Page 7 of But For You

I went down hard, hitting the van as I bounced off it, but from my angle, I could see the guy I had sprayed coming at him.

Kicking hard, I knocked the guy who had just hit me off-balance, and he tumbled to the ground beside me.

“What the fuck are you⁠—”

“Look out!” I yelled as the guy with the lug wrench came after us.

“Oh shit,” he screamed, scrambling back away from me, moving to run.

“Drop the weapon!”

“Get on the ground!”

Normally, policemen—even though I was married to an ex one—were not my favorite people. As a rule, they caught me doing crap I shouldn’t have been doing, but somehow missed everyone else talking on their cell phones, running red lights, and speeding.

But right at that moment, as I saw the uniforms, noted the drawn guns, and heard the orders being roared out, I was comforted.

The guy dropped the lug wrench and went to his knees.

“All the way down. Face on the pavement!”

“You saved my life,” the guy who had hit me said. “I⁠—”

But something slammed the back of my head, and everything went dark.

My husband, my brother, family, and friends would say that, yes, Jory Harcourt was a trouble magnet, but I thought it was more coincidence than anything else when fate decided to screw with me. Especially this time. I had been heading home from dropping off my kids—a trip I made Monday through Friday, normally without incident. How would I have known that I would end up in the crosshairs of accidental crazy?

“A what?” the policeman who was taking my statement at the hospital, in the emergency room, asked. I was now sitting sideways on the bed, no longer lying down.

“Trouble magnet,” I told him as I sighed deeply.

What was amazing was that other than the soreness on the back of my head—which, surprisingly, wasn’t even giving me a headache—I was okay. I was certain I looked worse than I felt.

“How did you get knocked out?” he asked me.

“The lady I’d told to stay in her SUV, I guess she opened the door really fast, and I was sitting right beside her car, and … you know.”

He nodded. “I see.”

“That’s why vans are better—the doors slide,” I educated him.

His smile was patronizing.

“I—”

“Jory!”

His yell bounced off the walls, and I winced.

The officer looked startled. “Who is⁠—”

“Scooch back,” I ordered and took a breath to get the required amount of air into my lungs. “In here!”

The curtain was flung open moments later, and there was Sam, jaw clenched, muscles cording in his neck, eyes dark and full of too many things to soothe at once.

“Detective Kage?”

Sam turned to the officer.