LITMIR.BIZ

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it all goes downhill from there. It takes only minutes to reach a point where no amount of medical care will make a difference.”

      He swallowed hard, the difficulty clear in the workings of his throat muscles.

      “Do you really want to die over a bunch of over-priced bikes?” A line of sweat had already formed on his brow and upper lip. She took a risk, glanced at the leg. “Damn, it’s pumping out pretty fast. You feel dizzy yet? Cold?”

      His hand shook—once, twice—before he lowered his weapon. “Call me an ambulance,” he choked out.

      Kayla confiscated his weapon, called for the paramedics then made a makeshift tourniquet with his shirt when she couldn’t stop the flow of blood any other way.

      Hadden had the guy he’d been tangoing with cuffed and was attending to the one he’d been forced to shoot. A shoulder wound involving mostly soft tissue, but the guy was crying like a baby. The buyer, Kayla surmised. He looked a little pudgy and had that fluorescent-lighting pallor of the skin—definitely not the type to be out pirating bikes.

      “Ouch,” Hadden said as he looked over her handiwork on the guy with the femoral artery injury. “That’ll leave a mark.”

      “He’ll live.” As long as the ambulance gets here in a hurry, she added silently. She’d have to keep a close watch on the jerk until then. Inflicting a lethal wound hadn’t been her intent, but she’d done what she had to in order to stop the perp from fleeing the scene and to protect herself…which might not have been necessary at all had she not been interrupted. She scrubbed her bloody palms over her jeans and eyed her uninvited backup. “What the hell are you doing here, Hadden?”

      He lifted one broad shoulder in a negligent shrug. “Just driving by, thought you might need some help.”

      “Bullshit,” she tossed right back. If he thought she was that naive he’d better get a grip.

      Before she could pursue the point, two Pinal County cruisers arrived along with the ambulance.

      “Hell, Ryan,” one of the deputies said as he surveyed the aftermath. “Why didn’t you just kill ’em all and save the taxpayers the cost of a trial?”

      “Funny,” she muttered as she started walking toward the vehicles. She glanced over her shoulder at Hadden. “Don’t you go disappearing on me, we’re not finished yet.”

      Two hours later, with two of the perps in the OR for surgery and the other in county lockup, Kayla had finished going over the scene with Steve Devon, the best county investigator in the Sheriff’s Department.

      “I’ll need your report on my desk first thing in the morning,” Devon told her before letting her go. He flicked a sour look at Hadden. “Yours too, Detective.”

      Devon didn’t have to spell out what that meant. A report was SOP, standard operating procedure. The urgency, however, was related to two wounded perps. Anytime shots were fired, the department flinched.

      The investigator’s stern questions only added to Kayla’s building annoyance at Hadden. She glared at him as they walked toward their abandoned vehicles.

      “This should have gone down without any shots fired.” If his arrival hadn’t set her targets on alert, a good portion of what transpired could have been prevented. She prided herself on doing her job with the least excessive force possible.

      “You just keep telling yourself that if it makes you feel better, Ryan,” he snorted. “But those guys had no intention of being rounded up today, otherwise they wouldn’t have been armed. Or willing to shoot at a cop,” he added.

      That part was true. She’d been surprised briefly by the unexpected exchange. But she still didn’t like him horning in on her bust.

      She went around to the back of her Jeep and opened the hatch. After pawing through a dozen items that she didn’t know why she hauled around, she finally found the antibacterial wipes. For the good they would do. She had that scumbag’s blood all over her.

      Hadden, playing it smart, kept his mouth shut as she cleaned herself up. By the time she’d gone through half the container of thin wipes her hands felt reasonably clean. There was nothing to be done about her clothes. The jeans and sweater were ruined.

      She closed the hatch and settled her renewed fury on Hadden. “Now tell me what you were really doing here. This is my jurisdiction,” she added. “You have no business nosing around here without giving someone at the Sheriff’s Department a courtesy call.”

      He grinned. A spear of warmth went through her. She looked away. She hated that he so easily turned the tide of her emotions. That was one reason she’d avoided him the past couple of months. Getting involved with another cop wouldn’t be smart. And she could see that coming a mile off. She knew Hadden’s type—nice guy, the kind who made lonely women fall in love all too easily.

      “Now we’re even,” he said jokingly, but she knew that whatever his motivation, it was no joking matter.

      “Don’t even go there,” she cautioned. Tucson was his jurisdiction, but her friend Rainy Carrington’s murder was her jurisdiction, no matter what the invisible boundary lines said. She would not give up on finding the whole truth. Not now…not ever. Hadden might as well get used to it. This had been a bad year for Kayla. First she’d lost her grandmother. Then, a few months later, one of her best friends had been murdered.

      “I’ve been watching you the past couple of days,” he admitted, surprising her all over again.

      She schooled her expression and planted her hands on her hips. “What for?” Every instinct told her she wasn’t going to like his answer. He’d been hiding things from her all along. But, so far, she’d had no reason to complain. God knew she was hiding plenty from him. That was another reason she’d steered clear of him the past couple of months.

      “Why don’t we go someplace where we can talk?” The suggestion was accompanied by a long, searching look from those piercing blue eyes.

      A shiver chased over her skin. Kayla gritted her teeth and would have liked nothing better than to chalk the reaction up to the weather, but, unfortunately, in southern Arizona that wasn’t likely. Even with only two weeks left before Christmas the temperature hung around fifty to fifty-five degrees Fahrenheit. Not cold enough to bring on the shivers.

      It was him. There was no denying that reality. She’d been pretending for months now. Keeping him at a distance for more than one reason.

      Though instinct warned her yet again that letting him too close would be a mistake, she just couldn’t help herself. For Rainy, she reasoned. If Detective Peter Hadden had discovered something related to Rainy’s murder, Kayla needed to know. The Cipher, the assassin who’d killed Kayla’s best friend, was dead. Samantha St. John, another friend and school-mate, had taken care of him. But whoever had sent him was still out there, the motivation a puzzle of bits of information that didn’t yet connect.

      If it was the last thing she did, Kayla intended to solve that mystery. She wouldn’t rest until those responsible for Rainy’s death were brought to justice…or were six feet under. And she had to keep searching for Rainy’s child—or children—until she found them or proved none existed. That was the part that hurt the most. Rainy had wanted children so badly and all along she might have had at least one. The bastards who had mined her eggs when she was young herself had robbed her of her ability to conceive and also deprived her of knowing whatever offspring had resulted. And when Rainy had discovered what they’d done and tried to find them, they’d had her killed. Kayla would find the truth.

      The Promise.

      She and her closest friends had made that promise to each other all those years ago while students at Athena Academy. Each year the class was divided into small groups of students who worked together all year long to become the best they could be in all aspects of their academic lives. Kayla’s group had been called the Cassandras. Headed by Rainy, their senior mentor, the seven of them, including Sam St. John, had become extremely

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