"Maybe, but he won't soon forget. He just about got his ass shot off."
She tried to smile, failed miserably, and ended up staring at the tabletop between them. "You saved my life."
"I saved my own ass. You just happened to be there."
Her gaze flew to his. "No. I saw the way you put yourself between me and that gun. If you hadn't been here, he would have—"
''Take my advice and don't play the what-if game. It sucks, and you lose every time."
"Maybe. But I just want you to know. What you did. It matters to me." A breath shuddered out of her when she realized she meant it.
He didn't look happy at the prospect of her gratitude and cut her a hard look. "I'm no hero, Ace. You'd be wise to .remember that."
Chapter 6
Randall stood at the bar and watched Denver’s finest walk through the shattered front door, leaving Addison to worry about securing what was left of her shop. Just like a cop, he thought sourly. They see too much, too often, and they become immune.
Just like you, a bitter voice added.
He looked at the woman behind the bar and felt his chest tighten. She was clutching a yellow mug as if it were her last link to the world. Two hours had passed since the shooting, but her face was still the color of bleached flour. She looked shaky at best, close to shock if he wanted to be truthful about it. He figured the least he could do was patch the broken pane of glass in that front door before he left.
“I've got some plywood and power tools in my truck," he said.
Her eyes traveled to the door. Cold air and the sound of traffic crept in where the glass had been blasted out by gunfire. Broken glass sparkled like diamonds on the floor. “I don't remember the glass breaking."
"Ricochet probably."
She ran a trembling hand through hair that looked incredibly soft beneath the yellow light of the tulip lamp overhead. Annoyed that he'd noticed something so irrelevant, Randall strode to the door and went outside. Standing curbside, next to his Jeep, he wrapped his carpenter's belt around his hips and pulled a single sheet of plywood from the bed. Good thing for Addison he was still carrying around the materials he'd bought for Jack's ramp. In the back of his mind he wondered how long his brother's patience would hold.
Something about the shooting nagged him as he contemplated how best to patch the large oval pane. There was a detail that unsettled him, but he wasn't sure if he should share it with her. He didn't want to upset her any more than she already had been tonight, but the implications of not telling her seemed much more disturbing. Holding that thought, he lugged the plywood to the door.
A few minutes later, Addison joined him.
He stopped working. "Any idea who might have been shooting at you?" he asked. "Ex-boyfriend, overzealous customer, anything like that going on?"
She looked appalled by the notion. "Van-Dyne seemed to think it was an attempted robbery. What makes you think it wasn't?"
Her voice was shaking again, and he didn't like the way she was trembling beneath that coat. But knowing her safety was at stake, he tamped down on the urge to back off. "Don't you find it odd that this so-called robber didn't take the bank bag?" he asked.
"You mean the one you just about hit him with? How ungrateful of him."
Randall stared at her, unable to shake the feeling that there was more going on than either of them had considered. "Why did you need a private detective?"
"I told you. I was searching for my birth parents."
"You found them?"
A minute jerk of her shoulders told him he'd hit a nerve. Her gaze dropped to the sidewalk. "My attorney, Jim Bernstein, located my birth mother in Ohio. A few days ago I flew up and ..." She crossed her arms protectively in front of her. "When 1 got there 1 found out she was dead. She'd been ... murdered."
Uneasiness rippled through him. "Murdered," he repeated, trying in vain to ignore the nagging little internal voice chanting I told you so like a mantra. He was suspicious by nature and didn't care for coincidence any more than he cared for someone taking potshots at him.
"How long ago was she murdered?" he asked.
"A little over three weeks."
He wondered what this rather benign woman had managed to get herself into. “Maybe you should start at the beginning and tell me everything."
"You think what happened tonight is somehow related to—”
"I don't think anything at this point. I just want to hear the story.”
"Okay." She sucked in a deep, shaky breath and began to speak. Randall listened intently as she relayed to him the details of her search for her birth parents and her recent trip to Ohio.