by Debra Webb
Hunter hefted Koppel back onto his shoulder.
“I guess this means he killed the real chief,” she said absently. She’d only just thought of that. Her chest constricted. How could she not have noticed?
“That would be my guess,” Hunter said wearily.
Rowen stalled at the door. “How can we ever be sure of anyone?” It seemed incredible that taking over a life so completely was actually possible.
His hand touched her cheek. “There are ways.”
He was right about that. The eyes could be fooled…even the ears could be duped. But when a man and woman made love, that was a dance that couldn’t be faked. But McGill had gotten around that by killing the chief’s wife.
Rowen ordered her attention back to the task at hand—getting the hell out of there. She could grieve her chief and her partner later after she’d brought down the people behind their murders.
They moved through the next two doors without incident. Rowen recognized the area. They were almost out of this damned nightmare. Wherever the hell all the security personnel had headed, it was definitely not this way. Maybe fate was on Rowen’s side tonight.
“This way,” she said over her shoulder.
Hunter nodded, but then he fell to his knees.
She rushed back to him, tried to help him up.
“Go,” he growled. “I’m finished.”
She shoved Koppel off him.
“You have to make it.” She grabbed Hunter by the arm and tried to haul him to his feet.
He groaned savagely. “Just go.”
She crouched down in front of him, made him look at her. His eyes were bloodshot as if he’d been on a week-long drinking binge, and his skin looked as pale as a ghost.
“Why can’t you walk? Are you hurt?”
Stupid questions, she knew. But she had to ascertain some kind of status on his condition.
“It’s the medication,” he managed to say brokenly. “I had to take an extra dose…too much.”
Hell. She didn’t know what to do about that. “Just try,” she urged. “Try to stand and then you can lean on me.”
She got back to her feet and tugged. She managed to get him to his feet. When he leaned on her, she almost went down, but she locked her knees and didn’t give in.
“Come on. We can make it.” She shoved the next door open.
She considered how the wailing alarm sirens were surely affecting him. She looked upward. The glaring fluorescent lights. God, he must be in horrific pain. She had to get him out of here. Into the darkness…away from the sound.
One more door. Just another fifty yards.
She walked as fast as she could with his weight bearing down on her.
Almost there.
She braced against the door as she slid the key card. The lock released and then she pushed it open. The cool air hit her in the face and she thanked God for it.
Floodlights weaved around the property, but she ignored them. The sound of a bullhorn stopped her halfway to the copse of trees they’d used as cover earlier.
“Boston police. Drop your weapons… Surrender.”
Relief hurtled through her. Backup was here.
Hot damn! Merv had come through for her.
“Halt!”
Rowen twisted her head around to see who’d shouted at them. “Boston PD!” she shouted back, identifying herself in the event it was another cop.
“Don’t move!”
She turned her head a little farther, and adrenaline flared in her chest. It was one of Koppel’s security team.
“Drop your weapon,” she demanded. “Don’t you hear that?” She cocked her head and listened to the orders being repeated for all to hear. “It’s over.”
“I have my orders,” he said grimly as he took aim. “You aren’t to leave this island alive.”
“No!”
She tried to shove Hunter to the ground, but she couldn’t move quickly enough. His body jerked with the impact of the bullet. Fear knocked the breath out of her.
When she was about to run headlong into the shooter to take him down, a bullet whizzed past her right ear.
She dropped to the ground.
“Take that, you bastard!” Another shot exploded in the air.
Rowen looked up to see her partner stalking toward the downed security guard, another round ensuring the guy wouldn’t be getting back up.
“I thought they killed you…” Her voice trailed off.
Her mind whirled with too many questions…too much insanity. Her head started to spin, blackness threatened. Can’t pass out, she ordered.
“They tried.” Merv stuffed his weapon back into its holster, sauntered over to her and offered his hand. “All I had to do was sink like a rock as soon as I hit the water. Damn fools thought they’d got me.”
He hoisted her to her feet.
Hunter.
Fear seized her again. She rushed to him, dropped to her knees. He lay deathly still.
“We need help,” she cried out, her gaze desperately seeking her partner’s. “Fast!”
Merv was on the horn already. She heard the words he shouted into his cell phone, knowing those instructions would be passed along to any medical personnel involved in the invasion of Boston PD all around them.
“No heartbeat,” she told Merv, her voice trembling. Her icy hands shaking as badly as her voice, she ripped open Hunter’s shirt. Blood poured from a wound almost dead center of his chest.
“I got the wound. Give him some air, Ro!”
Merv was on his knees, too. He’d flattened his palm over the wound to staunch the flood of blood.
Instinct took over, and Rowen performed the steps she’d been trained to do a dozen times over. Check the airway…quick breaths…chest compressions…
“Hang on, pal,” Merv muttered.
Suddenly someone else was there, taking over, pushing Rowen aside—paramedics.
She stumbled back out of the way…tears blurring her vision.
Hunter hadn’t moved.
He looked so pale.
Merv took her into his arms. “Don’t watch, Ro. It’s bad. It’s real bad.”
She pulled free of his hold. “I have to see,” she growled savagely. Then she remembered Koppel. She grabbed her partner by the lapels. “It’s Koppel,” she explained. “He’s the one who started this…we left him in a room….” She shook her head. “Somewhere, I don’t know where. He got a shot of his own medicine. He’s paralyzed, but he’ll come out of it anytime now. Don’t let him get away.”
Merv nodded and bounded off to find that bastard Koppel, though he had no idea why their chief would be a part of this. Rowen would explain everything to him later.
“We’re losing him!”
Her attention swung back to where Hunter lay on the ground. The two paramedics were working frantically to get his heart beating once more.
Please, God, she prayed. Don’t let him die.
“Clear!”
She had to turn away as they attempted to shock his heart back into a rhythm.
The whop-whop-whop of a helicopter’s blades cut through the air. She wanted to be glad for speedy transport, but she couldn’t think just now. Hunter was dying right before her eyes, and there was nothing she could do to stop it.
Someone was suddenly ushering her away.
She looked up to see a Boston policeman on either side of her. “We’ll take you to the hospital, ma’am,” one of them explained.
What?
She looked back to Hunter, but he wasn’t on the ground anymore. He was being loaded into the helicopter. “I want to go with—”
“There’s no room, Detective O’Connor. We’ll get you there as fast as possible.”
She looked back one last time, watched the helicopter lift off the ground.
Hunter was dead. She didn’t have to be told. She could feel it.
He was dead.
Chapter Fourteen
Dr. Bruce McBee glanced at the readout on the ca
rdiac monitor—the pattern of a heart struggling to stay ahead of the Grim Reaper.
Tension zipped through the surgeon who had been in this very position many times before. A patient’s survival depended upon three things—the skill of the surgeon and his team, time and plain old luck.
The patient had lost a massive amount of blood. An IV of Ringer’s solution, as well as fresh O-positive blood, was running wide-open into his veins and still he barely hung on.
Evan Hunter had been wheeled into a trauma room, stripped naked, intubated and slapped on a ventilator…no time for an operating room or fancy preparations.
He’d coded twice en route.
“BP’s dropping, Doctor.”
Anticipation only sharpening his precise movements, Dr. McBee glanced at the nurse, then back to the hemostats that had kept the patient from completely exsanguinating. The bullet had nipped the atrium, the wall of the heart. At this point, blood no longer pooled in the thoracic cavity, but the damage had already been done. Vitals were unstable. The patient was weak and losing ground with each passing second. With the bullet removed, all Dr. McBee could do was repair the damage and hope this man was strong enough to bounce back from the sustained trauma.
His life hung in the balance despite the best surgical team Boston Mass. had to offer.
Carefully, McBee stitched together the edges of the puncture. As swiftly and deftly as humanly possible, he repaired and checked the damage, then closed the necessary incision he’d performed himself in opening up the patient’s damaged chest.
“Losing his pressure!”
McBee frowned. “Don’t die now, Mr. Hunter,” he murmured. “We’ve got you patched up.”
“V tach!”
Ventricular tachycardia was a potentially lethal disruption of the normal heartbeat. In this patient’s case, definitely lethal. He was already immensely weak from significant blood loss and shock from serious physical trauma.
“Start CPR,” McBee ordered.
The organized chaos built to a crescendo as the entire team worked to save the patient’s life. The nurse, her hands on the patient’s sternum, was pumping his chest, cardiac compressions that would send life-giving blood to the brain.
No response.
“Shock him.”
McBee glanced at the monitor.
Nothing.
“Again.”
Sweat formed on the surgeon’s forehead. He and his team struggled for many minutes to regain a heart rhythm, but their efforts proved futile. McBee hated to get this close to success only to fail due to human frailty.
Finally, he relented. He stepped back. “Call it.”
His team looked at him, then at each other before stepping back, as well, leaving Evan Hunter to rest in peace on the table.
A moment of silence passed. No one liked to admit defeat.
One of the nurses announced the time of death, making the call official.
It was over.
ROWEN SAT in the E.R. lobby. Stared vacantly. Merv had come to sit with her. Had offered her coffee. Cola. Anything to get her to do something besides just sit there. But she couldn’t. She just couldn’t. She kept seeing Hunter lying there, unresponsive to the paramedics’ efforts.
He’d known he would die when he came here.
She didn’t know how she knew that, but she did. Maybe he’d told her.
She should have told him that she forgave him for walking out on her before. Now it was too late. She’d never get to explain that she had still loved him anyway.
“I have to…” She hurried out of the room, walked down the deathly quiet corridor until she found the nearest ladies’ room.
She grabbed the basin for support and let her emotions get the better of her. She cried. Cried so hard her entire body shook with the violence of it.
It just wasn’t fair….
Hadn’t he suffered enough?
After a few more minutes, she pulled herself back together. She should get back out there…wanted to be there when the doctor came with news. She bent over the sink and washed her face with cool water. Her fingers shook and she tried hard to scrape up some control, but the effort was just too much.
Her heart felt like a rock in her chest.
She straightened, reached for a paper towel.
She jerked, lost her breath. Her reflection was not the only one in the mirror.
Viktor Azariel stood behind her.
She wheeled around. “What do you want?”
A new wave of agony washed over her, forcing the tears cresting on her lashes to fall. She didn’t ever want to see anyone or anything related to this case again.
He reached out, swiped a hot tear from her cheek before she could dodge his touch. “Why the tears, Detective O’Connor?”
She had to clamp down on her lower lip to keep from howling in pain. What the hell was wrong with this bastard? Didn’t he know what was tearing her apart? He’d sure as hell appeared to read her mind before.
“Get out,” she said when she’d found enough control. “I don’t want you here. You were wrong—it wasn’t me who was next…it was Hunter.”
She couldn’t meet his eyes any longer. Just looking at him made her shudder in agony. Why didn’t he go away?
He shook his head, making those long silky strands of dark hair sway back and forth in a mesmerizing fashion against the backdrop of his white shirt.
“You must have more faith, Rowen,” he said, mimicking the way Hunter said her name.
A sob burst from her lips. How could he taunt her like this? “Bastard,” she choked out.
He reached for her hand, held on when she tried to jerk it away, then flattened her palm against his chest…over his heart. “Feel that,” he said in that voice that had the power to make her pay attention when all she wanted to do was die.
Somehow, she nodded.
“His heart beats for you….”
She jerked her hand away and covered her face. She didn’t want to hear any more…
“He’s like me,” Viktor whispered. “No mere bullet can kill him. Again he took your place and will live to tell about it.”
Rowen scrubbed at the new flood of tears and opened her eyes so that she could see Viktor’s face when she told him what she thought of him.
He was gone.
She blinked, struggled to catch her breath.
Maybe she’d imagined him.
The door suddenly opened. “Ro! The doctor’s looking for you.”
The next few minutes were one big blur for Rowen. Dr. McBee, the surgeon, kept repeating himself.
We thought we’d lost him, but somehow he survived. His heart just started beating again.
The only thing that mattered to Rowen was the fact that Hunter was still alive.
And Viktor had dropped by to tell her.
HE CRACKED his eyes open slowly, uncertain what he would find.
Evan wondered if he was dead or alive.
He vaguely remembered someone calling his time of death.
Had he dreamed that?
He also recalled seeing Viktor somewhere amid the chaos. Probably a dream, as well.
Where was Rowen?
He needed to know that she was all right.
Using all his might, he forced his eyes open.
Bright lights.
He squeezed them shut again, waited for the shock of pain that would follow the exposure to the lights.
Seconds, or maybe minutes, passed and no pain.
Curious now, he opened his eyes again and gave himself time to focus.
White room. Beeping sounds.
He turned his head to the right. A barrage of monitors tracked his vitals.
Hospital.
He looked down. A white sheet covered him from the waist down. A bandage had been plastered across his chest.
Gut shot.
He remembered now and slowly became aware of the pain shimmering just beneath the barrier the painkillers provided. In all likelihood, he should be dead jus
t now.
Rowen.
He turned his head to the left and his breath stilled in his lungs.
She was curled up in a chair next to his bed. His heart picked up an extra beat. She looked rumpled and a little scratched up, but basically unharmed.
He tried to say her name, but his mouth was too dry. He moistened his lips, struggled to clear his throat, then made a second effort.
“Rowen,” came out, rusty and croaky. His arms felt too heavy to lift, preventing him from reaching for her.
Her eyes flew open and she was at his bedside before he could say more.
“You’re awake.”
Her voice sounded…normal. Didn’t cause him any discomfort.
With monumental effort, he moved his left hand over the sheet, scarcely heard the rasp of sound. How was that possible? He didn’t understand.
He spotted the IVs then. Drugs, the painkillers. Powerful ones, no doubt.
But then he remembered that painkillers wouldn’t do the trick, had never provided him any relief. Every kind known to man had been tried on him three years ago.
“What happened to me?” he asked, trying to clear his throat.
The sound of his own voice startled him. The vibrations against his eardrums were tolerable…normal, like it used to be. Hope surged through his veins, but he beat it back. He couldn’t endure the disappointment if this relief proved to be short-lived.
“You were shot.” She looked away, as if what she needed to say next was more than she could bear to impart. “It was bad, Hunter. The surgeon said he thought he lost you. Your heart stopped for two full minutes.”
The only escape outside the healing is death.
Viktor’s words echoed in his brain.
Evan had technically been dead for two whole minutes.
“It’s a miracle you’re alive. You lost so much blood.”
She sighed, swiped at her suspiciously bright eyes. “But you’re fine now.” She managed a sad smile. “The doctor says you’ll fully recover. He couldn’t believe it. He said it was as if everything shut down, then two minutes later rebooted.”
Her eyes closed and she shook her head, her lips trembling. “I was so afraid I’d lost you.” She opened her eyes then and looked directly into his. “I don’t know why you walked away and never came back three years ago, but it doesn’t matter. I loved you then, I love you now. If you go away again, I’ll still love you.” She took a breath. “There, I said it. If that makes me a fool, I guess I’ll just have to live with it.”
