Page 71 of Hot Intent

“Alex Peters! I have one more thing to say to you!” she shouted.

She heard the gunshot, a sharp clear sound piercing the silent night. Felt something hot slam into her chest. Was aware of being spun around and thrown into the door at her back. Registered the sound of shattering glass. Saw the pavement rising up to meet her in slow motion.

But then her vision started to fade, first to gray, then heading toward black. And truth be told, she was kind of glad for that.

She thought vaguely that she probably couldn’t have stood watching Alex walk out of her life for good, anyway.

Poor Dawn. Poor Alex. Who would love either one of them, now?

15

At the sound of the gunshot, Alex spun down behind a car and whipped out his pistol. Sonofabitch. He’d been so furious with Katie that he’d barged out here right into the damned line of fire. Of course, the CIA had sharpshooters out here waiting to take him down.

Had the shooter missed him by accident? Surely not. He, of all people, knew just how good CIA snipers were. It couldn’t possibly have been an accident that the shot missed him, right?

He pushed the question aside as he scanned the rooftops looking for sniper perches. He quickly catalogued sightlines to hi position. Dammit. Almost too many to count. He had to move to better cover.

He spied a vestibule to the building next to his about twelve feet away. He could make it. He gathered himself, sprang forward and dived low, rolling into the deep doorway.

Huh. No gunshot. Why hadn’t the sniper taken the shot? Surely the guy’d had time to get a bead on him and knew Alex would head for better cover quickly.

He eased forward, staying in the shadows, but close enough to the street to scan the area. If there was a shooter out there, theguy was hidden too well for him to spot. Deep, waiting silence settled over the street.

Into the night, he heard a faint sound. A moan.

He was not a trauma surgeon for nothing. He’d heard that sound a thousand times. A semi-conscious person in severe pain. Who in the hell was moaning out there…

Knowing exploded across his brain with the force of the gunshot.

Katie. She’d run after him when he’d stormed outside, and the shooter had shot her. The bastard was using her as bait to draw him out. And if that was the case, the bastard had hit her somewhere that would kill her slowly. Slowly enough to give him plenty of time to listen to her dying.

He should walk away from here. Let her bleed out. He owed her nothing. He wasn’t a gullible amateur to fall for such a thing.

And yet, he mentally mapped a route back to his building’s entrance that would give him maximum cover. If nothing else, the act of moving toward her should cause the sniper to take another shot at him and reveal his position.

He darted from the safety of the doorway to the side of a parked car. No shot. Hmm. The sniper must be off to the side and not have a clear shot, yet. Alex moved behind a steel trashcan built around a tree trunk. He had significantly less cover here. The shooter should be able to get a bead on him from most of the street, now. He braced for the hit, covering his head with his arms to prevent an outright kill shot.

Still no shot. What was up with that?

He looked around and spied Katie lying face down in a spray of broken glass. Blood was spreading from underneath her, a river of red among the crystalline shards.

Frowning, he moved away from the trashcan toward her prone form. What was the shooter waiting for?

Surely, there was a general sanction out on him by now, a kill-on-sight order. Every sniper in the agency had to know he was armed and dangerous, the kin of man to kill first and ask questions about later.

Even if the order was to bring him in alive, any half-decent sniper would still want to wound him seriously enough to incapacitate him. Something that would drop him and take him out of commission.

And yet, no shot was forthcoming. Had the sniper egressed the area, already?

Why in the world would the sniper shoot Katie and then leave the area without shooting him, too? Unless…

Oh Holy God. No.

Swearing violently, Alex moved over to Katie fast and rolled her over. She was bleeding from a wound in the upper left quadrant of her chest.

He worked quickly, his movements practiced as he ripped away her shirt to expose what turned out to be two wounds—an entry and an exit wound. He used the torn cloth of her cotton night shirt to fashion makeshift pressure pads. Pressing hard on the entry wound, he prayed enough pressure was transferring through her body to staunch the blood flow from the exit wound in her upper back. She moaned more audibly as he used his left hand to pull his necktie free. He bound the pressure pads in place rapidly, and then grabbed her arms and hoisted her over his back in a fireman’s carry.

He took off jogging down the street toward a major thoroughfare. When he reached it, he urgently hailed the first taxi he saw.

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