“Round went in and out. You’re going to be okay,” said Sean. He fashioned a tourniquet from the torn sleeve. “You called in backup?”
The cop nodded, pain hardening his features. “What the hell is going on?”
“I wish I could tell you.”
Michelle knelt near him. “Is he okay?”
“He will be. Can’t say the same for his partner.”
An instant later they heard an ominous sound behind them: a gun slide being racked back. They turned. The man in the middle had regained consciousness and had his gun pointed at them.
“No!” a voice shouted.
In disbelief Sean watched as Dana darted toward the man and hit him with her purse. “Dana, no!” shouted Sean.
The man turned and shot Dana in the chest. She stood frozen for a moment and then dropped to the floor.
Sean lined up his shot and put a bullet right into the man’s brain.
He lowered his weapon and stared down at Dana on the floor, the blood pouring from her wound.
Sean ran toward her. “Dana!”
CHAPTER
24
WHEN SEAN HAD REACHED DANA he used every procedure he had learned from his Secret Service days to stop the bleeding. But she had still lost a lot of blood, perhaps too much. Then she stopped breathing and Sean performed CPR on her, and finally her lungs expanded and her heart restarted. The paramedics arrived, took over, and stabilized her. Sean rode over in the ambulance while Michelle followed in her truck.
Sean and Michelle were now in the waiting room at the hospital. They had been interrogated by both local Virginia police and federal authorities. They told some but not all of what they knew. It was fortunate that witnesses to the events at the mall had uniformly reported that the three dead men were the aggressors and that Sean and Michelle’s actions had been in self-defense, and had actually saved the life of one of the police officers.
That still did not buy them many points, particularly with the Feds.
A despondent Michelle looked up when she heard the door to the waiting room open. She hoped it was a doctor with good news. But her features grew even more depressed when she saw who it was.
Agent McKinney from Homeland Security stood there.
“What part of ‘stay out of it’ didn’t you get?” he barked.
“We were just at the mall having coffee,” said Sean wearily. “If there’s a law against that, I must’ve missed it.”
McKinney plopped into a chair across from them. “You know exactly what I’m talking about. The woman who was shot? She just happened to be the wife of an Army two-star and your ex?”
“I was meeting with Dana, yes,” Sean said stiffly. “She was helping us out on something.”
McKinney snapped, “On the Wingo something? The something I told you to stay the hell away from?”
“I don’t remember you being appointed to tell us which cases we could or couldn’t take,” said Sean sharply.
“Oh, I’m exactly that person. So you got her to help. How? Getting info from her hubby? Did you really stoop that low? Because it looks like you might have killed her in the process.”
Sean said nothing to this, because McKinney was actually right. He had used Dana and she’d been shot and might not live. All because of him. What had seemed like a fairly innocuous way to get some helpful information now seemed like the most insane idea he’d ever had. And the most selfish.
They heard a noise at the door and looked up. General Curtis Brown stood there in full uniform, red-eyed, his lean face sagging with despair. He had obviously heard this exchange.
“Sean King?”
Sean rose, his face pale. “Yes? How’s Dana?”