Chapter Fourteen
I sla walked out of the hospital with Sally, the head ICU nurse who’d asked her to come to pick up a handwritten commendation letter for her to attach to her assessment due at the college tomorrow. Touched and in need of that bright spot to her weekend, she’d agreed to get it at the end of the woman’s shift.
They had just stepped outside the hospital when several loud pops filled the already humid morning air, followed by a few pings echoing behind her.
Two other staff members had exited through the doors too, while several more were entering. It was the changing of the guard, so to speak.
One person fell to the ground, bleeding, and another was pulling that person behind one of four concrete pillars that lined the entrance. The people walking toward the hospital scattered, screaming as they ran for cover.
“Shooter!” one of them yelled.
Ducking like the others, Isla and Sally rushed to the first row of parked cars, covering their heads as more pops rang out and shattered glass rained down on them.
“That was from a different direction,” she muttered, crouched near the rear tire of an Escalade.
Sally nodded next to her. “There are at least two.”
Oh, God, were there any behind them as well? She hoped not, because they were pinned down.
And bleeding.
Her heart was hammering in her throat, and terror squeezed her chest tightly. Fear shook through her. She glanced at her stinging arms. Blood trickled from a peppering of slices and cuts, thanks to the shattered glass. Sally was bleeding too, but it was flowing more than trickling down her right arm.
“Sally, were you shot?” she whispered.
“I-I don’t know. I guess. Maybe.” The woman lifted her shoulder and winced.
Fear momentarily forgotten, Isla moved to get a better look when another shot rang out and air hissed from the tire of the car across from them.
Sally screamed and Isla jumped back, slamming the Escalade with the back of her head.
The sound of footfalls clapping off a sidewalk echoed in the distance before they heard male voices shouting for someone to drop his weapon.
“Oh, thank God. I think that’s security,” Sally said, shaking next to her.
Several shots rang out in what she could only assume was a firefight. It was hard to tell, since they couldn’t see the hospital entrance which was where the noise was centered.
Sirens sounded in the distance, the police definitely en route.
“I hope they get here before more people are hit,” Sally said, blood dripping from the hand she used to squeeze her shoulder.
They needed to stop the bleeding.
Isla glanced around, noting a young couple hunkering like them in the next row. From what she could see, they were unharmed.
She glanced in the other direction. Someone wearing scrubs lay motionless on the ground. Isla ground her teeth.
Who were these shooters?
Why were they doing this?
The white-hot fear trembling through Isla swiftly turned to rage.
Screw this.
Isla refused to cower against a damn car instead of helping Sally. If someone was firing from the right and another from the left but their reach wasn’t quite as far, she needed to get her friend behind the Escalade so she could help treat the wound.
And if there was a third shooter back there, then so be it. But she didn’t think so because there hadn’t been any bullets coming from that direction.
Besides, the security guards had the shooters occupied.
She hoped.
With a prayer on her lips, she dove past Sally and then tugged the woman behind the Escalade, without incident.
“You okay?” she asked Sally.
The woman nodded. “Yeah.” She removed her hand from her shoulder and pushed up her scrub sleeve to view the wound. “Think it was through and through.”
Isla helped her lean forward so she could view the other side. “Yes.” Blood flowed from what she felt was the entrance wound.
Thank God the bullet hadn’t been on the other side.
Sirens descended, tires squealed, then she could hear Gabe’s voice announcing the police presence and the “Drop your weapons” order.
Keeping an ear on the action but her eyes on her friend, she pulled off her shirt, and using a piece of broken glass, cut some of the material into strips. Sally folded a swath and placed it on the entry wound while Isla did the same to the exit before wrapping several of the strips around the woman’s shoulder and patches of cloth.
It wasn’t much of a tourniquet, but it would do for now.
The shooting stopped.
“Come any closer and I’ll kill him!” a male voice shouted. “I’m not here for him, but I will shoot him.”
She glanced around, noting the police and a few men she recognized from ESI working their way slowly toward them through the parking lot. Isla searched the faces, looking for Sinjin, but she knew he wasn’t there. His vehicle hadn’t been in his driveway when she’d left for the hospital earlier.
God, she wished she had her phone so she could talk to him, hear his voice. But it was in her purse on the ground somewhere between the hospital entrance and the cars. She glanced at Sally, noting the woman didn’t have her purse either. They no doubt dropped them when they’d scurried for cover.
“Put your weapon down,” Gabe ordered, his men setting up a perimeter in the next row.
“Not going to happen,” the guy grunted. “Not unless you arrest the people who let my father die.”
The stalemate continued for what felt like days but was probably less than an hour. It was a nightmare, but she was wide awake.
A whooshing noise from chopper blades sounded in the distance. Probably some news station wanting to get a good view, no doubt.
Isla itched for a better observation spot. She hated that she couldn’t see what was going on, so she lifted up and peeked through the car’s windows to see security behind the pillars, and one shooter holding a gun to a hostage. Unsure where the second shooter hid, she quickly ducked back down.
She watched as Mac and his men slowly pulled people huddling behind vehicles to safety and the line-up of ambulances that were parked at the back of the lot.
The whoop-whoop of the chopper sounded close now, but instead of hovering above as she’d assumed, it flew over and landed somewhere down the road. She found that odd but pushed it out of her mind.
Row by row, Mac and his men crept closer, and she silently urged them to hurry because blood was starting to soak through Sally’s dressing.
Isla was putting pressure on Sally’s wound. They had been taking turns, but she could tell the woman was getting weak. Not because she was sweating—it was Godawful hot outside—but because of her pallor and her eyes were starting to drift closed. At the very least her friend was in shock.
“Hang on,” she told Sally. “Our row is next.”
“Too bad you’ll be dead,” a gravelly voice said from low on the ground near the front of the car.
Isla sucked in a breath and twisted to the side in time to see the man who had stopped her in the hallway near the ICU waiting room last Friday. He wasn’t the one she just saw holding a hostage, so he must be the second shooter, her mind reasoned.
“You aren’t wearing scrubs now, but you were the day my father died,” he said, pointing his gun at her, crouched down out of view from the police.
Before she had time to react, blink—breathe—a shadow appeared on her left, and in a blur of movement, barreled into her, rolling with her to the right as she heard a gun go off. With the wind knocked out of her, she didn’t have time to scream.
When the rolling came to a stop, she blinked and stared up into Sinjin’s eyes.
“Are you okay, Isla?” he asked, gaze wild as he drew back and glanced her over. “You’re bleeding.”
“How…?” She blinked again as he stood up and pulled her with him. “Are you real?” she asked, half afraid she’d actually been shot and had died.
“Yes,” he muttered, voice raw with emotion, his breath warm on her skin as he crushed her close. “I’m here. I’ve got you. You’re okay. You’re okay.”
She clung to him, shaking, watching the other shooter fall to the ground while the hostage remained standing.
LEO’s rushed forward to secure the hostage, and from her other side, she turned to see Mac and Dex carry Sally to an ambulance.
How had they not hit her when they’d rolled?
“It’s over, Isla,” Sinjin said, still holding her tight. “You’re okay.”
“I am now,” she affirmed, noting that he was shaking too. “I’m okay, Sinjin. I’m okay. You saved me.”
He was here and he’d saved her…and he was here, her mind kept repeating. She wasn’t sure she ever wanted to let him go. She’d never felt more wanted or needed in her life.
They stood that way, holding each other, for how long, she had no idea and didn’t care. She just breathed him in and felt him doing the same with her.
Eventually, he released her to yank his shirt off with one hand then he quickly tugged it over her head. That’s when it dawned on her that she’d taken hers off for Sally and had been standing around in her bra.
Once the shirt was in place, falling down to her thighs, she watched as Gabe and a few officers approached.
“You two okay?” Gabe asked, and she glanced behind him to see the man that had threatened her was dead on the ground, with a GSW to the head.
Sinjin nodded. “We’re good.”
She slid her hand in his and squeezed her silent agreement.
He tugged her close and set his forehead to hers. “I have a lot I want to tell you and to say, but it’s going to have to wait until we deal with this, I’m afraid.”
Isla nodded, aware that there would be statements and examinations required. But that was okay. She’d get through it. Knowing he was there and would be with her made it easier to face.
***
H ours later, Isla sat on her couch, snuggled close against Sinjin, while Loki snored in his bed. She was happy that everything was over. Both shooters were dead. Their last names were Briganti. They were the sons of the man who had died of the Code Blue in the ICU on Friday. It was sad. Made no sense to her. But at least all of the wounded had pulled through, even the male nurse who had been lying motionless on the ground.
She sighed, and Sinjin tugged her closer, kissing the top of her head.
“I’m so sorry about yesterday,” he said. “I’m an ass. If I had gone to your house sooner, then maybe you wouldn’t have been at the hospital today. I’m sorry,” he repeated. “You needed me, and I was hours away. I’m sorry.”
She inhaled and drew back to stare at him as shock whispered through her. “You were at my house yesterday?”
After several hours of just staring at her laptop without typing one word of her assessment, she’d given up and hopped in her car to take a drive and try to clear her head, but it hadn’t worked. She’d still felt horrible at how she’d left things with him, even though he’d needed time.
He nodded. “Yes, around dusk. I came to apologize but you were gone. God, I’m sorry, Isla, and I’m so sorry it led to you going through shit today.”
“That wasn’t your fault,” she said, cupping his face. “Don’t you even think that, Sinjin. Of course, I would’ve gone there today. I was honored to receive a more detailed handwritten recommendation from Sally. And the only thing you’re guilty of is saving me. I’m alive because you stopped that creep from shooting me.”
He set his forehead to hers and nodded. “I’m just glad my father was able to get that chopper.”
Isla blinked. “Wait. You were in that chopper?”
He nodded. “Yes, my dad and another cop from El Paso.”
Her heart rocked. “You were with your dad? How?”
Sighing, he released her and stood. “I couldn’t sleep last night, so I got in my car and drove. Next thing I knew, I was sitting in front of my dad’s. He invited me in and we…talked. Cleared some stuff up.” He turned to face her. “Thanks to you.”
“Me?” She rosed to her feet, her chest full to bursting with emotions. “I didn’t do anything. You took a chance and heard your dad out. I know how difficult that was. I’m so proud of you, Sinjin,” she whispered, her throat hot with tears as she slid her arms around him and barreled into his chest.
Strong arms wrapped around her and held her tight. “And I’m so grateful you walked into my life, Isla.”
“So am I.” She sighed into his chest.
She was so damn lucky.
He drew back, lips curved, light dancing in his eyes. “You’re just grateful because I know how to take you to your happy place.”
“True, but I think you know it’s more than that.” She cupped his face and smiled. “You, Sinjin, you are my happy place.”