McDonald_SS_GEN_Nov2014 (9 page)

David laughed. “You’re the calmest man I know. Why would you want to tie yourself to a woman who swears every other sentence and talks like a man most of the time? Megan’s a tomboy. She’s angry, stubborn, and hard to talk to about everything. I have to put up with her attitude because I’m family. You don’t.”

“David—if you say anything else bad to me about your sister, I’m going to try and kick your ass. I may not succeed in the effort, but you’ll for damn sure know afterward I’m not going to tolerate you insulting Megan when I’m around. If she’s willing to defend me to you, I’m always going to be willing to defend her back. Maybe you think she’s a better man than I am, but she brings out every protective urge I have. And she’s all the woman I want or need, not to mention more of a real woman than any other I’ve known. Period. End of discussion.”

David shook his head at the longest speech his friend had ever made to him. The laugh started in his chest and moved to his gut. “Holy shit and call me Shirley. What is with you two? You haven’t seen each other in years and suddenly you’re the next power couple in Cincinnati?”

Nicolas shrugged. “Maybe we are. I like Megan like she is. You need to like her that way too, David. If she doesn’t have to change for me, she shouldn’t have to change for anyone else. She’s taught me all women are not the same—and thank heavens that’s the truth. One day when you get used to the idea of us, I’ll tell you how I’ve always been secretly in love with her.”

David sighed at hearing Nicolas admit his feelings. . .and then nodded to acknowledge them.

“So I’ll ask you what I tried to ask my sister before she got pissed at me over being as nervous about today as she is. Are you ready to be a target? Because that’s what you’re going to be sitting on the float.”

Nicolas frowned. “All I know is I’m ready to get this over with so I can have a normal life again. Megan and I are just getting started. No stalker is going to come between us.”

Megan sighed for the hundredth time and they hadn’t gone more than a few blocks yet. The float was moving at a rate a turtle could have outrun.

Beside her, a seated Nicolas waved to cheering people lining the streets. Santa’s elves, walking alongside the float on both sides, searched the crowd for sharpshooters as they threw handfuls of candy to all the kids.

“That skirt is so short, I’m trying to figure out how you could possibly stash a gun under it. I’d be less surprised if you pulled it out of your bra.”

“See? This is exactly what I knew would happen if I wore this stupid outfit. We’re both distracted by how I’m dressed. And my gun is on the leg next to your shoulder, buddy. The safety is off so be careful jostling against me.”

Nicolas laughed, smiled, and waved. And now he worried about Megan shooting one of them instead of the bad guy.

“I’m not distracted. Or at least I’m not distracted to the point where I have to adjust anything in my pants yet—not that I could reach anything in my lap with ten pounds of ceramic plate sitting on it. This body armor is freaking heavy.”

“Well your geeky head’s not covered with ceramic plate, so keep it down and watch for anything strange. Dive forward and get flat if you even suspect someone is pointing a gun at you.”

“How am I going to see anything in this crowd of screaming kids? I can’t focus on the thoughts running through my own head for all the noise,” Nicolas complained, then yelled hello to a bunch of ten year olds who were jumping up and down and calling out to them. “I heard you laugh, Megan. Quit pretending you don’t think it’s funny that I said yes to doing this stupid Santa thing.”

“Didn’t my brother tell you? I have no sense of humor. He accuses me of it all the time.”

“David’s been wrong about a lot of things where you’re concerned. I prefer to let him keep thinking wrong for now. Maybe his illusions will keep him out of our business until we have a chance to get to know each other better. He has a tendency to want to direct things—I guess it’s a family trait.”

Megan fought the battle not to grin, but lost. “You kissed my toes last night. How much more is there to learn about me? Oh. . .that reminds me. If you decide to buy me something for Christmas, I’d like some fuzzy soft socks to wear to bed. Give me a list of what you want and I’ll add it to my shopping.”

“Just keep showing up in my bed and improving my sex life exponentially. That’s the only gift I want this year.”

She ignored his heartfelt statement because it would only prompt more of them. And after giving her a double orgasm last night, she was pretty sure Nicolas knew she felt the same.

December wind coming off the river had been blowing through Cincinnati for days with no mercy. She was grateful for the long tights and shorts because the dress wasn’t offering much protection from the cold. There was a prediction of snow for the next week and she made a mental note to buy some long underwear before it happened. Wooly undergarments were something she definitely hadn’t needed in the desert.

And boots. . .she needed new boots. But hiking boots this time.

She glanced down at the ones she was wearing. She had put off picking boots to wear with the costume and had ended up grabbing the first pair of semi-suitable black boots she found. The steel-toed work boots weren’t much of a sexy look for Mrs. Santa, but they had offered good arch support and would allow her to run if she had to.

“How much longer are we riding on this thing?” she asked.

Nicolas stopped waving and turned his face toward her. “Why? Are you cold?”

Megan glared down at him. “When someone asks you a question, you have to give an answer before you get to ask them a question back. Even I know that social rule. Try again, Dr. North.”

Nicolas chuckled behind his Santa beard. She was impossibly bossy. It was a very fun trait in bed. Outside of it? Not so much. But he was developing a sense of humor from dealing with her.

“The parade lasts three hours. We have two more to go. Now I get to ask my question. Are you cold?”

Megan snorted. “No. I’m not cold. If you must know the reason for my query, I have to pee. The cold air has that effect on me sometimes.”

Nicolas chuckled again and started waving. “Sorry. Can’t help you there. Want us to stop the float and let you off?”

“Not leaving you. I can hold it for a while. It’s just the cold,” she said.

“TMI, Megan. TMI.” Nicolas waved and smiled at the kids jumping up and down when they saw him. “Do you like kids?”

Megan shrugged as she looked out into the crowd, which held dozens.

“They don’t suck too bad, but I know they’re a lot of work. When I got out nine months ago, almost all the women I went to high school with were pregnant with baby number two. I haven’t even thought about baby number one. Guess I can’t see myself as a mother, which is strange since David and I had a pretty good one. Ann Lynx actually may be one of the best mothers on earth. And she was everything to us after Dad died.”

Nicolas nodded. “Ann Lynx
is
one of the best on earth. I really like your mother. She’s supportive without trying to run your life like mine does.”

“Mom likes you too. Or maybe she’s just happy in general to know some hot guy wants to sleep with her rough-edged daughter. It’s like a coup for her mothering skills to know you actually want to be with someone like me.”

The revelation made him laugh, as had most of the ones Megan had blurted out over the last two days. “So you think I’m a hot guy?”

Megan reached out and smacked the back of his head, which was covered with a Santa hat as big as hers. “Yes. You’re a hot guy. Quit thinking about what you’re thinking about and wave at the kids—
Santa
.”

“Ma’am. Yes. Ma’am,” he said loudly, dishing back the military sarcasm she had fed him a steady diet of for two days.

Two hours and thirty minutes later, Nicolas thought his arm was going to fall off. “Man, I am never volunteering for this again. My arm went numb an hour ago.”

Megan searched the crowd and the windows of buildings they passed. She searched the top of the buildings for men hiding with guns. But there was nothing. Three hours of vigilance had passed uneventfully. But she knew from eight years of service and three combat tours to be thankful for boredom. The alternative was never as exciting as you hoped it would be and typically someone got hurt—badly hurt.

When the float finally veered to a side street and the drop-off point, she let herself sigh in genuine relief to be able to get off it. Part of her was glad there had been no need for her to use her loaded gun, but the other part knew the stalker was still out there somewhere.

She watched as Nicolas stood to stretch his legs and laughed when he ended up stretching his arms as well. At six foot two, his body was on the lean side, but what muscles he possessed were firmly toned. Someone his height had to be cramped from sitting on the wooden bench hidden beneath chicken wire and colored tissue paper shaped into a giant easy chair. She wasn’t doing so great either. Her leg was bothering her from standing for three hours in hard-soled work boots.

They both walked stiffly to the steps together.

“Great. I see our car is here and waiting. Let’s go find you a bathroom somewhere. You have to be dying by now.”

He started down the steps off the float and turned back to offer Megan a hand. Before she could take a step in his direction, he heard two cracks in rapid succession. After the second one sounded, fire erupted in his chest and sent him flying backwards off the float’s steps to the ground. The last thing he saw was Megan, gun drawn now, scanning the crowd.

***

Megan allowed herself a single glance at where Nicolas had fallen. He’d been facing her when he was shot. There was no blood on his forehead, which hopefully meant the bullets had landed in the protected area of his chest. She prayed both had hit the body armor as she looked in the direction they had to have been fired from.

“Call for an EMT and the cops,” she yelled at the float’s driver.

From the corner of her eye, she saw fast running elves scampering in all directions. Some of the crowd screamed back when they saw elves pulling guns and yelling like madmen for them to get down and out of the way.

Then she saw a tiny flash on the rim of a patio a few stories up on a building nearly fifty yards away. The shooter was standing and pulling his long range rifle up to his shoulder, probably trying to look through the scope and make sure Nicolas was really down.

She squeezed twice with her pistol, shooting the same number of shots as he had. One shot zipped past his shoulder and zinged off something solid like a wall. Plaster or cement or something she’d busted flew off into the back of him and made him flinch. The second shot at least knocked the rifle from his hand. He glared at her as he grabbed it back up and bolted out of sight. His face had been covered by some sort of mask, so there was no way to easily determine his identity.

She pulled out her cell and hit speed dial as she scrambled down the ladder to the ground. Her brother immediately answered. “The shooter’s in the apartment building three down from where the float stopped and on what I think is the second floor. Look for a white concrete patio facing this direction, you’re going to find one of my bullets in the plaster. Maybe you’ll find two. I knocked the gun from his hand, but I couldn’t tell if I hit him or not. Call the cops for backup, David. You’re going to need them to arrest him when you find the sonofabitch.”

Ambulance sounds drowned out the rest of their conversation as a policeman and EMTs ran to Nicolas’s side. She fell off the last step and crawled on her hands and knees over to where he lay unmoving. “Don’t die. Don’t die. You can’t be dead. Do you hear me? You are not allowed to be dead, Nicolas.”

“He’s not dead yet, ma’am. He’s still breathing. What happened?” the lead EMT asked.

She looked up at the man. “He’s wearing level 4 body armor under the Santa costume. We need to look for bullets in it before you do anything else. He was shot twice.”

The ache in her leg was growing, but she rose to her knees to rip open the front of the red velvet jacket. The EMT must have accepted she knew what she was doing because he followed her lead as she ran her hands over the vest, fingers searching everywhere for holes.

“I found one. Left side. First bullet is. . . here. And it’s mostly still intact.”

She pried it out with her fingernail and held it out to the policeman.

“Looks like a .30 caliber. Based on what I could make out from the size of the shooter’s rifle, and the fact that the shots were nearly silent, you need to look for .300 blackout casings near the shooter’s nest. My guess is the rifle he used was an AR 15. I may have damaged his weapon when I knocked it out of his hand.”

He let her drop the bullet into an evidence bag. “You a gun expert or something?” he asked.

“Marine MP,” she answered, going back to her search for the still missing round. “One more. One more. One more. Come here you piece of shit. Where are you? I know there was a second shot. It was quiet, but I heard it.”

She heard herself chanting “one more” over and over as she and the EMT searched frantically.

“Up here, ma’am. I found an indention. It goes in sideways and looks pretty deep. Also looks like his clavicle may have been damaged by the hit,” the EMT announced.

Megan crawled up Nicolas and looked at a deep rift near the very top of the vest. “There’s no bullet visible. No, wait—I see it.”

Her fingers shook as she used one shaking finger to wiggle loose a badly mangled, but still mostly intact shot from deep within the impact hole. She started to shake visibly at the same time the EMT announced blood was starting to seep from under the same place. The second bullet had almost made it through the vest. “Take it off him carefully. The vest is evidence.”

She dropped the second piece of metal into the bag when the cop held it out to her again.

“I was in the Marines too, Ma’am.
Semper Fi
.”

“
Oorah
,” she returned tiredly.

At the moment, she didn’t feel like a Marine. She felt like the girl Nicolas had always made her feel like around him. She wanted to cry and throw up and cry some more. She wanted to throw herself across his unconscious body and wail about the fact he was hurt.