A Little Too Hot

Chapter Fifteen

HE THROWS ME onto the ground behind the van, covering me with his body, and I’m sure my head just exploded with the impact. Shouts sound from up on the road, and my mind struggles to put together the pieces of what’s happened in the last ten minutes in a way that makes any shred of sense. I wait, disoriented and facedown in the ditch, my heart pounding and Jonathan on top of me. My eyes dart through the dark, assessing our surroundings and looking for a way out. There’s really nowhere to run. We’re in a ditch maybe ten or twelve feet below the road, with a cement sound wall behind us. It’s too high to get over. And if we run to either side, we’ll be in plain sight of the guy up the embankment.

On the road above, there’s the squeal of tires.

“Sam!”

Blake’s voice cuts through the night and my racing heart races faster with the renewed adrenaline.

“Sam!” There’s a rustling in the dead grass at the side of the road. “Sam! Are you down there?”

“Jonathan,” I say, bucking against him, but he doesn’t move. “Jonathan, let me up.”

I slither out from under him, rolling him onto his back, and that’s when I see the crimson bloom on his T-shirt below where my blood stains his shoulder.

“Oh, God!” I stagger to the end of the van and see Blake skidding down the embankment toward us. “Blake! Help! Jonathan’s shot!”

He looks up and sees me. “Stay there!” He half runs, half slides down the rest of the embankment and skids to a stop in front of me. “You’re bleeding.”

“I’m fine,” I say, pushing him back. “But Jonathan is shot. He needs help!”

My voice shakes so bad it doesn’t even sound like words, but Blake seems to get it. He lurches around the side of the van, pulling his phone from his pocket. “Direct pressure,” he tells me, kneeling next to Jonathan and bunching his T-shirt in his fist over the wound.

I kneel at Jonathan’s side as Blake calls for an ambulance. “You’re going to be okay,” I tell Jonathan, lifting his T-shirt to find the wound. He’s bleeding from a spot low on his right side, and I press my hand into it and lean my face near his, saying what he’s said to me so many times. “I’ve got you.” A tear leaks over my lashes as I slip a hand around his neck and rest his head on my knee. “I’ve got you, Jonathan. You’re going to be okay.”

Despite the fact that I’m starting to feel dizzy, I keep talking to him, and it seems like forever later when I hear the sirens. As they get closer, I bend down to be sure he’s still breathing, leaning my cheek near his nose and mouth. I feel his breath on my face and drop my forehead onto his, relieved.

“Hey, Red,” he whispers as a hand cups my breast.

“Don’t you die on me,” I tell him.

A ghost of a smile curves his lips as his fingers give a weak squeeze. But then his hand falls away and his eyes flutter shut again.

I look up to see Blake staring at us.

“Are they almost here?” I ask.

He nods.

I lower my face into Jonathan’s shoulder and press harder against the wound on his side. “Stay with me,” I whisper.

I hear people crashing through the night, and I’m being pulled back from Jonathan. I let them move me, as much as I don’t want to, because I know Jonathan needs more than what I can give him.

I watch, numb, as the paramedics load him on a stretcher and drag him up the hill. It’s only once he’s gone that I realize I’m sitting in the dark, on the ground, leaning against Blake’s body. Blades of light slice through the dark, catching the steam rising from the van like something out of Jonathan’s stage show. As a flashlight beam glides over my face on its way to door of the van, a stabbing pain shoots through my head and I gasp.

Blake’s arms tighten around me. “I need some help over here!”

His voice, so close to my ear, sends another spike of pain through my skull.

“Let me look at your face,” a uniformed woman says, crouching over me with a flashlight.

“I’m fine,” I say, trying and failing to pull myself to my feet.

“Hold still, Sam. You’re bleeding,” Blake says, and for the first time I detect a tiny shake in his voice. I look at him and, in the periphery of the flashlight beam, his eyes are too wide and the icy blue has melted into something deeper.

The paramedic is careful not to shine the beam directly into my eyes as she prods my right cheekbone with her gloved fingers. “This might need stitches,” she says. “I need to bring you in so we can get a closer look at this and check you for concussion.”

“I’m fine,” I repeat, louder. My voice reverberating around my skull sends another shooting pain through my brain. I gasp and lift my hand to my temple to stop it.

“You’re not fine,” Blake says. “You have a concussion.”

“Shut up, Blake,” I say, softer, gaining my feet. It’s harder than I think it’s going to be, and I stagger.

Blake puts his arm around my waist. “I’ll help you get her up the hill,” he says to the paramedic.

I jerk out of his grasp, and I swear the effort ruptures my brain. I cry out with the pain in my head and drop to my knees when my legs won’t hold me. But the next second, Blake scoops me into his arms, cradling my head firmly to his muscled chest. He scrambles up the embankment toward the flashing lights up top.

I try to protest, but the pain in my head stops me and I give up and sink into him. He makes the road and lays me on a gurney near the ambulance, and the blare of sirens nearly kills me. I want to press my palms to my ears, but my arms feel too heavy to lift. Headlights wash over me, and the light is too bright, shocking my brain. I whimper and close my eyes as a black car skids to a stop next to the ambulance and the lights click off.

“How is she?”

I recognize Cooper’s voice, and I want to tell him I’m fine, but my voice won’t obey.

“She’s pretty banged up,” Blake answers. “Did you get him?”

“No,” Cooper says. “I lost him off Grand. The locals are sweeping the area.”

I’m jostled as my gurney is hoisted into the ambulance.

“Where are you taking her?” Blake asks.

“General,” the paramedic answers.

I don’t open my eyes, but the light through my eyelids as I’m loaded into the ambulance is painful. I groan as the paramedic presses my eyelid open with a thumb.

“Light,” I say, trying to twist my head out of her grasp.

She lets me go and reaches up for a switch. The light dims and the pain in my head instantly recedes.

When the paramedics get me settled and strap the gurney in, one of them pokes at my face again and then roots through a drawer in a stand at the head of the bed, pulling a gauze bandage from a packet and pressing it hard to my face. The pressure stings and I let out a groan.

A warm hand grasps mine. “You’re going to be okay,” Blake says quietly. He must believe it, because I can hear the relief in his voice.

“If you’ll step out of the ambulance, sir,” someone says. “We need to get her to the hospital.”

“I’m coming,” Blake says. “DEA. She’s in protective custody.”

The same someone cuffs a laugh. “Then you guys are doing a pretty shitty job of it.”

I open my eyes in time to see Blake flashing his badge at a guy in a paramedic uniform.

“I don’t want him in here.” It comes out garbled, and I’m having trouble thinking straight enough to remember why.

What happened?

The image of Jonathan lying on the ground, bleeding, is the last thing I see before everything goes black.

I HAVE NO idea where I am when I wake up, but as I look around the room, it all comes back.

“Jonathan,” I say, but it comes out a weak croak.

“He’s going to be okay.”

Blake’s voice is the last thing I expect, so when it comes, so close to my ear, I suck in a breath.

The room spins as I turn my head to see him. He’s sitting next to my bed, his short sandy hair smashed on one side in a sexy case of bed-head. “What are you doing here?”

“You’re in protective custody, Sam.”

“Where’s Jonathan?”

He nods toward the closed door. “Just down the hall. He’s out of surgery and they say he’s in stable condition.”

“I want to see him.” I try to pull myself to a sitting position but my head pounds at the effort.

“Stay still,” he tells me. He sits back in his chair and scrutinizes me. “How’s your head?”

“Fine. Why am I in protective custody?”

“In case you missed it, someone was shooting at you. I don’t know how he found out, but Arroyo must know you’ve agreed to testify.” He looks hard at me. “You haven’t talked to anyone about the case, have you?”

I narrow my eyes at him. “You’re blaming this on me?”

“I didn’t say that,” he says with a shake of his head, “but he found out somehow.”

“The only people I told where Yvonne and . . .” Jonathan.

“Who?”

“No one.”

His intense gaze drills through me. “I can’t keep you safe if I don’t know who I’m keeping you safe from.”

“I told Jonathan, but it was just a few minutes before we were run off the road. And he’s the one who got shot, so I think the chances he’s in on any big conspiracy are pretty minimal.”

“Well, someone’s obviously gotten word to Arroyo.”

“Ben’s in jail, right? So how could it have been him?”

Blake shakes his head. “Arroyo rarely does his own dirty work, and he’s got a long reach. If he decides you’re a threat, he’ll find a way to take you out. It’s his pattern.” His brow creases and he drops his gaze. “And whoever’s leaking information has a direct pipeline, because he knew you were out within minutes of your release.”

I feel that defensive knot rise in my chest. “It wasn’t Jonathan.”

“We’ll see.” He leans back in the chair, tenting his fingers and tapping his lips.

I lift my hand to rub my face and find a thick gauze bandage fixed to my right cheek. “How did you find us in that ditch?”

“I had a feeling.”

“A feeling?”

He hauls a deep breath and rubs the back of his neck. “People who cross Arroyo tend to go missing.” His eyes flick to mine. “Or show up dead in Dumpsters.”

“So you knew he’d come after me? Is that why you told me to be careful?”

A shadow of guilt passes over his face. “Just for the record, I didn’t want to let you go. As long as we had you in custody, you were safe.”

What if he really did this? What if Ben’s really trying to kill me? My lungs feel like blocks of ice and I’m having trouble getting a breath.

“Sam, you’re going to be all right. I’ll make sure of it.”

There’s something about the sudden softness in Blake’s voice that cuts through my panic like the sharpest blade. If he hadn’t arrested me, none of this would be happening.

I stuff back the panic and glare at him. “This is your fault. If anything happens to Jonathan, I swear to God, I’ll make sure everyone knows exactly what you did. I’ll go to every newspaper who will hear me and tell them what a douchebag you are and how you set me up and got my friend shot.”

His mouth presses into a line and he lowers his eyes from mine. “I suppose I deserve that.”

“Leave.”

His eyes lift and lock on mine. “If that’s what you want.”

“What I ‘want’ is to have never met you. What I ‘want’ is my job and my life and my friend back. What I ‘want’ is for you to die a slow, painful death a thousand times over. But I guess I’ll have to settle for never seeing you again.”

He winces. “Like it or not, you’re sort of stuck with me for now.”

“Get out!”

He stands and moves toward the door, but before he steps through, he turns back to me, and the almost-smile on his lips makes me madder than I already am. “Glad you’re feeling better.”