Дэвид Балдаччи - King and Maxwell

“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!”

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 [19] CPR – cardiopulmonary resuscitation. 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?”

In answer Brown lunged and slammed a fist into Sean’s face, knocking him over a chair and onto the floor.

Michelle instantly put herself between the general and Sean.

“Back off!” she snapped.

“I’m going to kill you,” screamed Brown, and he tried to lunge past Michelle to get to Sean. She gripped his wrist and twisted it sideways and ripped his arm behind his back. He gasped, bent over in pain, and then with a massive effort broke free. When he took a swing at her, Michelle ducked and neatly clipped Brown’s legs out from under him. He fell heavily to the floor. She put a boot on his back.

“Stay down,” ordered Michelle.

When Brown tried to rise again, Michelle kicked him to put him back down.

“Stop, Michelle, just stop.”

Sean had gotten to his feet. His face was cut and bruised and already swelling. Brown rose, too.

Sean stood in front of him. “You want to take another swing, go ahead. I deserve it. Go ahead.” He grabbed the general’s hand and made a fist with it. “Go ahead,” he shouted.

But Brown backed away, obviously confused by Sean’s outburst. He sat heavily in a chair, put his face in his hands, and silently wept.

McKinney stood, flashed his ID although Brown wasn’t even looking at him, and said, “General, I’m with DHS. My sincerest apologies for what happened to your wife. Please rest assured that I will do all I can to make sure everyone responsible for this horrendous state of affairs is held fully accountable.”

He glared at Sean when he spoke this last part.

Sean stood there, his face bloody and puffy. He looked at no one other than Brown.

The door to the waiting room opened. The surgeon appeared, still in his operating room scrubs.

“General Brown?”

Brown looked up, his eyes wet with tears. “Yes,” he said shakily.

The surgeon moved over to him and spoke in a low voice, but one that Sean and Michelle could still hear.

“Your wife is out of surgery. She did well. Now, the bullet did quite a bit of damage and she’s still not out of the woods, but I’m hoping for a fairly complete recovery.” He added, “It was a miracle she didn’t bleed out. Whoever stopped the blood loss right after she was shot saved her life.”

Michelle glanced encouragingly at Sean, but he was now staring at the floor.

“Would you like to see her?” the surgeon asked Brown. “She’s not conscious of course, but–”

Brown quickly said, “Yes, please.” He followed the surgeon out of the room without a backward glance at any of them.

Sean sat down while Michelle grabbed some tissues out of a box on a table, wet them at the water fountain outside the door, and used them to clean Sean’s face. He neither stopped her nor assisted her. It was as though he didn’t even know she was doing it.

McKinney sat down across from them. “Damn, he really cleaned your clock. Can’t blame him, though.” He added snidely, “Good thing you had your partner here to defend you or else you might be in the hospital too.”

Michelle snapped, “Sean didn’t exactly fight back, did he? And just for the record the person who stopped her bleeding out is this guy,” she added, pointing at Sean.

“But she never would have been shot in the first place if not for him.”

“Actually, he was the one who told her to get the police and then go to her car and drive to the Pentagon. If she had listened to him, none of this would have happened.”

“No, if he hadn’t gotten her mixed up in this none of it would have happened.”

“He’s right, Michelle,” said Sean. He pushed her hand away from his face and stood. He looked down at McKinney. “You’re right.”

“Glad we agree on something. Now let’s get down to it.”

“To what exactly?” said Michelle since Sean did not appear to be listening.

“To what exactly you two are involved in.”

“We already told you that, Agent McKinney,” said Michelle in exasperation. “This all started with Sam Wingo disappearing and then coming back from the dead.”