“I’ll go with you. Get what you need, and do your paperwork when you get to your parents’. Better yet, tell me what you need; I’ll get it and bring it to you.”

Right, like I was going to let him go through my underwear drawer?

No sooner did I have that thought than I mentally shrugged. Not only had he seen my underwear-some of it, anyway-he’d taken it off me. Besides, I like pretty underwear, so it wasn’t as if there was anything there I’d be embarrassed for him to see.

“Give me your little notepad and a pen,” I said, and when he produced them from his pocket, I wrote down detailed descriptions of exactly what clothes I wanted him to get for me, and where my unpaid bills were filed. Since I already had my makeup and hair products with me, he was getting off easy.

When I gave him my house key, he looked down at it with a strange expression on his face.

“What?” I asked. “Is something wrong with the key?”

“No, everything’s fine,” he said, and bent his head. The kiss was warm and lingering, and before I knew it, I was on tiptoe with my arms laced around his neck, kissing him back with enthusiasm, plus interest.

When he lifted his head, he slowly licked his lips, tasting me. My toes curled and I almost told him to take me home with him, but common sense resurfaced at the last moment. He stepped back to give me room to get into the car.

“Oh, I need to give you directions to Mom and Dad’s house,” I said, remembering at the last moment.

“I know where they live.”

“How do- Oh, yeah, I forgot. You’re a cop. You checked.”

“When I couldn’t find you on Friday, yeah.”

I gave him the old Beady Eye, which is what Siana called it when Mom knew we had been up to something and would try to stare a confession out of us. “I think you have an unfair advantage, and you throw your cop weight around. That has to stop.”

“Not likely. That’s what we do,” he said, smiling as he turned to go to his car.

“Wait! Are you going to my house now and bringing my things, or are you going to work and bringing them later?”

“I’ll bring them now. I don’t know how long I’ll have to work.”

“Okay. See you there.” I tossed my bag into the passenger seat, but the toss fell short and the bag hit the console, falling back into the driver’s seat. I leaned down to pick up the bag and give it another toss, and a sharp crack reverberated on the street. Startled, I jumped sideways, and a sharp knife of pain sliced through my left arm.

Then a ton of concrete hit me and knocked me to the pavement.

The concrete was hard and warm, and was swearing a blue streak. And as I said, he also weighed a ton. “Son of a fucking bitch!” he said between clenched teeth, spitting out each word like a bullet. “Blair, are you all right?”

Well, I didn’t know. I’d hit the pavement pretty hard and banged my head, and I was kind of breathless from being squashed beneath him, plus my arm hurt like a mother. I felt sort of boneless from shock, because I’d heard that same crack before and I pretty much knew what was wrong with my arm. “I guess,” I said without much conviction.

His head moving from side to side as he kept a watch out for any approaching killers, Wyatt levered himself off me, then hauled me to a sitting position and propped me against the front tire, saying, “Stay!” as if I were Fido. Didn’t matter. I wasn’t going anywhere.

He pulled his cell phone off his belt and pressed a button. Talking into it as if it were a handheld radio, he said something hard and fast, of which I understood only “Shots fired,” and then our location. Still swearing, he moved at a fast crouch to his car and wrenched the back door open. He reached in, and came out with a big automatic pistol in his hand.

“I cannot fucking believe I forgot to get my weapon out of my bag,” he growled as he plastered himself, his back to me, against the rear tire of my car and risked a quick look over the trunk, then ducked back down. “Of all the fucking times-”

“Do you see him?” I interrupted his muttered stream of profanity.

“Nothing.”

My mouth was dry, and my heartbeat was hammering wildly at the thought of the shooter rounding the car and firing at both of us. We were sandwiched between the two cars, which should have seemed secure, but instead I felt horribly exposed and vulnerable, with those unprotected spaces at each end of the cars.

The shot had come from across the street. Very few of the shops that lined the street were open on Sunday, especially this late in the afternoon, and traffic was almost nonexistent. I listened, but didn’t hear the sound of a car leaving, which to my way of thinking wasn’t good. Leaving was good; staying was bad. I wanted the man to leave. I wanted to cry. And I was seriously thinking about throwing up.

Wyatt glanced over his shoulder at me, his expression grim and focused, and for the first time, got a good look at me. His whole body stiffened. “Ah, shit, honey,” he said softly. He took another quick look over the trunk, then moved in a crouch to my side. “Why didn’t you say something? You’re bleeding like a stuck hog. Let me see how bad it is.”

“Not very, I don’t think. It just sliced my arm.” I thought I sounded just like a cowboy in an old western movie, bravely reassuring the pretty farm-woman his wound was just a scratch. Maybe I should get Wyatt’s pistol and return fire across the street, just to complete the illusion. On the other hand, maybe I should just sit here; it took less effort.

His big hand was gentle as he turned my arm so he could examine the wound. Personally, I didn’t look. With my peripheral vision I could see way too much blood anyway, and knowing it was all mine wasn’t a good feeling.

“It isn’t too bad,” he murmured. He took another look around, then briefly put his weapon down to take a handkerchief from his pocket and place it, folded, against my wound. He had the big pistol in his hand again less than five seconds after he’d put it down. “Hold this as tight as you can against your arm,” he said, and I reached up with my right hand to do as he’d directed.

I struggled not to feel indignant. Not too bad? It was one thing for me to be brave and dismissive about being shot, but how dare he? I wondered if he’d be that blasé if it were his arm that felt as if it were on fire, if his blood was soaking his clothes and beginning to pool on the pavement.

Huh. That pooling on the pavement part couldn’t be good. Maybe that was why I felt light-headed and hot and nauseated. Maybe I’d better lie down.

I let myself slide sideways, and Wyatt grabbed me with his free hand. “Blair!”

“I’m just lying down,” I said fretfully. “I feel sick.”

Supporting me one-handed, he helped me to lie down on the pavement. The asphalt was hot and gritty, and I didn’t care. I concentrated on taking deep breaths and staring at the blueness of the late-afternoon sky overhead, and gradually the nausea began to fade. Wyatt was talking on his cell phone/radio, whatever it was, requesting medics and an ambulance. Already I could hear sirens as units responded to a call that their lieutenant was under fire. How much time had lapsed since the shot? A minute? No more than two, I was certain of that.

To one part of me, everything seemed to be moving in slow motion, but another part of me felt as if too much was happening simultaneously. The result was a total sense of unreality, but one in which everything seemed to be crystal clear. I couldn’t decide if that was good or not. Probably a little fuzziness would be nice, because I really didn’t want to have clear memories of this.