Dakota Marshal. Jenna Ryan
Through the window she noticed a shadow pass by outside. Apparently McBride truly did want to be gone, and quick. She was more than happy to facilitate that desire. She opened the side door, intending to offer some comment in line with her mood, when a weak beam of light from the porch slanted across the shadow’s face. It was not McBride.
Quickly she eased the door shut, not making a sound. Then she turned. “McBride!” She doubted he could hear her urgent whisper. Still holding the medi-pack, she ran for the lab. And plowed right into his chest.
He steadied her with his good hand as he glanced over her shoulder. “Is someone out there?”
“A guy with a gun. A big one.”
“Did he see you?”
“I’m not sure. Maybe.”
McBride stuffed the Glock he’d evidently retrieved into his waistband. “Can you describe him?”
“Long hair, ratty beard, nose ring.” She let him nudge her to a less visible exit. “Eddie?”
“Yeah.” He kept his eyes moving. “Bastard. I drove in ten different directions before coming here. I thought I’d lost him.” With a glance out the window and another behind them, he positioned her next to the door. “Stay right here, Alessandra. Don’t move.”
He drew his gun, pointed it up. Alessandra’s muscles knotted.
The moment McBride left, she went for the medicine cupboard, unlocked it and pulled out the .45 Dr. Lang kept there. She had to go through his desk for the bullets. Grabbing her purse, she doused the scattering of overhead lights, shoved everything into a backpack, then froze when she caught a faint creak of hinges behind her.
Instinct told her it wasn’t McBride. Careful not to make any sound, she ran back to the door, took a quick look into the rain and slipped out onto the wraparound porch.
She saw McBride’s black truck—barely—in a far corner of the lot. A light appeared, then vanished, in one of the examination rooms. Eddie must be working his way through the building. With an eye on the window, Alessandra inched carefully along the wall. “I’m going to kill you if Eddie doesn’t,” she whispered to the absent McBride.
She saw something a split second before a hand snaked around her neck and covered her mouth.
“Not a sound, sweet thing,” a man’s Southern-accented voice whispered in her ear. “I need to know where that slippery badass I shot and I reckon you helped has gotten to.”
She should have loaded Dr. Lang’s gun. That was Alessandra’s first and pretty much only thought. Instead, a greaseball with bad aftershave had his gun pressed into her neck and was dragging her around the porch.
“Sorry to say, I’m gonna have to do you, but not until the badass is as dead as my cheating ex-wife.” He inclined his head again, and she heard the grin in his voice. “I upped my rate when I heard McBride was the target. Come on now, you can tell old Eddie, how bad’s he shot up? One to ten. Use your fingers.”
She held up two, ordered herself to move with him, to keep breathing, to think.
“Is that all?” He sounded pissed off, but only for a moment. Then the grin returned. “Or could it be you’re lying to buy time?”
Although his breath smelled of beer, he didn’t sound drunk. He continued to haul her sideways. Alessandra waited, counted.
“C’mon, McBride,” the hit man growled through his teeth. “I got the girl. Play hero, and…” The rest came out as a shocked curse.
He hadn’t noticed the single step down to his right. Off balance, he let her go as he stumbled, then slammed into the clapboard wall.
Alessandra didn’t hesitate. She scrambled from the porch.
“You come back here!” Still off balance, Eddie fired. Unsure if she’d been hit, Alessandra ran for the corner of the building.
She heard a thud. Two more shots whizzed past.
“Get to my truck,” McBride shouted.
Looking back, the only thing Alessandra saw was a blur of rain and motion.
Another bullet discharged. Eddie swore again in a wheeze, and got off two more shots.
A hand gripped her arm. “Inside,” McBride ordered. He shoved her through the driver’s side door. “Stay down.”
She knelt on the floor in front of the passenger seat and tried to determine if either of them had been injured.
Once in the truck, McBride fishtailed out of the lot one-handed, his eyes on the rearview mirror. “Man, he’s packing four semiautomatics.”
Was that some sort of twisted admiration in his voice?
“How can you possibly—” She broke off when she glimpsed his shoulder. “You’re bleeding.”
“I know. He got me in my bad arm when I tackled him.” He swung the truck down a narrow road.
Bracing for the potholes, Alessandra stole a brief look out the back window before climbing up into her seat. “You need to stop and let me restitch that wound.”
“Not until we put some miles between us and Eddie.”
“McBride, you can’t ignore the laws of medicine forever. Lose enough blood, and you will die.”
His eyes were still fixed more on the mirror rather than the road in front of them. “I’ll do that a lot faster if we don’t lose him.”
Twisting around, Alessandra risked another glance, saw nothing and stared at his profile. “Who is that guy, and why does he want you dead?”
“Us dead,” McBride corrected. “And I’m really sorry about that part.”
“So am I.” However, since she knew he meant it, she breathed through her irritation. “Talk to me, McBride. Who sent a hit man after you and why?”
“Long story short, I was dispatched to apprehend an escaped felon by the name of Rory Simms. Rory’s sister is one of those crime lords the FBI would love to have under lock and tossed key, but unlike Rory, Casey’s smart enough not to get caught standing over a corpse, holding a smoking gun. That’s murder one. Rory’s in for twenty-five minimum. But big sister was afraid he’d go a little crazy inside, say things he shouldn’t about the family business, so she engineered an escape. Now Rory’s on the run, I’m on his ass and big sister’s hit man’s on mine.”
“And the no-cops, no-hospitals thing is just you not wanting to be removed from the case?”
He regarded her shrewd face. “Would you go with that if I said yes?”
“Not even if I was twelve years old and you looked like Captain Jack.”
Which he kind of almost did, but that was absolutely not the point.
She looked again, did a double take. Were those headlights bouncing far in the distance? She turned around as the tires slammed through a series of ruts. “Do you know where you’re going?”
McBride narrowly avoided a low tree branch. “At this moment, no. Overall, yes. Rory’s heading south. That means we are, too.” The apologetic tone returned. “I didn’t plan for you to be involved in this, Alessandra, but you can identify Eddie, so you are. I’d love to call in, get information, request backup, but I can’t. The last time I did—right before I got shot—I let my boss and only my boss know where I was heading. And yet Eddie, who’d been chasing me until that time, suddenly wound up ahead of me.”
“You think someone in your home office leaked the information to him?”
“To him or Casey.”
“Unless Rory called Casey or Eddie himself and told one or both of them where he’d be.”
“That’d