“If we don’t, she may never be safe. Neither you, I or the department can keep her safe forever and she doesn’t qualify for witness protection. We get one shot to draw them out and take them down. They aren’t going to do that with you around.”
“Then I’ll stay around.”
“Right and what happens in a month when the department has pulled back and you have to go to work? Who is there to protect Lucy? If you were rich, you could just take her away or pay for around the clock protection, but that’s no life for either of you.”
“Still, it’s a big deal.”
“It is, but it’s all we’ve got to end this thing for her.”
Ryan was afraid he was right and he didn’t like it one bit, but he went home and talked to Lucy about it.
“Let’s do it.”
“Are you sure? It could be dangerous.”
“Can’t be any worse than what has already happened.”
Ryan nodded and they worked out the plan. He would stay away and make it look like she was alone again, but he’d be keeping an eye out from a van parked on a different street, surveying the situation, and prepared for whatever action was necessary.
Several days went by with nothing more happening than Ryan going quietly out of his mind missing her. He was beginning to believe nothing was going to happen when everything went off the rails. A car began driving up and down the street near Lucy’s house. They looped around several times before finally parking on the curb outside her house and approaching her front door.
One tried the door while the other kept look out. It’s enough to nab them and find out who they are. Ryan gives the signal for a cop near the house to move in and several of them start toward the door just as Lucy opens it and sees the men outside. Ryan was immediately out of the van and running across yards to get to her quickly. He saw the glint of the gun being raise just as he cleared the street in front of her house.
The officer coming in from the side draws his own gun, yelling for the man to put down the weapon. The man turns and fires a shot at the officer, hitting him in the shoulder and the other man draws his own weapon, spotting more cops closing in. Ryan is coming up from behind, out of their site. He pops one in the hand and the other in the side, careful to avoid shooting directly into the doorway where Lucy is standing.
The men go down, but the one with the leg wound pulls up again, taking aim at Ryan. He fires off a round and Ryan returns fired, hitting him square in the head and putting him down for good. The other man bled out on the ground before the ambulance can get to him. No big loss there, Ryan thought.
It’s over. Finally, it’s over.
Or is it?CHAPTER NINETEENLucy
With the madness behind them, life seems to return to normal other than Lucy’s health. Ever since she returned home, she’d been feeling ill off and on and always tired. There weren’t enough naps in the world to suit her it seemed.
There is no doubt that all of the work she’d had to catch up on after her absence didn’t help the situation, but she was just too close to chance letting it go and taking the bad grades. Her instructors had been incredibly kind in letting her make it up given that she couldn’t give them any details about her absence other than she’d had some sort of breakdown. It was the best she could come up with in the absence of any real doctor’s notes.
Feeling particularly ill, she managed to get to class but had to come straight home and lie down. When she woke up the nausea had mostly passed, but she helped herself to a large gulf of Pepto Bismol, just the same.
She didn’t have time to be sick and wondered what they might have given her in the drugs she’d been injected with or in her food. The more she sat thinking about it, the more concerned she became. She called and made an appointment with her doctor for a checkup. Why she hadn’t already done so, she wasn’t sure.
“We have an opening tomorrow. Is that good for you?”
“That’s perfect,” she told his assistant.
It weighed heavy on her mind the rest of the evening. She doubted she’d feel better until she knew what was up with her. She could even feel herself getting jittery as she drove to the building where his practice was located.
Sitting in the little paper gown she was provided, she picked at her nail polish impatiently. She wasn’t even sure of what she should tell the doctor, but she needed to try and be as honest as possible. They needed to know what they were looking for and it helped that this was a pack doctor rather than a human one. They were used to odd happenings and didn’t report them to anyone who would check into them further, but she asked to be sure.