Senses heightened beyond belief, Janie masked her fear and faced the three rough-looking men who had delivered a wounded comrade to the ER and laid him out on a gurney. “You can put the gun away,” she said. “We’ll care for your friend the same way we would any patient.”
When the oldest of the four gestured with the pistol in his meaty hand, she suppressed a shudder.
“Then get to it,” he said. “Tim’s bleedin’ out.”
Where was a doctor? Where were the other nurses? Janie wished she could see through the privacy curtains that had been pulled around that small treatment area to close it off.
The tallest of the four men shouldered forward and cautiously placed his hand across the top of the pistol. “Hey, if you scare her too bad she won’t be worth a hoot, Boss.” His voice was deep with just a hint of gruffness.
The leader jerked the gun away, then aimed it directly at Janie. She could tell he was near the end of what little patience he’d had to begin with. Her knees weakened. She began to perspire despite the air-conditioning. “Please...”
The tall man stepped closer to her and spoke quietly. “You’ll be fine. I suggest you let me cut Tim’s clothes away from his wound while you check his vitals. Blood pressure’s probably low. He was shot a couple of hours ago and I haven’t been able to stop the bleeding. That’s why we brought him here.”
Eyes wide, Janie stared at the stranger towering over her five-foot-three-inch height. Strong, dark-haired and a healthy thirtysomething, he looked more like a renegade than a medic thanks to long hair, a scruffy, unshaven chin and worn denim clothing, yet he seemed to have useful knowledge.
As her blue eyes momentarily connected with his somber gaze she searched in vain for a flicker of anything that would tell her whether or not she might have found an ally.
Using her stethoscope she listened to the moaning patient’s heartbeat and breathing, then spoke to her possible helper. “I’m getting a fast pulse. Lung sounds are not good. BP is low. He may be bleeding into the pleural cavity, too.”
“Yeah, that’s what I was afraid of,” the man murmured as he cut away the last of the patient’s shirt and dropped the pieces on the floor. “You want to start an IV?”
“I was about to.”
The armed man interrupted, “Get a move on.”
Janie had been proceeding cautiously. Now that she had at least one aide who seemed halfway normal, she regained more of her usual professional air. Hands fisted on her hips, shoulders back, she said, “Look, mister. This will all go a lot faster if you stop pointing that stupid gun at me.”
“Then quit stalling,” the man ordered. “I know what you’re doin’. You’re waitin’ for the cops to get here. Well, I’m not fallin’ for it.” He motioned to the man who had been assisting her. “Let’s go, Brad. You’re done playin’ doctor.”
“I’ll stay a little longer. You guys go.”
“Nothin’ doin’. Either you’re one of us or you’re not.”
The man’s—Brad’s—eyes locked on Janie’s. She could tell he was trying to communicate something but had no idea what it might be. Did he expect her to read his mind?
“You can go,” she said, feigning calmness. “I can start the IV by myself.”
“What if he arrests?”
“Then I’ll call a code blue and somebody will show up with a crash cart.”
“Will they?” Brad’s glance darted to the speaker in the ceiling.
So, she thought, he knows what our code means. That might or might not be a good sign. Where was hospital security? Why didn’t she hear any sirens? Had so little time actually elapsed that it was too soon to expect backup?
Despite the strongest willpower she possessed, she couldn’t stop trembling. A needle needed to go into this patient’s vein but her hand was shaking too much to insert it properly. The thugs didn’t seem to notice, but Brad did.
His warm, firm grip on her wrist convinced her to pass the catheter needle to him. Relinquishing control was an unacceptable action for a licensed, trained nurse, but at that moment she saw no other alternative. If the patient’s blood pressure dropped much lower it would be next to impossible to find a viable vein. If she couldn’t find one, somebody had to.
“Hey, lady, what do you think you’re doin’?” the elder thug shouted. “Get back to work!”
“I am. I—”
He was on her in a heartbeat, and because Brad was concentrating on starting the IV, there was no one standing ready to defend her.
A meaty hand closed on her arm. Pain shot up to her shoulder as Janie was jerked off her feet and thrown across the cubicle. Her upper back hit a metal supply cart and sent it rolling and rattling through the open space at the bottom of the privacy curtains. She’d had patients abuse her before but they had been delusional due to medication or disease. This man, these men, were just like her older brothers had been. Cruel to the bone. Well, they weren’t going to best her.
Pushing off the floor with both hands, Janie stumbled to her feet. Everything hurt. Her head was spinning. By the time she was fully erect, however, anger had dulled the pain. Nobody was going to treat her that way anymore. Nobody.
Painful memories rushed to surface. Memories of abuse and tears and wondering if she was worthy of any life at all. As soon as she’d been old enough to manage alone, she’d fled her mean-spirited siblings and had learned self-defense, putting herself through nursing school by teaching other women how to physically fight back. Now, it was high time to employ those skills herself.
She didn’t strike a karate pose or shout, she simply braced herself and waited for one or more of the men to come after her. The gunman gestured for his youngest cohort to attack. Janie watched his eyes narrow before he began to smile and start toward her.
Meeting the wiry man’s lunge with a sidestep she reached out, grabbed his closest arm, ducked under it and flipped him onto his back without difficulty. He hit the floor with a thud, then lay there, stunned, while Janie stepped out of his reach and readied for another assault. Her eyes swept the cubicle, assessing her adversaries. The prostrate thug would soon recover and get up, she knew, but her immediate concern was the armed older man. The one they’d called Boss.
Roaring, he brought the gun to bear on her body and took dead aim at her heart.
Janie froze, too far from the armed man to use her skills, and positive any such moves would cause him to shoot.
Brad charged into the fray from behind, striking the boss’s outstretched arm and sending the gun sliding across the floor.
That changed everything. Janie whirled. Assessed. Decided. The wiry one she’d flipped was regaining his wits and crawling toward the weapon. There was no time to run closer and kick it away so she dived in that direction, landing atop her prostrate enemy.
His longer arms reached the cold metal first. Janie clasped his wrist with both hands. He flipped her onto her back, yet she held fast. They rolled together, grappling for the gun. Janie’s arms were shorter but strong. If she failed to gain control she knew she was in deep trouble.
Training made her continue to hold his wrist with all her strength. She got her knees under her first, shouted hoarsely, then threw her whole weight behind the effort to bend it back. As long as she kept holding him at an angle that kept the gun’s muzzle pointing away from her she’d be okay.
He screamed in agony but didn’t let go. Neither did she.
Less than ten feet away, the boss was being restrained by her unexpected cohort, Brad, so no help was coming to quickly aid the thug with his finger on the trigger.
Frantic to hold on, Janie leaned into the defensive grip. Heard the pop of dislocating joints as ligaments and tendons in his wrist let go. Empathetically sharing his pain, her stomach clenched.
The man shrieked.
Janie was thrown off balance. She fell against him, the gun pressed
between their bodies. He outweighed her by at least fifty pounds, which gave him a leverage advantage.
His acrid breath was hot on her face. She closed her eyes and reacted instinctively, slamming her forehead into his nose.
The gun jerked, firing. There was a deafening bang!
* * *
In the midst of the melee, while the nurse had been fighting back, Brad had realized why she’d seemed familiar. It had been years since he and other patrol officers had responded to domestic violence calls at a house outside Kansas City, but he was pretty sure this was the same young woman, even though the last name on her hospital ID didn’t match his memory. As a teen, she’d been the helpless victim of a destructive family. It was good to see she’d escaped the constant abuse and had grown up to become a useful member of society. But how could he continue to help her without blowing his cover?
He’d been assigned to infiltrate this criminal organization and he needed to continue to prove his allegiance to Speevey. Besides, the sooner he hustled the older man out of there, the better it would be for all concerned, especially the nurse.
Grabbing his “boss” by the shoulders, he spun him around and pushed him toward the door. “Go. I’ll take care of this.”
Speevey put on the brakes. “No way. We’re not leavin’ without my Bubba.”
“Let him stay here with Tim.”
“And wind up in jail? Not hardly. We’ll come back for Timmy as soon as he’s been doctored up.”
Because he was grasping the man’s shoulders, Brad felt the moment when reality slipped through. The wild gunshot had caused everyone to duck, yes, but one of them was down because he was gravely injured.
“Bub!” Speevey roared like an animal as he dived for his prostrate son, kicking Janie aside as though she were weightless. He gathered the thin young man in his arms, mindless of the crimson stain spreading from an abdominal wound.
Edging sideways, Brad tried to slip between the tragic tableau on the ER floor and the nurse. He could tell she was attempting to gather her wits. No telling what her reaction would be once she realized that the bullet had injured someone. Even cops were traumatized when they had to use lethal force, and this tenderhearted civilian was liable to take it even harder.
Plus, time was running out, Brad reasoned. He didn’t dare carry law enforcement identification for fear of being accidentally outed, so the cops in this part of Missouri had no idea who he really was. If he was forced to tell them, all his previous time undercover would probably be for nothing. Speevey wasn’t the top man he’d been assigned to find but there were enough personal connections to give him hope of solving a series of gang killings, one of which had cost his old friend and police chief, Wes Winterhaven, his only son.
Until Tim had been shot by a rival gang that morning, all Brad had needed to do was wait until he’d gathered enough solid proof to call in the FBI. Now, everything had changed. And not for the better.
He pulled Speevey up and dragged him toward the exit. The man lying on the gurney was moaning but there was no sound from the one on the floor.
“Pressure bandage,” Brad said gruffly, directing his instructions to Janie. “Better hurry.”
Her semilucid stare slid from him and Speevey to the man collapsed on the floor. Her expression changed as she realized what he was saying and made sense of the mayhem in front of her.
“You can handle this,” Brad told her. “Now move.”
Instead of waiting to see if she complied, Brad trusted the hospital situation to God—and a capable staff—and hustled Speevey outside.
A late-summer hot spell lingered ahead of a predicted cold front, creating the ideal trigger for thunderstorms. Wind ripped dried leaves from half-bare oaks and sycamores lining the street. Blowing dust smelled musty. Thunder rumbled.
“Into my truck,” Brad ordered.
Weeping, Speevey didn’t argue. That was just as well since Brad was fairly certain that Bubba’s injury was going to be fatal regardless of the treatment he was about to receive. He’d seen guys gut-shot while in combat overseas. It wasn’t pretty.
He pushed the old man into the front seat of his pickup and drove slowly out of the lot by a rear entrance. Approaching patrol cars going the opposite direction ignored him, partly due to his turtle-like pace. He’d counted on that happening.
Now, all he had to do was stick close to Speevey and hope he’d reach out to higher-ups for a replacement crew. There were drugs to deliver, quotas to make, money to collect. Without either of his sons, the old man would need outside help. And Detective Bradley Benton, aka criminal Brad Ross, was going to make sure he was right in the middle of it.
* * *
Janie was weary but not happy when she was relieved of duty. “I can still work. Please, let me stick this one out.”
“No way,” the charge nurse told her. “I have someone coming in to replace you in the schedule. Go home.”
Janie’s eyes misted. “It wasn’t my fault. He was trying to shoot me.”
“I know that and the police know that, Kirkpatrick. Nobody’s blaming you. But you look like you just ran a marathon through a jungle and had to fight for every step. So clock out. Go take a nice hot shower and kick back. Hug your little dog if it’ll help you unwind. I’ll rework the schedule to give you a week off. If you need more, let me know. You have plenty of sick time built up.”
“It’s not about the money,” Janie insisted. “Those men. So young. So sad.”
“And so stupid,” her superior added. “It’s not anybody’s fault but theirs that one is gone and the other is clinging to life. If you want to blame somebody, blame their father. He brought them in to us, right?”
“Right.” Janie hadn’t held back information about her erstwhile helper but she hadn’t volunteered a lot of detail, either. It didn’t take a genius to see that his background was different than that of the others. So was his speech. When he talked about medical matters he sounded professional, although he’d never claimed to be.
Regardless, she reasoned, Brad was special. Anybody who stood up and defended her the way he had deserved the benefit of the doubt and she was certainly ready to give it to him. Truth to tell, she might also be ready to like him, regardless.
Copyright © 2021 by Valerie Whisenand
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ISBN-13: 9781488072093
Desert Rescue
Copyright © 2021 by Lisa Phillips
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.
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Desert Rescue (K-9 Search and Rescue) Page 19
