No. No. And hell, no!
Tanner sprang forward toward his compact target. The woman who would have gladly taken a bullet for him.
Kathleen felt the impact all the way through her teeth. Damn, but Tanner tackled like a pro.
Confusion, frustration, outright fear all rocked her with as much force as Tanner's linebacker body slamming her sideways.
Pop.
A bullet hissed from the silencer through the air just before they smacked the ground.
She waited for the stinging sensation. Some kind of pain beyond the jarring of hitting the floor. Anything to reassure her she'd been hit rather than Tanner.
Nothing. Not a scratch.
"Tanner? Talk to me! Now, damn it!"
"Shut up, Athena," he growled in her ear, raw emotion tempering his unmistakable anger. "I'm pretty pissed at you right now."
Relief melted the tension from her. "You can be as pissed as you want as long as you're alive."
Quinn loomed over them. "That was damned stupid. Brave but stupid. Why does everybody always insist on being a hero?"
Kathleen struggled to breathe, a difficult proposition with 238 pounds of Tanner shielding her and showing no signs of moving anytime soon.
Quinn knelt, gun clutched in two hands between his knees. "Roll off her. Now. We're not wasting anymore time."
Tanner flipped off Kathleen, slowly, easing to his feet. He towered over her, lights at his back casting his face in shadows. He extended an arm down to help her up.
Then she saw it.
Blood.
Streaming down the side of Tanner's face.
A scream built. Begged for release. Professional objectivity went all to hell as she leaped to her feet. "Oh, God, Tanner. Let me look."
"It just nicked me." Tanner shoved aside her hands and wiped away the blood with an impatient swipe of his wrist.
Kathleen peered through the dim glow. It seemed like the scratch he claimed it to be. Not that the knowledge stopped the grinding fear. Quinn was out of control and that made him beyond dangerous.
Tanner grabbed Kathleen's arm and shoved her behind him. "You're not leaving here alone with her, Quinn."
"Touching. A real Days of Our Lives episode in the making." Quinn steadied the gun. "Nice try, Doc, but I can handle the big guy here. Two hostages are better than one. Gives me a spare to dispose of. Now move."
Tanner's rage mushroomed within him like an A-bomb as he walked across the tarmac toward a row of C-17s. Not a damned SP in sight on the mammoth runway that sprawled for miles into the desert. No visible activity due to the holiday.
Fears for Kathleen swirled with his grief over what had happened to his sister. He would make the son of a bitch pay for threatening even one strand on Kathleen's head.
Flight line badges flapping as they walked, Quinn urged Tanner across the hundred feet to the nearest C-17. The runway lights did little to brighten the overcast night.
There was nothing to stop them from stealing a plane. The aircraft was even gassed up and ready to go since planes always refueled immediately after landing.
Wind whipped at Kathleen's hair as it had only two weeks ago when they'd stood together on the flight line in Germany. But the fire in her eyes had dimmed. The shooting had rocked her. And while the fear for him lingering in her eyes thumped him right in the chest, it also scared him a helluva lot more than any bullet.
She would toe the line now, and Quinn had to know it. How far would Quinn push her?
Tanner thumbed aside the slow trickle of blood on his pounding temple. If he'd kept his mouth shut back in Germany, listened to her diagnosis and parked his own butt in the infirmary, she would have been safely dispensing diagnoses and prescriptions.