Harper Allen - The Night In Question

Her head bowed, her shoulders shaking with soundless sobs, she didn’t hear the hoarse voice calling out her name until it was too late. Blindly she looked up and saw the bus bearing down on her.

HE’D ALMOST BEEN too late. Max rubbed his jaw wearily and looked down at the still figure tucked under two comforters and a wool blanket in his bed. Her hair was still damp, and just below the hairline and above her closed eyes was a raw-looking graze. He’d given her that when he’d managed a fair imitation of the high-school football player he’d once been and had knocked her out of harm’s way with a flying tackle in the intersection. He realized he was gingerly rotating his shoulder, and he winced just as the doctor he’d called in looked up.

“There’s nothing physically wrong with her except for exhaustion and a bad chill. Now that she’s fallen asleep, I’d prefer not to wake her.” The older man lifted an eyebrow. “Even if I could get her admitted, hospital beds are in short supply. She’d be released tomorrow.”

“She refused to let me take her to one, anyway.” Max met his quizzical gaze and shook his head firmly. “And no, Doctor—there’s nothing here you have to worry about. I’ll let her get a decent night’s rest and then send her on her way in the morning. My interest in her is professional, not personal.”

One-handedly he fumbled his ID wallet out of his jacket pocket—his torn jacket pocket, he realized with little surprise—and displayed it briefly. The doctor grunted.

“I didn’t peg you as the type. But doesn’t she have anywhere else to stay?”

“She’s a transient.” Max’s reply was more curt than he’d meant it to be. “And I’m not sure she didn’t deliberately step out in front of that bus, Doctor. I’d given her some bad news earlier, and…” He paused uncomfortably. “Hell, who knows. Maybe I should have handled it differently.”

“I see. Well, if you’re still worried about her emotional state tomorrow, give me a call and I’ll arrange to have her put under observation for a few days, although I’m sure she won’t thank me for that.” There was shrewd assessment in the physician’s faded gaze as he got to his feet and walked to the door with Max. “She’s recently been a guest of the state, am I right?”

At Max’s quick glance he gave a wintry smile. “Please, Mr. Ross—she’s got a prison pallor, a wound from some kind of homemade weapon on her hand, and she’s obviously been living on sheer nerve for far too long. And you’re FBI, which raises a whole passel of awkward questions I don’t think I’ll ask.”

“Like I said, the relationship between us isn’t personal,” Max said evenly. “I was the one who put her behind bars. If I had my way, she’d still be there.”

They’d reached the front door, and the older man took the lightweight topcoat that Max was holding out to him and shrugged into it. He pursed his lips thoughtfully, patted his pockets for his keys and picked up his medical bag.

“Then it’s all the more interesting that you unhesitatingly risked your own life tonight to save hers, wouldn’t you say?” He tucked an umbrella under the arm that held his bag, and grasped Ross’s hand with the other. “Call me if you need to. But Mr. Ross, don’t forget that old Chinese saying—if you save someone’s life, you’re responsible for them forever.”

“My forebears were hardheaded Scots Presbyterians, Doctor.” Max didn’t smile as he opened the door and stepped aside. “That philosophy would have struck them as annoyingly fanciful.”

He waited until he saw the other man get into his car. Then he closed the door against the still-wet night and snapped off the porch light. A few steps along the short hall, he stopped to unlatch and slide open the pocket doors that led to the living room.

“Sorry, buddy. You can come in now.”

At his words, the big black dog that had been lying on the living room floor got heavily to his feet, his tail beating in acknowledgement. Stiffly the animal walked over to him and stopped, looking up inquiringly.

“Yeah, we’ve got a guest, Boomer.” Max dropped a hand to the dog’s head and idly scratched the folded ear, frowning. “I’m damned if I know what I was thinking, bringing her here, but we’ve got a guest. I’d better go check on her.”

The house was quiet as he passed through the kitchen, the only sounds the ticking of the clock on the wall and the irregular dripping of the faucet. He’d been meaning to fix that, he thought, pausing to tighten the loose tap. Maybe tomorrow he’d stop by the hardware store and get some washers after he sent Julia Tennant on her way.

Julia Tennant. Julia Tennant in his house—no, in his bed. What exactly had he been thinking, for God’s sake?

He’d told the good doctor his interest in her wasn’t personal. That might have been true at some point, but even two years ago he’d been in danger of crossing over the line between professional and personal. Now there was no doubt about it. His involvement with her in the last few days hadn’t been any part of his official duties.

In fact, if anyone found out just how involved he’d let himself become with Julia Tennant, Max told himself with calm certainty, he could end up losing his job.

He’d had a whack of vacation time due him. Other agents might plan a trip to Disneyland with the wife and kids, a wild and crazy jaunt to Vegas, a fishing trip with a few good buddies. He’d taken a week off three years ago, mainly because his director had insisted on it, and for the whole seven days he and Boomer had sat on the couch in front of the television, watching old movies and the afternoon soaps.

But when the word had gotten out that Julia Tennant’s conviction had been overturned and she was due to be released, he’d immediately asked for time off. He just hadn’t told anyone that he intended to spend his vacation making sure that she didn’t get within a hundred miles of her daughter and the woman who had once been her friend and sister-in-law.

So, yeah—this whole thing was emotional, Max admitted, staring out of his kitchen window into the night. But despite what Julia probably thought, the emotion driving him wasn’t hatred of her. She was a murderer, and he’d put plenty of them behind bars without giving them a second thought. On the Tennant case, however, he’d had to watch a little girl’s world be torn apart by the cold-blooded actions of her mother, and Willa Tennant’s innocence had broken through the wall of detachment he tried to keep between him and his work.

She hadn’t deserved to have her father killed, her life turned upside down, and everything familiar taken from her. He’d vowed her mother wasn’t going to do it to her a second time.

But this afternoon when he’d seen Julia standing in that intersection as if she had no desire to go on living, his blood had turned to ice. And a few seconds later, when he’d been cradling her suddenly fragile-seeming body beneath him on the pavement, he hadn’t been thinking of Julia Tennant as the enemy at all. Oblivious to the shaky anger of the bus driver who’d stopped a few feet past them and the surge of bystanders who’d gathered around, his attention had been fixed on her hair, dark with rain under his hand, on the vulnerable line of her throat, on the delicate fanning of her lashes against her cheeks. Then her eyes had opened.

They really were sapphire. For a moment they’d simply gazed at him as if waking up and finding him close to her wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. For that same crazy moment, he’d felt exactly the same way.

He was losing his goddamn mind, Max thought flatly, turning away from the sink and just barely concealing his disconcertion as he met those sapphire eyes once again. This time they were staring expressionlessly at him from a few feet away.