Rick cleared his throat. If he thought about this for too long, he might wimp out and take back his offer. “Getting back to work can wait,” he told Terrell. “It shouldn’t take you that long to get your family squared away. Besides, after all that you and Val did for me and Axle, it’s the least I can do.”
It wasn’t the least he could do. It was a huge sacrifice, and Rick knew that Terrell was fully aware of how much it was costing Rick. Terrell stood up from the ambulance and held out his hand to shake. Pulling their grasped hands across his heart, Terrell reeled Rick in for a manly hug, slapping him on the back twice.
“Thank you,” Terrell said before he set Rick free from his solid embrace. “I should only need a week. If you can keep her safe for me until then, I should be able to take over from there.”
Rick nodded. “Not a problem,” he assured Terrell.
Terrell chuckled. “But now you’ve got to tackle the hard part.”
“What’s that?” Rick asked.
“Convincing Stephanie to let you help her.” Terrell shook his head. “I love that girl like my own sister, but she is stubborn and she won’t enjoy being needy. She has been the rock of her family for a long time, and no one has ever looked out for her. Don’t take it personally if she isn’t too keen on the idea of having a bodyguard.”
Val walked over and joined the men, balancing Haddie on her hip. “Hey.” Her eyebrows pinched together as she made eye contact with Rick. “Have you guys seen Stephanie?” she asked. “I can’t find her.”
“Yeah, she’s waiting by my...” Rick pointed at his car, but she wasn’t there. Axle sat on the sidewalk in front of it, but Stephanie was gone. The hairs on the back of his neck raised.
“Axle, hier,” Rick called Axle to come to him. The dog trotted to his side obediently. Rick patted Axle’s saddle area. Axle had been sitting by the car and Stephanie the whole time. If something malicious had happened to Stephanie, he would have alerted Rick. Where was she?
Rick started toward his car with Terrell, Val and Axle following him, but the paramedic called out to Terrell. “Sir, you really need to keep that mask on, and I think we’re ready to transport your son to the hospital.”
Terrell and Val froze. Their dark complexions paled with worry. Both of their gazes flitted between the ambulance and Rick’s patrol car.
Rick put a hand on Terrell’s shoulder. “Go!” he commanded. “This is part of what I just volunteered to do. You take care of your family. I’ll take care of Stephanie.”
* * *
It had taken him two hours to find her, and he was not happy. He wanted to chew her out for being so stupid, but finding her on her knees in the front of the church sanctuary dissolved his anger. Well, it dissolved it a little bit. Seeing her alone and praying tugged at his compassion. He was relieved that she was alive and well and not floating upside down near the Ballard docks as Hale’s other victims had been. But he was still plenty angry with her. What had she been thinking, taking off like that with nothing more than a note to explain? Didn’t her friends deserve better than that?
And why did he care so much? The smart thing would be to leave her right where she was to fend for herself. He had already gone above and beyond what duty dictated. Where had his objectivity gone? Victims had a right to refuse help. But this victim mattered a lot to Val and Terrell, and they mattered too much to Rick to let them down. Like it or not, he was involved for their sake.
Rick crossed his arms and called out down the church aisle, “So are you planning to make me chase you all over this city today, or what?”
Stephanie scrambled up from the front altar and spun to face him. Her body was set to run or fight, and her face was so pale he almost felt guilty for startling her like that. Almost.
He raised his hands and stepped closer so she could see him. “Hey. Calm down. It’s just me.”
Stephanie closed her eyes and relaxed, letting out an audible sigh. Her eyebrows crinkled together. “How’d you find me?”
“The question should be why I had to go looking for you again in the first place. Wasn’t saving you once today enough?”
She squared her shoulders. “Terrell would have insisted that I stay with them.” She crossed her own arms, mirroring Rick’s stance, holding her ground. “They don’t need to babysit me, Rick, and sticking around gave Julian opportunity to hurt them more than he already had. Making everyone mad at me was a small price to pay to keep them all safe.”
He admired her selflessness, but her actions were still foolish. The minute she’d walked away from the crowd, she had allowed herself to be an easy target. He took a step closer to her. “You could have asked me for help. Terrell and I were setting up a plan for your protection.”
“As a favor to Terrell, right?” Her jaw tightened. “I am not your responsibility, Rick. I’ve always taken care of myself. I’m trying to figure out how to keep doing that.”
He had made a promise to Terrell. Now he needed to convince Stephanie to let him fulfill it. “Lone ranger tactics get people killed, Stephanie. Even the toughest cops call for backup.”
As soon as he said it, memories flashed, and in his mind he was instantly back on the sidewalk by the warehouse in the Industrial District on the night that he and Axle had been stabbed. He was once again in the dark, rain falling on his face while he waited for either rescue or death, unable to move, unable to do anything but wait for backup to save him.
Most of all he remembered the blood. Blood on the man’s chest where Rick’s bullets had entered. Axle’s blood. Rick’s blood. And he remembered the sounds. Sirens. Pounding feet of his backup finally arriving, running to help. Shouts of “Officer down. Officer down.”
Rick shook his head to clear it, returning to the present. “I understand not wanting to be in need of help, believe me, I get that better than you know. But can’t you see that taking off on your own and refusing their help has made you more of a burden for Val and Terrell? You should see how worried they are about you right now.”
Her face was turned up toward his, and he noticed how close they had moved to each other as they talked. Even in the dim lighting of the sanctuary, he was near enough to see her eyes change to a different shade of blue as they filled with tears. Her head dropped, and she slid her hands up into her hairline and grabbed at her roots. “Ugh. That was not what I was trying to do.”
He reached out and pulled her hands down to her sides. “I know it wasn’t what you wanted to do, but Stephanie, it took me only two hours to find you in the city. It could have been Hale who found you instead of me. What was your plan?”
She plopped down onto the nearest seat. She rested her head on the back of the chair and stared up at the ceiling. “I didn’t have a plan,” she admitted, but added, “Yet. I was going to figure it out, maybe find a women’s shelter or something that would help me. But once I started walking, I didn’t know where to go. I thought about going back to the school to get the stuff I had left there, or going home and making some phone calls. But I was too scared to go to any of the places Julian knew about so I ended up here. Our pastor is meeting with the worship team upstairs, and he said I could hang out here for a while and pray.”
She rolled her head to the side in order to look in his direction. “So how did you find me?”
Rick shrugged, then sat down on the chair next to her. “Not sure. Just knew you would want to feel safe and thought your church might be a place you’d go in search of help.”
“Yeah, I thought someone would be here and that maybe the office would have a flier or a phone number for a shelter