Under Fire. Carol Ericson
and jumped up, clutching his weapon. He raised it to his shoulder but it didn’t get that far.
The man from across the room fired. Simon spun around and fell against the window, which finally cracked.
Ava clapped a hand over her mouth as she met Simon’s blue stare. The film over his eyes cleared. They widened for a second and he gasped. Blood gurgled from his gaping mouth. He slid to the floor, out of her sight.
Every muscle in her body seized up and she couldn’t move.
The security guard kept his weapon at his shoulder as he stalked across the room. When he reached the window of the lab, he pointed his gun at the floor, presumably at Simon.
Ava covered her ears, but the gunfire had finally ceased.
Slinging his weapon over his shoulder, the man gestured to the door. “Open up. It’s okay now.”
Would it ever be okay? She’d just watched a crazed gunman, one of her patients, mow down her coworkers and had barely escaped death herself.
She stumbled toward the door and reached for the first lock with stiff hands. It took her several tries before she could slide all the dead bolts. Then she pressed down on the handle to open the door.
The man, smelling of gunpowder and leather and power, stepped into the lab. “Are you okay, Dr. Whitman?”
She knew that voice but couldn’t place it. Tilting her head, she cleared her throat. “I—I’m not physically hurt.”
“Good.” His head swiveled back and forth, taking in the small lab. “Are there any blue pills in this room?”
She took a step back from his overpowering presence. “Blue pills? What are you talking about?”
“The blue pills.” He stepped around her and yanked open a drawer. “I need as many blue pills as you have in here—all of them.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” She blinked and edged toward the door. Had she just gone from one kind of crazy to another? Maybe this man was Simon’s accomplice and they were both after drugs.
He continued his search through the lab, repeating his request for blue pills, pulling out drawers and banging cupboard doors open.
A crash from another area of the building made them both jump, and he swore.
Taking her arm in his gloved hand, he said, “We need to get out of here unless you can tell me where to find some blue pills.”
“I told you, I don’t know about any blue pills, and there’s no serum on hand either.” Maybe he was after the vitamin boost the agents received quarterly.
He grunted. “Then let’s go.”
“Wait a minute.” She shook him off. “H-he’s dead, right? Simon’s dead?”
The man nodded once.
“Then why do we have to leave? Maybe that noise was the police breaking in here.” Cold fear flooded her veins and she hugged her body. “Are there more? Is there another gunman?”
“He’s the only one.”
“Then I’d rather stay here and wait for the rest of your—” she waved a hand at him “—security force or the cops or whoever is on the way. That could be them.”
He adjusted his bulletproof vest and took her arm again. “We don’t want to wait for anyone.”
Confusion clashed with anger at his peremptory tone and the way he kept grabbing her. She jerked her arm away from him and dug her heels into the floor. “Hold on. My entire department has just been murdered. I was almost killed. I’m not going anywhere. I don’t even know who the hell you are.”
“Sure you do.” He reached up with one hand and yanked the ski mask from his head.
Her eyebrows shot up. Max Duvall. Another one of her patients, another agent—just like Simon.
“Y-you, you’re...”
“That’s right, and you’re coming with me. Now.” He scooped her up with one arm and threw her over his shoulder. “Whether you want to or not.”
“Let me go!” She struggled and kicked her legs, but Dr. Ava Whitman was a tiny thing.
He could get her to go with him willingly if he sat down and explained the whole situation, but they didn’t have time for that. That could be Tempest at the door right now. He couldn’t even risk doing a more thorough search for the blue pills. He’d have to just take her at her word that there were none at the lab.
Maybe Dr. Whitman already knew the whole situation. Knew why Simon had gone postal. He couldn’t trust anyone...not even pretty Dr. Whitman.
Clamping her thighs against his shoulder, he stepped over the dead bodies littering the floor. When he navigated around the final murder victim in his path at the door of the clinic, Dr. Whitman stopped struggling and slumped against his back. If she’d had her eyes open the whole way, she probably just got her fill of blood and guts.
He crossed through the waiting room and kicked open the door to the stairwell. He slid Dr. Whitman down his body so that she was facing him, his arm cinched around her waist.
“Will you come with me now? I need you to walk up these stairs and out the side door. I have a car waiting there.”
Through his vest, he could feel the wild beat of her heart as it banged against her chest. “Where are we going? Why can’t we wait here for the police?”
“It’s not safe.” He grabbed her shoulders and squeezed. “Do you believe me?”
Her green eyes grew round, taking up half her face. She glanced past him at the clinic door and nodded. Then she grabbed the straps on his bulletproof vest. “My purse, my phone.”
“Are they in the clinic?”
“Yes.”
He shoved back through the door and pulled her along with him. He didn’t quite trust that she wouldn’t go running all over the lab searching for the security guards. Wouldn’t do her any good anyway—Simon had killed them all.
She broke away from him and yanked her purse from a rack two feet from the body of a coworker. She dipped her hand in the pocket of her lab coat hanging on the rack and pulled out a phone.
Another crash erupted from somewhere in the building, and Dr. Whitman dropped her phone. It skittered and twirled across the floor, coming to a stop at the edge of a puddle of blood.
She gasped and hugged her purse to her chest.
The noise, closer than the previous one, sent a new wave of adrenaline coursing through his veins. “Let’s go!”
Her feet seemed rooted to the floor, so he crossed the room in two steps and curled his fingers around her wrist, tugging her forward. “We need to leave.”
Still holding on to Dr. Whitman, Max plucked her phone from the floor and headed toward the stairwell again. He half prodded, half carried Dr. Whitman upstairs, and when they reached the door to the outside, he inched it open, pressing his eye to the crack.
The car he’d stolen waited in the darkness. He pushed open the door of the building and a blast of air peppered with sand needled his face. He ducked and put an arm around Dr. Whitman as he hustled her to the vehicle.
She hesitated when he opened the passenger door. The wind whipped her hair across her face, hiding her expression.
It was probably one of shock. Or was it fear? “Get in, Dr. Whitman. They’re here.”
This time she didn’t even ask for clarification. His words had her scrambling into the passenger seat.