Page 80 of I'll Be There
She stared at him, and he raised an eyebrow in quiet confrontation. “Fine,” she said and went to an ambulance, its doors opened to the scene. He ripped off the other sleeve, wiped the blood from his arm.
She returned moments later with a clotting sponge. “Trust me,” she said, and applied it over the wound. Held it there. “It’ll stop the bleeding.” She then held up the requested silicon tape.
He stood still, watching as she pressed the tape over the wound. “You probably need a couple stitches.”
“Later.” He glanced at Micah. “Okay, I get that maybe he feared I had information, but...why take out the entire wedding party, burn down a city block? That’s a little overkill.”
“Maybe to make a point,” Micah said. “Keep you quiet.”
“No. He wanted to hurt us. To watch us burn. Or kill us, one by one...”
“You’re scared, right?”
The question rocked him back. He swallowed, his chest raw.
More than he wanted to admit.
“Then it worked. You’re either going to shut up or...”
“Or find him.” Conner nodded. “Right. He counted on me either dying or hunting him down.”
“He could hardly shoot you in the Deep Haven interrogation room,” Kyle said, coming up to them. “Maybe I should have let you go, but I couldn’t have you two running around the county in a shoot-out.”
Micah’s jaw tightened.
“Then you’d better walk away from us, Kyle. Right now,” Conner said.
“Sorry. No can do, pal. I’m in this just as much as you are, now. He attacked my town. My people.” Kyle’s voice fell, turned to a growl. “My wife.”
Conner got that, but...
Micah cleared his throat. “So, here’s what we do. We check back with Conner’s GPS program, track down Blankenship—”
“He’s probably still watching us,” Conner said. “Figuring out his next move.” The sense of it raised the hairs on the back of his neck.
That, and the idea that Blankenship might walk right into the hospital, grab Liza, or someone else he loved, and then— “We gotta find him, right now.”
“We will,” Micah said.
Conner had spent the past thirty minutes, while watching the firefighters douse the town, categorizing the various sniper nests. “I think he might have been shooting, based on the angle of sight, from the café on the corner. Maybe he left something behind.”
The Blue Moose Café. Two stories, with stairs on the outside to an upstairs art gallery.
“I’ll go check it out,” Kyle said, and took off in a jog.
Micah turned to him, dark eyes sparking. “What are you doing?”
“Get in Kyle’s truck. Drive around the block and pick me up at the end of the street.”
Micah slid into the driver’s seat, and Conner quick-walked down the sidewalk toward his truck. He’d parked across the street from the pizza joint, left the rig unlocked in the unassuming streets of Deep Haven. Now he opened the passenger door, clicked open his glove compartment, and grabbed out his Glock. Shoved it into his belt, shut the door, and kept walking.
Micah pulled up in a lot at the end of the street, and Conner picked up his speed into a jog.
He slid into the passenger seat. “Go.”
Micah pulled away, not fast enough to alert attention, but with a wary glance in the rearview mirror to see if Kyle might be catching on.
Conner dropped the clip to check his ammo, then racked it back in, chambered a round.
