Page 84 of Tasting Fire
Fuck. Emmy just could not catch a break, Cash thought as he jammed his truck into reverse. Unfortunately, his quick maneuvering caught the attention of the folks on the fringe of the protesters, and people began to turn and look at the truck.
Protesters! Who did that anymore?
“Have you checked your Facebook lately?” he asked Emmy. “Or the hospital’s?”
“It hasn’t exactly been a priority the past few days. Do you think this is related to that op-ed piece?”
“The Jekyll thing clinched it for me. Someone is stirring the shit.”
Unbelievably, people chased Cash as he backed up, beating their signs against the hood of his truck. Emmy rolled down her window and yelled, “Stop! You’re damaging personal property.”
That only made them beat harder, the wood handles scratching his nice paint job.
One guy reached inside Emmy’s open window and tried to grab at her shirt, but Cash hit the up button, almost pinning the asshole’s arm.
“Cash!” Emmy gasped.
“I’ll cut the fucking thing off if someone comes at you like that again.”
“See if you can pull into the ambulance bay,” she instructed. “Maybe they’ll have sense enough to keep out of there.”
Wishful thinking. The horde stayed right on the truck, almost surrounding it as Cash switched into drive and inched toward the bay. He parked, but the idiots with signs were swarming like ants on a picnic. “Stay inside until I get them handled. When I knock on the truck, get out and run like hell for the ER door.”
“But—”
“They won’t do a damn thing to me,” he said, and gave her a hard kiss on the mouth. “Let me handle this.”
“Meet me inside?”
“As soon as I can.” He slid out and hit the lock button to keep people out of the truck. “Back up, everyone,” he yelled at the crowd.
Where the hell was hospital security?
“I don’t know what you think you’re accomplishing, but you do not want to hurt anyone.”
“Cash Kingston,” hollered a lady he recognized as a regular at the Triple B, “are you dating a killer? You used to be such a nice young man. I bet when your mama and daddy find out—”
“Please keep my parents out of this. Now back away from the truck, or I’m calling the sheriff. Do any of you really want to spend the night in one of Maggie’s jail cells?”
“That Dr. McKay is the one who should be in a cell. Murdering bit—”
Cash caught the foul-mouthed window-breacher by the shirt collar. “You don’t want to finish that word, sir. The surgeon general guarantees that it will be harmful to your health.”
“Are you threatening me?” The man shook his phone in Cash’s face. “I’ll call the sheriff myself and—”
With just a tad too much force, Cash grabbed the man’s hand and squeezed it around the phone until his face twisted. “Back. Off. Sir.”
The man was thirty years his senior and twenty pounds his lesser. He finally dropped his defiant and rabid gaze and took a step back, and thankfully the crowd followed his lead. Cash kept herding them backward until they were several feet from his tailgate. Only then did he step back and tap his knuckles against the back quarter panel.
Emmy was out of the truck and through the automatic doors like a track star.
At the sight of her, the crowd tried to push forward again. Cash stretched out his arms as if he could hold them all back himself.
Finally, two security guards came around from the front of the hospital just as Maggie’s cop car and two others pulled in perpendicular to Cash’s truck.
When she stepped out of her car, Maggie had her hand on the baton in her utility belt. “Ladies and gentlemen,” she said in a slow Southern drawl edged with the sharpness of an icepick, “you will break this up right now. You are on private property and the owner is requesting that you disband and depart.”
“This here’s a county hospital,” someone protested.
