Playing With Fire (Tangled in Texas, #2)(94)
My eyes misted over, but I cleared my sore throat and hoped like hell my words didn’t come out as raspy as I thought they might. “It’s my fault. He was protecting me.” Their eyes widened as I started from the beginning and told them the whole story.
The moment I finished, Ox and Judd stepped out to call Cowboy’s parents, who were visiting his grandmother in El Paso. Ned made himself useful by getting everyone coffee, while Bobbie Jo and Emily took turns wearing a hole in the floor with all the pacing they were doing. I, on the other hand, couldn’t do anything but sit there on my hospital bed, feeling numb, waiting for news to arrive.
Another half hour went by before a nurse entered the room, her face weary and bleak. “The FBI agent asked me to give you all an update on your…er, friend,” she said somberly, glancing at me.
Fear pumped through me. “He’s not…”
“No, no, he’s alive. Once we left here, we stabilized him and then he was taken up to the OR to remove the instrument from his neck. The blades missed a major artery by only a fraction of an inch and he’s still in recovery, but he’s awake and going to be just fine. He’s a very lucky young man.”
“Oh, thank God!” I breathed a huge sigh of relief and blinked back the moisture pooling in my eyes. “When can we see him?”
“It will be a little while. Agent Ward is with him right now and then we have to move him to a room. I’m not sure what your friend did, but if the FBI is questioning him, then he must be in a lot of trouble.”
As she left the room, we all grinned. Jake wasn’t on any official business, although he’d obviously led the hospital staff to believe something entirely different.
Everything was going to be okay.
Chapter Twenty
My airways had been singed and the doctor apparently felt like it was too early to give me any solid foods. So when the nurse brought me a small tray with some orange gelatin and some smelly broth, I sent everyone else down to the cafeteria for breakfast. Just because the hospital was starving me didn’t mean they had to suffer the same fate.
But Ned declined.
I found it strange he wanted to stay, but could tell he had something on his mind. Once the others cleared the room, I gazed over at him. He seemed to be calmly mulling something over in his head. Everything had happened so fast after he’d arrived I hadn’t even mentioned anything to him about Chief Swanson. “I’m sorry about your brother.”
He nodded a thank you.
“I met him once…a long time ago. In Houston, where I lived with my mom. He pulled me out of a fire. I was only six at the time.”
Ned grinned at that. “I know. You’re Anna Weber.”
My eyes widened. “Y-yes,” I replied, confusion lighting my voice. “How did you—”
“Ted told me about you years ago. He was a rookie back then, fresh out of training, and you were the first person he’d ever saved. Said it made him feel like a hero.”
“He was a hero.”
“Yeah, I suppose so.” He ran a hand over his wry face. “But he was also a jackass.”
I glanced over at him, not sure how to respond to that.
He grinned in amusement at my blank expression. “I know that sounds heartless, especially coming from his twin brother who just found out he died. But that’s not the way I remember him.” He shook his head. “Ted may have been a hero to you, and probably many others, I’m sure…but, to me, he was a wife-stealing, no-good sonofabitch.”
“You mean, Janet?”
He lowered his head as the pain smeared across his face. “We were married only a few short months when I caught them together. She was the only woman I ever loved. And I guess Ted must’ve loved her, too, since he was willing to forgo our family ties to be with her.” He raised his head and his eyes narrowed. “But I didn’t know that dumbass was going to end up cheating on her with that…monster of a woman.”
His reference to Mandy made me cringe, but I remembered things Cowboy told me and wanted to be completely honest with him. “I don’t know for sure, but from what I heard, the affair started after Janet left. Technically, Janet and Chief…er, I mean Ted, were still married, I guess, but when she came back into the picture and they got back together, he must’ve told Mandy it was over between them.”
“And that’s what drove her insane? Crazy enough to kill two people?”
I shrugged. “It’s the only thing that makes sense.”
Ned sighed and pulled an envelope from his pocket. “After I got the message from your boyfriend, I had to know what this letter said.”
He held it out and motioned for me to take it. I did, though I wasn’t sure why he was showing it to me. I slipped the paper out and unfolded it to read the chief’s final words to his brother.
I may have been a hero once, but I haven’t done a heroic thing since. I’m sorry about Janet. I didn’t deserve her.
“My brother is…was a damn fool. When it came to women, he was always playing with fire.”
After Ned left, I laid my head back and allowed my eyes to drift closed. The others hadn’t returned from the cafeteria and the nurse said it would be a while before they moved Cowboy to a room. But as sleep claimed my tired body, I became restless and hyper-aware that my tangible surroundings had changed, morphing into something that resembled a young girl’s bedroom.