"You got it. Now go brush your teeth and comb your hair."

"I did comb my hair."

"The front looks good. The rest of it's a problem."

"Fine," he said, running off.

"Do you think less of me, as a homicide detective, that I want to kill the kid who hurt him?" Shelby asked.

"Actually, I think more of you as a friend than I ever have before. Thank you for helping with that just now."

"You're a great mom, Sam. He's lucky to have you in his corner."

"That's nice to hear, thank you. I need to get to work. Do you mind making the drop at school and sticking around for a few minutes to make sure he's okay?"

"I'd be happy to."

"I'm going out to get the papers," Sam said. She was anxious to see if there was anything reported about Nick's connection to Lexicore ahead of Graham's statement.

Just as she was about to open the door, the doorbell rang.

She opened the door and was overtaken by a hulking form in a police uniform. Before she had time react, he had grasped her throat and was squeezing the life out of her.

Chapter Fifteen.

The feral snarl from her attacker identified him as Stahl. Sam had been on the receiving end of that snarl often enough to recognize it. He had such a tight hold on her throat that she immediately saw stars and couldn't seem to get her hands to function properly to practice any of the self-defense strategies she'd just imparted to her son. The scene before her faded in the fog that filled her mind as she had enough capacity to wonder if she was going to die right there on her own doorstep.

As images of Nick and Scotty filled her mind, she found the wherewithal to slam her knee into his groin.

He shrieked and fell away from her, stumbling backward on the ramp.

Drawing in greedy gulps of cold air, Sam kicked at him, her foot connecting with his knee, drawing another grunt of pain from him.

And then Scotty's Secret Service agents were on him, pulling him down the ramp, kicking and screaming the whole way.

Sam bent in half, hands on knees as she took a series of deep breaths, willing her pounding heart into submission.

Shelby came to the door. "What happened? Oh God, Sam! Are you all right?"

"Yeah," Sam said. "Keep Scotty inside." When Shelby hesitated, obviously torn, Sam said, "Go. Please. Close the door."

Shelby did as Sam asked, which was a tremendous relief to Sam, who didn't want Scotty to see her hurt.

"I called it in," one of the agents said as the other slapped cuffs on Stahl, who was calling her a fucking bitch and spitting his rage all over her sidewalk. "Ambulance is on its way."

"No ambulances," Sam said, her voice raspy from the attack. "I'm fine."

"It's for him."

"I'm so sorry that happened, Lieutenant," the agent said. He must've been new, because Sam hadn't seen him before. "He was in uniform and had your newspapers so we assumed he was a friend of yours."

"Not your fault," she said, still breathing hard as a MPD cruiser came screaming around the corner onto Ninth Street.

The agents turned Stahl over to the EMTs and patrolmen, who seemed a bit freaked out to be hauling away an Internal Affairs lieutenant. They looked to Sam for guidance. Ignoring the throbbing pain in her neck, she nodded to them and took extreme pleasure in watching them cuff a purple-faced, screaming Stahl to the gurney.

Sam took another minute to regain her composure before she went back inside. The entire incident had transpired in under ten minutes, but the seconds in which she'd been denied oxygen had felt like weeks.

Shelby rushed from the kitchen to meet her. "Are you okay? Tell me the truth."

"I'm fine. I don't want Scotty to know."

"Come," Shelby said, taking her hand, "quickly."

"Come where?" Sam allowed the tiny sprite to drag her through the kitchen to the mudroom where Shelby had to go on tiptoes to wrap a pink cashmere scarf around Sam's neck. "That bad, huh?"

"That bad."

Sam fingered the soft wool while turning her nose up at the color. "Desperate times call for desperate measures."

"Yeah, you're fine."

Scotty's footsteps were heavy on the stairs. He came back with his hair wet down and tamed into submission. Ignoring the runaway trembling that continued to rack her body, Sam held his backpack for him and turned him to face her, hands on his shoulders. "You're going to be fine." Despite the pain it caused her, she forced her voice to remain normal. "Right?"

He nodded. "Why are you wearing Shelby's scarf? You hate pink."

"Shhh," Sam said in an exaggerated whisper. "She gave it to me as a gift. I'm pretending to like it."

Scotty's lips curled with amusement.

"Let's see the death stare one more time."

His eyes narrowed into a positively sinister expression.

"That's my boy." She hugged him tightly. "Love you. If anything happens, use your cell phone to call me."

"We're not allowed to use them in school."

"Go in the bathroom and text me. I'll be there so fast they won't know what hit them."

His smile lit up his face and touched her heart. "Thanks."

She cuffed his chin. "Love you."

"Love you too."

Sam waited until he'd left with Shelby and the detail to let herself fall apart a little. She sat at the table and dropped her face into her hands, fighting back tears she refused to allow. Stahl had scared her. There was no doubt in her mind that he could've killed her. Her strength was no match against his rage, and in his addled mind, he had nothing left to lose.

She experienced a powerful longing for her husband's strong arms. In light of how angry he'd be over what'd happened on their doorstep-with Secret Service agents in close proximity-it was probably better for all of them that he was winging his way across the globe at the moment.

When the trembling finally subsided, Sam got up to collect her badge, gun and cuffs from the locked drawer in the kitchen where she kept them now that Scotty lived there. She went through the motions of securing her service weapon in the hip holster she wore on her belt and clipping her gold shield to the waistband of her jeans.

Because she knew her dad would be wondering what had happened to bring a police car screaming on to their street so early in the morning, she went down the ramp from her house and up the ramp to her childhood home, rapping on the door as she walked in. "Anyone home?"

"Back here," her dad called from the kitchen.

Seated in his wheelchair, he was scanning the headlines in the morning paper. His wise blue eyes took a perusing look over her, settling on the pink scarf and widening with surprise. He hadn't seen her in pink since her toddler years.

Sam bent to kiss his forehead. "Anything in the news? I didn't get a chance to look at the paper." In light of recent events, the statement would've made her giggle if her throat hadn't been throbbing.

"Did you hear about Lexicore and the Thai factory?"

"Unfortunately, yes. Nick owned stock in Lex, and had to dump it at a huge loss yesterday."

"Ah shit. That's a bummer, but he doesn't need that sticking to him in the homestretch of the election."

"He's hoping it doesn't screw things up."

"Did he get off on the trip okay?"

"Early this morning."

"Are you going to tell me what just happened?"

"Do I have to?" Sam dropped into a chair and told him what had transpired the day before with Stahl. As she spoke, she watched her dad's usually genial expression harden with anger.

"So he blames you for the whole thing even though he was the one stupid enough to make the call at all, let alone make it from inside HQ?"

"That's the gist."

"And now he'll face an attempted murder charge on top of everything else."

"At least he'll never get bail after the stunt he pulled this morning."

"There is that." He glanced at her neck. "Take off the scarf. Let me see."

"No need. I'm fine."

"I didn't ask."

Sam reluctantly unwound the scarf from around her neck.

Skip winced. "Looks like it hurts."

"Doesn't feel great, but I'll live. I gotta get to work. They're going to want a statement about what happened with Stahl. Not to mention I've got one murdered ballplayer and another missing."

"Who's missing?"

"Lind, but we don't know yet if he's actually missing or off the grid licking his wounds. Apparently, that's his pattern."

"You sound frustrated, baby girl."

"I am. We need something to go on, and there's very little beyond the chaos in Willie's personal life. No one's jumping out at me as an obvious suspect." She got up, repositioned the scarf and leaned in to kiss her dad, surprised when he winced. "What?"

"Weird tingle in my leg."

"You're feeling something in your leg?" He'd been paralyzed from the neck down in an unsolved shooting almost three years earlier. To her knowledge, the only place he'd retained sensation was in his right hand.

"I don't know what it is."

"But it's something. Have you talked to the doctor?"

"I'm seeing him next week."

"What do you think it means?"

"I couldn't tell you. It's damned uncomfortable though. Like a bad case of pins and needles."

"Oh my God, Dad! You can't wait a week to get that checked!"

"Get what checked?" Sam's stepmother Celia asked as she came into the kitchen.

"Dad's got pins and needles in his leg."

"What?" asked Celia, who was a nurse.

"It's nothing," Skip said, his annoyance clear. "Just a weird ripple of some sort."

"A weird ripple that you can feel?" Celia asked.

"I don't know if I'm feeling it or dreaming it or what."

"And when were you going to tell me this?" his wife asked, hands on hips.

"Soon."

Celia scowled at him, but Sam knew she had to be as excited as Sam was. No one was more devoted to her dad than Celia.

"Will you call the doctor?" Sam asked her.

"Right away."