, she tumbled out the side opening, right into Cole’s arms. They closed protectively around her, his legs already in motion. And for a few blissful seconds she felt fifteen again. He rushed her away from the ambulance and coaxed her onto a porch step.

Her patient’s porch step.

Remembering the poor gentleman who’d been in so much pain when they arrived, she lurched to her feet. “We need to transport our patient.”

Cole urged her back down. “It’s okay. Another ambulance is en route.” He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear, the tenderness in his gaze making it difficult to breathe.

She forced herself to inhale a deep breath, but with it came his distinctive, spicy scent. A scent that had whisked her into silly happily-ever-after fantasies more times than she cared to remember. Memories assaulted her of the sweet kiss and soul-stirring hug they’d shared after she’d played paramedic and treated the swollen, bloodied knuckles he’d gotten taking out his anger on the wooden fence between their yards. She squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn’t let him inside her head again and definitely not her heart.

At a sudden painful pressure against her cheek, she jerked back, her eyes popping open.

Cole’s lips dipped into an apologetic frown. “Your cheek is bleeding.” He held out a bloodstained tissue.

She accepted it from him and pressed it to the wound, cringing at what a wreck she must look. What was she supposed to say? Good to see you after all these years. Swallowing the lump in her throat, she settled for, “Thank you for getting me out in one piece.”

He cradled her jaw in his palm and coaxed the muscles to relax with a soothing brush of his thumb. “You were amazing back there.”

She stiffened, not wanting to acknowledge how something inside her came alive at his touch, at the admiration in his gaze.

Dan hurried toward her, trauma bag in hand.

But Cole didn’t budge. “I’m sorry,” he whispered, and she had the uncomfortable feeling he was apologizing for a lot more than his out-of-control brother.

* * *

If Cole needed any more proof that he shouldn’t get involved in a serious relationship, he was staring her right in the face—sun-kissed hair pulled back in a ponytail, save for the wayward strands shielding wary blue eyes; trembling lips that even tipped down still dented her cheeks with those adorable dimples he used to lie awake thinking about; and that sweet strawberry scent that would forever transport him back to the day he’d stolen a kiss and she’d responded with a hug so touching it had probably kept him from doing something really stupid seven years ago—it and her admonition not to lose faith. Sherri Steele. The epitome of what his messed-up family had cost him.

She’d been the bright spot in their neighborhood, always quick to offer a smile or lend a hand.

Now, with another paramedic examining her neck, thanks to his brother’s ruthless attack, she couldn’t even look at him.

Exhaling, Cole tore his gaze from the purple smudges blooming under her eyes and turned to his partner, who was hauling his handcuffed brother off the sidewalk.

“This is your fault!” Eddie screamed, wrestling against Zeke’s hold as he hurled increasingly colorful insults at Cole, his expression rabid.

This was not how Cole had hoped his first shift with the Stalwart Sheriff’s Department would go down. Let alone his first meeting with Eddie. He’d anticipated needing the full armor of God to battle Eddie’s inevitable resistance, not his stun gun. He’d been away seven years too long. Seven years of trying to convince himself that he wasn’t his brother’s keeper. Seven years of running from God. He tried not to cringe at Eddie’s hollowed-out cheeks, heavy-lidded bloodshot eyes, the rat’s nest of jet-black hair—not his natural color. Taking another deep breath, Cole bit back the lecture scraping his throat.

His brother was in no condition to hear it. And he had no right to say anything. If he wanted Eddie to listen to him, he needed to start by earning back his trust.

“He’s tripping out pretty good,” Cole said to his partner, who’d finally got Eddie subdued. “We’ll need to take him to the hospital before we book him.”

The balding heavyweight who’d bellowed at the sheriff for being “saddled with breaking Cole into the way things worked in Stalwart” propelled Eddie toward their cruiser. “Family connections will not get you any special treatment from me,” Zeke hissed in Eddie’s ear, shoving him hard against the trunk and digging a knee into Eddie’s bony thigh as he reached for the rear door handle.

Cole started toward him, but then stopped himself. The manhandling was over-the-top, but if he stepped in Zeke would accuse him of favoritism. He’d already made it clear that he didn’t appreciate Cole “usurping” the position that should have been his nephew’s. Cole should’ve known the ornery deputy would try any tactic to prove Cole didn’t deserve to be here. Three years with the Seattle PD clearly didn’t rank higher than blood with him. Talk about favoritism. As Zeke clamped his meaty palm on Eddie’s head and pushed him into the backseat of the cruiser, Cole hoped his brother wouldn’t add his silence to the list of things he held against him.

He should’ve made more effort to connect since he’d returned to town two days ago, considering it was the only reason he’d taken the job in the first place. Never mind the dozen calls he’d made to Eddie’s cell phone. In this condition, his brother probably hadn’t even known he was ignoring them. Cole should’ve dropped by the house. And if he’d had to face his father, well...so be it.

He wondered if Sherri still lived next door. She hadn’t seemed to recognize Eddie, so she’d probably moved away before the dye job and downward spiral. If not for the call from an old high school buddy alerting him to the situation here, Cole might not have recognized Eddie at first glance, either.

“Did you hear me?” Zeke rounded the hood of the car.

“What?”

“I said did you get the paramedic’s statement?”

Cole blinked, glanced back at Sherri, now being helped to her feet by her partner. She’d pulled the elastic from her hair, leaving it to tumble in soft sandy waves over her shoulders. She was more beautiful than he remembered. Of course, the last time he’d seen her she’d been only fifteen—just a girl. To an eighteen-year-old, the three-year age difference had seemed unbridgeable.

“Cole?” Zeke repeated gruffly.

“Not yet.” He pulled his notebook from his pocket and headed toward Sherri, hating how scattered and unprofessional he was coming off. He couldn’t have made a worse first impression if he’d tried.

And Zeke’s griping about how his nephew wouldn’t have forgotten wasn’t helping.

The second ambulance had arrived. As Sherri’s partner briefed the paramedics on the patient awaiting transport, Cole cut her away from the group. “I need to ask you a few questions for the report.”

Her answering smile looked more like a wince. “It kind of hurts to talk.”

His chest tightened. If he’d just manned up and gone to Dad’s place the day he’d pulled into town, he might have averted this whole incident. “You really were amazing back there. Held it together when most people would’ve freaked.”

Once again the compliment seemed to make her uncomfortable, or maybe it was him. Her gaze flitted from her partner to the police cruiser to the vicinity of his chin. “Would you have zapped him?”

“In a heartbeat. If I’d had a clear shot.”

Anguish flickered in her eyes, reminding him of the caring girl who’d nursed back to health every injured creature he’d brought to her doorstep.

He reached for her hand as naturally as she’d reached for his the day he’d been the injured creature on her doorstep. Her fingers felt like ice and remained coolly rigid. “I love my brother, Sherri. But your welfare comes first.”

Her surprised gaze jumped to his.

“I’m not going to stand by and do nothing while he hurts innocent people,” he added, needing to convince her for a reason he didn’t want to examine too closely.

Her gaze dove back to the sidewalk as her hand slipped from his grasp.

Her retreat hurt more than it should have, considering she’d just been ambushed by his brother.

“Listen, I can come by the ambulance base later to get your statement. But I need to confirm a couple of things. Eddie took you hostage to coerce you into handing over narcotics?”

“Not at first. I surprised him when—” grimacing, she splayed her fingers over her throat and sank back to the porch step “—when he was trying to break into the cabinet.”

“Okay.” He hated to press her for details when talking was obviously painful. But... “One more question for now. Do you have any idea who the guy he referred to is?”

She shook her head.

Cole pocketed his notebook and hunkered down in front of her until she couldn’t help but look at him. “I’ll make sure Eddie never bothers you again. I promise.” The disbelief that flickered in her eyes at her nod pierced clean through his soul. “I’m sorry this happened.”

“Fat lot of good sorry does her,” her partner growled, stalking toward them. “You need to lock that punk up and throw away the key. He’s done nothing but terrorize Sherri for weeks!”

“What?” Cole’s heart couldn’t have jolted harder if the guy had slapped paddles on his chest and zapped him. He jerked his attention back to Sherri. “Is that true?”

She shook her head repeatedly this time.

“Someone’s doing it,” her partner hissed.

“Whoa, whoa. Back up a second.” Cole pulled out his notebook again. “These incidents, were they reported?”

“No, they’ve been little things. The kind of things that could happen to any paramedic. Crank calls. Getting sideswiped.” He motioned toward Sherri’s black eye. “Assaults.”

“So what makes you think that Eddie’s behind them? They all sound pretty random.”

“’Cause they only happen to her!”

The color drained from Sherri’s face, her white cheeks a sickeningly stark contrast to the bruises around her eyes and throat. “Dan, leave it alone,” she whispered.

Cole’s heart lurched. She was afraid. Anyone with two eyes could see it. So why didn’t she want the incidents investigated? Did she know who was behind the other attacks?

Dan shot a scowl toward the rear window of the cruiser. “A kid like that doesn’t hang around a neighborhood like this. No way did he just happen upon our ambulance. Not unless he’s breaking into old folks’ houses to grab their prescription meds.” His lips curled menacingly. “Either way, he needs to be locked up.”

“No argument here,” Zeke agreed, his rear resting on the cruiser’s hood, his legs stretched casually in front of him, his arms crossed.

Cole ignored him, focusing instead on Sherri as he clasped her elbow. “When I come by I’ll want details on every suspicious incident.” Her trembling reverberated through him, sending way too many unwelcome scenarios bouncing around his brain.

Her lips flattened into a silent line, and she stepped backward toward her truck.

“Okay?” he pressed. “I want to help you get to the bottom of what’s going on.”

Zeke snorted. “Why don’t you start by barking up your own family tree?”

Sherri wrapped her arms tightly around her middle and shook her head. “It’s not your problem, Cole.”

“I’m making it my problem.”

TWO

“What am I going to do with you?” Sherri’s boss rested his hip on the corner of his cluttered desk. “Every time I turn around you’re getting into trouble.”

The rain that had started soon after Eddie’s attack now pelted the office window as fast and furiously as her heart pinging her ribs. The ambulance base was a three-strike operation. Not that any of the incidents that had happened to her lately could really be called strikes, no matter how much her boss liked to intimate as much. Yes, she’d left the ambulance unlocked, but not one of their paramedics would have thought twice about leaving it unlocked in that neighborhood. “I’m sorry, sir,” she said.

“I’d like you to take a few days off.”

“That’s not necessary.” The last thing she wanted was free time. The busier she kept, the less time she had to think. To relive her dead partner’s shooting. She swallowed and caught herself wincing at the pain still plaguing her throat courtesy of Eddie’s stranglehold. “I’m fine. Really.” Or she would be if she could shut out the memory of Cole’s concerned gaze searching hers and his husky declaration that he was making her problem his problem.

“You may be fine,” her boss scolded, “but the station’s morale has hit rock bottom. One more incident like this and no one’s going to want to work with you. You know what they call you?”

“Yes, sir.” She lifted her chin. Princess Dark Cloud was actually a step up from what they used to call her—Ice Queen.

He studied her in silence for an unnervingly long moment. “Your partner Dan has convinced one of the sheriff’s deputies that the incidents haven’t been merely unlucky coincidences. Is that what you think?”

Sherri pressed her sweaty palms against her navy blue slacks, debating her response. Her boss wouldn’t want to hear what she really thought. But she heard the way her fellow officers still whispered about the shooting when they thought she wasn’t around. They blamed her for letting Luke die. They didn’t want her here and would do just about anything to drive her to quit. She was sure of it. But she was just as sure that God had let her survive for a reason.

She curled her fingers into fists. “I don’t know what to think, sir. But I assure you I can handle whatever curveballs are thrown at me.” Because there was no way she’d let Luke down a second time.

“Unfortunately, some of those curveballs are turning into boomerangs that are beating us upside the head.”

Tension hummed along her nerves. “Pardon me?”

“Reinhart, the widower whose wife died of a heart attack last month, is demanding an inquest. Claims your refusal to come up to his apartment without a police escort cost too many minutes. Minutes that could’ve saved his wife.”

“Sir, I’m deeply sorry for his loss, but the building was flagged for multiple drug-related incidents. I followed protocol.”

“Yes,” he said, but didn’t sound pleased about it. No doubt thinking if it hadn’t been her in that ambulance, he wouldn’t be facing an inquest.

“Any paramedic would have done the same. Did Dan say otherwise?” The men liked to be cowboys, but she’d thought they’d learned their lesson after what had happened to Luke. If she and Luke had followed protocol that morning, he might still be alive. Her chest tightened at thoughts of other choices that might have kept him alive.

Her boss shrugged. “Not in so many words.”

A rap on the door made her jump, but not nearly as fitfully as her insides trampolined when Cole stepped into view.

His gaze narrowed in on her cheek and his eyes darkened.

She finger-combed her hair over the butterfly bandage binding the cut his brother had given her.

“You must be Donovan.” Her boss beckoned Cole in. “You can use my office to question Sherri. Her shift is covered, so take as long as you need.”

Sherri nodded, straining to appear cooperative when everything inside her wanted to bolt.

He stepped through the door, and the room seemed to shrink, much like the crisply ironed shirt straining at his muscular shoulders.

She looked away, not wanting to notice how good he looked in a uniform. Not wanting to imagine that concern for her had etched those creases into his brow.

He might say her welfare came first, but she’d stopped believing in fairy tales long ago. Never mind how princelike he’d seemed today. He’d do the same for any innocent person. He was here to question her about the incidents, not to get reacquainted.

The sooner she told him what he wanted to know, the sooner he’d be on his way.

As her boss stepped out of the room, she sank into a chair and grasped for a light tone. “You’re his dream come true. If everything that’s happened goes on the record, he’ll claim I should be put on administrative leave for my own safety until you can figure out who’s behind everything.”

“Sounds like a smart move to me.”

“No,” she said firmly. “It’s not.”

His eyebrow arched curiously. “Why’s that?”

She tapped her fingers to her lips, fighting to rein in her galloping pulse. She couldn’t tell him that her days off were worse. That she’d rather fight off a drug-crazed kid than— She cut off the thought and casually slid her fingers from her mouth to tame an invisible strand of wayward hair. “Because I need every shift I can get if I’m going to qualify for the next flight medic job that opens up,” she improvised with the same story she’d used on her parents to justify taking extra shifts. Once she got the flight medic job, things would get better. There wouldn’t be so many reminders.

Cole smiled, the corners of his eyes crinkling in that way that used to make her heart flutter.

She silently groaned at the realization that it still did.

“A flight medic, wow! I can’t help feeling a little proud that you took my advice.”

The warmth in his voice did funny things to her insides. That and the fact he remembered his murmured, “You’d make a good paramedic,” that day she’d treated his swollen knuckles.

“It’s good to see you doing so well.”

She pasted on a smile and nodded. “So what brings you back to Stalwart?” She glanced at his left hand, but his fingers were tucked out of sight. “You married? Come back to settle down?” Her cheeks heated. Why on earth had she asked him that?

His gaze darkened. “No, working law enforcement and marriage aren’t a good mix.”

“Hah,” she scoffed. “I have several happily married uncles and cousins who would loudly disagree.”

“Appearances can be deceptive.”

Resisting the urge to massage her bruised throat, she sat up straighter. Yeah, she knew all about keeping up appearances. “Then you’ll understand why I don’t want these incidents blown out of proportion. Because, between you and me, I’m pretty sure I’m just being hazed.”

“Hazed?” Cole’s eyes widened. “But you’ve already been on the job a couple of years. Haven’t you?”

“Almost three.” She pressed her lips together, wishing she’d kept her mouth shut. Hazing had seemed like an innocuous way to say her colleagues didn’t want to work with her.

Cole studied her too intently as he pulled a notepad and pencil from his shirt pocket. “How about you tell me what you remember about each incident?”

She exhaled, relieved that at least he hadn’t pressed for reasons for her hazing suspicions. “I’m not convinced they can be called incidents. Dan is overreacting. Nothing has happened to me that hasn’t happened to any other paramedic at one time or another.”

“Difference is they keep happening to you.”

Yeah, okay. There was that. “They were incidental things like being called to an address that didn’t exist or being propositioned by a half-doped patient who claimed he’d never called an ambulance.”

Cole flinched as if the thought of some creep pawing her made him feel sick.

“Nothing I couldn’t handle,” she stressed, trying not to squirm under the intensity of his troubled gaze. The reaction of the other paramedics, who’d slapped her on the back and complimented the Ice Queen for kneeing the loser in the groin, had been easier to handle. Ironically, their hazing probably had helped her tough it out when she’d felt like quitting as much as they wanted her to.

“When did the incidents start?”

“I can’t say for sure.” The whispering had started first. Luke’s death had been the tipping point for her colleagues. He’d been a good man, a true friend. And the only paramedic who hadn’t griped about teaming with her after she’d gotten her first partner fired for drinking on the job.

“You did the right thing,” he’d said the first time they’d driven to a call together. He hadn’t said what he was referring to. Hadn’t needed to. She wasn’t sure if he’d ever known how much those five little words had meant to her, because they’d never talked about it again.

“Sherri?”

She jerked her attention back to Cole. “Um.”

“Can you give me dates, addresses, descriptions?”

She stared at Cole, taking a moment to register his question. “I’d have to pull out my reports.”

“Are they handy?”

She rolled her eyes.

“Okay, we’ll worry about that later.”

No, there couldn’t be any later. With Eddie’s attack, her boss’s innuendoes and Cole’s unexpected charge back into her life, she was scarcely handling now. She pushed to her feet. “Just a second and I’ll grab them.” As she tugged the coil-bound book from the top shelf of her locker, her Bible toppled to the floor, spilling a month’s worth of church bulletins and inserts at her feet.

She quickly stuffed all but one back into her locker and rejoined Cole in her boss’s office. Handing Cole the pamphlet for Teen Challenge, a faith-based residential program that helped young men and women overcome addictions, she said, “I found this while I was grabbing my call journal and thought it might be something you’d want to look into for Eddie. Some of the men that are in the program spoke at our church last week. It’s turned their lives around. If you could convince Eddie to go—”

“I don’t want to send him away,” Cole said gruffly. He glanced at the pamphlet then slipped it into the back of his notebook. “I appreciate the suggestion,” he added, his tone gentler this time. “Helping him is the reason I came back to Stalwart.”

Of course it was. Sherri glanced away, focused on the world outside, blurred by the rain streaming down the window. In the months after he’d left, her imagination had read too much into his surprise parting gift, let alone the gratitude that had been in his eyes after that world-tilting hug. But when months turned into years, the truth eventually had sunk in. Not that it would matter anymore now. She couldn’t afford to let anyone get close.

“If I’d been here for Eddie in the first place...” Cole continued, but then shook his head and motioned to her call journal. “Tell me about the other incidents.”

She skimmed the entries and offered several examples, a few of which she had to admit that even she couldn’t see the guys pulling. She closed her journal. A lot of them may have been purely random occurrences.

Cole looked up from his notepad. “Is that all of them? Your partner mentioned your ambulance being hit.”

She frowned. “That couldn’t have been deliberate.”

“Where your safety is concerned, I don’t want to take any chances.”

She gulped at the determination blazing in his eyes. Did he mean her safety in particular?

Bothered that she cared one way or the other, she glanced away. She just wasn’t used to having an ally in her corner, at least not at work. Her family was great, but between the veteran firefighters and deputy-sheriff cousins and uncles, she preferred not to talk shop around them.

“Tell me about the accident,” Cole prodded.

“Oh, right. Um, it happened last week. A pickup sideswiped our ambulance as we turned on to County Road 15. There’s a police report on that one.”

“Did they arrest the driver?”

“No. The pickup was stolen. They found it abandoned down the road.”

“Did you get a look at the driver?”

For the first time she realized what Cole was really asking, had been trying to get at all along—could this guy have been his brother? This wasn’t about her at all. Not really.

“Sherri?”

“No, I didn’t.” She squinted at the window, picturing that night. “He was wearing a hoodie. That’s all I remember.” Was it any wonder the driver hadn’t seen her turning off the side road with his hood up like that? The collision couldn’t have been deliberate.

“Were you hurt?”

Cole’s anxious tone didn’t help her churning stomach, but she managed to shrug as if it was all in a day’s work.

He looked over his notes, his eyes as stormy as the sky. “Can you think of any reason why someone would target you?”

I let my partner die. She didn’t say it, just shrugged again.

“A patient or maybe a family member of a patient who blames you for a death?”

She gasped.

“I take it you’ve thought of someone?”

“Rolph Reinhart has demanded an inquest into his wife’s death due to delay in treatment. But he’s over eighty years old. I can’t see him doing any of—” she motioned to the notebook he was writing in “—those things.”

“I’ll talk to him. Can you think of anyone else?”

She racked her brain, flipped through her call journal. “No, no one.” For the most part she’d been fortunate with outcomes. Not like Luke who’d been threatened by a shooting victim’s fellow gang members when the victim hadn’t survived. They’d claimed Luke was tight with their rival gang and had deliberately let their man die.

“How about a jealous ex-boyfriend?”

She snorted. “No.” She’d broken up with a guy or two over the years, but none had ever caused trouble.

“A rival then? Maybe a woman who—?”

“No.”

He squinted at her, clearly perturbed by her certainty. “Your fellow paramedics are not behind these incidents, Sherri. Your partner was the one who urged me to investigate.”

“Could’ve been to throw off suspicions.”

“You obviously didn’t see his face as he treated that cut on your cheek.” Cole grazed his fingers across the hair she’d nudged over the bandage.

She inhaled reflexively.

Big mistake. With him so close, she could smell the spicy scent that instantly transported her back to her sophomore year—and the dreamy guy living next door.

“Why are you so convinced your coworkers are behind these incidents?”

She sprang from her chair and walked to the window, regretting that she’d said anything. Out on the street a woman fought to right her umbrella, turned inside out by the wind. Sherri could so relate. Dan’s protective outburst had been out of character, but maybe the guys had merely opted to try another tactic to derail her. “Do you think Dan would’ve asked the police to investigate if these incidents had happened to him or one of the other guys?”

Cole didn’t respond for a long time.

She sneaked a peek over her shoulder at him.

He, too, was watching the woman wrestling with her umbrella. “You think it’s because you’re a woman that they’re trying to scare you into quitting?”

She let out a humorless laugh. Close enough. “You’ve got to admit that it’s a lot more palatable than thinking some faceless stalker is after me.”

“But what if you’re wrong?”

* * *

The next night Sherri’s “faceless stalker” comment was still replaying in Cole’s head as the compulsion to stick close to the ambulance base and keep an eye on her warred with the need to visit his brother.

He didn’t blame Eddie for refusing to talk to him yesterday after the way he’d let Zeke manhandle him. He probably should’ve bailed him out of jail himself instead of leaving it to their father, but he’d hoped the brief taste of life behind bars would scare him straight.

Cole slid into his truck and stared at the drug rehab pamphlet Sherri had pressed on him yesterday, still a little stunned that she’d been more concerned with getting his brother help than fretting over her own situation. It had physically hurt to look at her black eye and the cut his brother had sliced in her cheek. The least he could do for her was get to the truth about the suspicious incidents on her shifts.

Reinhart was definitely out as a suspect. The man was on oxygen 24/7, but he had a son, a son Cole had yet to catch up with. As for Sherri’s suspicions of her colleagues, he hadn’t gotten the sense from any of the other paramedics that they resented her or had any other reason to haze her.

Then again, besides her partner, no one he’d interviewed had seemed concerned that the rash of incidents involving her was anything more than coincidence. Even her uncle, a sergeant in the department, hadn’t known about them until Cole mentioned them. Apparently, Sherri hadn’t breathed a word about the incidents to her family.

Cole tucked the pamphlet she’d shared into his glove box. He wasn’t surprised that her uncle couldn’t imagine anyone having a reason to deliberately target someone as caring as Sherri. Eddie certainly didn’t have one.

At least no reason that Cole knew of. But he didn’t really know his brother anymore. Which was what he’d come to town to change. Cole started his truck and headed toward the old family home. He’d let himself get sidetracked long enough.

As he turned on to their street, Cole’s palms started to sweat. He hadn’t faced his dad in seven years and wouldn’t today if he could avoid it. He parked his truck a few houses shy of the driveway so he could slip out the back if Dad made it an early night with whatever woman he was dating these days. He shrank back at sight of Sherri’s parents exiting the neighboring house. He waited until they’d locked up and driven off, then hurried past.

From the corner of his dad’s lot, Cole cut across the lawn, expecting to kick up clouds of dandelion fluff with every step. But under the forgiving cover of twilight, the place looked surprisingly tidy.

Maybe Eddie’s arrest had drummed some responsibility into Dad. The TV flicked on in the living room, and Dad settled on the couch. Alone. No date.

Cole clasped the porch stair rail. The green paint crumbled off in his hand and an odd sadness twisted in his chest. Painting the rails had been his and dad’s spring project for as long as he could remember. That and tinkering on the old Camaro.

Bypassing the porch for the moment, Cole rounded the corner of the house to peek in the garage. He rubbed a clear circle in the dingy window. The Camaro was still there. He wondered if Dad ever worked on it with Eddie.

Being the youngest, Eddie had always been more of a mama’s boy, which was probably why it’d almost killed Mom when he’d chosen to stay in Stalwart with Dad. Cole couldn’t blame Eddie for not wanting to leave his friends, but if he’d heard how Mom had cried herself to sleep every night, maybe he wouldn’t have minded making new friends.

The ones he had here sure hadn’t done him any favors.

At the sound of a bedroom window sliding open, Cole ducked behind the hedges that hugged the base of the house and the memory of a much younger Sherri playing hide and seek in his yard whispered through his mind. As an only child eager to join in their games, she’d helped bridge the wide age gap between him and his brother on lazy summer afternoons. A backpack thumped the dirt under the window. Then, clad in a black hoodie, Eddie perched on the window ledge of the darkened room.

Cole’s temper flared. Eddie wasn’t supposed to be out after dark—a too-little-too-late curfew had been imposed by Dad, who clearly wasn’t paying any better attention to what his youngest son was up to than he had before Eddie’s arrest. As his brother jumped to the ground, Cole resisted the urge to read Eddie the riot act here and now, opting instead to see where he headed.

Eddie darted behind the garage and re-emerged a second later pedaling his bike.

Cole waited until he’d turned onto the street and had gotten a few houses ahead before he jogged back to his truck. When Eddie reached the corner, Cole pulled his vehicle onto the street at a crawl. This could be the break he’d been hoping for. Eddie had refused to snitch on his drug sources, but something told him his little brother was about to lead him straight to them.

Eddie crossed street after street heading toward the west side of town, seemingly oblivious to Cole’s truck trailing a block behind him. Halfway up Belmont, Eddie ramped the curb and swerved to the back of a squat bungalow.

Parking in front of the playground a few houses shy of Eddie’s destination, Cole’s internal radar ratcheted to high alert. The neighborhood was one of the older ones in town. The postage-stamp lawns appeared neatly kept for the most part. But it didn’t take his brother showing up here to tell him something about the neighborhood wasn’t right. It was a Friday night, and the streetlights hadn’t kicked on; yet, there wasn’t a kid to be seen.

Cole quickly circled to the far end of the playground where soccer fields bordered the backs of the houses for the rest of the street. A discarded cold medicine package caught in the fence reinforced his suspicions that the guy Eddie came to see was a drug dealer. If he’d been driving his cruiser, he could’ve checked the system to see if they’d had any recent trouble in the area.

As he sprinted to the back of the house Eddie had targeted, the wail of a distant ambulance roused concerns for Sherri. But he couldn’t trail her ambulance, let alone do a thing to protect her until he got his brother out of here.

Peering past the detached garage between him and the house, Cole spotted Eddie picking his way up the back steps of the dimly lit bungalow. Its blinds were drawn, and Cole had no illusions the owner would welcome his arrival.

The wood of the dilapidated veranda groaned under Eddie’s weight.

Gripping the chain-link fence, Cole scrutinized the backyard for booby traps. Drug dealers could be sickly creative about safeguarding their privacy.

The veranda’s wooden floor suddenly cracked, and Eddie dropped out of sight, yelping like a whipped pup.

“Eddie?” Cole hissed.

A low groan rose from below the porch.

With one last visual sweep of the backyard, Cole vaulted over the fence. Monitoring the windows for signs of movement inside, he edged toward the house.

Eddie’s head bobbed above the splintered wood.

“What were you thinking?” Cole hissed, offering him a hand out.

Eddie startled at Cole’s hand in his face, but a burst of light from a nearby window got him moving. As he cleared the rotted floorboard, a pill bottle tumbled from his pocket.

Cole confiscated the drugs and stuffed them into his jeans pocket.

“Hey, that’s mine!”

“Only if you want to land yourself back in jail.”

At the scrape of the door’s dead bolt, Cole yanked Eddie into the shadow of a nearby bush. A second later the door cracked open.

From his vantage point, Cole couldn’t make out anything more than the guy was over six feet and had a pistol clamped in his fist.

He hovered in the doorway a long moment, his pistol aimed at the hole in the porch floor, then pulled the door shut again.

As the dead bolt clicked once more, Cole caught sight of Eddie’s bike propped against the side of the garage. No way had the man missed it. Cole dug his fingers into the fabric of Eddie’s hoodie. “We’ve got to get out of here, now.” Then, he’d worry about figuring out a way to shut this place down. One that wouldn’t land his brother in jail.

Or worse, on the wrong end of a vindictive drug dealer’s gun.

Eddie whirled the opposite direction. “My bike.”

Cole tightened his grip. “Forget the bike.” He hauled him across the driveway, scarcely giving him time to keep his feet under him, and plunged into the cover of the hedge edging the property.

Eddie slapped branches from his face. “What are you doing here?”

“Saving your hide. Now move.” He gritted his teeth to hold back a lecture. He intended to give it, but first he needed to put a good mile between Eddie and this place. Finding a sparse section, he shoved Eddie through the bushes into the next yard. “My truck’s at the park.”

The wailing ambulance he’d somehow stopped hearing blasted around the corner and braked at the foot of the driveway. At the sight of Sherri jumping from the passenger side, his heart lurched. He dug out his keys and slapped them into Eddie’s hand. “Wait for me in the truck.”

By the time Cole pushed back through the hedge, Dan and Sherri were rolling a gurney toward the drug dealer’s front door. “Wait!”

Motion-detector lights flicked on, exposing a suspicious mass in the branches of the tree in front of the house.

“Get down!”

THREE

Sherri dove to the dirt, scarcely escaping the giant feedbag that swung off a branch. The sack caught Dan in the back and sent him crashing against the gurney, which pitched onto her and punched the breath from her lungs.

Cole tore the gurney off her and propped it on its edge like a shield between them and the house. “You okay?”

A pleasant sensation fluttered through her chest at his protective presence. “Now I am.” She army-crawled toward her groaning partner.

“I’m fine.” Dan pushed her hand away. “Just give me a second to catch my breath.”

Cole pointed to the trip wire Dan’s foot must’ve caught. “You may not have a second! Get back to the ambulance. Both of you.”

“The trauma bag.” Sherri reached for it.

Cole ripped off the straps securing it to the stretcher and shoved it toward her. “Go,” he barked, drawing a gun from his ankle holster.

Heart in her throat, she pushed to her feet alongside Dan and ran hunched over to the back of the ambulance.

As soon as they jumped inside, Cole rounded the rear door and called for backup. “The call. What was it for?”

Sherri snatched up her stethoscope to check Dan’s lungs. “Asthma.”

Cole squinted at Dan. “Are you up to transporting a patient if this call turns out to be legit?”

She fumbled the stethoscope. Legit? He thought the feedbag was meant for her.

“Yeah, I can drive.” Dan stopped rubbing his chest and dropped his hand to his side. “Just got the wind knocked out of me. Good thing Sherri ducked when she did. It would’ve taken her head off.”

Cole’s strangled gasp left her own chest tight. That and the gun he had trained on the house.

Reflexively, her palms clapped over her ears, the shot that had ripped through Luke’s chest blasting through her head. Breathe. Cole’s safe. Dan’s safe.

“You okay?” Concern edged Cole’s voice. And the heart-in-his-eyes look he swept over her, as if he desperately needed reassurance she was truly unharmed, felt...nice. Really nice.

Slipping her hands from her ears, she forced her gaze away from the deadly steel in his hands to his attire—black jeans and T-shirt, not his deputy uniform. “What’s going on? What are you doing here?”

The muscle in his cheek flinched and her stomach fluttered. Had he followed the ambulance to keep watch over her?

He slanted a glance down the street, then returned his full attention to the house, not her. “I was in the neighborhood.”

Confused by his gruff response, she squinted through the deepening twilight at the truck parked at the curb a few houses away. His truck. And it had been there before they arrived. “How did you know about the trap?”

“Someone came out of the house,” Dan hissed, peering out the window on the ambulance’s side door.

Sherri squinted over her partner’s shoulder as a dark figure disappeared into the detached garage. “What do we do now?”

With an intensity that knotted her stomach, Cole peered past the ambulance’s back door he was using as cover.

“You can’t go after him. Not without backup!”

A sheriff’s cruiser whipped around the corner and careened to a stop behind the ambulance, silencing her objection. Cole flashed his ID. “We’ve got a booby-trapped property. One male in the garage. Unknown number in the house. Cover me.” Without waiting for a response, Cole snuck along the side of the house using bushes as cover.

Bushes! What good would a bush do him? It wouldn’t stop a bullet. Please, Lord, don’t let another man get shot because of me.

The sheriff’s deputy hunched behind his cruiser, his gun pointed at the garage as he barked orders into the radio on his shoulder.

The garage door rumbled open, accompanied by the roar of an engine.

Cole darted closer.

“Look out,” the deputy shouted as a motorcycle blasted from the garage and screamed away.

A deafening explosion blew out the windows of the house, rocking the ambulance.

“Cole!” Sherri shoved open the side door and sprang to the ground. Shielding her face from falling debris with her arm, she scanned the area she’d last seen him, except the explosion could have thrown him anywhere. Smoke stung her eyes as she silently pleaded with God to let her find him.

“There!” Dan jumped to the ground behind her and pointed to a dark shape on the far side of the driveway.

She sprinted toward him and scooped her arms under his armpits to pull him away from the fire.

“Through here.” Dan helped her pull him through a scraggly section of hedge into the next yard, where she instantly dropped to her knees at his side.

“Cole, talk to me. Cole!”

The deputy ordered emerging neighbors back into their houses between demands into his radio for fire trucks and someone to catch the man on the motorcycle. “Is he okay?”

Sweat slicked her trembling hands. “I don’t know. He’s not responding.” She forced herself to take deep breaths. Oh, God, I can’t have a panic attack. Not here. Not now.

“Try a sternal rub,” Dan ordered before dashing back to the ambulance.

Cole moaned at the pressure, but didn’t open his eyes or answer her.

“Cole, tell me where you hurt.”

Dan dropped the trauma bag beside her. “Anything?”

“He responded to pain, but isn’t talking.” Sherri checked his airway. “Airway clear.” She slid her fingertips to his wrist as Dan pulled out a stethoscope. “Pulse a hundred twenty and strong.”

She palpated his stomach and was rewarded with another groan. “Abdomen soft, no internals, yet. Cole, can you hear me?”

“He’s got decreased breath sounds on the left side. Could be looking at a collapsed lung.”

“How bad is that?” A kid skidded to his knees beside her.

Sherri’s breath stalled in her throat. “Eddie? What are you—?”

Dan surged to his feet. “You again?” He grabbed Eddie’s collar and hauled him away from her. “You made the call. Didn’t you?”

Sherri’s heart jumped to her throat. Eddie had set her up?

Dan shoved him up against the side of the cruiser. “What kind of sick—?”

“Hey, what are you doing?” The deputy rushed toward them.

“This punk attacked my partner yesterday trying to get drugs,” Dan growled. “He’s got to be behind this crank call, too.”

“I’m not,” Eddie cried. “You’ve gotta believe me!”

Disturbingly, Cole didn’t react to Dan’s accusations, didn’t even open his eyes.

The deputy snapped open his handcuff pouch. “This true, ma’am?”

Ignoring the question, she raised Cole’s left eyelid. “Cole, are you with me?”

Both eyes blinked open and a slow smile curved his lips. “Hi,” he said softly, then sheer panic swept over his face.

“Cole? Dan, forget the kid. I need you here.” She struggled to tamp down the alarm edging into her voice. “Cole, what’s wrong?”

Dan shoved Eddie at the deputy. “Keep him away from her.”

“I didn’t do anything,” the kid bellowed. “I need to stay with my brother.”

Cole rolled to his side and tried to push himself up. “Let him go. He didn’t—” His voice cut out on a frown.

“You need to lie still.” Sherri exchanged a worried glance with Dan as he caught Cole’s shoulder and compelled him to stay put.

Cole’s gaze shifted to her lips, his forehead wrinkling. “I can’t hear.” He pressed the heel of his hand to his temple, his gaze bouncing from her to the commotion around them. “I can’t hear anything.”

She leaned over him so he’d see the reassurance in her face and maybe read her lips. “You need to lie still so we can help you.” She flicked her penlight over his eyes. “Pupils round and reactive.”

His gaze darted back to his brother.

She laid her palm on his pounding chest and waited until he looked at her, her own heart galloping at how vulnerable he looked lying there. “Eddie’s fine.” She stuffed down the silly disappointment that Cole hadn’t been here for her as she’d first supposed.

“He’s got a contusion on the side of the head,” Dan reported. “No bleeding or fluid from the ears. Check for broken bones.”

Mentally cataloging the serious injuries they could still be looking at, she continued her palpitations, her fingers trembling. “Breathe,” she coached. He’d only been here because he’d been following his brother, not her. She wasn’t to blame.

Not this time.

Below his hipbone, Sherri’s fingers pressed into something hard. Probing it, she felt the distinctive shape of a prescription bottle. Glancing up, she found Eddie’s gaze fixed on her hands and swallowed the bile rising in her throat. They’d been buying drugs?

Cole’s hand locked on her wrist. “Please, don’t,” he whispered, a soul-deep pain shadowing his eyes.

Disappointment clutched her chest. He must’ve followed his brother here, confiscated the drugs Eddie had just bought. He wasn’t helping Eddie by covering for him. But just like the silly teenager who’d have agreed to anything if it’d meant Cole would notice her, she couldn’t say no. Was ignoring what she found the same as lying? Her heart seesawed in her chest, her gaze fixed on Cole’s. His brother had held a knife to her throat. Only an idiot would keep this to herself. Eddie was a danger to himself and anyone who came between him and a fix.

“You find something?” Dan’s voice cut into her thoughts.

She held Cole’s gaze for a long moment. She couldn’t not keep his secret. Not after he’d just saved her hide. No matter why he’d really been here. She tugged her wrist free of Cole’s grasp and quickly palpated the rest of his leg. “No broken bones.”

“Okay, our gurney’s toast. I’ll bring the ambulance around. We need to get it out of the way of the fire trucks anyway.”

“I can walk,” Cole said, his hearing apparently returning. He tried pushing himself to a sitting position with a frustrated groan.

She cupped his elbow to help him. “On a scale of one to ten, how bad’s the pain?”

“Three,” he said through gritted teeth.

She rolled her eyes. “I’ll give you some meds anyway, tough guy.”

“Thank you,” he murmured.

Warmth surged through her and with it the memory of the last time he’d thanked her for nursing his wounds. His soft kiss. Her first. And the hug that neither of them had seemed to want to end. She’d relived that moment too many times to count in the seven years since. She blinked away the memory, cleared her throat. “Just doing my job.”

He started to shake his head, winced at the movement. “I mean thank you for trusting me.”

Her heart flip-flopped. He was talking about the drugs he’d asked her to keep secret. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”

* * *

Two days later, Cole walked into the sheriff’s office, his head still throbbing along with his ribs, but at least his hearing was back to normal.

Or at least enough not to miss Zeke’s gloating stage whisper to the deputy beside him that his nephew wouldn’t have been off on sick leave less than a week into a new job. Cole pressed his fingertips to his forehead and temple, wondering how much of today’s headache was due to the mild concussion the doctor said he’d suffered and how much from dreading this interview.

He’d had every intention of handing over the drugs he’d found on Eddie to the sheriff and explaining the situation. But that was before Sherri had showed up and everything had blown apart. He hadn’t needed to hear what her partner had ranted to the deputy to know he figured Eddie had lured her there.

He had a bad feeling that whoever made the 9-1-1 call had deliberately set up Eddie. But who? And why? Questions he had hoped to have answers to by now. Cole sliced a glance at Zeke. The whole scenario had played nicely into his disgruntled partner’s agenda, but...that didn’t mean he’d set it up.

According to Eddie, the same guy who’d prodded him to raid Sherri’s ambulance had given him the tip on the supposed great deal at the drug house—not Zeke. Trouble was Eddie still couldn’t identify the guy.

The deputy who’d taken control of the scene outside the drug house motioned Cole to an interrogation room. “I figured you’d appreciate some privacy. Don’t pay any attention to Zeke. Trust me, no one else wanted his nephew to get the job.”

Taking a seat, Cole opted not to respond, since he had no idea who might be listening in on the other side of the two-way mirror.

I hope you know what you’re doing. Sherri’s words whispered through his mind for the hundredth time as the lanky deputy straddled a chair and laid a file folder on the table.

“Okay.” The deputy tapped his pen against the folder. “Why don’t you start by telling me why you were in the neighborhood?”

“I already told you.” At least a half dozen times when the deputy had interrogated him in the hospital. “It’s no secret that my brother’s an addict. I spotted him sneaking out his bedroom window. Figured he was up to no good. Followed him to the drug house and yanked him out before he could make a buy.”

“Did he stop at the variety store on the corner?”

Cole’s insides jumped at the new question. “No.”

The deputy studied him for an uncomfortably long minute. “You’re sure?”

“Yes, why?”

“The 9-1-1 call that summoned the ambulance was made from a phone booth there.”

The knots in Cole’s neck eased at the confirmation that his brother couldn’t have secretly made the call without Cole noticing. “I already told you he didn’t make the call. Since when is a deputy’s word not a reliable alibi?”

“You’re his brother.”

“Yeah, and I’m Sherri’s friend.” He winced at the memory of their argument in the ambulance on the way to the hospital. She’d been furious that he’d asked her to keep quiet about the pill bottle in his pocket. Or more accurately “to shelter Eddie from the consequences of his actions.” Consequences that might get him the help he needed...or so she thought.

Never mind that the pill bottle had turned out to be an old codeine prescription of their father’s. But yeah, the fact that Cole had asked her to conceal it a mere day after his brother had held a knife to her throat was testimony to how hard he’d smashed his head.

Any other woman would’ve been jumping at the chance to get Eddie off the streets. Except—Cole planted his elbow on the table and buried his fingers in his hair—with her hovering over him, those beautiful blue eyes filled with concern, he hadn’t had a hope of thinking straight.

Worse than that, he’d asked her to compromise her principles.

“You okay?” the deputy asked.

Cole blinked. Massaged his forehead. “Yeah, sorry, still nursing a headache.” And still nursing a seven-year-old infatuation that had started when Sherri found him pounding his fist into the fence that had separated their yards after he’d learned his father had been cheating on Mom.

Sherri had dabbed antiseptic on his grazed knuckles, and he remembered feeling as if just by allowing her to help him, he’d been sullying her somehow, tainting her innocence by exposing her to his family’s mixed-up morality.

Seven years later nothing had changed. Same girl. Same infatuation. Same insurmountable obstacle of his family.

Cole glanced at the clock on the wall behind the deputy and wondered if Dad was keeping a better eye on Eddie today. As much as he would have liked to avoid his dad, he’d had no choice but to allow Dad to visit him in the hospital to warn him about the prescription Eddie had stolen on top of sneaking out of the house to buy more drugs. The fact that Dad had seen the conversation as an invitation to pick up where’d they’d left off the day before his selfishness blew apart their family was proof of how mixed up his morality was.

But if you do not forgive others their sins, your Father will not forgive your sins.

Cole rubbed his forehead harder, wishing he could rub out the scripture verse that had flitted through his mind too many times since. He dropped his hand to the table and returned his focus to the deputy. “What are you doing to keep Sherri safe?”

“Sending a patrol car along on any calls. Not much more we can do.”

That was something anyway. It would give him time to hang with Eddie without having to worry about Sherri every second. Helping Eddie escape the mess he’d made of his life was the whole reason he’d moved back to Stalwart. The attacks against Sherri had sidetracked him, but getting through to Eddie was no less urgent. Kids younger than him died of drug overdoses every day. And Eddie was clearly addicted.

The deputy grilled Cole about what he’d seen around the house before the explosion, which amounted to nothing helpful. The fire marshal had already confirmed it was a drug house, but they had yet to identify, let alone catch, the guy who’d escaped on the motorcycle.

“The house was a rental,” the deputy explained. “And the name on the lease agreement turned out to be fake. Our working theory is that he’d already had the house rigged to blow to give himself a chance to get away if the need ever arose. It doesn’t seem likely he could’ve done it in the short time you were there.”

Cole studied the descriptions of the renter offered by neighbors. “Yeah, I’m not buying that he’s the one targeting Sherri, either. Not when he had to know his operation would be outed by luring her to the house. I think we need to look for the guy who gave Eddie the tip.”

“Sure.” Skepticism flickered in the deputy’s eyes. Apparently he wasn’t buying that Eddie was being framed. “But your brother’s description doesn’t give us much to go on.” The deputy closed the file. “The guy’s heavier than the motorcyclist and balding. That probably describes half the men over thirty in town.”

Yeah, and chances were the suspect wouldn’t risk making contact with Eddie again anytime soon. But if Cole could convince Eddie to show him around his usual haunts they might find him that way.

As Cole stepped out of the police station a few minutes later, the urge to drop in on Sherri before seeing Eddie drew his gaze across the street. The fire station blocked his view of the ambulance base, so he meandered toward the street. After all, the least he owed Sherri and Dan were coffee and a donut to thank them for yanking him away from that drug house the night before last. He pressed the butt of his hand to his throbbing temple. Besides, the caffeine might help kill his headache.

A guy in faded jeans and a dark hoodie skulked along the side wall of the ambulance base, his hands bunched in his pockets.

Cole quickened his steps. The guy who sideswiped Sherri’s ambulance had worn a hoodie. Cole’s gaze fixed on the punk’s pocketed hands. The uneasy feeling that they concealed a weapon tripped his pulse into overdrive.

Sherri stepped out the front door, calling “Double? Double?” over her shoulder, oblivious to the threat lurking around the corner.

“Watch out!” Raising his hand stop-sign style, Cole dodged traffic, narrowly escaping being hit by a horn-blaring car. He glanced at it only a moment, but when he turned back to the ambulance base, Sherri was gone.

So was the punk.

FOUR

Sherri braced her hand on the door as Dan careened the ambulance onto Park Street. “Dispatch said he was on the north side of the park.” She glanced in the side mirror as a patrol car turned onto the street behind them, and wondered what Cole had been shouting about when the call blared over the loudspeakers and she’d had to dash back inside. Her mind flashed to the sight of him cupping his forehead as they’d blasted out of the ambulance bay. He should still be on bed rest.

Dan pulled to the curb next to the four-acre park in the center of town. “He’s over there.” Dan pointed to a homeless man ranting at a rose bush. He wore several layers of filthy shirts and pants that once might have been tan in color. “It’s Harold again.”

“Yay,” Sherri said mockingly. He was one of their frequent flyers and it was always a toss-up as to which personality they’d be dealing with. To make matters worse, he was borderline diabetic and lately he’d been spending more time over the line than not. They unloaded their gurney from the back of the truck.

The deputies met them at the curb. “Maybe we should handle this.”

Harold’s gaze snapped their way and his entreaties to the rose bush grew louder. “Watch out. Hide. They’re coming. They’re coming.”

Sherri felt sorry for the poor man. He wasn’t enough of a threat to himself or others to warrant locking him up, but he refused to stay at the shelter, where staff could help him monitor his blood sugar and his meds, if he’d take them. “Let’s see what we’re dealing with first. He’s usually harmless enough when he’s only ranting at vegetation.”

Dan wrinkled his nose. “At least the roses might mask his BO. Last time we transported him to the ER it took half a can of air freshener to kill the smell afterward.”

At that reminder the deputies looked a little too happy to step back and let them take the lead.

A couple of blond-haired youngsters raced over to them from the playground and gaped up at the deputies in wide-eyed awe. “Are you going to arrest that man? He’s scary.”

Their mother caught up to them a moment later and caught their hands. “I’m sorry. I told them to stay on the playground. I’m the one that made the call. I’ve seen him here a lot, but never like this.”

“Thank you, ma’am,” Deputy Vail said. “We’ll see to him. It’d be best if you take the children home now.”

Sherri circled upwind of Harold so he’d see her approach and lifted her hands palms out to appear unthreatening. “Good morning, Harold. What’s bothering you today?”

His nostrils flared. “I’m not going with you.”

She patted the air. “That’s okay, Harold. Let’s just talk.” His breathing appeared normal. He wasn’t clutching his chest. His eyes seemed to focus on her okay, although they immediately darted back to the rosebush.

“Don’t let her take you,” he hissed to the bush. It would’ve been comical if he weren’t dead serious.

“He doesn’t seem disoriented,” Dan said. “Or aggressive like the last time his blood sugar nosedived. We’re likely not looking at a diabetic issue, and something tells me he’s not going to willingly let us take a sample anyway.”

“Harold, have you had anything to eat this morning?” She took a step closer. “Can we get you something? You guys have any extra donuts in the cruiser,” she called over her shoulder to a grumbled chorus of “Ha-ha.” Harold didn’t seem to think the quip was funny, either.

In a blur of motion he pulled a knife from his pocket—a dinner knife—but it was startling enough that the deputies closed in.

“Get her, officers,” Harold ordered them. “She’s an alien. She’s trying to abduct me.”

Deputy Vail motioned her back. “Okay, Harold. Take it easy.” As Vail kept him distracted, the other deputy skirted behind him and easily commandeered the knife, then cuffed him.

Harold went berserk. “Not me. Not me.” He jerked from side to side, trying to break out of the deputy’s hold. “She’s the one you have to stop.”

“Take it easy, Harold. We’ll make sure she doesn’t get you.” Deputy Vail winked at Sherri. “I guess we’d better deliver him to the ER.”

The other deputy approached with Harold.

“Whoa.” Vail stepped back and pinched his nostrils. “On second thought—”

“Nope.” Dan started pushing the gurney back to the truck. “He’s all yours.”

The deputies escorted Harold to their cruiser, but when he spotted her helping Dan load the gurney on the truck, he went berserk.

“You won’t get away with it. I know what you are. They told me. They told me.”

Terrific. He was hearing the voices again. She should’ve figured. Across the street passersby stopped to stare at her. Cole pulled up in his pickup. What was he doing here?

“I’m going to get you,” Harold vowed. “As soon as I get out, I’m going to kill you!”

The deputy shoved him into the back of the cruiser. “You don’t want to do that.”

Cole stalked across the street, fists clenched, expression fierce, looking ready to tear the poor man limb from limb.

My hero.

Deputy Vail intercepted him with a palm to his chest. “This isn’t your man. He’s a regular. Made the same threat to me four weeks ago, and today I’m his best friend. Why don’t you follow the ambulance back to the base?”

Cole held his ground for another thirty seconds, his glare burning a hole through the cruiser’s rear window, before he finally took a step back and let the deputy climb in his car.

“What are you doing here?” Sherri allowed herself a moment to relish the sight of him back on his feet. He wasn’t in uniform, but that didn’t diminish his commanding presence one iota. And only intensified her wholly inappropriate pleasure at seeing him here looking so protective of her. “You’re supposed to be resting.”

His surreptitious visual sweep of the surrounding park and streets before he joined her on the sidewalk chilled her a hundred times more than Harold’s empty threats. “Who was that guy? Has he threatened you like that before?”

“He’s harmless,” Dan assured, slamming the ambulance’s rear doors shut. “He has a psychotic episode every once in a while, but he doesn’t have the power to back up his threats. And he doesn’t remember them by the time he comes back to his senses.”

Cole searched her eyes, clearly not ready to take Dan or the deputy’s word for it.

Sherri shrugged. “What did you expect? This is an ordinary day in the life of a paramedic. Last week, I got a marriage proposal from a prisoner we transported.”

Dan guffawed. “Oh, yeah. A real winner. Missing half his front teeth but sporting a six-pack.”

Cole tensed. “Is he still in jail? How did he take your refusal?”

Sherri reached for the passenger door handle with a teasing grin. “What makes you think I refused?”

Cole pressed his fingertips to his forehead and temple. “Sherri, you’re not taking this serious enough.”

She squeezed his arm, secretly pleased by his concern even though it was his brother he should have been focusing on. “I’m fine. But you look like you should be in bed. Head injuries are nothing to mess with. Just because the MRI was clear doesn’t mean you won’t have any problems if you try to do too much too soon. What are you doing here anyway?”

“Making sure that guy didn’t come after you.”

“The homeless guy?”

“No, the guy in the hoodie I spotted skulking outside the ambulance base as you came out to get coffees.”

Her heart hopscotched over a few beats, but she managed to keep her expression neutral. “That’s why you shouted and pulled the kamikaze routine through traffic?”

His hands fisted again and he looked ready to blow a gasket. “He was seconds away from ambushing you. If that call hadn’t come in when it did—” he glanced around again, scraping his hand across his forehead “—who knows what he might have tried. He must’ve run off when he heard me shout. I searched the area, but couldn’t track him, so I followed you here to make sure he didn’t show up.”

“Cole, you shouldn’t be out racing around after me.” Oh, boy, not something she’d ever thought she’d hear herself say to Cole. But she couldn’t him let him get any closer for both their sakes. His brother needed him. And she needed not to need him. His mile-wide, protective streak was entirely too attractive, and if she wasn’t careful, she’d start admitting things he didn’t need to know. She opened the side door of the ambulance and pressed him to sit on the step. Then flicked her penlight over his eyes, trying not to notice the intriguing shades of blue radiating from his shrinking pupils.

“I’m fine. I need to be out there finding that punk before he shows up on your doorstep.”

She checked his blood pressure, her own spiking at the notion that some creep might show up at her apartment. “The deputies are following all our calls, and Dan is with me. I will be perfectly safe. You need to rest.”

“I’ve rested enough,” he said in a growl.

She lost her patience. “Then spend time with your brother. Considering where he turned up Friday night, he clearly needs help sooner rather than later.”

* * *

The next afternoon Cole shifted in his truck seat, trying to get comfortable. He was still on sick leave, so he’d been parked in the coffee shop’s back lot with a bird’s eye view of the ambulance base since Sherri arrived for her shift this morning. She’d been right about him needing to spend time with his brother, and as much as her scolding had stung, Cole appreciated her concern. He’d kind of enjoyed her playing paramedic on him again, too— looking so intently at his eyes that he’d started to feel as if she could see into his very soul. He hadn’t been able to get her deep blue eyes off his mind since. He just wished she exhibited half as much concern for herself.

Thankfully, the punk hadn’t come back, and so far not even an ambulance call had come in to break up the monotony. He couldn’t help but admire how easily she’d sloughed off the homeless guy’s threat yesterday and joked about a prisoner’s marriage proposal.

Yeah, it was how most frontline workers dealt with the junk, but she’d seemed genuinely unaffected.

Cole glanced at his watch. Eddie would be getting out of school in another forty-five minutes, and he didn’t want to miss him again. Unfortunately, if the kid he’d spotted skulking around the ambulance base yesterday was also in school, he might show up just when Cole needed to leave.

Cole unscrewed his thermos cap and eyeballed the last few ounces of day-old coffee. Forget it. Time to grab a fresh cup. As he pushed open the door, movement along the fence behind the ambulance base caught his eye.

He soundlessly pushed his truck door closed and hunched down behind the hood.

A kid clambered over the chain-link fence. Same black hoodie hiding his face.

The instant he moved toward the ambulance base’s side door, Cole dashed forward and face-planted him into the dirt. Wrestling the guy’s arm behind his back, he hissed, “What are you doing here?”

The punk stopped fighting. “Cole?”

Cole’s stomach tanked. “Eddie?” He grabbed a fistful of his brother’s hoodie and hauled him to his feet, scarcely restraining the urge to connect his fist with Eddie’s nose. He clearly didn’t know him anymore. “How could you?”

Eddie’s eyes ballooned. “How could I what? I came to apologize to Sherri.”

“Right.” Cole felt sick. “That’s why you’re skulking over the fence, instead of walking up from the street.”

“I didn’t want the other guys to see me. I wanted to catch her alone.”

Cole swallowed a rush of bile at how that sounded. He shoved his brother through the hedge flanking the parking lot toward the coffee shop next door. “We need to talk.”

“I’m telling the truth!”

Cole opened the coffee shop door and motioned Eddie to a window seat.

“I always liked Sherri. She was nice to us.”

A waitress sashayed over, clunked two empty mugs on the table, and flashed Cole a welcoming whatcha-doing-later smile. “You must be new here. I never forget a face.” She had pouty lips and an over-the-top makeup job that he supposed some guys would find attractive.

“That’s right.” He pushed his cup toward the pot in her hand.

“What can I get you boys?” she asked as she filled both mugs.

“A couple of the specials,” Cole ordered to expedite her exit.

“Two specials coming up.” She winked and flounced away, leaving a trail of fragrance lingering behind her.

Eddie snagged the sugar dispenser and dosed his coffee with a steady stream. “Still a chick magnet, I see.”

Cole popped a couple of ibuprofen to take the edge off the headache that had returned with a vengeance thanks to their scuffle, and tried to decide if he heard derision or jealousy in Eddie’s tone. Probably a little of both. If Eddie spent half his time tripping out, Cole couldn’t imagine too many girls being interested in hanging with him. At least no one who wasn’t stoned herself.

Eddie stirred his coffee so hard it swirled over the brim. “C’mon, why don’t you just get the lecture over so we can both go home?”

“You expect me to believe you came here to apologize to Sherri?”

“Yes.”

“The guy who lured you to the drug house didn’t send you here?”

“What? No!”

Cole exhaled, unfortunately believing him, which meant he was back to square one. “Okay, I’m sorry I doubted you. I’m afraid we didn’t get off to a good start, but believe it or not, I came back to Stalwart because I want to spend time with you, not lecture you.”

“Don’t do me any favors. I got over my case of big brother worship a long time ago.”

Yeah, Eddie hadn’t appreciated Cole’s opinion on his choice of who to live with after the divorce. Almost a year had passed before they’d even talked to each other again. “I’m sorry. I was wrong to stay away so long. I’m hoping we can make up for lost time.”

Eddie snorted. “Face-planting me into the sidewalk is a great way to start.” He lifted his mug in a toast. “Thanks.”

The waitress slipped their soup bowls onto the table, allowing him to let the remark pass without comment. Clearly it would take a lot more than a few shared dinners to chisel that boulder-sized chip from Eddie’s shoulder.

Sirens cut through the silence. An ambulance whipped out the bay next door, but with hedges blocking a good part of the view, Cole couldn’t tell if Sherri was inside. He breathed a silent prayer for her protection that only partially quelled the urgent desire to follow the ambulance and do the job himself. Okay, time to stop worrying about treading on his brother’s feelings. He locked gazes with Eddie. “If you want me to trust you, you need to be straight with me. ’Cause I’ll tell you, across the street is an office full of deputies that think you should be sitting in jail. Are you stalking Sherri?”

“What?” Eddie’s head jolted back, his eyes wide with shock that looked pretty believable, unless it was shock that Cole had clued into his double life. If Eddie was trying to exact revenge for the way Cole had ignored him, terrorizing Sherri was a sickeningly smart way to go.

“You heard me,” Cole said through gritted teeth, not wanting to believe the worst about Eddie despite appearances.

“No, man, I just needed a fix.” He raked his fingers through his hair. “I thought you of all people would believe me.”

“I want to, Eddie. But you’re not giving me anything to go on. You say some guy told you to do these things, but you don’t have a name, a location and scarcely a description. And her partner’s got it in for you now.” Cole had checked the guy’s background. A former army medic, the man had a little too much righteous warrior in him for Cole’s comfort level.

“I’m telling you, that day in the ambulance is the first time I’d seen her in, like—” he hesitated, the flick of his gaze betraying his deception “—like, forever.”

Cole let it slide. For now. If he wanted to earn Eddie’s trust, he needed his brother to at least think he believed him. “And where were you when this guy told you to raid her ambulance?”

“Around.”

“Around where?”

“I don’t remember. The park maybe.”

“The park downtown?” Where psycho homeless guy hung out.

“Yeah, maybe. I hang there sometimes. It’s not like I go looking for him.” Eddie slurped his soup. “He finds me.”

Cole didn’t like the sound of that. “He finds you?”

“Yeah, you know. We just kind of run into each other.”

Yeah, Cole could imagine the kind of places they ran into each other. If anyone had asked him seven years ago if there was a booming drug culture in Stalwart, he would’ve laughed. Now...he wasn’t so sure. “You hang out together?”

“No, but he knows what it’s like to, you know, need a fix.”

Needing to get his own fix on the guy’s whereabouts, Cole resisted the urge to point out that the guys at Teen Challenge knew, too, and cared a whole lot more about helping him. Eddie wasn’t ready to hear it yet.

“He sometimes gives me tips on where I can get stuff free,” Eddie went on.

“You mean steal it?”

Eddie shrugged again.

“What’s he drive?”

“Never paid attention.”

“But he does drive? He’s not some homeless guy living on the street?”

“He doesn’t look like one.” Eddie pushed away his empty soup bowl. “We done?”

Cole’s cell phone buzzed. He glanced at the screen. Zeke? He’d thought his partner would be happy to have another day off from being saddled with him. Probably calling to rub in that his nephew wouldn’t be taking a sick day if he were on the job. Cole held up a finger to signal Eddie to wait a minute and clicked Talk. “What’s up?”

“You know where your brother is?” Zeke’s voice grated. Why the sheriff had partnered Cole with the one guy who resented him filling the new opening, he’d never know.

“Here with me. Why?”

Eddie’s wary gaze snapped to his.

“You’re lucky. Dispatch just got a call of a savage dog attacking a female paramedic.”

Cole’s pulse jumped. Sherri was the only female paramedic in Stalwart. “Where? Is she okay?”

“I don’t know what her condition is. I’m on my way. So’s animal control. She’s at Line One near Third.”

“Thanks for letting me know.”

Zeke’s snort punctuated the click of him hanging up. Clearly his intention hadn’t been friendly.

Cole threw cash on the table and grabbed Eddie’s arm. “We’ve got to go.” Zeke may have taken his word that Eddie was with him, but he wanted Sherri to see it for herself.

“Me?” Eddie looked as if he thought Cole was taking him to a lynching—his.

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