Healing Her Heart (Crystal Lake Series Book 1) Read online

  “This is all your fault,” he said in a harsh tone, waving the gun in her general direction. “Annie’s gone, and it’s all your fault!”

  Kurt Hinkle. Was he intoxicated? He certainly acted like it; his eyes were bloodshot and his gait unsteady. She swallowed hard and tried to edge behind one of the metal bedside tables, not much protection against a bullet. When Kurt came farther in the room, she fought a rising panic.

  Where was everyone? Couldn’t they hear Kurt?

  “Don’t move!” he threatened. He took a step toward her, and she couldn’t help shrinking backward, dragging the metal bedside table with her.

  And this time when he raised the gun and pointed it directly at her, his hand was far too steady.

  Chapter Six

  Gabe glanced impatiently at the clock on the wall. Where was Larissa? It wasn’t like her to take such a long break in the middle of her shift like this. He’d always been impressed by what a hard worker she was.

  But he also knew just how upset she was at seeing the extent of Annie’s injuries. The burn from two nights ago had been weeping and was covered in dirt and grime from the highway. Annie had also sustained several broken bones, a head injury, and a potential ruptured spleen. It had been a long time since he’d seen anyone so badly hurt. And knowing Larissa, she was likely blaming herself even though there was absolutely nothing she could have done to prevent what had happened.

  Still, he couldn’t help sending up a quick prayer for Annie’s recovery. And then shook his head in mild disbelief when he realized he’d prayed more since attending church with Larissa than he had in the year his sister had hounded him to go.

  Not that he planned on telling Kimberly that.

  Julie came abruptly around the corner and barreled right into him. He steadied her with his hands on her shoulders. “Whoa, take it easy.”

  “Sorry,” she said with a sigh, taking a step back. “It’s been so crazy busy.” She frowned. “Have you seen Larissa? One of her patients needs something for pain.”

  “I’ll find her,” he promised. “Just get her patient the pain meds for now, okay?”

  “Okay.” Julie disappeared, and he swung around to head back to the trauma bay.

  He slowed to a stop when he heard a familiar voice.

  “Annie’s not here, Kurt. Why don’t you put the gun down and have a seat so I can arrange for you to go and see her?”

  Kurt? Gun? Ice crawled down his spine, and he sprinted toward the nearest phone and punched in 911. “Kurt Hinkle is armed with a gun and is in the trauma bay with Larissa,” he said in a low, terse tone to Grace, the sheriff’s department dispatcher. “Hurry.”

  He hung up the phone, swung around, and quickly flagged down Debra, the charge nurse. “Keep everyone out of the trauma bay, do you understand?” he said as quietly as possible.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Kurt Hinkle is in there with a gun, but the police are on their way. Keep everyone out and far away from this area,” he repeated, moving toward the door.

  “You can’t go in there,” Debra protested, grabbing his arm.

  “Yes, I can. Just keep everyone out here, okay?” He shook off her hand and edged toward the door leading to the trauma bay. He didn’t want to barge in there in case he startled Kurt into shooting.

  But he couldn’t bear the thought of Larissa facing someone as unstable as Kurt alone, either.

  Dear Lord, please give me strength.

  He cracked the door open and peered inside. The ice on his spine turned glacier when he saw how close Kurt was to Larissa, just six feet away, with his gun leveled directly at the center of her chest. Larissa stared up at Kurt with wide, frightened eyes with nothing but a small metal bedside table between them.

  There was no way he was waiting for the sheriff’s deputies. He shoved open the door and stepped into the room. “Put down the gun, Kurt.”

  The older man swung around to face him, the gun bobbing up and down in his hand. “Stay out of this, doc. This is between her and me.”

  “Put the gun away,” he repeated, projecting a calmness he didn’t feel. “Don’t make this worse than it already is.”

  “Get outta here!” Kurt shouted, his face turning red.

  From the corner of his eye, he noticed Larissa was edging farther away from Kurt, exactly the way he’d hoped. The trauma bay was big and open; there weren’t any places to hide or much to use as a barrier against a gun.

  “Why are you threatening Larissa?” he asked, striving for a conversational tone. “She hasn’t done anything to you.”

  Mentioning Larissa was a mistake as Kurt immediately swung back toward her. “You should have stayed away from Annie,” he accused. “You shouldn’t have filled her head with ideas of leaving me. It’s your fault she got hurt. If she wouldn’t have left, she’d be fine right now.”

  Gabe couldn’t believe Kurt’s twisted logic, but then again, he didn’t understand why any man would physically abuse his wife, either. Kurt was so far beyond rational that Gabe didn’t have a clue how to get through to him.

  “I was trying to help Annie,” Larissa said with a note of defiance. “You’re the one who keeps hurting her, not me.”

  Gabe silently urged Larissa to be quiet. There was no sense in making the guy mad.

  “What do you want, Kurt?” Gabe asked, desperate to get the man’s attention focused back on him instead of on Larissa. “I can’t help you if I don’t know what you want.”

  “I want you to get out of here,” Kurt shouted. “If you don’t, I’ll start shooting!”

  Gabe glanced helplessly at Larissa, trying to think of a way to stall. Kurt might be drunk, but considering his hunting background he didn’t dare bank on the fact that Kurt might not hit his target. Especially considering Larissa was in close range.

  Where were the sheriff’s deputies? Shouldn’t they have been here by now? What was taking them so long?

  “Now!” Kurt said, firing the gun for emphasis, the sound echoing through the trauma bay.

  “Get down,” Gabe shouted to Larissa as he dropped to the floor. He rolled and then came up in a small crouch, ready for the next gunshot.

  Larissa must have sensed what was about to happen, because when he glanced over, she was hunkered down in the corner of the room holding the small metal bedside table turned sideways so that the tray protected her chest. He didn’t see any blood, so he hoped and prayed that meant she wasn’t hit. Thankfully, she had some cover.

  “Kurtis Hinkle! Drop your gun and come out with your hands up!”

  Kurt spun around toward the doors leading in from the ambulance bay, where the sheriff’s deputies were located. Gabe took advantage of Kurt’s momentary distraction to dive toward Larissa. She clutched at him, and he held her tight for a fraction of a second before he shoved her behind him.

  “Stay down,” he whispered. A bullet could still go through him to get to her, so he used the metal bedside table as a shield while hoping for the best. He took heart in the fact that he could see a deputy standing just outside the door he’d come through earlier.

  The cops had Kurt and the trauma bay surrounded. But the danger was far from over.

  “Go away or I’ll kill them both!” Kurt shouted.

  “What do you want, Kurt?” one of the deputies shouted. “Do you want to see Annie?”

  “Annie’s dead!” Kurt screamed, his face mottled with anger.

  “Annie’s not dead,” Gabe said and hoped he wasn’t lying. “She’s at a hospital in Madison. The deputies can arrange for you to see her.”

  “You’re lying!”

  Gabe probably was lying since he doubted the deputies would take him anywhere near Annie. It was clear they believed Kurt was the one who’d run Annie down. But they needed to get Kurt to surrender his gun before anyone got hurt.

  “Do you want to see your son, Tommy?” the deputy asked from outside the ambulance bay doors.

  “Leave my son out of this!” Kurt grew even more
agitated, pacing back and forth in front of the ambulance bay doors. “Stay away from him, do you hear me?”

  Gabe realized that Tommy was a lever they could use, and hopefully the deputies knew that, too. Because right now there wasn’t much between him and Larissa and the madman with a gun.

  And Kurt could easily shoot them both before the deputies would have a chance to stop him.

  ____________

  Larissa had prayed almost non-stop since Kurt had cornered her in the trauma bay. And the fact that Gabe was here, too, made her feel even worse.

  She didn’t doubt for a minute that Kurt had been driving the car that slammed into his wife. Annie had clearly been trying to get away from him. Hadn’t Kurt admitted that much already?

  This was her fault, Kurt was right about that. She should have spent more time with Annie the night she’d come in for her broken wrist. She should have convinced Annie to get away from Kurt right then and there. She could have taken Annie to a safe house, at least for the night.

  But she hadn’t. And now she and Gabe were both in danger. Trapped in a corner where Kurt could easily kill them. The fact that Kurt hadn’t shot either of them yet was nothing short of a miracle. Maybe his being intoxicated was actually working in their favor. He didn’t seem to be thinking too clearly.

  The door leading in from the trauma bay was slowly opening about an inch or so, and she realized one of the sheriff’s deputies was standing there. From the angle of the door, he wouldn’t have a good shot at Kurt, but just knowing the deputy was there helped steady her nerves.

  “It’s not too late, Kurt. Put down your gun and come outside. We understand this is all just a big understanding.” The voice outside sounded like Deputy Armbruster. “Come out while you still can.”

  “No! If you come in here, I’ll kill them both!”

  The door from the main part of the ER opened even wider, and Larissa tensed as she saw Deputy Thomas kneeling there, wearing full SWAT gear. Despite the awkward position, he pointed his handgun at Kurt. She thought she was prepared for the sound of gunfire, but the blast made her jump.

  Kurt screamed and swung around, shooting wildly before he went down hard. The next few seconds passed in a blur, but suddenly the gunfire stopped and the nightmare was over.

  “I have him,” Deputy Thomas said as he stood over Kurt, who was bleeding profusely onto the floor. Kurt’s gun was on the other side of the room far out of reach.

  “Get him up on a gurney,” Gabe said. He shoved the metal tray aside and rose to his feet, pulling her up, too. “Are you all right?” he asked in a low tone, his warm, brown eyes gazing down at her.

  “I think so.” Her hands were still trembling, so she clutched them together.

  Thank you for saving us, Lord!

  “Run and get Julie to come and help me with Kurt,” he said, moving away. “He needs medical attention. You can cover the patients on the teams until we’ve finished.”

  She could barely wrap her mind around the fact that Gabe was going to help fix Kurt’s gunshot wound. But then she realized they simply couldn’t let him die, no matter how much he might have deserved it. So if Gabe could do it, so could she. “I’ll help you.”

  “You don’t need this, get Julie,” Gabe repeated, heading over to where the sheriff’s deputies were handcuffing Kurt Hinkle to a gurney. There was so much blood that she knew there wasn’t time to waste.

  She went over and grabbed IV supplies, knowing that they’d need access in order to give badly needed blood and fluids. The rest of the ER staff poured in to assist once the deputies had given the all clear. Soon she and Julie were working as a team, pumping four units of O-neg blood in at a time through a rapid infuser.

  “Call the trauma surgeon on call,” Gabe ordered. He stared down with obvious concern at the open wound on Kurt’s lower abdomen where Deputy Thomas’s bullet had penetrated deeply into his flesh. “I can’t stop the bleeding, and he needs to get to the OR stat!”

  A nicked artery certainly explained the massive blood loss. Larissa didn’t allow herself to think about anything that happened before, focusing solely on saving Kurt’s life. Even though she knew he’d end up in jail if they managed to succeed.

  She heard Julie making the call to the surgeon. “Dr. Rausch is on his way in.”

  Gabe grimaced and began packing the wound. “I hope he gets here in time.”

  “Do you need a suture tray?” Larissa asked after she finished hanging four more units of blood. Kurt’s vitals were low but stable, at least for now.

  Gabe gave her a grim nod. “I’ll try my best to patch him up at least until he can get to the OR.”

  She pulled a sterile vascular tray off the shelf on the back wall and quickly opened it up as Gabe pulled on a new set of sterile gloves. The vascular tray wasn’t really equipped for a large-vascular injury, but it was better than nothing.

  Larissa handed Gabe instruments and lap sponges as he worked to stem the bleeding enough to see what he was doing. He placed a few sutures, and the blood gushing out slowed to a trickle. He put more sutures in and then stepped back. “That’s all I can do for now.”

  Fifteen minutes later, Dr. Rausch strode in and took command of the situation. Within moments, she and the transporter wheeled Kurt over to the OR. Deputy Armbruster followed alongside, unwilling to let his prisoner out of sight.

  “I’m afraid you can’t go in there,” she warned, putting a hand on the deputy’s arm. She wasn’t sterile, either, and neither one of them would be allowed any farther. “You’ll have to stay out here if you really want to wait.”

  “You can be sure I’ll wait for him,” Deputy Armbruster muttered. “Although, frankly, it’s a waste of time patching him up since he’ll be spending the rest of his life in jail.”

  She didn’t have an answer for that and was ashamed to admit she’d had the same thought earlier. But the source of the injuries didn’t matter; as health care professionals, they were obligated to save lives to the best of their ability. Even Kurt’s. “There’s a coffee machine over there. Help yourself,” she murmured.

  “Thanks. I’ll have to take your statement later, okay?”

  “I’ll hang around after my shift is over,” she promised.

  “Tell the doc I’ll need to talk to him, too.”

  She nodded to indicate she’d pass the message. “Take care.” She turned and made her way back to the ER. She felt bad that Julie and Debra had been covering her patients all this time. But when she glanced up at the clock, she stared for a moment, unable to believe that only an hour had passed since Kurt had trapped her in the trauma bay.

  The rest of her shift passed by in a blur. After she gave report to the oncoming nurse, she headed outside, surprised to see the bright sun. The rain from the night before had passed, giving way to a new day.

  As much as she wanted to go home, she knew the police still wanted to talk to her and to Gabe.

  Just then, Gabe joined her outside. Wordlessly, he crossed over and pulled her into his embrace. She leaned against him, relieved and glad to be alive.

  “I’ve never been so afraid in my whole life,” he murmured in her ear. “I’m thankful you weren’t hurt.”

  “Me, too,” she said, her voice muffled by his shirt. “I mean, I was terrified he was going to shoot you.”

  “Deputy Thomas saved the day.”

  She couldn’t argue that one.

  The parking lot began filling with cars, members of the hospital leadership team and the public relations department arriving to take charge of the situation. As they streamed past, she felt distinctly self-conscious and tried to pull away, knowing Gabe wouldn’t want to be seen hugging her like this in public.

  But he refused to let her go. His arms tightened around her, and when she glanced up at him questioningly, he simply smiled, lowered his head, and kissed her in full view of anyone who cared to watch.

  And she reveled in the sweetness of his kiss.

  Chapter Seven

&n
bsp; Gabe barely noticed the various pairs of eyes boring into him as he kissed Larissa. Only when he needed to breathe did he break away and lower his forehead to rest on hers. His pulse thundered in his ear, and he realized he didn’t want to let her go.

  “I prayed for your safety,” he confessed in a low voice. “And God answered my prayers.”

  “Me, too,” she admitted. “I prayed for us and for Annie.”

  “At least Annie is safe from Kurt now,” he said. “Kurt will be stuck behind bars for a long time.”

  “I know.” Larissa ducked her head and leaned back as if trying to put more distance between them. “Gabe, we’re attracting too much attention.”

  “I don’t care.” And he was surprised to realize he truly didn’t care. Larissa wasn’t Rebecca, and no matter what happened, he knew Larissa would never spread lies about him. It was ridiculous it took him this long to realize that. Or maybe he was just hiding behind the idea because it was a good excuse. “I care about you, and I don’t mind if the whole world knows it.”

  Her green eyes widened in surprise. “But Gabe, you never date any of the ER nurses. Ever.”

  He couldn’t help but smile. “Until you.”

  She looked flabbergasted by his response, but Deputy Thomas interrupted them. “Dr. Allen? Larissa? Do you have time to give your statements?”

  “Of course,” Larissa said.

  He didn’t want to let her go but had to be content with holding her hand. “Could we sit down somewhere? It was a long night, and I’m sure Larissa is exhausted.”

  “No problem. Let’s head over to the patio outside the dining room.”

  Once they were seated at the picnic table, Deputy Thomas took out his notebook and pen. “Larissa, why don’t you start at the beginning?”

  “After we transferred Annie to Madison, I needed a moment alone, so I went outside and stood beneath the overhang just outside the ambulance doors. I guess I must have been out there longer than I thought, because when I came back in, the trauma bay was already clean, and everyone was gone. I was about to head back to my team of patients when Kurt came in.”