Burn for Me: A Hidden Legacy Novel (30 page)

The Escalade roared into life and shot backward. Troy slid off, rolled on the pavement, jumped to his feet, and chased the huge black SUV. The Escalade turned the corner of La Branch, still in reverse, and sped up the street parallel to Franklin. I ran through the empty lot after it. The Escalade made a sharp right onto Crawford. The driver was circling the parking lot in reverse. If he made another right, it would put him straight on a collision course with Mad Rogan.

“Troy!” I turned right and cut across the parking lot, running at full speed.

The Escalade turned onto Franklin. Mad Rogan was still fighting the metal debris.

I squeezed every drop of effort out of my muscles. Air turned into fire in my lungs. Hot pain stitched my side.

The Escalade sped straight at the metal clump surrounding Rogan.

I fired at the tires, trying to slow it down. Four bullets ripped into the rubber.

The metal clump of the pipes and chains fell apart. For half a second Rogan stood completely exposed. The Escalade rammed him. There was a crunch, a sickening crunch. Oh my God.

Rogan flew across the pavement, fell, and lay still.

I lunged between him and the Escalade and fired point-blank at the rear window. Eight, seven, six . . .

The passenger door swung open. The pipes jumped up, re-forming into a beast, a shield between me and the car. I kept firing. An arm in a suit sleeve reached down and swiped something off the ground. The sun reflected on a thick gold ring just before the door slammed shut.

Last round. I fired.

The SUV snarled and sped up Franklin Street.

Rogan.

“Drop your weapon!” someone roared behind me.

I raised my hands in the air, slowly lowered my gun, and let it fall from my fingers. Something bit me from behind, right between the shoulder blades. My body locked up, as if I’d jumped under an ice-cold shower and every muscle had gone rigid at once and stayed that way, numb, hot, and painfully itchy. I fell on my side. My head bounced off the pavement. Three men in marshal uniforms jumped on top of me.

Tased, I realized. They’d Tased me.

The men wrenched me up. Someone forced my hands behind my back, and I felt the cold metal of cuffs on my wrists.

Ahead I could see Lenora Jordan stopped by a pile of metal. Where was Rogan?

Four people in uniform dragged Troy forward. He was bent over, his skin scraped bloody from falling on the asphalt.

Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, please don’t let Rogan be dead.

The metal heap shivered.

The marshals dropped me, and I went down on my knees, hard. There were cops and marshals and bailiffs everywhere I could see, and every gun was pointed at the metal heap.

The pile of pipes and chains exploded. Rogan staggered up. His expression was terrible.

“Stand down,” Lenora ordered.

Two dozen people simultaneously lowered their firearms. Rogan turned to her, his face contorted by dark rage. For a second, I thought he might kill her.

“Issue a fucking alert, Lenora,” Mad Rogan growled.

“H
e probably has two broken ribs,” the female paramedic told me. “It’s likely an incomplete fracture, but the only way to find out for sure is to take an X-ray. We’ve relocated his shoulder to its proper place, but he’s refusing further treatment.”

She glanced at Mad Rogan sitting on a stretcher. He had what could only be described as the Look of Rage on his face. The first responders were giving him a wide berth.

“He really should go to the hospital,” the female paramedic said. “Really.”

“Have you told him that?”

“Yes, but . . .”

I waited.

The female paramedic leaned closer. “He’s
Mad Rogan
. The DA said I should talk to you about it. She said you could make him see reason.”

If the clouds split open and an archangel descended onto the street in all of his heavenly glory and tried to make Rogan see reason, he would fail miserably and have to pack up his flaming sword and go back to Heaven in shame. I had no idea what gave Lenora the idea that I could do any better.

Well, if none of them could scrape enough courage to explain to the Scourge of Mexico that he needed to go to the emergency room, I guess I’d have to do my best. “Thank you so much. I’ll take care of it.”

I walked over to Mad Rogan. The female paramedic trailed me.

“Your ribs are broken,” I informed him.

“You heard her,” he said. “It’s an incomplete fracture.”

I held out my hand.

Mad Rogan looked at it.

“Give me your keys, Mr. Rogan. I’m taking you to the hospital.”

I became aware of the sudden quiet around us.

“This is ridiculous,” Mad Rogan growled.

“Broken ribs can be life-threatening.” I cleared my throat. “I need you to function, so let’s fix this. Which part of going to the hospital is upsetting?”

His eyes narrowed. “It will take forever. I’ll get there, sit for two hours, then someone will X-ray me and tell me, ‘You have broken ribs.’ Then they’ll give me two ibuprofens and send me home.”

“This is almost the same argument, word for word, Leon used last year after he decided it would be a grand idea to ride his bike down the stairs.”

“It’s a perfectly good argument.” Mad Rogan bristled. “What’s wrong with it?”

“Leon is fifteen years old. You’re twice his age.”

“Are you implying that I am elderly and decrepit?”

“I’m implying that you should know better. You were hit by an armored vehicle going at least twenty-five miles per hour. Before that you were compressed by half a junkyard’s worth of metal. You could be bleeding internally. You could have a concussion. You are supposed to have more sense than a fifteen-year-old boy who wanted to get on YouTube.”

“I’ve been injured before. I know it’s not serious.”

“I’m sorry, was your official designation sixty-two-alpha in the Army? Were you an emergency physician?”

“I’ve had training.”

I nodded. “Do you know who else had training? All these paramedics around you.” I nodded to the first responders. “Raise your hand if you don’t think Mr. Rogan should go to the hospital.”

Nobody moved.

“See? Please let them do their job.”

Mad Rogan leaned forward. A muscle in his face jerked. He caught it, but it was too late. I saw it. He pronounced every word with quiet menace. “I’m not going to the hospital.”

“Okay,” I said. “Is there another place with X-ray equipment and medical personnel where you would be willing to go?”

“Yes. You can take me to my family physician.” He reached for his pocket, slowly and gingerly pulled out the keys, and put them in my hand.

“Thank you for your cooperation.”

Three minutes later I was driving an Audi through the crowded streets of Houston. Mad Rogan sat in the passenger seat. His breathing was shallow. Troy shifted in the backseat. His left leg was broken when the Escalade hit him during its final escape. He also refused to go to the emergency room.

I changed lanes, sliding the Audi neatly in the short space between two cars. It handled like a dream.

“Maybe I should drive,” Troy said.

“She knows what she’s doing,” Mad Rogan said.

I sniffed.

“What?”

“The fragrance of a genuine compliment from Mad Rogan. So rare and sweet.”

The radio came on. “This is an emergency broadcast. The Secretary of Homeland Security received credible evidence of a possible terrorist attack on the city of Houston . . .”

Lenora had issued the alert. Hopefully downtown and the other business centers would begin to empty.

“Take the exit in two miles,” Mad Rogan said. “Did Leon make it down the stairs?”

“Yes, he did. He rode the bike straight into the wall and the handlebar cracked his ribs. He also managed to hit his head and get himself a serious concussion for his trouble.”

My Leon was in Austin with my sisters and out of harm’s way. But the city was full of Leons and Arabellas and Catalinas, and Adam Pierce now had another piece of the artifact. For all we knew, he already had all three. He would burn the city down. And now another Prime was involved. What was happening? Why?

I felt like the further we went, the fewer answers I got.

Mad Rogan’s family physician practiced out of a three-story building that had no sign. It looked like a perfectly nondescript office building with tinted windows and its own small, private parking lot. There were only three other cars there, all three dark SUVs.

I parked and dipped my head to look at the building through the windshield. No signs of life.

Mad Rogan was getting out of the car. I stepped out and opened the door for Troy. “I’ll see if I can get a stretcher or a chair.”

Mad Rogan punched a code into the keypad.

“I think I can manage,” Troy said.

“It’s okay, I’m sure we can wrangle up something . . .”

The tinted double doors swung open. Three men and two women emerged, pushing two stretchers with practiced efficiency. Behind them, a huge Hispanic woman followed. She wasn’t fat but large, tall, at least six feet, and powerfully built, with broad shoulders and strong-looking arms left bare by her dark green scrubs. Her dark hair was pulled back. Her features, like everything about her, were large: dark eyes, strong nose, and big, full mouth. You knew she smiled often and the smile would be bright. She looked around forty.

She looked at Mad Rogan. “What did you do?”

Mad Rogan opened his mouth.

She turned to me. “What did he do?”

“He got hit by a car,” I said.

The woman pivoted back to Mad Rogan. “Why in the world would you do a stupid thing like that?”

Mad Rogan opened his mouth again to say something.

“Don’t you have an army of badasses to keep this exact thing from happening?”

“I . . .”

The woman turned to me. “What kind of car was it?”

“An armored Escalade,” I said.

“Well, at least it was a nice car.” She turned to Mad Rogan. “Who would want to ruin their nice car by hitting you with it?”

Mad Rogan sucked in a slow breath and let it out.

“Got you in the ribs, huh.” The woman waved. “Load both of them up.”

“I can . . .” Mad Rogan started.

She pointed to a stretcher. “Down.”

I felt the distinct urge to do whatever she said and do it quickly.

Mad Rogan lay down on the stretcher. The team wheeled Troy and him into the building.

“I’m Dr. Daniela Arias,” the woman said to me. “Come inside. You can wait in our waiting room.”

I followed her in. I didn’t really feel like I had a choice.

Most waiting rooms I visited had rows of semi-comfortable chairs, a TV, and, if you were lucky, a Coke machine. This waiting room should’ve been in some luxury hotel. A huge floor-to-ceiling aquarium took up one wall, and small schools of silver fish with bright red fins swam back and forth, darting in and out of an elaborate white coral at the bottom. Plush couches occupied the room, some in the corner, arranged into a semi-private ring around an obligatory fireplace, others in front of an enormous flat-screen TV, hooked up to what had to be every gaming system known to man. To the left, a large stainless steel fridge with clear glass doors showed off rows of water, orange juice, and Gatorade on one side, and deli meat, yogurt, salads, and plastic bowls filled with cut vegetables and fruit on the other. I was encouraged to “help myself.” I helped myself to a bowl of raspberries. They were ridiculously delicious.

I was on my third bowl—I had earned it—when Daniela Arias walked through the door.

“He will live,” she said.

Oh drat.

“He would like to see you.”

I made myself put the raspberries down and followed her down the hallway.

“Is he in pain?”

“I’ve given him something that will get him through the next six hours. But if he twists the wrong way, he’ll feel it. He has two cracked ribs, and his shoulder is severely bruised.”

He wasn’t dead. That was all that mattered.

“What about Troy?”

“Broken leg, a nice clean fracture. He’ll be sent home with a bonus. So what’s your story?” Daniela asked. “Were you in the service?”

“No, ma’am. My mother was.”

“How did he rescue you?”

“I’m not employed by Mad Rogan. We just happened to work together.”

“I see.”

“Were you rescued, ma’am?”

“Yes,” she said. “I served for ten years, six of them in South America. Then I finally got out, because I was ready for civilian life. I went to work for a med-first urgent care clinic. Some urgent clinics offer good service. The one I worked for was all about money. When I got into medicine, I did it to save lives. So if I knew that a certain drug was needed, I prescribed it. If a treatment was required, I administered it. Even if I knew the patients might not be able to pay the deductible.”

“The owners didn’t like it?” I guessed.

“No. All doctors write off some patients who can’t pay, but the owners decided I was writing off too much. They talked to me, then they threatened me. They expected me to fold, but I didn’t tuck my tail between my legs and slink away. I was paid a salary based on what they thought I would make. Then insurance refused to pay a few times, some deductibles weren’t met, and I ended up owing the clinic money. Normally the clinics would push those moneys out to the next quarters, but they didn’t. They demanded that I cover what the insurance didn’t, and when I couldn’t, they went after me in court. I sold my house, emptied all of my savings, and then I declared bankruptcy. Then Mad Rogan found me, paid off my settlement, gave me a chance to practice medicine, and made my life a hell of a lot better. So if you do anything to hurt him, I will put a bullet in your brain.” She smiled at me and opened the door. “Go in.”

I walked through the door and heard the lock click behind me. I stood in a beautiful hotel room. Directly opposite the door, a thick, grey curtain framed a floor-to-ceiling window presenting a view of Houston. On my right, a giant bed stood against the wall. It was high enough, and the metal and plastic frame in which it rested was complicated enough, for it to serve as a hospital bed, but right now it looked more like a bed in some upscale suite, complete with snow-white blanket and rows of pillows. Further on the right, a small kitchenette hugged the wall. Across from it near the curtain stood a rectangular glass box. It took me a second to realize it was actually a shower with several nozzles, with water still beading on the inside of its walls, and that Mad Rogan stood next to it, barefoot, wearing jeans and a plain white T-shirt, and that his dark hair was damp.

Mad Rogan had just taken a shower. He had stood in that glass box, naked, with water running all over him. I’d probably missed a naked Rogan by mere minutes.

My imagination painted him nude, the golden skin damp, hard, smooth muscle rolling on his arms as he ran his hand through his hair . . . heat spread through me. I was flushing. I knew I was flushing.

We were locked in a room together. The room had a bed. Why did my heart speed up?

“. . . male.”

What?

Mad Rogan grimaced. “No, I didn’t see his face. I saw his hand as he bent down.”

He was on the phone. This wasn’t good. I was observant. It was one of my professional skills, something I practiced, but also something that came naturally to me. He was standing right there with his phone to his ear, and I completely didn’t see it. I just saw his eyes, and his jaw, and the strong line of his neck, and the outline of a muscular chest under the T-shirt. I saw an enormous dark bruise creeping up the left side of his neck and a dozen small cuts and bruises on his arms. But I didn’t see the phone. The thought of him in the shower short-circuited whatever power of observation I had.

Okay. This had to stop. This was now actively interfering with my ability to do my job. I had to not think about him in the shower. Or being in the shower with him.

“Yes, I’m sure, Augustine,” Mad Rogan said into the phone. “He didn’t caress my cheek softly with his calloused fingers, but I saw a male hand.”

“He wore a ring,” I said.

“Wait.” Mad Rogan put the phone on speaker. “What kind of a ring?”

“A thick gold ring. It looked like a school ring.”

“Did you happen to notice what finger the ring was on?” Augustine said through the phone.

“Index finger.”

“Are you sure?” Augustine asked.

“Yes,” I said. “I thought it was odd, because school rings are usually worn on the ring finger of the right hand.”

“Not if it’s a Zeta Sigma Mu frat ring,” Rogan said.

“What kind of fraternity is that?” I asked.

“Magic. Notable and above only,” Augustine said.

“That frat ring is worn on the index finger because the ancients believed that ring fingers had a vein going through them that led straight to the heart,” Mad Rogan said. “Magic is an analytical art and must be free of constraints of the heart, so you wear the ring as far away as possible from the ring finger. Which would technically mean the thumb, but thumb rings are too impractical.”

“There are eight animator Houses in the country,” Augustine said. “Possibly more. I don’t like it. I don’t like that more than one Prime is involved in this. The stakes just skyrocketed. Okay, I’ll call you when I get him.”