LITMIR.BIZ

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thought.

      Dr. Fuentes shook his head.

      “She needs X-rays for sure. There may be some cracked ribs and I fear internal bleeding. As for her back, just at a glance I see small rocks and sand in the wounds, which will require a very sterile setting to clean up. Will you please allow me to call an ambulance for her?”

      Anton frowned, but he obviously had no other choice.

      “Of course,” he muttered.

      Dr. Fuentes cleaned his hands and then stepped out into the hall to make the call.

      Anton knelt beside the bed and ran a hand down the side of her cheek.

      “Star?”

      Her eyes opened, piercing him with a watery blue stare.

      “Let me die.”

      “Then who will take care of Sammy?” he asked.

      Rage flickered on her face and then disappeared.

      “I am no longer his mother. You decided that. You have destroyed me. Let me die.”

      He stood abruptly. She’d nailed him on that. When someone had no fear of death, he had no way to coerce them to his will. Then Fuentes stepped back into the room.

      “There is an ambulance on the way. I will wait for them in the foyer.”

      Anton sat down in a chair beside the bed they shared and thought about the changes yet to come.

      Star was shaking. Shock and pain were moving through her in waves. The fact that Sammy had been found was such a huge relief to her that the tears she shed were tears of gratitude. And she knew something Anton had yet to learn. The two people who died in that fire were federal agents. It was only a matter of time before the Feds made their move and took him down. However, if she was still under his control when he found out, he would kill her.

      A short time later the ambulance came, and the paramedics loaded Star up and took her away. Anton called for his car and a couple of his men to go with him and followed, unwilling to let her out of his sight for long.

      * * *

      Quinn was struggling to wake up. She didn’t remember going to bed and didn’t know where she was. All she could hear was a woman trying to wake her up. She sounded like Mrs. Treadway. Quinn didn’t like Mrs. Treadway. She wouldn’t let them have butter or jelly on their toast.

      “Quinn, can you hear me?”

      Quinn moaned. She was so cold she couldn’t stop shivering.

      “Please, Mrs. Treadway, I don’t feel like school,” she mumbled.

      The Recovery nurse smiled.

      “No school, Quinn. You had surgery and you need to wake up now.”

      “Cold. Hurt,” she mumbled and then tried to lick her lips. They felt swollen.

      “I’ll put another blanket on you,” the nurse said.

      As soon as Quinn felt the weight and the warmth of the added covers, she began to relax.

      The nurse tucked the heated blanket around her and then laid a hand on Quinn’s forehead.

      “Quinn, open your eyes now!”

      Quinn was trying, but her lids felt too heavy. After several moments more of struggle, she finally saw light and then the face of the woman beside her.

      She wasn’t Mrs. Treadway, and Quinn was no longer nine years old.

      “Good girl!” the nurse said.

      “Where...?”

      “You’re in Centennial Hill Hospital. You had surgery on your shoulder.”

      Quinn exhaled slowly as memories flooded.

      “Someone shot me. There was a baby...”

      “I don’t know anything about a baby. We’ll be taking you to your room in a few minutes. You can ask someone there, okay?”

      Quinn let herself drift, wondering if any aspect of her life would ever get easy. This time of year, people would be chattering about holiday plans, going home to a block-party barbecue and having family over on the weekend. It all sounded so good—so ordinary. She had never lived an ordinary life.

      And then the same nurse was back, patting Quinn’s arm.

      “We’re going to move you to your room now. You just lie still and we’ll do the driving,” she said and giggled.

      Quinn braced herself for motion, guessing it might hurt, and she was right. When they began wheeling her through the hall leading toward the elevators, she closed her eyes against the bright fluorescent light fixtures in the ceiling above and was drifting back to sleep when they suddenly stopped.

      “Quinn, you’re doing great. It was my honor to take care of you, and now Thomas will take you the rest of the way to your room.”

      All of a sudden Quinn was in the elevator with a stranger named Thomas. After what she’d been through, the thought unnerved her. Then she heard the orderly humming and relaxed as the car went up. When it stopped, Thomas put a hand on her shoulder.

      “Are you okay, ma’am?” he asked.

      “Yes.”

      “We’ll get you comfortable soon,” he said.

      The doors opened as he began to push her out into the hall.

      * * *

      Nick had chosen a seat near the door so he could watch the elevator, and when he saw the elevator doors sliding open and the end of a bed emerging, he jumped up and went to see if it was his patient. He saw her red hair first and was about to speak to the orderly when he heard footsteps running up behind him.

      The panicked expression on the orderly’s face was all the warning he was going to get. He pulled his weapon even as he was turning around. It was the man from the waiting room. He was running toward them with his gun already aimed.

      Nick jumped in front of the bed. “Get her back in the elevator!” he yelled and pulled the trigger.

      Thomas reacted quickly, catching the door before it closed and pulling the bed back inside just as gunfire erupted.

      Dev pulled the trigger as the cop was shouting. In his haste to get off the first shot, his aim was off.

      Nick leaned just the least bit to the left as he fired and saved his own life. The bullet from Dev’s gun grazed the side of his head instead of hitting him between the eyes, but for a moment Nick thought his head would explode from the pain. But it hadn’t affected his own aim. Shot in the heart, the gunman hit the floor. Nick was still standing and the man was dead.

      * * *

      When the two gunshots sounded only feet away from her bed, Quinn screamed in terror, certain she would die. When the orderly slammed the side of her bed against the elevator wall, she cried out again, this time from the pain.

      “I’m so sorry,” Thomas exclaimed, trying to get around her bed to the button to close the door.

      And then Quinn saw the cop from Homicide move into her line of vision. There was blood running down his face, and he was holding his gun in one hand and the elevator door open with the other.

      “You’re bleeding!”

      Thomas turned, saw the blood running down the cop’s face and leaped forward.

      “You’ve been shot!” he said.

      Nick’s head was pounding. He ran a finger through the groove the bullet had left in the side of his head and shuddered. That was close. Too close.

      “It’s just a graze. Are you two all right?” Nick asked.

      “Yes,” Thomas said.

      “Then

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