Page 36

At the sound of the gunshot, Alex spun down behind a car and whipped out his pistol. Sonofabitch. He’d been so furious with Katie that he’d barged out here right into the damned line of fire. Of course, the CIA had sharpshooters out here waiting to take him down.

Had the shooter missed him by accident? Surely not. He, of all people, knew just how good CIA snipers were. It couldn’t possibly have been an accident that the shot missed him, right?

He pushed the question aside as he scanned the rooftops looking for sniper perches. He quickly catalogued sightlines to hi position. Dammit. Almost too many to count. He had to move to better cover.

He spied a vestibule to the building next to his about twelve feet away. He could make it. He gathered himself, sprang forward and dived low, rolling into the deep doorway.

Huh. No gunshot. Why hadn’t the sniper taken the shot? Surely the guy’d had time to get a bead on him and knew Alex would head for better cover quickly.

He eased forward, staying in the shadows, but close enough to the street to scan the area. If there was a shooter out there, the guy was hidden too well for him to spot. Deep, waiting silence settled over the street.

Into the night, he heard a faint sound. A moan.

He was not a trauma surgeon for nothing. He’d heard that sound a thousand times. A semi-conscious person in severe pain. Who in the hell was moaning out there…

Knowing exploded across his brain with the force of the gunshot.

Katie . She’d run after him when he’d stormed outside, and the shooter had shot her. The bastard was using her as bait to draw him out. And if that was the case, the bastard had hit her somewhere that would kill her slowly. Slowly enough to give him plenty of time to listen to her dying.

He should walk away from here. Let her bleed out. He owed her nothing. He wasn’t a gullible amateur to fall for such a thing.

And yet, he mentally mapped a route back to his building’s entrance that would give him maximum cover. If nothing else, the act of moving toward her should cause the sniper to take another shot at him and reveal his position.

He darted from the safety of the doorway to the side of a parked car.

No shot. Hmm. The sniper must be off to the side and not have a clear shot, yet.

Alex moved behind a steel trashcan built around a tree trunk.

He had significantly less cover here. The shooter should be able to get a bead on him from most of the street, now.

He braced for the hit, covering his head with his arms to prevent an outright kill shot.

Still no shot. What was up with that?

He looked around and spied Katie lying face down in a spray of broken glass. Blood was spreading from underneath her, a river of red among the crystalline shards.

Frowning, he moved away from the trashcan toward her prone form. What was the shooter waiting for?

Surely, there was a general sanction out on him by now, a kill-on-sight order. Every sniper in the agency had to know he was armed and dangerous, the kin of man to kill first and ask questions about later.

Even if the order was to bring him in alive, any half-decent sniper would still want to wound him seriously enough to incapacitate him. Something that would drop him and take him out of commission.

And yet, no shot was forthcoming. Had the sniper egressed the area, already?

Why in the world would the sniper shoot Katie and then leave the area without shooting him, too? Unless…

Oh Holy God. No .

Swearing violently, Alex moved over to Katie fast and rolled her over. She was bleeding from a wound in the upper left quadrant of her chest.

He worked quickly, his movements practiced as he ripped away her shirt to expose what turned out to be two wounds—an entry and an exit wound.

He used the torn cloth of her cotton night shirt to fashion makeshift pressure pads.

Pressing hard on the entry wound, he prayed enough pressure was transferring through her body to staunch the blood flow from the exit wound in her upper back.

She moaned more audibly as he used his left hand to pull his necktie free.

He bound the pressure pads in place rapidly, and then grabbed her arms and hoisted her over his back in a fireman’s carry.

He took off jogging down the street toward a major thoroughfare. When he reached it, he urgently hailed the first taxi he saw.

The cabbie slowed and rolled down his window to yell, “Hey, buddy. I’ve got a fare, but I’ll radio for another cab to head over here!”

Alex nodded his thanks and kept moving. Mustn’t stop. Mustn’t make himself and Katie any easier targets than they already were. God, he felt naked out here like this. Every cell in his body screamed for him to take cover. To go into full stealth mode.

But Katie was shot and unconscious, and he had no choice but to run along a damned city street for all the world to see.

That fucker had shot Katie.

Why in bloody hell was she the target and not him?

As desperate as he was to get the hell away from her, his gut told him it was vital to answer to that question before he disappeared for good. God damn it.

Katie woke up slowly. Her left shoulder felt like it had been smashed with a baseball bat. It throbbed horribly and felt stiff and swollen. She reached for it but her right hand encountered tape…

…her eyes flew open and she craned to look down at herself. A bandage?

She looked around. She was lying in a double bed in a plainly furnished room. It didn’t look like a hospital room. For that matter, it didn’t look much like a hotel room. Where was she?

Someone moved beyond the doorway and she sat up carefully. Crap. The room spun around her for several unpleasant seconds. It finally settled down and she stood up cautiously. No more whirligig, thank God.

She felt strangely weak and lightheaded as she shuffled to the doorway and peered out. A plain living room furnished with only a sofa, coffee table, and television on a stand unfolded before her. There was no carpet on the dirty wood floor, and plastic roller blinds on the windows were pulled down.

Off to one side a small, dingy kitchen was visible. She spied movement in there and headed for it.

Alex looked up from a glass of orange juice he’d just poured. “How do you feel?” he asked emotionlessly. Professionally. Like a doctor talking to a patient.

“Like crap.”

“Drink this. You lost a fair bit of blood.”

“What happened?”

“Sniper took a shot at you. An inch lower and he’d have killed you. Must’ve been a long-range shot for him to have missed. You should be dead.”

That last sentence was delivered with all the sympathy of a robot. Which was almost more upsetting than the news that she’d been shot. She took the juice and downed it all.

“More?” he asked.

“Yes, please.”

“How’s the pain on a scale of one to ten? Can you function?”

She paused to consider it. “A six. It hurts a lot, but if I had to walk or run, I probably could for a little ways. Where are we?”

“Safe house.”

“Still in Washington?”

“Close by.”

“You have a safe house in Washington in addition to your penthouse fortress?” she asked, startled.

“Never can be too careful.”

“Or paranoid.”

“It’s not paranoia if people are actually shooting at you.”

She rolled her eyes at him.

“Speaking of which, who’s shooting at you?” He turned fully to face her and met her gaze directly for the first time.

“They were shooting at me?” she echoed blankly.

He nodded once, tersely. “I gave the bastard a clear shot at me and he didn’t take it. The sniper was definitely targeting you. Probably thinks he killed you, too.”

“Umm, is that good?” she tried.

“It is good. Gives us a window to figure out who in the hell sent someone to kill you before they come after you, again.”

“They’ll come after me again?” she squeaked.

He made a ‘don’t be stupid’ face at her. Okay, she deserved that. If she were under orders to kill someone and realized she had failed, she would go back to finish the job, too.

She sighed. “Unlike you, I don’t have a long list of enemies eager to do me in.”

“Do you have any enemies at all?” he asked a shade derisively.

“Actually, no. I mean there were a couple bitches in high school who hated my guts for no apparent reason, but I highly doubt any ex-hormonal-teen-girls are climbing on rooftops and taking pot shots at me after all this time.”

“This is serious,” he snapped.

“I’m being serious. Nursing students don’t run around making mortal enemies.”

“Apparently, you do.”

“This isn’t about Dawn, again, is it?”

“Doubtful. I called your dad while you were sleeping. He said there’s been no unusual activity up their way. He had a couple of your brothers come over to the house to beef up security around Dawn for now.”

Wow. That was actually pretty thoughtful of him. So unlike him in his current asshole-ish frame of mind. “Uhh, thanks,” she mumbled.

He shrugged and said briskly, “Attempt not to use your left arm or move it. The bullet passed through just above your left lung and below the shoulder joint. You were lucky the guy didn’t use a hollow point round.

The exit wound in your back is only a few millimeters larger than the entry wound, so I’m guessing he went with a Teflon-tipped bullet.

Which means we’re looking at a pro. Snipers prefer hard-tip shells—they fly truer. ”

She seriously did not care what type of bullet had nearly killed her. At the moment she was less interested in Alex’s spy self than his doctor self. “What did you do to fix my shoulder?” she asked.

“Cleaned the wound, mostly. Had to cauterize a small artery and then stitch it all up. You really were incredibly lucky.”