Page 3 of Katherine's Last Hope
Katherine might not be his favorite person, but he knew she had a little boy at home who’d already lost one parent. He didn’t need to lose another.
“Your job? That’s a joke in this town. Guilty people walking around free as a bird while the innocent suffer. You should be ashamed to wear that badge.”
Cody opened his mouth to respond but the loud blast of a car alarm screeched through the night sky. The headlights of Katherine’s car blinked on and off, on and off.
Startled, the man’s arm loosened around Katherine’s neck.
She lunged forward.
Cody lifted his gun to get off a shot, but the man shoved Katherine hard in the middle of the back.
She stumbled toward the pavement.
Shifting gears, Cody maneuvered his body to land under Katherine’s. The hard pavement scraped against his side as her soft, lean body fell in his lap.
“You okay?” he asked, his arms wrapping around her on instinct. He peered around her and caught sight of the man disappearing into the patch of woods that surrounded the edge of the parking lot.
Her whole body shivered, and she rested her head on his shoulder for a beat. “I…I don’t know. I can’t believe that just happened.”
He held her tighter, the shock in her system clear to him. He had to call in the incident, but right now, he just wanted her to know she was safe. “Did he hurt you?”
She shook her head. “Just scared the crap out of me.”
He snorted out a humorless laugh. “Me, too.”
She pulled away and stared at him with those big brown eyes. “Really?”
“You think facing down a masked man holding a beautiful woman hostage in a dark parking lot is an everyday thing for me?”
She blinked up at him and the tremors left her body.
Shit. He’d called her beautiful and admitted to being scared while on the job. Probably something her ex-sheriff dad and two brothers never admitted.
Even if they were.
Owen and Tommy might have been sheriff’s deputies for years—Owen now serving as the county sheriff—but every man and woman behind a badge understood the fear that came along with doing their job.
“I guess I never really thought about that,” Kathrine said, answering the question that lingered between them. She cleared her throat and pushed to her feet. “Thank you.”
He stood and winced at the burning sensation of raw skin on his side. “I didn’t do much. You took a risk setting off that alarm. But you might want to turn it off now.”
“Oh geez.” She fumbled to retrieve her keys and shut off the alarm. “Where’s your backup?”
“I lied. I didn’t call anyone.” He cracked a small smile. “Looks like we both made some risky decisions, but for now let’s head into the hospital so I can get your statement.”
She blew out a long breath. “Yeah. Let’s get that done fast. I need to get home. My dad’s waiting up for me. He’s going to freak out.”
He kept his mouth shut as he walked her inside the emergency room. Her dad wasn’t the only one who’d be upset by tonight’s attack. The whole damn sheriff’s department would be in an uproar, and he’d found himself directly in the middle of the upcoming shitstorm.
2
Fear burrowed into Katherine like a tick. She recalled all the tricks her therapist had taught her over the past year to keep her emotions from swallowing her whole. She couldn’t get sucked into anything that would take her away from her number one focus.
Getting home safely to Ollie.
She sat in the break room, a space she’d been in a brief ten minutes before. She’d been tired and overwhelmed and on the brink of insanity, but that was her new normal. Now, her knee bounced up and down and her heart rate had to be triple it’s normal speed.
“Katherine?”
