Restrained Under His Duty (Dirty Little Secrets 3)

“Don’t move,” a cop says, stepping in behind me, as two more move toward Hadley. “Identify yourself.”

“Ryder Blackwood. Chief of security for Senator Winters.”

“Where is your weapon?” the cop asks, placing his hands over mine on my head.

“Left side of me on the ground.”

The cop moves slowly then and picks up my gun, removing the magazine. “Any other weapons?”

“No, sir.”

A pause.

I look to my left, seeing that Lee has been cleared of his weapon and now the cops are handcuffing the governor.

“All clear, Blackwood,” the cop finally says. “Good work.” I rise to my feet as the cop lowers his assault rifle and gestures to the limp body a few feet away from me. “I take it that’s our perp.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Your team disabled another one upstairs.” The cop clicks his radio. “One DOA. We’re all clear here.” He moves to the man, flipping him over onto his back. “We’ve been looking for this guy. FBI has a warrant out for his arrest. From what we’ve heard, he’s a hitman, responsible for over twenty murders throughout North America. The other guy upstairs has a rap sheet a mile long.”

My blood runs cold that Hadley was anywhere near guys like that, when suddenly Alex rushes into the room, grasping my arms, looking me over. “Thank God, you’re all right. I called in the location and explained that we’d found the senator’s shooter when I heard you’d found Hadley.” She smiled, a big proud grin. “I knew a SWAT team was on its way to take down a drug house around the corner, so I intercepted them.”

I cup her shoulder, glad she’d obviously been listening in through my communicator. This situation was much easier to explain with the cops on scene than having to explain it after. “You did the right thing.” But it’s not the cops I want to look at right now. And it’s not Alex, no matter how much I appreciate her. I swiftly move to Hadley lying on the ground, fighting against the shake of my hands.

Two cops are with her; one is checking her pulse. I move in, regardless that my move may be considered inappropriate. “Is she all right?”

“She’s got a strong pulse.” The cop then clicks his radio. “We need EMS in here.”

Both men move away then, and I reach for Hadley’s head, cradling it in my hands, sliding my fingers against the warm stickiness of the blood. “Hadley,” I say softly, seeing movement all around me, but my attention is only on her. “Hadley. Sweetheart. Wake up.”

Her eyes flutter. “Ryder,” she barely whispers.

“You’re safe,” I tell her, my chest finally

relaxing, letting me breathe easier. “I’ve got you.”

Chapter 18

Hadley

Beeping and voices is what I wake to, but sleep has dug its claws into me. I fight against the heaviness of my eyelids, though it’s like a thick blanket rests over my face. Sometimes light comes in, but mostly the darkness remains.

It’s not until the fourth time my eyes open that I realize all the noise has stopped. The view through the window with the yellow curtains tells me it’s morning now and it’s a dreary Monday morning at that. Raindrops beat rhythmically against the window, as I turn my head on the pillow to face the doorway. That’s when I find two warm eyes, making everything better. “Hi,” I say to Ryder.

He gives me a gentle smile, sitting on the edge of the chair, legs spread and elbows resting on his knees. “How are you feeling?” he asks, voice soft.

“Well…” I take an inventory of my body, suddenly realizing a bandage is on my head, and beneath that bandage there’s a deep throb at the back of my skull. “I feel hurt,” I admit, scanning the room from the hospital bed.

Blank yellow-painted walls, horribly uncomfortable pillows, terrible fluorescent lighting; apparently, I’m at the hospital. I think back, trying to recall what’s happened. I remember Ryder showing up in that room. I remember him fighting and wrestling with my captor. And I remember plowing into them, chair and all, trying to help. After that, I’m drawing a blank. “What happened?”

“You bashed your head pretty good when you fell,” he explains, watching me oh-so-carefully. There’s an emotion in his eyes that I can’t quite pinpoint, as he adds, “They gave you ten stitches when you got here.”

That bashed-up head is also a little fuzzy, and when I feel the bandage around my entire head, I try to remember what happened after I attempted my first, and hopefully last, tackle. “God, it’s all a blur. I don’t remember even coming to the hospital.”

“That’s because you were knocked out cold and lost a lot of blood. They gave you a transfusion to top you back up.” He pauses as a couple of nurses walk by my door, then continues. “When you finally did wake up, they gave you some more medicine to knock you out in the ambulance to make you more comfortable, and then I believe they gave you some more when the doctor stitched you up. After what you’d been through—”

They didn’t want to hurt you more is what Ryder can’t say.