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Nick’s head was pounding. He ran a finger through the groove the bullet had left in the side of his head and shuddered. That was close. Too close.
“It’s just a graze. Are you two all right?” Nick asked.
“Yes,” Thomas said.
“Then get her to her room, stat,” Nick said and began helping the orderly get the bed back out of the elevator.
Nurses were running toward them. They already knew he was a cop and that he was there to guard a witness in one of his cases, so there was no mistaking what must have happened.
Nick flashed his badge.
“Get her to her room and stay with her. Don’t let anybody in but the police,” Nick said.
One nurse grabbed Nick by the arm.
“Are you hit anywhere else?” she asked.
“No.”
“You need to get to ER. I’ll go get a wheelchair,” she said, then hesitated when she glanced at the shooter and the blood spilling out onto the floor beneath him.
“What about him?” she asked.
“He’s dead. Forget me right now and get her out of the hall. He may not be the only one after her.”
Quinn was scared. The man standing at the foot of her bed was bleeding, and everyone was running madly around her.
“What’s happening?” Quinn cried.
Nick heard the fear in her voice and turned around. Their gazes locked, and for a heartbeat everything faded. It was just him watching her eyes fill with tears.
“It’s okay, Miss O’Meara. You’re safe.” He grabbed the orderly by the arm. “Move her now!”
After that, panic ensued as the RN on duty began issuing orders to put the floor on lockdown.
“Step aside!” Thomas yelled. “Coming through.” He rushed her down the hall and into her assigned room.
Nick was watching them go when the thundering sound of running feet echoed up a stairwell. He turned with his gun already aimed, only to see a team from Hospital Security coming through the exit door and out onto the fourth floor with weapons drawn.
“Las Vegas Police!” he shouted and held his hands up with the gun in one hand and his badge in the other.
The first guard to reach him immediately took him by the arm.
“Detective, what happened?”
“You have a woman in room 424 who was shot earlier this evening out on Highway 93. Unknowingly, she rode up on a murder in progress and got shot for her troubles. That man followed her and just tried to finish the job.”
The guard nodded. “We need to get you to ER, Detective. Wilson, escort him down, and the rest of you start a room-by-room check to make sure there aren’t any gunmen on site. I’ll wait here with this one’s body until the police arrive.”
“I need a guard on room 424 or I’m not going anywhere,” Nick stated.
“Go. We’re on it.”
Nick was reluctant to leave, but he also knew he needed some first aid. He called in to his lieutenant again as they were going down in the elevator to tell him what happened.
“Lieutenant Summers.”
“Lieutenant, this is Detective Saldano. Someone tried to take out the O’Meara woman as they were bringing her up from surgery. I shot him.”
“Is she all right?” Summers asked.
“Yes, sir. The shooter is dead, and I’m on my way to ER to get some first aid.”
“You’re wounded?”
“Head wound, sir, but nothing serious. It’s going to be a big headache and nothing more.”
“Write up your report and consider yourself off duty.”
“Sir, seriously, I’ll be—”
“That’s an order,” Summers said, leaving no room for argument.
Nick sighed.
“Yes, sir.”
The security guard glanced at Nick.
“Pulled you, didn’t he?”
“Yeah,” Nick said and leaned back against the wall as the elevator took them down to ER.
* * *
Anton was standing in the doorway of the bedroom, watching as the EMTs were preparing Star for transport. He didn’t like what was happening, but he’d made the decision to keep her alive, and this was the consequence.
His phone rang, and he frowned when he saw the name on his caller ID.
It was his snitch in the Las Vegas PD. This was a call he never ignored. He backed out into the hall and lowered his voice.
“This is Baba.”
“Mr. Baba, this is Alicia Alvarez. We just got word that a man named Dev Bosky was killed in a shoot-out with a homicide cop in the Centennial Hill Hospital.”
Anton stifled a curse. So much for getting his son back the easy way.
“Thank you.”
“Yes, sir,” she said and disconnected.
Anton shoved a hand through his hair in abject frustration. What the hell was going on? All the people he normally depended on were failing him miserably. He was just superstitious enough to wonder if he’d brought it upon himself by betraying the mother of his son.
At any rate, he couldn’t go after the witness from the desert at the moment. Dev was already dead, and if he did anything more it would surely tie him to that crime. He was going to have to step back for the time being and see how this played out. The Feds would come, that he was certain of, and he would be questioned. His best bet now was to remain patient and, as always, deny, deny, deny. After all, Dev hadn’t worked for him in months...
* * *
Star cried out as the EMTs loaded her faceup onto a stretcher, bouncing her repeatedly on her injured back as they took her downstairs to the ambulance. She could hear Dr. Fuentes talking to Anton as they followed her down, but she wouldn’t open her eyes.
Her back was miserable, but she didn’t think she had any broken ribs or internal bleeding. Still, she was going to stay quiet and allow the paramedics to take her to the hospital. The only way she was going to survive any of this was to get away again, and right now the best chance she had to get away was on this stretcher. Her mind was focused on one thought: Sammy. The only hope she had of getting him back was to testify against Anton Baba—and to do that, she had to escape and stay alive.
When they transferred her to a gurney and loaded her into the ambulance, she moaned. She heard the back doors closing and then waited until it was moving before she dared a quick look.
There were two EMTs with her and then the driver up front. These two were strangers to her, but she knew enough about Anton’s world to understand that didn’t mean they weren’t in his pocket.
One of them was swabbing the inside of her arm.
“Just a small stick,” he said, as he slipped a needle into a vein to establish an IV.
Star felt nothing but the constant throb and burn of the wounds on her back. The ride was rough, and by the time they reached the hospital, tears were running down her face.
The EMTs were running when they wheeled her into ER. She knew because she could hear the rapid slap of their shoes against the tile. She heard one of the men giving out her stats and heard a woman ask her name.
“Her name is Star Davis,” the EMT said. “She’s Dr. Fuentes’s patient. He’s on the way to the hospital, too.”
“Star, my name is Dr. King. Can you tell me where you hurt?”
Star moaned softly.
“My back, my back. Please turn me over,” she begged.
The doctor frowned as she pointed to two of the nurses.
“Help me roll her... Not much. I just need to get a quick look at—”
The doctor froze. It was only for a second, and then she began issuing orders quickly and loudly.
Star sighed. The relief of lying on her side, if briefly, was huge. Her tears turned into soft, choking sobs.
“What happened to you?” Dr. King asked.
“I was in a wreck,” Star said.
X-ray techs wheeled the portable X-ray into the room.
“I’m sorry, Miss Davis. I’m going to need you to lie flat for these X-rays,” the doctor said.
“No, no. Not again,” Star moaned.
She felt hands on her shoulders, at her waist and at the backs of her legs trying to ease her back down, but when they rolled her down onto her back, the pain was so intense she passed out.
Dr. Fuentes came into the exam bay, recognized Dr. King and nodded.
“Dr. King.”
“Dr. Fuentes,” she replied, giving him a hard look. “What can you tell me about your patient?”
“That she lives with Anton Baba and she was in a wreck.”
Dr. King guessed the rest of what he wasn’t telling, which meant not asking too many detailed questions.
Seconds later, Anton and his two bodyguards entered the room.
“Wait outside,” Anton told the men and then aimed his questions at the doctor he didn’t know. “What is her condition?”
“Mr. Baba, I’m Dr. King. We’re just about to x-ray her, but she’s unconscious at the moment—the pain is quite intense. As soon as we’re finished, we’ll focus on the wounds on her back,” Dr. King said.
“Did she say anything?” Anton asked.
The doctor frowned.
“That she was in pain. If you will step outside long enough for us to get the X-rays we need, you will be allowed to return until we take her to surgery.”
Anton glanced at her, startled by this news.
“She needs surgery?”
The doctor folded her arms across her chest.
“I assume you saw her back?”
Anton nodded.
“Then you understand the severity of her injuries. She’ll need to be under anesthetic and in a perfectly sterile environment when we begin removing the debris embedded in her back and closing the wounds.”
“Yes, of course,” Anton said. With one last look at Star’s unconscious body, he stepped out of the room.
He was pissed all over again. Now she was damaged goods, which would definitely bring down her worth in a sale. She was still the best woman he’d ever had in bed. Maybe this accident was the nudge he needed to keep her with him. All he had to do was get their son back, and he knew she would stay.
Still, what a fuckup.
He would kill Ian all over again if he wasn’t already dead. It was just as well that the cops took Dev out, too. Saved him the trouble of doing it.
* * *
Nick was sitting on an exam table in the next bay waiting for a doctor to come back with the results of his X-rays. They had already cleaned and dressed his head wound, and his head was throbbing to the point of making him nauseous when he noticed the chaotic sounds of an emergency in the room next to his.
He heard the soft cries of a woman in pain and couldn’t help but hear what the EMTs were saying as they discussed her injuries. He heard the word “wreck” and then “in the desert” and frowned. But when he heard she was one of Dr. Fuentes’s patients and the name Anton Baba, Nick’s heart skipped a beat.
