Cross the Line (Alex Cross 24)
“Le needs to see me. It will change things.”
I didn’t wait for a reply. I cut the mute and said, “Mr. Le? You there?”
I heard him snort something again. “I’m here. You coming?”
“I am,” I said. “I’ll be the tall unarmed man with the ambulance workers.”
The EMTs came in pushing a gurney. I hit the mute button again.
“He says he won’t shoot,” I said. “But it’s your call. I’ll go alone if I have to.”
The male EMT, Bill Hawkins, said, “He mentally stable?”
“Surprisingly so, at the moment,” I said. “But an hour ago he evidently thought Officer Parks and the others were part of a vigilante gang and opened up on them. So there’s got to be some delusion there.”
“You trust him?” said Emma Jean Lord, the other EMT.
“Enough to lead the way,” I said.
They looked at each other and nodded.
“Be quick about this,” Bree told them. “Let Alex talk. You go straight to Parks, everything crisp and businesslike, no different than if he’d had a heart attack on his front lawn.”
“Okay,” Hawkins said. “Let’s go.”
Looking to Captain Fuller, Bree said, “You’ll cover them?”
“What are the rules of engagement?” he said with the hint of a sneer.
“Protect them.”
“Okay,” Fuller said. “I can live with that.”
“Good,” I said, thumbing the mute button off. “We’re coming out, Mr. Le. We will be moving fast to get to Officer Parks.”
“Come on, then,” Le said.
I holstered my gun, opened the door, and trotted off the front porch, saying, “You’re seeing me?”
“We’re not looking out windows and getting shot,” Le said. “Do what you have to do.”
Still, I couldn’t help feeling as if crosshairs were on my forehead as the three of us went to Officer Parks, who was gray and sweating with pain.
Hawkins swung the gurney next to him.
Lord said, kneeling beside Parks, “Can you feel your legs?”
“Yeah, too much,” Parks said through gritted teeth. “Like they’re on fire, and it hurts insanely bad around and above my hips. I think my pelvis is broken on both sides. And I’m thirsty.”
“Because you’re gut shot,” the EMT said, taking his vitals.
“Am I gonna live?”
“If we have anything to say about it,” Hawkins said.
Lord and Hawkins worked fast, getting an IV into Parks’s arm and then putting him on a backboard. They lifted him onto the gurney, strapped him down, and headed for the street.
I waited until they were out of range before saying, “You did a good thing, Mr. Le. Officer Parks will live. Why don’t you do another good thing and come out onto the porch to talk to me face-to-face?”