Chapter Thirty-Five
Ava leaned a little more of her weight over her hands. Bill had lost too much blood already. The bullet wound was an inch or two right of the lower end of his sternum. Not a good place to get shot. Not that there were any good places to get shot, but the amount of blood she was seeing indicated internal hemorrhaging, possibly a lacerated liver.
If he didn’t get advanced medical care within the next ten or fifteen minutes, he was going to bleed to death.
She’d been in this situation before, and it hadn’t turned out well.
One of the men who’d stormed the warehouse walked closer, watched her. “Why do you waste your time?” the man asked. He wore a bandana over his mouth and nose, so all she could see of his face were dark eyes and bushy eyebrows. “He’s dead already.”
“He’s my friend,” she answered, then shut her mouth before she could say anything that might get herself shot.
Bill had tried to explain that they weren’t police, that they were CDC, but all that got him was a bullet to the chest. Bastards.
Anger rolled her gut, lent her arms strength, and cleared her mind of fear. She’d survived Ebola and terrorists wielding explosives and bioweapons. These drug-dealing wackos were barely worth her notice.
Glass shattered from multiple windows as canisters spraying out some sort of gas landed on the concrete floor. Tear gas.
The dozen or so men who claimed to own this sleazy drug factory shouted to each other in Spanish and began firing wildly at the windows and doors.
People, drug runners, and CDC personnel all over the large space began to cough, and Ava tucked her face into her sleeve to try to escape the worst effects. Her eyes burned and watered, then the burn slithered into her nose and down her throat. Gasping for breath only made it worse, exacerbating her cough enough to make her hands slip off Bill’s chest. She put her hands over his wound again, careful not to let her continued coughing dislodge her again.
More gunfire, now interspersed with screaming, had her peering toward the area closer to the windows and main door. Tear gas swirled as bodies moved, running and fighting. A bullet ricocheted off the cement floor on a few feet away from Bill’s head. She’d be lucky if she didn’t get shot by accident.
The drug runner who’d spoken to her right before this catastrophe of a rescue ran toward her, gun pointed at her. She didn’t move.
He stopped and shouted something in Spanish again.
He jerked as blood bloomed on his chest. He was still looking at her, but his gaze was empty now. Lifeless. His arm dropped, and he went down.
Behind him, two men ran toward her, both wore gas masks, but she knew who they were despite their obscured faces.
“Get an ambulance,” she shouted at Henry Lee. “Bill’s been shot, and he’s lost a lot of blood.”
Henry nodded and ran back through the gas.
She looked at River. What was he doing here? His lack of communication had made it clear that he wasn’t interested in a relationship.
He shook his head. “People tend to get shot a lot around you.”
“Not as often as they get blown up,” she corrected with a fake smile. Another coughing fit kept her too busy to trade verbal barbs with him.
Something touched the top of her head, and she reared back, only to discover that River had removed his gas mask and was trying to put it on her.
“What are you doing?” she yelled as she jerked her head around, dodging his hands. “Get that thing away from me.”
“You need this.”
“I don’t have a gun to shoot people with,” she hissed, despite how badly she wanted to cough.
He glared at her, his eyes watering as badly as hers, but he put the mask back on.
A flurry of movement from the direction of the door had River turning, his weapon up, but he lowered it almost as quickly. Paramedics with a stretcher stopped next to Bill, and they began pummeling her with questions. She gave them all the answers she had, as well as her suspicion that Bill had an internal bleed of some kind before they had him packed on the stretcher and were racing him out.
“Come on,” River said to her. “The police want everyone out of here yesterday.”
“Why?” Ava got up slowly, her knees stiff from kneeling on the floor for so long.
“Apparently, some of these chemicals are highly flammable. They’re afraid there could be an explosion.”
Ava rolled her eyes. Of course they were.
River grabbed hold of her arm and pulled her through the warehouse and out the door. She didn’t start resisting until they were outside and away from the majority of the commotion.
“I’m perfectly capable of walking on my own.” She twisted her arm in his grip.
He hung onto her for another second or two, then let go to rip off his mask. “You’re welcome.”
Her jaw dropped. He thought she should be suitably grateful for his rescue? “Thank you,” she said with enough sugar in her voice to hopefully rot his teeth. She turned on her heel and walked away.
“You look…better,” he called after her.
She spun around. “How nice of you to check up on me after all this time.” She resumed her course, heading for the first CDC vehicle she could find and a cell phone so she could report in. Her nose and eyes were still very irritated. That’s why she was sniffling and crying. It had nothing to do with the man who’d just shown her how much he didn’t care.
Behind her, River muttered, “Fuck.” Footsteps followed her. “Ava, wait.”
She stopped, wiped her face, then spun around and put her hands on her hips. “What?”
He jerked to a halt several feet away, his posture wary. “I’m sorry.”
He was sorry? “For what, exactly?”
“I’m an asshole.”
She knew that already, so she just stared at him.
“I’m also an idiot.”
She knew that, too.
A group of police walked past them with more people in marked uniforms from the CDC, DEA, and FBI coming right behind.
River got a glimpse of the numbers and shifted closer to her. “I need to talk to you, about a bunch of stuff. Can I come by your apartment after I’ve finished all the paperwork on this situation?”
She should say no, tell him not to bother, but she was also curious, and…she missed talking to him. Missed having him around.
“Fine, but if you don’t show up, I’m never speaking to you again.”
“I’ll be there.”
“Do you even know my address?”
“Yeah, Henry gave it to me.” He flashed her a grin, then disappeared into the mob of law-enforcement people all around.
Now that he was gone, all her anger drained out of her, leaving her exhausted physically and emotionally. Bill had been alive when the paramedics left with him, but the memory of that student terrorist, pale from blood loss, wouldn’t leave her mind.
She got into the CDC van she arrived in, fished her cell phone out of the locked glove box, and called Dr. Rodrigues.
…
River arrived at Ava’s apartment a few hours later and managed to get inside, thanks to a lady on her way out. He knocked on Ava’s door, and it took a minute before he heard footsteps. A moment later, the door opened.
She looked so sad, and he feared the worst. “Bill, did he…?”
She backed up, silently inviting him in. “No, he’s alive. In surgery still. The bullet nicked his liver.”
River closed the door behind himself. “Good, that’s good news,” he said, looking her over. “Is that why you look so tired?” She did, with bags under her eyes and pale face.
“I don’t know.” She retreated further into a comfortable living room and took a seat on a one end of a couch. “All I can think about is that stupid kid who died at the café.” She rubbed her face with both hands. “Work has been busy, too. We’ve been trying to unravel that strain of Neisseria, but whoever mucked around with it did it in a way that doesn’t seem to make sense.”
She was trying to keep the conversation on work. Nope.
He sat down next to her, giving her a foot or two of space. “I retired from the Army.”
She blinked at him. “You…what?”
“I work for the CDC now.”
“But, you…why? I thought you loved what you did in the Army.”
“I did, but it was time for a change. I’ve changed. Active duty in the Special Forces is tough on a body. Mine has been telling me it was time to get out for a while. Plus, I want to be able to spend time with my girl. See her every day. No long deployments, no trying to shorten the distance between us with phone sex.”
That made her choke. “Phone sex? That would require you to actually talk to m…this girl.”
He winced. “I had to get my shit figured out first. For a while, I thought I was no good for her.”
“No good?” She pressed her lips together, then punched him. “What does that mean?”
“I live a dangerous life. At least, I used to. My new life might still have some scary moments, but I’m hoping we can work around it.”
Her mouth hung open for several seconds. “You’re really not in the Army anymore?”
“Nope. Now, it’s just me and her,” he said, inching toward her to cup her face in one hand. “Naked on a bed, in a room with a locking door.”
Her jaw dropped open again, and she sputtered. “You…me…” Her voice trailed off into a panicked pant. “I…”
“Easy,” he said, rubbing the back of her neck. “I love you. I figured that out in the first twelve hours after I met you, so if you don’t feel the same, you’d better tell me now.”
A sob broke out of her. She buried her face in the hollow of his shoulder and clutched him tightly.
He settled her in his arms and rocked her for a couple of minutes, murmuring reassuring words in her ear.
When she quieted, he pulled back to look at her. “You okay?”
She nodded, sniffed, and he handed her a tissue from the box on the table next to the couch. “I had a fiancé,” she told him. “He was a soldier, like you. He died in Afghanistan a year ago. Friendly fire incident.”
“I remember.”
“He took risks. More than he should have, I think, but no one could stop him when his mind was set. He thought he was untouchable. Invincible. Until he wasn’t. I felt like he left me every time he was deployed.” She stared at him, fear etched on her face right to the bone.
“I’m not a soldier anymore,” he said, tilting her face up so she met his gaze. “I’m not going anywhere, unless it’s with you.”
“Promise?”
“Promise.”
She slid one hand off his shoulder to play with one of the buttons on his shirt and whispered, “I love you, too.”