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She still didn’t know if her shot had killed Richard or hit the body armor he’d worn. Hers hadn’t been the only shots fired, though. Seth had fired multiple times, she thought, and Michael at least once. Whichever of them had killed him, she didn’t feel the teeniest bit of regret.
Iris had been glad to take Jacob once Robin had been allowed to leave. Now she hurried up to the receptionist.
“Seth Renner? The detective?”
“And you are?”
“Robin Hollis. I’m living with him and his father,” she said simply. “The investigators held me up to take my account of what happened.”
“Let me check.”
Two minutes later, she returned. “Mr. Renner senior is still here in the ER, but Detective Renner was taken to surgery. I show him as being in recovery now.”
Robin asked if she could see Michael, and was ushered through the double doors. She found a frantic man wearing his own pants and a hospital gown who insisted no one would tell him anything. They’d had to remove a large splinter—the four inches long kind—but felt most of his “discomfort” came from the previous wound. He’d been to X-ray and was now waiting to be taken for an MRI when all he wanted was to know how his son was.
With his blessings, she rushed to the surgical suite, where she had to wait for a maddening fifteen minutes before she was permitted to see Seth.
Half-sitting up in bed, he was crunching on ice chips. He looked both wonderful and awful, woozy, his skin pasty and his hair lank—but alive. Awake. His expression lightened the minute he saw her, and he reached out his good hand.
Robin latched onto it. “They removed a bullet?”
“No, just had to do some repair work,” he said grumpily. “They didn’t even have to use full anesthesia. I’m not in a daze, and I want out of here.”
She leaned over and kissed his scratchy cheek. “Your father is just as crabby.”
He demanded to know what had been happening, so she told him about the questioning, about taking Jacob to Iris’s and what she knew about his father’s condition.
Then he focused on her in that way he had. “Are you all right, Robin?”
Her smile turned tremulous, but she said, “Yes. It was horrible and scary, but...”
“It’s all over.”
“My knees keep wobbling, but at the same time I feel as if I can take a full breath for the first time in years. If you hadn’t stopped me from taking off...”
“I did a lousy job protecting you.” His voice was bleak, his eyes unflinching. “If Hammond hadn’t called, I don’t know whether I’d have turned around and gotten back in time.”
“I thought you were dead.” The memory was so vivid, for a fleeting moment he was dead. The memory of her shock and horror was that real. “I thought...” Her throat clogged.
“You believed him?” For all his postsurgery state and self-imposed guilt trip, Seth pulled a grin from somewhere. “No faith in me at all.”
Cheeks wet, she leaned over to press her face to the white blanket over his chest. His heart beat strongly, his chest rose and fell. “I hope I killed him,” she mumbled.
“No.” He stroked her hair, his voice a rumble that was somehow also soft. “You saw plenty to give yourself years of nightmares. You don’t need more on your conscience.”
Impatient with herself, she wiped away tears and reared up. “Why would it be on my conscience? He intended to kill us, and then steal Jacob. Abuse him, hit him—” Robin choked on the rest. What would Richard have turned her sunny-natured child into? It didn’t bear thinking about.
“Okay.” Seth ran his knuckles over her jaw, his expression so tender her eyes burned again. “Have you called home yet?”
She stared at him. “What?”
“Bet your mother would like to hear from you. Your sister, too. They’ll get to meet Jacob at last.” Then he smiled crookedly, his eyes clearer than they’d been. “They can let the doctors know to schedule that surgery.”
“I had to see you.” Actually, the thought of calling home hadn’t even crossed her mind yet. But if it had...she would still have raced right to the hospital.
