Star Witness

chapter Fifteen

Dani wanted to go to the hospital with Harte, but the police had a different idea. After she was examined and released by the EMTs, she was taken to the police station, where she spent all the rest of the morning and a large part of the afternoon being questioned and writing out and signing her statement. Someone had found her a clean set of scrubs and a blanket to wrap up in, but she still had on her wet sneakers.

She glanced at the clock over the door for what had to be the two hundredth time. It had been over an hour since anyone had even peeked in to see if the room was free. Had they forgotten about her?

She picked up the foam cup that held what might have passed for coffee two hours ago, but was now sludge. One whiff and she set it down and pushed it as far away as she could.

At that instant the doorknob turned. It was Lucas. He had her purse in tow. “I gotta say this is the biggest purse I’ve ever seen.”

“Thank God you’re here,” Dani said. “I can go now, right? I need to see Harte. How is he?”

“He’ll be fine,” Lucas said. “I’ve got an officer waiting to drive you to a hotel.”

“You mean to my house.”

“No,” he said evenly. “I mean to the hotel. You’re still under an order of protection until the trial is over, and it’s been delayed.”

“Delayed?” She wanted to cry. She was exhausted and filthy and sleepy and hungry. The pallid vending-machine ham sandwich and watery soda she’d had who knew how many hours ago were long gone.

Lucas nodded. “The D.A. is assigning another prosecutor to handle the trial, and he or she will need time to get up to speed.”

“Why another prosecutor? You told me Harte was going to be fine.” She grabbed Lucas’s arm. “Please. Is he okay?”

Lucas narrowed his eyes. “He is going to be fine. They’re giving him blood. As soon as they can, they’ll get him into surgery. Apparently, the bullet hit the top of his left lung.”

“Oh no,” she said. That was why he’d sounded wheezy, why he’d struggled so much to take a breath. “But they can get it out. Just go in and—” she put her thumb and forefinger together “—pluck it out. Right?”

Lucas looked somber. “They think so. It’s pretty close to his heart.”

“Close to—?” Her pulse pounded in her throat. “Have you seen him? Talked to him?”

“They’ve got him sedated. They don’t want that bullet to move.”

“Oh,” she moaned, sinking into a chair. She pressed her palm against her chest. Her heart felt as though it was going to burst wide open, it was hurting that much. “I didn’t know how bad he was hurt.”

“Hey,” Lucas said, rubbing his forehead. “The doctors know what they’re doing.”

His tone didn’t match his reassuring words. She looked up at him. He looked exhausted. His hair was furrowed and sticking up as if he’d run his fingers through it multiple times. He had a smudge of dirt on his cheek and a scrape on the knuckles of his left hand. But what frightened Dani was the look on his face. His brow was furrowed and his mouth was grim.

“You’re worried,” she said.

He met her gaze. His mouth curved upward slightly, in a duplicate of Harte’s crooked smile. The sight of it made her heart ache.

“I am,” he said, “but Harte is tough and stubborn. A little thing like a bullet won’t stop him. It wouldn’t dare.”

Dani smiled back at him, even though her eyes were burning. “You’re right about that. He is pretty stubborn,” she said.

“He comes by that naturally.”

She studied him for a brief moment. “You and he don’t look much alike. I mean obviously you do, but—”

“That’s because he took after the French side of the family, and I got the Irish genes.” As he spoke, he opened the interrogation room door for her, then closed it behind them. A young uniformed officer was waiting outside the room.

“Dani Canto, this is Officer Roebuck. He’ll take you to the hotel.”

The officer nodded. She acknowledged him with a brief nod of her head. “Officer, will you be my day-shift babysitter?”

“No,” Lucas said. “You won’t have a guard during the day. Just at night.”

“So I’m in less danger than I was?” Dani shook her head. “How exactly does that work?”

“The men who chased you are in custody, for one thing.”

Dani pushed her tangled hair back from her face. “Good,” she said tiredly. “So, Officer Roebuck, shall we go?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Roebuck said. “The car’s out front.” He stood back to let her precede him.

Dani turned back to Lucas. “Can we swing by the hospital to see Harte?”

Lucas shook his head.

“Lucas—Detective, I need to see him.” She bit her lip, doing her best to look him in the eye, to appear strong and capable, not small and scared that she might never see Harte again.

“I told you, he’s sedated. They’re not letting anybody see him right now.” Lucas looked past her at Roebuck and nodded.

“Ma’am?” Roebuck said. “We need to get going.”

Dani couldn’t tear her gaze away from Lucas. “Please don’t lie to me,” she said. “It’s too important.”

He glanced at Officer Roebuck and nodded toward the door. The officer walked toward the exit door to wait. Once he was out of hearing, Lucas stepped close to her.

“Harte is unconscious. They’re taking him to surgery any minute now. It’s going to be touch-and-go. If the bullet shifts, it could go into his heart. My parents are there with my sister, waiting.”

Dani pressed her lips together, working to stay calm. Her heart was threatening to burst again. She could barely breathe, her throat was so tight. But she heard Lucas loud and clear.

Harte is in critical condition. He needs his family.

“I understand,” she said hoarsely, then grabbed his shirtsleeve. “Please, when you can, have someone call me?”

“Okay,” he said gently. “As soon as I can.” He turned and walked toward another detective who was obviously waiting to talk to him. She saw him rub the back of his neck as he spoke to the other man.

Dani squeezed her eyes shut. She couldn’t wipe away the vision of Harte’s soft, dark gaze as he’d lowered his head to kiss her, or the pinched pallor of his face as he’d looked up at his big brother and tried to pretend he wasn’t bleeding to death.

They’d been on the run together for less than twelve hours. But she didn’t think she could live if he died.

* * *

ETHAN DELANCEY DIDN’T like hospitals. People died there. He paced back and forth between the window and the door of the private room where his youngest brother lay—too quiet, too pale, too still.

He stopped and looked at Harte for what must have been the twentieth time. How the hell had this happened? He and Lucas and Travis were the ones who flirted with danger. It was cops and soldiers who took their lives in their hands, who went out there day after day to try to make the world a safer place. They understood the risk. They dealt with it.

Harte hadn’t followed in his brothers’ footsteps. He’d taken a different path—the path of their dad and their notorious grandfather. He was a lawyer. Lawyers didn’t get shot.

Ethan walked over to the bed. He felt so damn helpless. Reaching out, he straightened the tubes that fed oxygen through Harte’s nostrils. Then he brushed thick dark hair off his brother’s forehead.

Behind him, he heard the room door open. He turned. It was Lucas. “Hey,” he said.

“How is he?” Lucas asked, closing the door and coming up beside Ethan.

Ethan shook his head. “No change. Didn’t the doctor say he’d be awake by now? It’s been almost twenty-four hours since the surgery.”

Lucas nodded. “The surgeon said they wanted him to sleep as much as possible. That’s why they kept him in the ICU for twelve hours.”

Ethan rubbed his temples and flopped down in a hard vinyl chair near the bed. Lucas leaned against the wall near the window. He crossed his arms.

“You look pretty scruffy,” Ethan observed. “What’s the latest?”

Lucas sighed and rubbed his jaw, his palm scraping like sandpaper across the stubble. “When did I talk to you last?”

“Yesterday, after you got Dani to the hotel.”

“You mean Saturday.”

“No, I mean yesterday. You’d talked to Paul, but you said Stamps had lawyered up.”

“Right. After I got Paul’s statement that it was Stamps who’d shot him, I talked to Stamps’s lawyer. That was a massive waste of time. She claimed he was sedated after the traumatic events and couldn’t be questioned.”

Ethan laughed. “Seriously?”

“I’m thinking she’s setting him up for an insanity defense.”

“What about Paul?”

“I asked her what their response to his accusation would be, and she wouldn’t talk about it.” Lucas shook his head. “I’m trying to get a court order to test for gunshot residue—”

“Talk about a waste of time,” Ethan put in.

“I know. Stamps, sedated or not, will have hosed himself down by then.”

“What do you think about Paul saying Stamps shot him?”

“That’s odd too. Paul was nearly hysterical at the scene, screaming that Stamps had tried to kill him. I’ve got several witnesses that heard him. But later, after he was discharged from the emergency room, he said it was an accident. Said Stamps was firing wildly.” Lucas sat on the small couch under the window and leaned forward, elbows on knees.

“I thought you told me—”

“That Stamps only fired one shot?” He nodded. “That’s right. I did.”

“And you’ve got the gun,” Ethan said, glancing over at Harte’s pale face. “A senior senator shooting people, our distant cousin somehow involved—what the hell did the kid dig up?”

“Well, he was right about one thing. Ernest Yeoman is in it up to his neck. And he’s not going to walk this time.”

“The D.A.’s probably over the moon. So the no-necks Dani shot are Yeoman’s men?”

Lucas nodded smugly. “They weren’t carrying any ID, but here’s a shocker. They were both in the system.”

“Yeah? Who were they?”

“Couple of small-time crooks. You know how it goes.” Lucas pulled a small notebook out of his pocket. He flipped a few pages. “One of them was Chester Kirkle, the guy who left the fingerprint on Canto’s office door the night he was killed,” he said.

“Right. Harte was hoping to cut a deal with him. I thought he was remanded.”

“Somehow, this past week, he got himself a decent lawyer and made bail. No information where he got the money.” Lucas rubbed the back of his neck.

“Do you think he’s still willing to cut the deal?”

“Oh yeah. I dangled aggravated assault three over his head.”

That surprised Ethan. “A. A. Three? Can you make that stick?”

“Hell yeah,” Lucas said, gesturing at Harte. “The D.A. authorized it. They wounded a public official with a deadly weapon, threatened a second and were fleeing from law enforcement. And one or more of them may have been involved in the murder of Freeman Canto.”

Ethan smiled. That was what made Lucas one of the best detectives on the force. Better even than Dixon Lloyd, Ethan’s partner. He gave Lucas a tip of an imaginary hat. “Good job. What’d they cough up?”

“Get this. Kirkle’s playing the deal card. Says he had Harte’s promise of a deal if he talked, so now he’s singing about Yeoman. He claims Yeoman sent them to persuade Canto to reverse his position on tariffs and one of the goons got too rough.”

“What do you think?”

“I’m inclined to believe him. If he rolls on Yeoman, the D.A. and a lot of other people will be ecstatic.”

Ethan looked at Harte again. “One of them shot Harte,” he said, hearing the catch in his voice.

Lucas heard it too, because he sent him a sharp glance, then stood and walked over to the bed. He touched Harte’s hand where the IV tubing snaked out from a white bandage with a tiny spot of blood on it. “I know,” he said. “I’d like to bury both of them, but they’re punks. Nobodies. We need to get Yeoman if we can.”

Ethan didn’t say anything. He and Lucas stared at their baby brother for a moment. Finally, Lucas patted Harte’s hand and turned toward the door. “I’ve got to go. I’m going to run home and shower, then—”

“Good,” Ethan interrupted. “It’s about time.”

Lucas shot him a warning look. “Then I’m heading over to Impound. The vehicle is a Lincoln Town Car and it’s totaled.”

“They used it to break down a freight door at that warehouse where Harte and Dani were hiding, right?”

Lucas nodded.

Ethan shook his head. “I can’t wait for Harte to tell us how he managed to keep away from them all night long.”

“I know. So the crime scene guys collected paint and glass fragments from the vehicle that rammed the warehouse freight door and ran them. They matched the glass and paint the car left at the scene at Dani’s house.”

“They used the same car? That’s amazing.”

“You want amazing, guess who owns the car.”

“Not Yeoman—” Ethan said.

“It’s registered to the general manager of the Hasty Mart Corporation.”

Ethan was stunned. “Are you kidding me? Yeoman’s got to be smarter than that. Otherwise, how has he managed to stay out of jail all this time?”

“I don’t know,” Lucas said, rubbing a hand down his face. “Maybe it was his henchmen who were too dumb to change vehicles. All I can say is thank God for stupid crooks.”

Ethan laughed. “Way to go. That plus Dani’s testimony should nail the SOB.”

“It should.” Lucas sighed. He looked at his watch. “What are you doing the rest of the afternoon? Is Mom coming over?”

“She said she might be here around six, after she fixes dinner for Dad.” Ethan stood and stretched. “I think I’ll stay here until she gets here. I’ve got a feeling the kid might wake up soon.”

“All right, E. Call me if he does, okay? And try to get some rest.”

Ethan nodded and held out his hand. Lucas took it and the two shared a quick, awkward man-hug.

Once Lucas was gone, Ethan thought about turning on the TV, but he wasn’t in the mood for seven million channels and nothing on. So he yawned, then sat back and closed his eyes.

Rest sounded good. He had been up all night sitting with Harte, and was exhausted. Lucas, on the other hand, had worked the crime scene, and was about to head back out for a third shift with no rest.

Lucas had always been a superhero in Ethan’s eyes.