Chapter Thirteen
Del Rey was waiting for them. He sat at the same table he had occupied the previous night, this time in his uniform, red beret perched just so atop his coal-black hair. Seated across from him was the second man—also in uniform, with a patch on his shoulders that suggested he was a sergeant of some sort.
The pair looked up at Mitch and Katrina as they emerged from the elevator, then went back to their breakfasts, clearly pleased not to have to fetch them. Carrying Katrina’s backpack over his left shoulder, Mitch led her to the breakfast bar.
“You should eat something,” he encouraged as she eyed the pastry display apathetically.
“I’m not hungry.”
Mitch reached for a plate with his free hand. That very instant, the familiar crack of a bullet shattered the peaceful quiet. Del Rey and his sergeant exploded from their seats. Katrina slammed into the counter next to Mitch and bounced off, dragging a tray of pastries down on top of her as she collapsed onto the terracotta tiles. Her head struck the floor before Mitch could prevent it. He threw himself over her, fully expecting another round to be discharged.
Crack! The second shot struck tile, mere inches from their heads, splintering ceramic and leaving his ears ringing. Mitch groped for the Astra 600 he had slid into the waistband of his jeans at the last minute before they left the suite. Pulling it out, he glanced briefly at Katrina’s pale face to get the lay of the land. Her face was expressionless, her eyes closed. A circle of blood bloomed on her left shoulder. Jesus.
Del Rey and his subordinate had taken refuge against the nearest wall, which put them directly under the shooter, with no direct line of fire. All the same, the sergeant had drawn his weapon and was darting out of his hiding place to keep the shooter distracted.
Crack! Crack! Pits of plaster and tile rained down into the courtyard. Desperate for cover but loath to move Katrina lest the bullet travel from her shoulder to her heart, Mitch lunged for the base of the nearest table, jerked it hard and toppled it. Pulling it close, he used its breadth as a shield while he thumbed off the ancient pistol’s safety.
Taking a bead on the dark head peeking around the pillar on the gallery above him, Mitch took a steadying breath. Having never fired the weapon in his possession, he didn’t know if he could even hit his target. He aimed and fired, discharging a round and imbedding it in the old brick just inches away. Encouraged, he adjusted and fired again. Sshh-clenk. The pistol jerked. Mitch willed his aim back to point then realized the second round had lodged against the spent shell of the first. The weapon was useless to him.
A cold sweat enveloped him as he tossed it down. He and Katrina were sitting ducks. Glancing down at her, he found her alarmingly pale, the stain on her shirt wider.
“Hey, asshole.”
Mitch’s hopes rocketed as Austin’s taunt echoed off the walls of the courtyard high above his head. Oh, thank God. His teammates had roused to the sound of shooting and naturally headed right for the trouble.
“What the fuck, dude? You’re waking everybody up.”
Mitch looked up to see a shirtless Austin ambling along the gallery with his hands outspread, no weapon in sight. What looked like sheer stupidity was, in fact, a distraction. Just then, the elevator slid open on the other side of the shooter, revealing an equally shirtless Chuck.
The shooter hesitated, uncertain of whom to fire at first. With a sweep of his hand, Chuck hurled one of his shuriken. The metallic stark-shaped blade struck the shooter in the chest. With a scream of agony, he sank to his knees, dropping his weapons.
Instantly, both SEALs ran at him. Austin pegged him to the ground, and Chuck kicked the man’s pistol under the railing. As it fell with a clatter onto the courtyard floor, del Rey’s sergeant snatched it up before charging up the stairs to assume control of the situation.
Mitch shouted at del Rey. “Call an ambulance! She’s hit!” Shoving away the overturned table, he jackknifed to his knees and released the upper buttons of Katrina’s blouse. The point of entry was more than an inch across; the slug had gone deep into her chest.
“No, no,” he muttered. Shock slipped over him, cold and numbing. Falling back on his training, he kept it at bay by feeling her pulse at her throat, talking to her to keep her present, and praying. On more than one op, he’d taken Bullfrog’s place as the acting medic, treating several bullet wounds. Never on the woman that he loved. And never had one looked more fatal.
Grubbing in her backpack for something to use as a compress, he found a soft white T-shirt and pressed it to the wound. Palpating her wrist, he counted her weak heartbeats, while listening to her shallow breaths.
Without warning, she gave groan. Her eyelids fluttered, and she blinked up at him.
The disoriented and pained look in her eyes tore at his heartstrings. “Hey, baby,” he crooned. “Hold still!” he cautioned as she shifted to assess her situation. Almost immediately, her eyes rolled back in her head and she passed out again.
Mitch swallowed a howl of frustration. “Come on, Katrina. Stay with me,” he pleaded.
Not so much as a flicker of acknowledgement.
“Damn it, don’t leave me. Look at me!”
The memory of her looking at him while he filled her blew through his mind. Her eyes remained closed. His heart felt too heavy to beat.
Del Rey joined him, dropping onto his knees next to him with a look of shocked dismay. “Is she—?”
“She’s alive.” Mitch bit out the words, doubling the pressure on her wound. “Where’s the ambulance?” he demanded.
“They’re on their way—five minutes.” Del Rey’s phone was still pressed to his ear.
Sparing a glance for the action taking place on the gallery, Mitch noted the sergeant wrestling the shooter into a pair of handcuffs. The man wailed in agony while shouting what sounded like “Desperta Ferro!” along with intermittent invectives.
“I’m so sorry,” del Rey said, as he put his phone away.
Mitch couldn’t look at him. “Is that her brother, Martí?”
“I believe so,” the captain affirmed. “We’ve had a warrant out for his arrest. If I’d realized he would follow her here…”
“It’s not your fault.”
But it could be mine, Mitch thought with a pang of agony. Katrina had warned him Armando was likely to tell her brothers what he’d seen on the train. Given his training, his situational awareness, Mitch should have sensed Martí Ferrer long before that man ever opened fire. If she died on him…
He refused to accept that outcome. “She’ll be fine,” he insisted.
“Yes, of course. I hear the ambulance,” del Rey said, standing up to greet the paramedics at the door.
Ten minutes later, Mitch tried to follow the gurney carrying Katrina into the back of the ambulance.
One of the paramedics jumped in his way. “Are you her husband?” he demanded.
Mitch hesitated then ground out, “No.”
“I’m sorry,” said the man, firmly but with sympathy. He turned away and proceeded to close himself inside the vehicle.
“Wait, take her backpack. It has her ID in it.”
“I’ll take that,” del Rey said, wresting it from Mitch’s grasp.
“Give me a ride,” Mitch demanded as del Rey turned away. “I need to stay with her.”
With an audible sigh, del Rey turned back to speak with him. They stood on a narrow sidewalk being gawked at by pedestrians. Austin and Chuck had finished dressing and joined him, standing on either side like faithful bookends.
Dividing a gentle look among the three of them, del Rey gestured toward a van with a camera mounted atop it creeping up the cobbled street. “Are you sure you want to stick around? When the press realize the same men who prevented a massacre in Barcelona just saved a young woman’s life in Seville, you’re going to get far more attention than you bargained for.”
Mitch didn’t give a shit about attention. “We’ll deal with it. Just take me with you,” he exhorted.
All at once Chuck’s sat phone gave a shrill ring. Tensing, Mitch looked over as Chuck took the call.
“Suzuki.”
It was often hard to tell what the unflappable Haiku was thinking, but the way his dark eyes darted first to Mitch then to Austin, Mitch knew with a plummeting of his heart that Spec Ops was calling. Some unforeseen occurrence necessitated their immediate return—a hazard they had all learned to accept in their line of work.
“Roger that. On our way.” Chuck hung up.
Del Rey was astute enough to pick up on their new orders. He laid a firm hand on Mitch’s shoulder. “Go,” he said. “I’ll take good care of her.”
The doors of the ambulance shut with a clang, wresting Mitch’s attention toward the red cross emblazoned on the back. Austin and Chuck shifted wordlessly closer as the vehicle pulled away, turning at the next corner. A second ambulance carrying Martí Ferrer chased silently after it, its red lights sparkling, sirens conspicuously silent. Mitch felt his heart unraveling.
Del Rey gave them one last look then stepped away to speak with the handful of local policemen who’d responded to calls from the hotel staff.
Mitch, who could feel nothing apart from devastation, managed to find words for his two teammates. “I guess we’re leaving.”
***
Katrina floated up and away from the nagging pain in her shoulder. As she rose, her consciousness sharpened bringing an awareness of her environment that had been lacking up until then. With astonished curiosity, she realized she was looking down at a small gathering of people—all of them dressed in surgical gowns and masks and standing over a prone body. A plethora of medical instruments whirred and beeped. The patient, lying naked from the waist up—clearly belonged to a female. The patient’s hair had been stuffed into a cap, but some of it had escaped, so that a golden-brown tendril spilled over the edge of the operating table, drawing Katrina’s notice.
With a sense of shock, she recognized the hair was hers. It occurred to her with a sense of wonder that she was looking down at her own body, which meant that she was no longer in it.
One of the medical instruments gave a shrill peep.
“She’s flat-lining!” announced a nurse in rapid-fire Spanish.
The doctor hissed out a curse. Without pausing in his intent activity—digging into her chest with what looked like tongs—he barked orders for her to be hit with a defibrillator.
Katrina longed to flee the distressing scene. Two nurses wheeled the defibrillator closer. One snatched up the paddles, placing them on her bare chest.
The other called, “Clear!”
It occurred to Katrina that the choice was hers to stay or go. Sensing a warm light close above her, she was tempted to escape if only to avoid the pain she knew awaited her if she returned. Yet some magnetic pull compelled her to return to her body. A promise. Yes, she was bound by a promise, one she intended to keep.
Mitchell.
His name came suddenly to mind, followed by a powerful rush of emotion. He had said that he would wait for her. She couldn’t let him down.
Beep.
With a violent jerk and sudden discomfort, Katrina returned to her flesh.
***
The 747 was still lumbering toward the arrivals terminal when Mitchell powered on his cell phone. Halleluiah. Now that they were back on the east coast, his phone worked. Through eyes that stung from sleep deprivation and ignoring the voice mail from his task unit commander, Mitch accessed the number he’d transferred from del Rey’s business card into his contacts.
By now, eight hours after the shooting, del Rey would have definitive news on Katrina’s condition.
Over the pounding in his temple that had worsened over the course of the flight, Mitch listened to del Rey’s phone ring and ring. When his call went to voicemail, he left a terse message for the captain to return it and apprise him of Katrina’s status.
Lowering his arm, he suffered the queasy sensation that something awful had happened to her. Granted, it was probably dinnertime back in Spain, but the man ought to be answering his phone—unless he had bad news he didn’t want to share.
Between the headache that was battering his cranium and his reluctance to jump into a time-critical operation, Mitch dragged himself off the plane. He, Chuck, and Austin funneled silently into customs.
As they waited in line to get their passports checked, Mitch regarded his phone in the hopes that he’d overlooked a return call. Nothing.
A sudden thought had him accessing Safari to search for a news story. Surely, the reporters who had descended on El Abanico Hotel would have followed up to discover the fate of the woman shot in the hotel lobby.
He performed a search, plugging in Katrina’s full name. With rising amazement, he garnered immediate results, news stories dating to that same day. Opening an article published by La Vanguardia entitled “Shooting in Seville tied to Catalan Independence Movement,” he waded through the passages in search of Katrina’s fate.
A shooting took place at 8 a.m. this morning in El Abanico Hotel in Seville, that resulted in the arrest of Martín José Ferrer, believed to be the mastermind behind Sunday’s bombing of La Boquería, Barcelona’s largest outdoor market. Ferrer had allegedly traveled to Seville yesterday in pursuit of his half-sister, Katrina Ferrer, who may have betrayed her brother’s activities to the Civil Guard. The shooting has been labeled an act of retaliation. The victim, Katrina Ferrer, was shot in the shoulder and taken to Hospital Victoria Eugenia, where she later died…
Mitch’s gaze froze on the word murió. Shock dumped ice into his bloodstream. A buzzing filled his ears. The customs area became an indistinct blur.
Katrina was dead.
How could that be? He had held her in his arms less than twenty-four hours ago. All that vitality, all that passion, could not be gone—just like that.
Acid seared his throat, warning him of impending disgrace. Without a word to his companions, Mitch bolted for the nearest restroom, arriving in the nick of time to empty the contents of his stomach in a toilet.