Lucas didn’t know what to say in response to that so he didn’t say anything. He waited until she had finished applying the gauze pad and wrapping his arm with the bandage to speak up. Though it was the last thing he wanted to do, he also knew he had no choice. “We have to tell Caity.”
Tess cleaned up the wrappers before pulling off her bloody gloves and adding it the pile of blood-soaked cotton balls. She would get rid of the medical waste in a second. First, they had to have this conversation. “Do you really think we should?”
“She’s the sheriff. Last time I checked, shooting at someone was a crime. She has to know that I was hit.”
He had a point. “Let me ask you a question. Hamlet has a population of under two hundred, but it’s a rural area. It’s got a big mountain on one side, that deathtrap gulch at the entrance and tons of trees. Maybe guns are common here, maybe not, I don’t know. Do you?”
Lucas’s lips thinned. “We don’t hunt here. Not too many of us carry guns because there’s never any crime in Hamlet. If I had to guess, I’d say it’s just anyone who is—or was—in law enforcement.”
“That’s what I thought.”
“Tessa, what are you saying?”
Clasping her hands in front of her, Tessa looked at the way her fingers interlocked. It was something to stare at that wasn’t the accusation in Lucas’s icy blue stare. She felt that chill all the way down to her bones.
When he continued to stare, waiting for her answer, she looked up at him with worry written in every premature line in her face. “What if she—”
“Caitlin would never take a shot at me.”
“No,” she agreed wholeheartedly. “But would she take a shot at me?”
And that, right there, was the elephant in the room she’d been trying to pretend didn’t exist. Lucas was the one who got hit.
Was he the target?
She thought of the note no one could find, the implied threat about what would happen to her if she didn’t go, and had her answer.
“Shit.”
Tessa had to agree with that sentiment, too.
19
“I hate that you got shot.” Leaning into Lucas, her fingers ghosted over the bandage, a feathered caress.
“It wasn’t your fault.”
Tessa didn’t answer. She didn’t have to. Her sad smile told him she disagreed. The guilt tugging on her lips made him wish that he had managed to dodge the bullet.
They were parked outside of Ophelia, sitting in his idling Mustang, both of them unwilling to leave the other after the scare they experienced together. Lucas was behind the wheel, running his palms anxiously along the leather rim.
Tessa had wanted to drive but, as she discovered, the man was stubborn to a fault—even after being shot. No matter how hard she tried to charm him, he refused to let anyone else get into the driver’s seat. Even with the dull ache throbbing his fresh wound, he insisted on it. And if his arm ached every time he made a left turn? Oh well. It wasn’t like they could stay at the office.
Lucas didn’t even bother taking out his communicator. After wrestling his keys away from Tess, he loaded her up in his car and headed straight over to his sister’s place instead. His office was in a more secluded part of Hamlet, tucked near the foot of the mountain that acted as one of its natural borders. No one was around for miles. He usually liked the solitude when he was at work. Now he couldn’t get away fast enough.
And if he wanted to make sure no one was coming near Maria, who could blame him for looking out for her? She was his precious younger sister, Tessa a vulnerable outsider. Ophelia’s security was the best money could buy. Knowing they were safe inside would ma
ke him feel a lot better when he had to leave them behind.
Using his good arm, he moved his hand to rest against the buckle of his seatbelt. “Do you want me to walk you in?”
“I’d rather go to see the sheriff with you,” she retorted.
They'd had the same argument the whole way back to Ophelia. Tessa couldn’t understand why he was going to see Sheriff De Angelis on his own when they were both there when the shots were fired. Just because Lucas was the one who was hit, it didn’t mean that Tessa didn’t have anything to add. She was the one who heard the fateful sound of something in the woods the second before the first shot rang out. She could help.
Besides, Tess hated the idea that he would be alone with Sheriff De Angelis when he told her about the shooting. She didn’t know how she’d pull it off, but the sheriff would probably find some way to blame her for Lucas getting shot.
Lucas was adamant. Though he didn’t come out and say it, it was obvious that he believed she was the one they were aiming at. It couldn’t possibly be a coincidence that, days after Jack Sullivan was murdered, someone fired a gun at the exact spot his wife was standing at.