Blood Challenge

TWELVE

FLASHING lights. Cop lights, strobing their red emergencies into the street, onto the bloody grass. Lily sat on the wet grass, her arm pulsing out of sync with those lights, driven by a frantic heartbeat, each pulse a hot beat of pain too large to think through or around.

“What?” she said. “I didn’t hear … you need to send someone to talk to the concierge.”

“Later,” the officer kneeling beside her said soothingly. He was young, dark-skinned, with a teensy little mustache. “You said you’re FBI. Do you have ID on you?”

“In my holster.” She’d already surrendered her weapon, knowing the officers had to have it. Lily started to reach behind her—and hissed at the fresh blow from her injured arm.

“I’ll get it. Stay still. You aren’t bleeding out, but—”

“I’m okay. Didn’t get the plates, though. First we were tumbling, then I saw … they were gone by the time I looked. Shot us from behind, hit the gas.”

He’d managed to extract her ID. As he shown his flashlight on it, a siren’s mounting wail grew closer. Ambulance, she saw when she glanced at the street. It pulled to a stop, adding its flashing light to the two patrol units.

But they were too late. LeBron was dead. “Could be an opportunistic hit, could be planned. If the concierge talked to someone …” The world did a slow loop. She closed her eyes to see if that made the dizziness go away.

When she opened them, she was flat on her back and someone else was bending over her. A woman, thirty-something, brown and brown, square chin. Not a cop. “Take it easy, ma’am,” the woman said. “We’re going to get you loaded in just a minute. I need to know where you hurt.”

Paramedic. Brown-and-brown was a paramedic. “My arm. That’s it. I need to call people. My phone’s in my armband. Get it for me, okay? Can’t reach it.” She’d tried, but the armband was on her left biceps and she couldn’t contort her left arm enough to reach it.

“You need to be still. You’ve lost some blood.”

Blood loss? Was that why … she’d thought the mate bond had yanked on her, making her pass out. That’s how it felt when she and Rule were too far apart—dizzy as hell, followed by unconsciousness if they didn’t close the distance quickly. But blood loss made sense. “Talking won’t make me lose more blood. I need to call Rule and …” Not Ruben. He’d had a heart attack. God, her brain wasn’t working right. “Croft. I need to tell him. And Rule.”

“We can make a call for you, but first we have to get you loaded. Hold on a minute now, we’re going to—”

Someone did something to her arm that seared her brain to white. When it came back online, someone was saying dammit, dammit, dammit … oh, that was her. Apparently she could curse even without a brain. “Call now.”

“We’ll call soon. We’re going to move you now.”

“O-NEGATIVE.” Lily lay on a gurney in the back of the ambulance. The motor was idling, the siren silent. Up front, a door slammed as the driver got in. “And that’s all you get until you call.”

“Special Agent,” Brown-and-brown said, “no doubt you are used to being in charge. You aren’t in charge now. I said I’d call, and I will—after we reach the hospital. Now you need to answer some questions. Any allergies?”

Lily set her jaw and stared at the ceiling. It was way too close. Everything was too close and cramped in the back of an ambulance. Rule would hate it.

“I need to know if you’re allergic to any drugs.”

They pulled away from the curb. Just as Lily thought maybe they’d spare her the siren, it came on. She winced. It probably wasn’t as loud in here as outside, but that urgent blare made her heartbeat jump back into double time.

They’d bound her arm. The pressure was necessary to stop the bleeding, but God, it hurt. No more dizziness, though, thanks to the IV now dripping fluid into her vein, so she tried to get her brain working.

It was not, she thought, a professional hit. A pro would have used a rifle or an automatic. It clearly hadn’t been an automatic—she was too alive for that—and it had sounded like a pistol, not a rifle.

Brown-and-brown sighed and surrendered. “All right, I’ll call. What did you say his name was?”

“Rule. Rule Turner.”

VANDERBILT had the closest ER, barely five minutes away. That was irony, not a coincidence; Ida had booked them into the Doubletree precisely because it was close to the hospital.

Brown-and-brown hadn’t been able to reach Rule, but she’d left a message. She’d called Croft, too, just as the ambulance pulled into the emergency bay. She hadn’t let Lily speak to him, but at least she’d called. Lily made sure she told Croft about LeBron.

Not Rule, though. He shouldn’t learn that from voice mail.

Many painful minutes had since passed. Lily’s time sense was too skewed to guess how many. Time enough to cut away her top, though it was obvious her only damage was to her arm. Time enough to steal more of the blood they said she was low on. Time enough to get X-rays, during which she’d passed out again, but not, she thought, for very long. They’d followed that up with a CT scan.

Now she lay flat on a hard treatment table, enveloped in pain. Her own fault, she supposed, for refusing pain meds. But she couldn’t turn loose yet, couldn’t … only she was tired. So tired.

Still, she tried to pay attention to the doctor who was telling her a great many important things involving her tibia. Or was it her fibula?

No, neither of those were right. Her arm, anyway. Her arm was screwed up. Hollow-point bullet, most likely. They really tore things up on their way out. Like LeBron’s eye socket, exploded into obscene red jelly …

“… very fortunate there is no significant vascular damage, so we won’t need a vascular surgeon. The surgery may take awhile, given the shattering of your humerus—bone fragments, you know. Got to chase down as many of them as we can, but we have an excellent orthopedic surgeon. He’ll be here very soon, and he’ll take good care of you,” he told her, hearty in his reassurance. “Do you have any questions?”

“Not going into surgery yet.”

The ER physician was a portly man with twin patches of sandy hair in parentheses around his ears. He had a mole just under his chin and a shiny head. He frowned at her in disapproval. “You need surgery, young lady.”

Lily gritted her teeth at the “young lady.” “I’m not refusing treatment. Just not yet. He’s almost …” No, wait, she wasn’t supposed to say that. “I need to see him first.”

“He? Who do you mean?”

There was no door to her treatment cubby, so she heard the commotion in the hall clearly. First a woman’s voice: “Sir! Sir, you can’t go—”

Then a wonderful voice. “No, now, you’ll have to get out of my way. My nadia is in there.”

“Visitors are not allowed for that patient—sir! Security! Stop him!”

Relief rolled over Lily in a huge wave. “That’s him, and you’ll let him in here or I swear I’ll get up off this goddamned table and go out there to him.”

“The officers left word that you—”

“I am a goddamned officer, and I say … oh. Oh, there you are.”

Rule appeared in the doorway, his hair disheveled, his eyes frantic. “Lily.”

From behind him another man spoke. “All right, you! Hands up and step back. Step away from the door.”

Rule didn’t move, and he didn’t look away from her. “I suggest you put that gun up before you hurt someone.”

“Harvey,” the doctor said, turning, “don’t be waving that gun around. It’s all right. My patient knows this man—whoever he is—and she is not going to cooperate until she sees him.”

Harvey started arguing. The doctor started for the hall. Rule stepped aside for him politely—and came in. Came to her.

“Lily.” He swallowed and touched her cheek so carefully, as if he feared even that might hurt.

She seized his shirt with her good hand and pulled him to her. He let her, and at last, at last she could bury her face in his shoulder, his shirt wrinkled and soft, his scent filling her. At last she could let go. Rule was here.

A shudder hit like a small quake. “LeBron is dead.”

“I know.” He stroked her hair. “I was still four-footed when the mate bond yanked at me—”

It did?

“—so I raced back to the car, Changed, and got that message from the paramedic.”

“But she didn’t say—”

“I called Croft. He told me.”

Her hand clenched in his shirt. “He died for me. He wrapped himself around me and took the bullet. For me.” The first sob shook her, shocked her, sent a white bolt of pain shooting from her damaged arm … but that didn’t stop her.

She wept.