Amelia Autin - Killer Countdown

“Mary, mother of God,” she repeated over and over, and Shane knew it was a prayer.

Sirens could be heard in the distance now. Shane levered himself into a crouch behind the limo after making sure Laney was unharmed, except for the bad scrape on her elbow where it had made contact with the unforgiving sidewalk.

He peered over the limo’s hood. A stocky figure was running in the opposite direction, through the center island’s walkway, heading toward the far parking lot. Shane wanted to give chase, but knew that would be stupid. An unarmed man going up against someone with a high-powered rifle?

His staff members, who’d hit the ground when he had, stood and swarmed around him suddenly, as if they feared he would do just that. Then more people rushed outside from the clinic’s lobby—security guards and the morbidly curious. Shane quickly bent down and helped Laney to her feet, then brushed her off. He pulled a clean hanky from his jeans pocket and held it against her elbow, which was oozing blood.

“You okay?”

She nodded. “Thanks to you, Senator.”

A medical emergency team rushed onto the scene, and suddenly police cars were everywhere, although—thankfully—no TV news crews were on site yet. Then Shane remembered Carly, and he shot a quick glance over to where he’d last seen her...only to realize she wasn’t there. He scoured the parking lot for a sign of her. On the right he saw the back of a woman cutting across the drive, darting from one sheltered area to another. Moving in the same direction the gunman had been heading when he’d made his escape, but trying to stay under cover.

Shane cursed and took off running before the policemen could even exit their vehicles. He ignored the urgent cries of the people behind him in his goal to cut Carly off before it was too late. He sped through the circuitous sidewalk leading through the driveway’s center island, grateful the cactus and bushes shielded him from the gunman’s sight. He passed the statue of an American Indian woman, then a small waterfall, but he had eyes for neither. He took the stairs in three steps and was just about to exit the north side when he saw Carly. She was crouching behind a giant saguaro and a large agave plant, but peering around the one and over the other. She had something in her hand aimed at the running gunman...and she was right in his line of sight when he suddenly turned.

Shane made a flying leap and tackled Carly. The iPhone she’d been trying to use to film the sniper’s escape flew across the gravel and skittered into the roadway. He rolled her beneath him as the unmistakable crack of a rifle shot broke the silence. Then a door slammed. Tires squealed. And a white pickup truck fishtailed out of the far side of the parking lot as the driver gunned the engine.

A police car gave chase a minute later, siren blaring, but Shane wasn’t optimistic. Whoever had been shooting at him and then at Carly had too great a lead. The highway was only two stoplights and a few blocks away, and since it was the weekend, there wouldn’t be rush-hour traffic to impede the getaway.

Shane picked himself up off the ground and helped Carly to her feet, first making sure she wasn’t hurt. Then he grasped her upper arms and shook her. Hard. In a voice he hadn’t used since his Marine Corps days he demanded, “What the hell did you think you were doing?”

Chapter 3

Carly shook Shane’s hands off her arms and darted into the roadway. She retrieved her smartphone, which miraculously hadn’t been run over by the pursuing police car. The case had protected it against most of the damage that could have occurred, but there was a scratch across the touchpad. She swiped and pressed, then heaved a sigh of relief. “It’s not broken,” she exulted under her breath. Her eyes caught Shane’s. “And I got him.”

“You got him?” Throttled temper made him rigid, and he towered over her like the USMC officer he’d once been. “You think that was worth risking your life for?”

“I wasn’t in any real danger,” she replied calmly.

“The hell you weren’t!”

“The hell I was.” She lifted her chin. “You think I’m stupid? I’ve covered two wars and three ‘police actions,’” she said, referring to a military conflict in an undeclared war. “I know how to keep my head down. There was no point at which I was completely exposed.”

“You think a saguaro would block a high-velocity bullet?” He snorted. “It would slice through that like a hot knife through butter. Then go right through you.”

Carly opened her mouth to retort, but hesitated as she acknowledged there was some truth to what Shane was saying. She had been a tad reckless. True, she’d never been injured covering a story. In fact, she’d never been wounded at all, no matter what happened to her. She’d fallen from the top of a jungle gym when she was ten with nothing but brush burns and bruises to show for it. The helicopter she’d ridden in during her first foray as a war correspondent had been caught in a hot LZ—a landing zone where the helicopter came under enemy gunfire—and she’d been untouched. She’d even walked away physically unscathed from the horrific car crash that had caused such devastating damage to Jack.

She’d led a charmed life physically...had she grown overconfident? “You’re right,” she admitted now. She drew a deep breath. “And I apologize for putting you in the position of having to rescue me.” Then her natural ebullience returned, and she held up her smartphone. “But I got him.”

* * *

The police had whisked them all away before the TV news cameras showed up, for which Shane was grateful. He hadn’t wanted to be confronted by a reporter asking what he was doing at the Mayo Clinic or theorizing as to why he’d been an assassin’s target. Those questions would be posed soon enough, but at least he’d have a little time to come up with suitably noncommittal answers.

The Phoenix police, who’d been joined by FBI agents from the city office, finally let Shane and his entourage go four hours later. Four hours during which he’d been grilled relentlessly—albeit respectfully—with questions that, for the most part, he couldn’t answer. He hadn’t really seen much of anything except the glint of the rifle scope and a stocky figure running away. The man was white—he knew that much. And he was pretty sure the shooter’s hair was that indeterminable shade between blond and brown, although the ball cap the man had been wearing had concealed most of it. The shooter might have sported a close-cropped beard—but Shane couldn’t swear to it because he hadn’t really seen the man’s face. Yes, he’d seen the getaway vehicle, but he hadn’t caught the license plate number. And there were probably a million white pickup trucks out there.

He didn’t even struggle over the decision to disclose what Carly had said, that she’d caught the man on camera, although she wouldn’t thank him for it. Yes, she’d earned her scoop—by risking her life—but public safety trumped it. The shooter had been aiming at Shane, but anyone in the vicinity could have been gravely injured or killed. It was a miracle no one had been. Carly’s camera footage was critical evidence, and whatever the police and the FBI could glean from viewing it was more important than an exclusive news report...even if it meant confiscating her iPhone.

Shane didn’t see Carly again before he left for the airport, although he thought of her constantly as the limo ferried his aides and him from the police station to Phoenix’s Sky Harbor International Airport through the Saturday afternoon traffic. He caught his flight by the skin of his teeth, dashing through the hallways once he got past the TSA checkpoint, his aides scurrying to keep up. “Last call for flight...” was just being announced when he arrived at the gate, and Shane heaved a sigh of relief. There were later flights to DC out of Sky Harbor, but this one was nonstop.