by Lara Lacombe
“Tell me about him.” She had to keep him talking, keep him awake until the ambulance arrived. If the sound of the sirens was any indication, it should be here any minute.
“Tough bastard,” he said. “Like Alex. Strong.”
“You know he’s innocent,” Jillian said.
Jim closed his eyes but mumbled, “Yes.”
The ambulance roared to a stop by the curb, the back bay doors popping open with the force of an explosion. She was relieved to see the paramedics, but before she left Jim’s side, she needed to know that he would help Alex.
“Promise you’ll help him clear his name.” When he didn’t respond, she shook him gently. “Promise,” she repeated, a little louder this time.
Jim’s eyelids fluttered and it was obvious the effort of speaking was proving too much for him. “Dan...Dan is the traitor. Don’t trust...” With that, Jim lapsed into unconsciousness.
One of the paramedics knelt by Jim’s side, facing Jillian. “Ma’am, I need you to move.” He peeled the jackets off of Jim and she grabbed hers, pulling it on with shaking fingers.
Jillian spoke before thinking, instinct taking over. “He’s got a double GSW to the right upper quadrant. No exit wounds visible. Slight tachycardia. Respiratory rate 20 bpm.”
The medic blinked at her, but didn’t waste time questioning her qualifications. “How long has he been down?”
“About ten minutes.”
He placed a blood pressure cuff around Jim’s arm. Jillian tried to be patient while he worked, but it was hard letting someone else run the show. Her fingers tingled with the temptation to root through the medic’s bag to find the materials she needed, her confidence returning with the arrival of medical supplies.
The driver brought over a backboard and placed it next to Jim. Recognizing her chance, Jillian positioned herself so she could see Jim’s back as the paramedics gently rolled him onto the board. Her heart sank when she saw the smooth, unbroken skin, pink from the cold and his position. No exit wounds. Not good.
“Do you know him?” the second medic asked while he buckled Jim onto the gurney.
Jillian thought quickly. If she said no, she’d be forced to stay here and give her statement to the police officer who’d just showed up. He was busy talking to the girl from the café, but he’d want to get her statement, as well. If, on the other hand, she said yes, she’d be allowed to ride along in the ambulance. She could make sure Jim was receiving the best care, and if he happened to regain consciousness on the trip to the hospital, she’d be there to hear anything he might reveal.
Her decision got a lot easier when the waitress pointed her way, her mouth working a mile a minute as she no doubt recounted everything she’d seen from the warm safety of the café. The cop turned his head to follow her gesture, his gaze landing on Jillian with surprising weight. There was an alarming degree of suspicion in his eyes, as if he thought perhaps Jillian had shot Jim, then run out of the café to try to save him. What exactly was that girl telling him?
Jillian opted not to stick around to find out. “He’s my friend,” she said. The lie triggered a twinge of guilt, but she justified it by telling herself that because Jim was Alex’s friend, he was, according to the transitive property that applied to relationships as well as mathematics, her friend, as well. Or at least he would be, by the time this was all over.
“We’re taking him to Howard,” the medic said. Jillian nodded her approval. Howard University Hospital was a Level 1 Trauma Center, which would greatly improve Jim’s chances for recovery.
“I want to ride along.” She followed as the two men wheeled the gurney toward the ambulance, careful to keep hold of it so they didn’t lose control on the icy pavement.
The driver started to disagree, but his partner cut him off. “Do you have some kind of medical background? You talk like a nurse.”
“I’m a doctor,” she replied automatically. The men shared a look that spoke volumes. “But he’s your patient,” she hastened to add, wanting to make it clear she wouldn’t interfere with their treatment of Jim.
“Your call,” the driver muttered.
They reached the back of the ambulance and the men boosted Jim into the bay. Once he was secure, the driver stepped back and closed one of the doors before heading toward the cabin. Jillian stayed where she was, waiting for an invitation to board.
“Come on up, Doc,” the medic called. “Get the door behind you.”
She clambered up ungracefully to land in a heap on the bench seat and then reached behind her to grab the door. She gave it a tug, but a large hand suddenly appeared, catching the door before it closed. A shadow crossed the floor of the bay as the police officer stepped into view.
“I need to talk to her.” He nodded at Jillian, but didn’t make eye contact with her.
The medic spared him a glance. “She’ll be at the hospital. We’re headed to Howard.”
“I need to speak to her now.”
The driver’s voice crackled over the speaker. “Murph, what’s the holdup back there?”
Murph pressed a button on the wall. “Two seconds.” Then he returned to the process of starting an IV, his movements practiced and smooth. He didn’t bother to look up when he spoke again. “Sorry, but she’s a doctor. I need her with me.”
The cop opened his mouth to protest, but Murph cut him off. “Close us up. We’ll see you at the ER.”
The man’s jaw hardened and for a heartbeat Jillian thought he was going to refuse, or worse, reach into the ambulance and pull her out. Then he shot her a glare and slammed the door shut.
Murph pressed the button again. “We’re a go.”
The driver didn’t waste any time. They took off with a lurch, the back tires sliding for a breathless second before finding purchase in the icy slush that coated the road. Jillian planted her feet on the floor and gripped the seat hard, struggling to stay on the bench when they rounded a corner.
“What’s your name, Doc?”
“Jillian Mahoney.”
The medic nodded, but kept his focus on Jim. “What do you do?”
“I’m in the ER at GW,” she replied, using the standard shorthand for George Washington Hospital.
He whistled, long and low. “Busy place—we take a lot of patients there. You probably get a ton of GSWs.”
GSW was emergency parlance for gunshot wound, a depressingly common injury in any urban setting.
“All the time.”
“You did a nice job keeping him stable. He’s lucky you were there.” There was no accusation in his tone, but she could tell he was curious to know what had happened.
“I was in the café. Three men walked over and shot him when he tried to run. They didn’t stick around for long afterward.” No way was she going to mention Alex, or the real reason why Jim had been shot. Better for him to think it was a random event.
Murph was quiet for a moment, and even though he never looked at her, Jillian could tell he was weighing the truth of her words.
“Like I said,” he remarked, reaching over to fiddle with the IV line. “He was lucky you were there.”
The ambulance stopped, the vehicle rocking slightly when the driver closed his door. “Get ready to move,” Murph told her.
She jumped out as soon as the bay doors opened, then stepped to the side to get out of the way. The medics rolled Jim out in a fluid, practiced motion. Once again, Jillian was relegated to the role of bystander, with nothing to do but watch as they pushed Jim toward the ER.
Murph stopped at the door, letting his partner roll Jim into the hospital. Moving quickly, he stripped off his jacket and tossed it to her. “You’re still shivering. Zip up.”
“I can’t take this—”
“Sure you can. I know where to find you when I need it back.” He shot her a dimpled gri
n before turning to catch up with the gurney.
She debated going after him for a split second, but another gust of icy wind blasted through her clothes, chilling her through to the bone. Shaking slightly, she quickly slid into the still-warm coat, grateful for the additional layer. As an added benefit, the jacket provided a little bit of a disguise—Grumpy Cop would be looking for her green sweater and black coat, not a navy paramedic’s jacket. To complete the effect, she pulled her hair free of the ponytail, letting it form a sheltering curtain around her face.
Now that Jim was safe—or as safe as he was going to get—she had to get to Alex. The plan was to meet back at her apartment if things went bad. While she didn’t have any experience in this kind of thing, it seemed things had gone very badly indeed. But would Alex be there to greet her when she got home? More importantly, if he wasn’t, what could she do about it?
* * *
“Explain to me why I should continue to help you, when all you ever do is fail.” Dan felt his throat tighten as he struggled to keep his voice down. The walls of his office weren’t particularly thin, but if he started yelling, he had no doubt people would come running. And attention was the last thing he needed right now.
“It’s not a total failure,” the man on the other end of the line protested. “We shot one of them.”
“The wrong one!”
“I don’t think so. You told us to pop ’em both. The way I see it, the job is half done.”
“And you think you deserve some kind of reward for that?”
“Be patient. We’ll get it done.”
“Let me explain something to you,” Dan said, gritting his teeth so hard it was a wonder he didn’t break his jaw. “If Jim recovers from his injuries, he’ll know that I was the one who revealed his location to the gang. That means my role in all of this will be discovered. And believe me when I tell you that I will not hesitate to sell you out to save my ass.”
“Relax, my man. That guy is not getting up.”
“You’ll forgive me if I don’t believe you, seeing how nothing else has gone as planned.”
“What’s your beef with Malcom, anyway? Why’re you so obsessed with finding him?”
Dan closed his eyes as he gripped his thigh with his free hand. It was the strangest thing, this numbness that was his constant companion. He could feel his leg, mold his palm to curve around the muscle and bone. But like a one-way street, the sensation only moved in a single direction. His leg, which should have registered the contact, was inert and unfeeling. Useless. In fact, everything below his waist was a black void of nothingness. It was as though his body had been cut in two, his legs, knees and feet—all of them gone.
To make matters worse, he was still attached to the corpses of those once-functional limbs, a constant reminder of what he had lost. The doctors might as well have amputated them, for all the good they did him. Some days, he wished they had. Then he wouldn’t feel the rage, white-hot and blinding, that came over him when he looked down unawares and was reminded of the fact that he still had those traitorous legs.
And the man who had condemned him to this shadow life had never been made to answer for his actions.
“Don’t worry about my motivations,” he said, unwilling to discuss something so personal with a hired thug. “Just keep looking.”
Malcom may have been born under a lucky star, but that luck had to run out sometime.
And Dan was going to make sure he was there when it did.
Chapter 11
Alex paced the length of Jillian’s den, his steps uneven and awkward as he tried to keep his weight off his injured leg. Her apartment wasn’t very big, but the sharp, shooting pains emanating from his knee made the distance seem endless.
Where was she? Why wasn’t she back yet? Had she managed to save Jim?
Or had the gang come back?
He stopped, the thought of the gang finding her making his already weak knee wobble dangerously. Moving gingerly, he lowered himself to her couch, then immediately wished he’d gone for the bathroom instead. His stomach churned in a threatening manner and his skin felt clammy and cold.
I should have made sure the cops found them.
If he’d stuck around to verify that the police officers had apprehended the gang enforcers, he would know without a doubt that Jillian was safe, that they hadn’t run back to get their car and stumbled upon her helping Jim.
It was all too easy to imagine the scene—Jillian, kneeling next to Jim, her attention absorbed by her patient. She’d be totally unaware of the approach of the enforcers until it was too late. He pictured the three men stopping, their anger overflowing to spill onto her defenseless head. Would they shoot her outright for interfering with Jim? Would they pull her away, using her as a hostage to cover their retreat? Or would she get caught in the cross fire as they battled it out with the police?
A thousand scenarios flashed through his mind, each more gruesome and horrifying than the last. How could he have left her there, alone and unprotected? What if the driver from the car had grabbed her and she was even now in the custody of the gang? A shudder racked his body and he leaned forward, gulping air while he fought to calm both his stomach and his racing heart.
Snap out of it! Panic clawed at him with sharp, digging fingers, but he forced himself to relax, focusing on each body part in isolation and consciously releasing the tension from his muscles. First his toes. Then his feet. His ankles were next.
By the time he made it up to his hips, he was breathing normally again. When he got to his shoulders, his thoughts had calmed enough that he started to come up with options. Wrapping himself in a cloak of panic was not the way to help Jillian. And while wandering the streets in search of her would satisfy his need to do something, it wasn’t the best way to go about finding her.
First things first. He had to try to get the swelling in his knee to subside so he could regain some mobility. Right now, he could barely walk across the room, much less run. If something had happened to Jillian, he was in no shape to help her in his current condition.
Bracing his hands on the couch, Alex pushed to his feet and headed for the kitchen before the pain made him change his mind. The bottle of ibuprofen was sitting on the counter by the sink, and he shook a few pills into his hand, washing them down with a handful of water from the faucet. He patted his face dry with the dish towel, then hobbled to the freezer and assembled an ice pack, wrapping the ice cubes directly in the towel. It would get soggy after a bit, but he didn’t know where she kept the plastic bags, and he was reluctant to search through the kitchen drawers. Even though he wasn’t snooping around, it seemed wrong to go through Jillian’s things without her knowledge or permission. Although he was fairly certain she wouldn’t begrudge his search for a sandwich bag, he hadn’t known her long enough to feel comfortable making himself at home in her space.
He shook his head at the irony of the situation. Here he was, going out of his mind with worry about a woman he barely knew. In a little more than twenty-four hours, she’d gotten under his skin and was swiftly working her way into his heart. That had to be some kind of record. And yet, despite the growing intensity of his feelings, he hesitated to open a few drawers in the name of practicality.
“Don’t be an idiot,” he muttered. “It’s the kitchen, not her underwear drawer.”
Shaking his head at his own foolishness, he pulled open the closest drawer and was rewarded with the sight of the bags he sought. It took only a moment to fortify his ice pack, and he set off for the couch once again. He’d give the drugs and the ice half an hour to work their magic, and then he was heading back out into the city.
His plan was simple; he’d go back to the Civil War Memorial to try to trace Jillian’s steps from there. He knew there was a hospital nearby. That was probably where they would have taken Jim, if he hadn’t died on th
e sidewalk.
The thought made the tiny hairs on his skin prickle with unease. Not only would Jim’s death make it harder for him to prove his innocence, but he considered the man to be a friend. He had few enough of those left—he certainly didn’t want to lose one.
He still felt shell-shocked at the revelation that Dan was the likely mole in the Bureau. It was no secret Dan still harbored some resentment toward him for his part in the training accident, even if that part was limited to the simple fact that he had been present when it happened. But Alex had never imagined Dan’s resentment would morph into hatred so deep and pervasive it would lead him to betray the very people he worked with day in and day out. Hate that strong changed a person, poisoning them from the inside out. How long had Dan been carrying around such a toxic blend of emotion? How long had he been living inside a hell of his own making?
And most importantly of all, had the destructive forces he’d set into motion touched Jillian?
He couldn’t quite put his finger on the moment when she had begun to matter so much to him. But somehow she’d gone from being a stranger to a woman he cared deeply about, one he wanted to get to know better. And if his instincts were right, she felt drawn to him, as well.
Memories of last night filled his mind. The way she’d touched him, her explorations of his body simultaneously bold and hesitant, as though she was trying not to hurt him. The way she’d responded to his touch, sighing in the dark while she arched against him, silently asking for more. Physically, they couldn’t be more compatible. It had taken every ounce of his willpower to stop her hands last night. But he knew now, as he had then, that if she’d continued to touch him, his desire for her would overcome his common sense.
On a rational level, he figured that some of the spark between them was due to the adrenaline of their situation. When emotions ran high, so, too, did passions. But there was more to it than that. She was a truly remarkable woman—intelligent, sarcastic, caring, with a strong practical streak. She was by turns ruthless and gentle; a contradiction that he imagined served her well in her life as a doctor. He wanted very much to spend time with her, time that wasn’t weighed down by the heavy threat of discovery or violence.
