She should get down from the float. She should stop holding Tricks and get down from the float, do her job, because she was the chief. But she couldn’t, couldn’t move, couldn’t care. She laid her cheek against the top of Tricks’s head, closed her eyes, and tried to concentrate on breathing.
Then Jesse and Patrick were there, Jesse in his street clothes because it was his day off, Patrick officially taking charge. Patrick crouched beside Morgan and handcuffed Kyle, while Jesse stood at the rear of the float and said, “Chief, is everyone up here okay?”
“I think so,” Christa replied in a shaky voice, as if she knew Bo was still incapable of doing so. “He was aiming right at us, then Mr. Rees hit him!”
At Tricks specifically, though with the girls so close to her and Bo directly behind, she supposed any of them could have been hit.
The shouts around the wounded person got louder, and Jesse took off in that direction. Bo was gathering herself—thinking about gathering herself—when hard arms closed around her and lifted her bodily off the float. Morgan’s scent and heat closed around her, thawing the ice in her veins. She managed a very weak, “No,” from her constricted throat, though she wasn’t certain what she was saying no to. Morgan stood her on her feet, said, “Can you stand?”
She nodded. He took her hand and placed it on the float, just in case. Then he gathered Tricks in his arms and gently set her down on the street too. He looped her leash around his wrist, asked one of the kids to pass Bo’s bag down to him. He hung the bag off his left shoulder, scooped Bo up in his arms again, and called out, “Can someone open this store? The chief needs to get out of the sun.”
Someone could. It turned out to be the hardware store. Morgan carried her inside with Tricks trotting along beside him. The store was cool and more private than the street. She didn’t even mind the somewhat funky smell that hardware stores always had, for some reason.
A battered office chair on wheels was dragged out. Bo sat down, then leaned forward and looped her arms around Tricks, burying her face against the dog’s soft ruff. The weight of what had almost happened was so heavy that she could barely breathe, barely force her lungs to pump in and out. Tricks had been targeted because of her. Whatever maggot had gotten into Kyle Gooding’s brain, he’d known that the best way to get to her was through Tricks. It was common knowledge she doted on her dog, and bright, innocent, happy Tricks had almost been killed because of that.
The realization devastated her, filled her with such pain and remorse she couldn’t get a grip on her emotions. She’d handled everything in life that had come her way: instability, betrayal, financial problems, deprivation, but she didn’t know if she could handle anything bad happening to Tricks because of her. But what had she done? What had so enraged Kyle that he’d decided to destroy something she loved?
The son of a bitch! She wanted to choke him, she wanted to hit him with everything she had.
She was jerked from her thoughts as Morgan squatted in front of her, his big warm hands cupping her elbows and his dark brows lowered over the blue ice of his eyes as he studied her face. “Bo—honey, everything’s okay. Tricks is fine.”
He could have been killed, she realized—again. Jumping Kyle the way he had, Kyle could easily have turned the weapon on him and pulled the trigger. He’d risked his life for her, for Tricks, for everyone on the float and everyone lining the street to watch the parade. Kyle could have kept shooting until he was out of ammunition. But despite nearly dying just a couple of months before, Morgan hadn’t hesitated.
Sensing something was very amiss, Tricks laid her head on Bo’s thigh and looked up at her with worried dark eyes. Gently Bo touched Tricks’s head. “Why didn’t you shoot him?” she asked in a very low tone, because she didn’t necessarily want anyone else to know Morgan was armed.
His hands tightened on her elbows. “I couldn’t get a clear shot with all the people around,” he murmured.
He was watching her so intently she realized she had to get it together. She was the chief of police; she had to act like it. If Mayor Buddy and the town council wanted her to let Jesse and Patrick handle it because she was too directly involved, she was okay with that, but until they told her so, she had to do her job.
She drew a deep breath, let it out, and firmed her jaw. She still felt like jelly on the inside, but on the outside she would show strength or die trying. “I’m okay,” she said, lifting her head and looking around at everyone who had crowded into the store, all the concerned expressions on the faces of people she knew and some she didn’t know. “If you can give Tricks some water, I need to get out there and do what needs doing.”
CHAPTER 18
SHE STEPPED OUT INTO THE BRIGHT SPRING DAY WITH Morgan close behind her, Tricks’s leash in his hand. Tricks had lapped up some water, then refused to let Bo leave the hardware store without her, as if she knew how upset Bo was.
Once again, because of Kyle Gooding, she heard the sirens of multiple patrol cars and medics racing to Hamrickville. This time there wouldn’t be any dropping of charges, at least not on her part. She intended to nail him with every possible charge and let the district attorney sort it out.
The street was clogged with people milling around, and the parade floats were blocking traffic in every direction. The VFW guys and the Shriners were trying to clear the street by moving the floats out of the way, which met with some difficulty because in several cases the men who had been driving the tractors had left their vehicles to go see what was going on. But the front end of the parade was beginning to move, so the clearing out had started.