Chapter Thirty-Four
One second Smoke was running with a grip so tight on Kini’s shirt he couldn’t feel his fingers, the next she was screaming and they were tumbling across the pavement with bruising force.
She shoved him out of the way, rocketed to her feet, grabbed the axe he’d dropped, and, shrieking like a banshee, threw it at something behind them.
The sheriff, who had a gun and was about to shoot them.
Fuck.
Kini launched herself toward the sheriff.
Oh fuck, no. Smoke tried to grab her, but missed.
“Kini!” he yelled.
Her throw, wild and without any thought of aim, still made the sheriff flinch and sidestep.
Smoke found himself on his feet and running. He had to get to Kini before the sheriff recovered and shot her. Nothing was more important than protecting her. Not even his own life.
One step, two, three, he’d reach her in another step.
His injured leg buckled as he reached out to snag her shirt.
His fingers brushed the fabric as he fell and missed.
The boom of the gun, once, twice, sounded louder than any sound had a right to. Two shots were all the sheriff managed to make before Kini plowed into him, shoulder first, with enough force to knock the man off his feet.
He landed hard.
Kini had fallen on her butt after her shoulder check, but tried to push herself to her feet, her gaze locked on the handgun the sheriff had dropped before he hit the ground. It had skidded several feet away.
Smoke didn’t remember getting up, didn’t remember the run, but found himself reaching the gun before Kini or the sheriff.
He turned the weapon on its owner.
Kini blocked his shot.
“Down!” he shouted at her.
An arm slid around her throat from behind. In the sheriff’s other hand was the axe.
“Drop it,” he snarled at Smoke, holding the axe blade up to Kini’s throat.
Smoke froze. Behind the sheriff most of the firefighters were focused on the blaze, but a couple, one of them the fire chief, were watching them.
The son of a bitch would kill Kini. Smoke could read it in his eyes. He considered putting the gun down, but he was also sure the sheriff wouldn’t just get into his car and leave. He’d take Kini with him.
Not going to happen.
Another police car came screaming around the side of the building, followed by a couple of sedans. They came to a stop a good distance away, and someone in a state trooper uniform opened the driver’s side door, pulled his service weapon, and aimed it at Smoke.
“Drop your weapons!” the trooper shouted.
A grin spread across the sheriff’s face.
Fuck. If he didn’t put the gun down the trooper would probably open fire on him, which wouldn’t do Kini any good.
But he’d escape a life he didn’t know how to live anymore.
For one awful moment, he gave serious consideration to shooting the sheriff, knowing he was killing himself at the same time.
Kini made a sound, a tired, pained protest as tears cleared tracks through the blood on her cheeks. “Smoke,” she whispered. So much grief, so much fear, so much worry packed into his name.
He couldn’t do it. Couldn’t hurt her. He loved her too much to add his death to her nightmares.
He loved her.
Smoke set the gun on the ground carefully then put his hands up in the air.
The sheriff glanced behind him and saw the trooper moving forward. The grin on his face got wider. “You two are a regular Bonnie and Clyde,” he said, raising his voice so he’d be heard by the trooper and the men who’d gotten out of the sedan and were approaching with weapons drawn. “But your murderous adventure is over.”
“Let her go, Sheriff,” Smoke said. “You don’t need that axe anymore.”
“Until you’re in handcuffs, boy,” the sheriff snarled, “she isn’t going anywhere.”
The trooper stopped advancing as soon as he was in a position slightly behind the sheriff and to his left. A clear shot to either Smoke or Kini if she managed to get away.
One of the men came forward with a set of handcuffs. He wore nothing but black jeans and a black T-shirt, no identifier printed on his clothing to indicate what law enforcement agency he belonged to. He did have a shoulder holster with the butt of a handgun pointed out on his left side.
“On your knees,” he ordered Smoke.
Smoke looked into the eyes of a man who looked vaguely familiar and utterly ruthless, and complied with the order.
He met Kini’s gaze and sucked in a painful breath. She was covered in a lot more blood than the last time he’d looked at her. Her face had gone ashen and her eyes glassy. Below her left hand he could see a steady fast drip of blood onto the ground.
She blinked and her gaze sharpened, focused on his face. One corner of her mouth kicked up. “You’ve got that ferocious look again,” she teased, her voice barely above a whisper.
The guy in black behind him grabbed one of his wrists and pulled it behind his back.
Jesus Christ, she was in the hands of an out-of-control asshole who held an axe an eighth of an inch from her neck, and she was bleeding. “Don’t joke.”
The guy grabbed his other wrist and twisted it around and pulled it behind his back. Smoke waited for the cool metal kiss of the handcuffs, knowing he was giving up his last opportunity to kill the bastard. No contest. Any chance of getting Kini to safety was worth taking.
“Promise me you’ll laugh once in a while,” she said, her voice breaking on the last word.
“Shut up,” he growled at her. The pool of blood beneath her was getting larger fast. Her only hope was an ambulance, but the fucking sheriff had to let go of her first.
Smoke would do anything to speed this up. Where the fuck were the handcuffs?
“She’s been shot,” Smoke shouted to the whole world. “She needs immediate medical attention.”
The guy behind him pressed metal against his hand and wrist, but it wasn’t a handcuff. It was a gun.
What the flying fuck was this?
The guy behind him said gruffly, “On your feet,” then helped him stand, like Smoke was actually wearing handcuffs.
The trooper lowered his weapon a couple of feet but maintained his two-handed grip. One of the other guys from the sedan approached the sheriff and said, “Thank you, Sheriff Davis. I’ll take her.” He gave Davis a concerned expression. “You look like you need to see the paramedics, too.”
The sheriff frowned at the newcomer. “Who are you?”
“Came in with the state troopers,” the guy said with a friendly smile, reaching for Kini.
The sheriff backed up half a step, dragging Kini with him. “I’m not giving up custody of my prisoner until I know who I’m dealing with.” He glanced around quickly, his gaze going over then coming back to the trooper who’d lifted his weapon a bit higher and was pointing it more at the sheriff than Smoke.
“I’m FBI,” the guy said. “Just arrived on scene and responded to a call for backup at this location.” The guy glanced at the burning building without taking his focus off the sheriff. “Some serious shit going on here, Sheriff. We’re here to support your office in any way you need.”
The sheriff studied the FBI agent then the guy behind Smoke, suspicion a permanent resident on his face. “Who called for backup?”
“One of your deputies.”
Kini made a pain-filled sound and sagged in the sheriff’s hold.
Smoke and the man behind him made an aborted move toward them, but the sheriff caught it anyway.
“What the fuck is going on here?” he yelled at everyone as he hitched Kini higher, covering more of his body with hers. “You’re all looking at me like I’m the criminal and not this stupid bitch and her army reject boyfriend.”
“We’re concerned for the woman’s wounds,” the agent said. “She looks like she’s losing a lot of blood fast.”
“So what?”
Everyone was watching him like he was a cockroach they wanted to step on, and no amount of smooth talk from the FBI was going to convince the asshole to let his guard down.
“She can’t face justice if she’s dead.”
“Fine,” the sheriff said, taking a couple of full steps backward. “I’ll stick her in my squad car and take her to the hospital myself.”
Kini’s eyelids fluttered and she went limp; the only thing keeping her upright was the sheriff’s arm around her throat.
He managed to keep the axe pressed to the back of her ear and neck as he dragged her a few more steps toward his car.
“Sheriff, she’s unconscious,” the FBI agent said, frustration coloring his tone. “She needs medical attention now.”
“I’m not letting you take over this investigation. She stays in my custody.” He was halfway to his car now.
The agent pulled out his weapon. “You’re not acting rational, Sheriff. Let the woman go.”
The sheriff bared his teeth. “I knew it.” He tightened his hold on Kini’s neck and turned to face the FBI agent. “Someone fed you a load of bullshit and you believed it, didn’t you?”
Smoke couldn’t let him get any farther away. He’d made Kini a promise not to kill anyone, but if she didn’t get her wounds taken care of, she was going to die of blood loss. If he did what he had to do to save her, he’d lose her just the same.
Better that than dead.
He had a shot. Better than the agent or the trooper who also had his gun trained on the sheriff.
I’m sorry, sweetheart.
Smoke yanked his arm out of the loose grip of the guy behind him, pulled the gun up, aimed, and fired.
The sheriff’s head recoiled and he went down, taking Kini with him.
Before his brain could register what happened, Smoke was running toward them. Kini lay across the sheriff’s body, fresh blood leaking out of a cut on her neck.
Not a lot of blood, the cut no deeper than any of the others she already had on the other side of her neck.
He gently, carefully scooped her up and lifted her off the sheriff’s body. He lay her down on the ground a few feet away from the dead man. Covered in blood from her neck to her knees, there was no way to tell where the bullet wounds were. He grabbed the edges of her shirt and tore it down the middle.
No, oh God, no.
There were two bullet holes in her torso, both of them bleeding.
“Medic!” he bellowed, putting a hand over each wound and applying pressure. “Someone get me a fucking medic.”
“So loud,” a wavering voice said.
His lungs stopped working for the whole second it took to look at her face. “Kini?”
Her eyes were open a crack but widened with surprise as she looked at him. “What did I do this time?”
She was awake, talking to him. Then her question registered. “You got shot,” he growled at her. “You ran straight toward that asshole and he shot you.” He leaned down until he was just a couple of inches from her face. “Twice.”
“Of course I did.” She smiled at him, so beautiful and sweet. “He would have shot you otherwise.” One bloody hand reached up to touch his face. “Love you.” Her hand dropped and her eyes closed.
“Kini!” he shouted at her. “Don’t you fucking die on me, don’t you fucking dare.”
Someone put a hand on his shoulder. He jerked away.
“Smoke, the paramedics are here.”
All he could see was the ghost of a smile on her face and the blood on her body. If he lost her, he’d go insane.
“Smoke, come on, man, get your shit together, the paramedics are here!” He glanced over his shoulder at the man who’d handed him the gun instead of handcuffing him. Then at the ambulance and the paramedics running toward them.
The next few minutes were a blur as the paramedics fought to stop Kini from bleeding any more than she already had. They put IVs in both her arms, loaded her onto a stretcher, and were gone.
Smoke hadn’t moved from where he’d been standing. All he could do was stare at the pavement where Kini had lain. There was so much blood on the ground. So much.
Finally, he turned his head and regarded the man who’d stayed with him the whole time. Henry Lee, an ex-Special Forces soldier, currently employed at the CDC as a lab tech. “What are you doing here?”
“Came with the rest of our people. No one needed me to figure out the pathogen, so River gave me a gun and told me to stay out of trouble.”
“Dumb.” One did not hand a man like Henry Lee, who’d lost a leg but none of his training, a gun for any other reason than to make trouble.
“Yep.”
“So you promptly disobeyed his orders just like he expected you to?”
“He’s not my boss, but…” Lee shrugged. “Yeah.”
Another fire truck arrived, followed by more state trooper cars and another generic sedan. None of the people who got out of the vehicles paid them any attention. “Why aren’t I under arrest?”
“Your grandfather got word to us about the same time the sheriff called in to say the fire alarm was false.”
That couldn’t be all of it. “What was the word?”
Lee gave Smoke a startled glance then started laughing. “You live up to your reputation.”
“Which is?”
“You get straight to the point and only say what you have to.” Lee shook his head. “Your grandfather said to look into the owners of this place and a property on the other side of the canyon that turns out to be a drug lab. Both places are owned by a development company, that’s owned by a shell company, that eventually leads back to Sheriff Davis.”
“That asshole sheriff wasn’t just producing meth. This place is a cover for bioweapons.”
Lee stopped laughing. “No. Really?”
“Kini told me the sheriff removed some of the pathogens from the building. You might want to check the trunk of his police car.”
“Shit.” Lee took a couple of steps toward the knot of people talking with the fire chief, then stopped and said, “Don’t go anywhere.”
At Smoke’s nod, he jogged away, only the slightest limp giving away the fact that he had a prosthetic leg.
It didn’t take long for Lee’s news to rile everyone up. Shit, he could hear the questions from where he stood.
Smoke walked over to Lee and the rest, the pain in his calf reminding him that he had to see a doctor about getting that bullet out.
“You might as well let the fire burn,” Smoke said to the group. “Let the heat destroy whatever shit he had in there.”
“What the hell is wrong with your leg?” Lee asked, staring at his torn jeans like he’d hadn’t noticed them until now.
Something told him some of these people were going to squawk. Fuck, he was tired of the noise. Still, maybe he could convince everyone it was no big deal.
He shrugged. “I sort of got shot.”