He couldn’t utter a rational response. Not around the lump in his throat. He muttered a goodbye to Julia, gathered his things and went to a coffee shop to spend the next ninety minutes alone. With old rock music playing in the background, and folks coming in and out, he could bask in obscurity until he showed up at work. Mercifully, working would help him through the next forty-eight hours.
A call to back up Zach Harrison on a possible breaking and entering case came midway through his shift. He drove toward the lower east side of Kirkwood Lake just after dusk.
He pulled up to the address, spotted Zach’s cruiser off to the side and rolled to a stop alongside him. He lowered his window so they could talk without radios. “What have you got?”
“B and E, two kids, a possible third, looting side-by-side merchants.”
“You want front or back?”
“I’ll take front. Chalmers should be right along.”
“They know they’ve been spotted?”
Zach shook his head. “I’m blocked by the trees. A neighbor in the upstairs apartment over the nail salon called it in. And it’s dark now, so they’re less likely to see us.”
Chalmers pulled up then, and the three men eased out of their SUVs. Tanner circled left while Chalmers joined Zach as they approached the front of the building. Zach stopped, waited for Tanner to make it around back, then yelled, “New York State Troopers! Come out with your hands up!”
They came out, but not with the intention of getting caught. Two darted out the back, straight at Tanner. He raised his hands. “Stop. Now.”
One kid did. The other dodged right, then the first one thought that might be a good idea, and darted left. Tanner pinned him against the wall while talking to Zach and Chalmers through his radio. “One suspect heading east, about five-eight, leather jacket, clean-shaven, tight blue jeans, black boots.”
Zach’s voice came through the radio. “I’ve got visual.”
The next thing Tanner heard was a dash, then a scuffle, followed by a moan of pain. Zach was in trouble. He half dragged his cuffed perp around the front of the building, then groaned.
Zach lay sprawled in hip-deep snow. Chalmers had both youths lying on the ground, his weapon drawn as he barked a request for an ambulance into the radio. And from the look of Zach’s lower leg, his ankle went one way and the leg went the other.
Julia Harrison was going to kill Tanner for not protecting her brother. And he wouldn’t blame her one bit.
She rushed into the ER twenty minutes later with Zach’s wife, Piper, and a big, broad man that must be Zach’s father, Marty. He was taller than Julia, with the same blond hair, and he threw a frustrated look at Zach. “First her.” He jerked a thumb at Julia. “Now you. I assumed this whole parenthood thing got easier once you grew up. Clearly I was mistaken.”
“Are you okay?” Julia asked while Piper grabbed hold of Zach and burst into tears.
Zach sent his father a questioning look because anyone who knew Piper McKinney Harrison knew she didn’t cry. Ever.
Marty Harrison made a face, surprised.
Julia shrugged. “Don’t look at me. I figured it was just an ankle and not a bullet, but then I’m hard-hearted.”
“Compared to Piper?” Tanner scratched the back of his head. “No one’s tougher than Piper, are they?”
Julia started to speak, then paused.
Zach winced in pain, then caught her look. “Piper? Are you...? I mean, are we expecting again?”
“Yes.” She nodded against his chest, and Tanner’s gut did a weird little twist when Zach’s hand tightened protectively over his wife’s neck. “I was going to tell you tonight, I had it all planned and it was going to be very romantic—”
“Seems it already was,” noted Julia. Her easy humor made Tanner feel better, but for a guy who avoided pregnancy and children purposely, he’d been unexpectedly bombarded by both for the past twenty-four hours.
“And then they called and said you were hurt,” Piper continued, “and the first thing I thought was you were shot.”
“But I wasn’t.”
“Well, you could have been,” she insisted.
“Only if Tanner shot me. Or Chalmers. Unfortunately I was bested by a decorative rock path buried under a monumental snowdrift. I went one way. My foot went the other.”
“How bad is it?” Julia asked. She lifted the blanket, grimaced and set the woven throw back down gingerly. “Oh, that’ll need an operation, bro. When is that expected to happen?”
A doctor strode into the room. “Right now. We just called in an ortho specialist. I’m Dr. Laramie, hey, wait.” He stared at Tanner, then Julia, then Zach. “Didn’t I see you Three Musketeers in here last night?”
“Guilty as charged,” Tanner admitted. “Last night it was her fault.” He pointed Julia’s way and ignored her little squawk of protest. “This one’s on me.”
“It’s on a rock path and a snowstorm and three brats who wanted to steal old folks’ pensions to support a drug habit.” Zach held Piper’s hand between two of his and stared at Tanner. “You had two-on-one at the back. You did what you needed to do. I tripped, plain and simple.”
Tanner couldn’t let it go that easily. “If he’d come around the other way, you’d have been clear and there’d be no injury. Now you’re busted, your wife’s expecting and you won’t be around to back me up for six—”
“Eight,” said Zach’s father.
Julia scoffed. “Ten, minimal.”
“Twelve weeks, most likely,” the doctor advised cheerfully. He held up an X-ray. “This snazzy black-and-white photo of your bones shows multiple breaks that are going to be surgically repaired by installing some pretty inventive hardware in your ankle. The nuts and bolts will hold things together as they heal, but the tough part isn’t the four breaks in the bone.”
“It’s not?” Zach asked.
“Soft tissue damage,” the doctor reported. “That’s why we’re looking at twice the healing time. Tendons and ligaments grow slowly, so you’ll be spending the entire spring out of commission.”
Zach looked like someone just kicked him in the teeth, and Tanner knew just how he felt. Twelve weeks of immobility?
A killer.
Zach turned toward his sister. “Julia. The clinic.” His face darkened. “Oh, man. You were counting on me, and you need to have that work done on time for the grant money to be disbursed.”
She waved his concern off as if it was nothing, and that garnered Tanner’s respect because Zach had explained that if the work didn’t get done, the grant money went to someone else.
“You think you’re indispensable or something?” Julia shrugged as if this wasn’t a big deal, but Tanner knew better. “We’ll get someone else to help us get the clinic ready for business.”
“I know what your budget’s like and you were counting on me,” Zach lamented. “And we can’t have Piper working in a zone that might have asbestos. Jules, really, I’m so sorry.”
“I’ll help” Tanner offered. It was the last thing he wanted to do, to be caught in a work zone with midwives and doctors and pregnant women, but they should be done with the work before too many young mothers came around. “I’m decent with a hammer and I like fixing things. And it’s not bragging to say I’m better than your brother.”
Zach started to protest,