Exposed (27 page)

A flash of light, closer. Every muscle tensed as she watched it cut through the darkness. She hunched lower. She watched the beam sweeping back and forth. She tried not to move or even breathe. She watched. She waited.

The light moved closer.

Brian swept his flashlight over the rain-soaked landscape, cursing the weather. It had been raining for more than an hour, and with each passing minute, any trail he could have followed was being washed away. He’d seen no footprints, no tire tracks. Only Maddie’s car, and Maddie’s camera bag, and Maddie’s phone abandoned on the side of the road more than half a mile away.

His foot slipped out from under him, and he caught himself on a tree limb before he took a skid down the hillside. This terrain was damn near impossible, and he couldn’t imagine her trekking around out here in this downpour. Below him, water churned through the ravine. Brian’s gut churned, too, at the prospect that she might have slipped and fallen and possibly drowned in the rushing water. Did she know how to swim? He didn’t know. Brian had grown up on a farm, where the ability to swim was taken for granted. But he’d learned the first week of boot camp that not everyone was raised with a creek or a beach or a swimming pool in the backyard. He’d met full-grown men who could run a mile
in less than six minutes but were worthless in six feet of water.

Brian aimed his flashlight at the torrent. He shifted it to the hillside, looking for any sign of movement or clothing or the slightest thing out of place in the rugged landscape.

“Maddie!”
he bellowed for the hundredth time, knowing it was probably impossible for even Sam to hear him above the drumming rain.

That’s why she hadn’t answered—the weather. If he told himself that enough times, maybe he’d make it true.

The
crack
of that rifle crashed through his head again, and he felt smothered with fear. He hadn’t been able to get the sound out of his brain since the instant he’d heard it over the phone.

“Maddie!”

His flashlight landed on a tangle of branches and a downed tree that stretched across the ravine. He searched for footing and then hiked up and around it, scanning the ground carefully as he went. Leaves, vines, and rain-slicked tree trunks shimmered back at him, but no injured woman. Not a trace of her.

Brian grabbed a sapling and hefted himself to the top of the incline. From the higher vantage point, he shone the flashlight around again. He tried to ignore the growing lump of despair clogging his throat. He’d covered this ground already, twice. But he’d cover it again. And again. He’d cover it a thousand times if he had to, because she was out here, and he was going to find her.

Unless someone else already had.

“Goddamn it, Maddie!”

He swept his light over the trees and caught something white. His heart flip-flopped. Something white and curved that definitely didn’t belong among the mud and leaves. A
shoe
. He lunged, nearly losing his balance on the steep embankment as he rushed toward it. The shoe was half buried in leaves, but as he drew closer, he realized the pile of leaves wasn’t a pile of leaves at all but a
person
huddled at the base of a cedar.

He dropped to his knees and dragged her out from under the branches. A startled yelp was the most welcome sound he’d ever heard.

“What happened? Are you hurt?”

He cupped her face in his hand and shone the flashlight in her eyes as they fluttered open. Christ, she was freezing cold. And pale. And glassy-eyed. But she was alive.

“Maddie, talk to me! Are you injured?”

She winced, answering his question, and he jerked down the zipper of her jacket. Leaves were everywhere, sticking to her clothes, her neck, her hair. She looked as if she’d taken a tumble all the way down a mountain.

“Arm,” she croaked.

She made an animal-like sound as he shifted her body and caught sight of the blood on her arm.

“He . . . shot me.”

Brian’s vision blurred with anger as he saw the wound below her elbow, just inches away from her vital organs. The dark smears of blood contrasted with her pale skin.

“What happened?” he asked, stripping off his jacket and his shirt. Where was his phone? He tied the shirt around her wound. The bleeding had stopped, but he had
no idea how much blood she’d lost. It was everywhere—soaking her shirt, her skin, coating the leaves around her. He choked down his panic as he tied the makeshift bandage.

“We’ll get you out of here, all right?” Where was his phone? “Just hang on.”

She mumbled something as he located his cell phone in his pocket and quickly dialed Sam.

“I found her. Where are you?”

“North bank, ’bout half a click from the car,” Sam said. “She injured?”

“Yeah, and I’m going to need your help getting her out of here. We’re on the north side, about a hundred yards up.”

A flicker of light pulled his attention to the ridge above. He recognized the wide beam of the flashlight cutting through the black.

“Craig!” he yelled. “Down here!”

Maddie squeezed his arm in a death grip. “No.”

Her eyes were wide, frightened. The urgent look on her pale face sent a chill down his spine.

“Not Craig.”

He glanced up at the sheriff’s deputy, who’d pulled up to the scene at the same time Brian and Sam had. He’d told them he’d been responding to a 911 report of shots fired at this intersection.

Brian unholstered his Glock and watched the flashlight beam that marked the deputy’s descent down the hillside. Brian wasn’t sure what was going on, but Maddie was terrified.

“Craig, go back to the car,” he commanded. “Call an ambulance.”

“You found her?” he yelled down.

Maddie’s fingernails bit into his arm as the flashlight beam bobbed toward them.

“Go call an ambulance,” Brian repeated.

The light paused briefly and then moved back up the hillside. The grip on his arm relaxed.

“He’s gone now, okay? Tell me what happened.”

“Someone shot me.” She clutched his shoulder with her good arm and tried to sit up.

“Whoa, wait.”

She pushed herself into a sitting position. “It’s just my arm. I can sit.”

Beyond the trees, he spotted the narrow beam of Sam’s Maglite. Brian whistled to get his attention.

Sam hurried over and dropped to a knee beside Maddie.

“You got a first-aid kit?” Brian asked.

“Nope.” He handed Maddie a bottle of water and helped her take a sip. “Damn, girl, what’d you do to yourself?”

His tone was light, but Brian saw the tension in his face.

“She took a bullet. Lower right arm.”

“How’d you find me?” Maddie asked, and Brian heard the tremor in her voice. He pulled his jacket around her shoulders for warmth.

“We pinged your phone after you called Beckman,” Sam said. “Narrowed your location down, then found your car on the side of the road up there.”

“How’d you get here so fast?”

Brian looked at Sam. They’d been beating the bushes for more than an hour. If she thought that was
fast, then she’d probably been unconscious part of the time.

“Hey, we’re good like that.” Sam shone the flashlight in her face, probably looking for a head injury. Her cheeks were smudged with dirt, but there wasn’t any blood visible.

“We got an ambulance coming,” Brian said. “We’ll get you to a hospital.”

“I hate hospitals. Help me up.”

She grabbed Brian’s shoulder and tried to push herself up. Sam tried to keep her down, but she was determined, and Brian stood and helped her to her feet.

“It’s just my arm. I can walk.”

Brian looped an arm around her waist. She slumped against him, and he felt a tidal wave of relief. She was alive. She was cold, scared, and shaken. She had a freaking gunshot wound. But she was alive, and that was the opposite of what he’d been thinking for the past ninety minutes.

In the distance, a siren penetrated the drizzle.

“Hear that?” Brian pulled her against him, careful not to jar her injury. They took a wobbly step up the hillside.

“I hate hospitals,” she repeated.

“Yeah, well.” Together, they took another step. “You’ll just have to get over it.”

Maddie stared out the window, transfixed by the raindrops sliding over the glass. She still felt tired. Dizzy. And strangely famished, although she couldn’t imagine
mustering the strength to sit up in a chair, much less cook something to eat.

“Bet you’re ready for a hot shower.”

She glanced across the car at Brooke, who had been at her side since they’d started on her stitches. Ten in all. As GSWs went, it was barely a scratch. Hadn’t even nicked the bone.

And Maddie still couldn’t believe the doctors had used the phrase
GSW
to describe what had happened to her.

She felt dizzy again. She looked down at her mud-streaked clothes. Brooke was right. A hot shower was definitely in order.

“We have a tail,” Brooke said. “Just FYI.”

“Huh?”

“The sedan behind us? They friends of yours?”

Maddie glanced at the mirror to her right and saw a dark sedan with two people in front.

“They’re from Brian’s office,” Maddie said. “He told me they planned to have someone cover me.”

He’d told her that in the chaos of the ER, right before he’d rushed off to an urgent meeting with his team to discuss the latest incident that he and Sam seemed certain was related to their case.

Maddie wasn’t so sure. Her head pounded just thinking about it.

“What does that mean, exactly, someone ‘covering’ you?” Brooke asked as she turned onto Maddie’s street.

“I don’t know.” She sighed. “Guess I’m about to find out.”

Brooke pulled into the driveway as the agents rolled up to the curb. They remained in their car talking on
phones as Maddie and Brooke got out. Maddie’s arm was in a sling, so Brooke gathered her photography gear off the backseat.

“Where are your keys?” Brooke asked.

“I’ve got them.”

Luckily, her injury was to her left arm, not her right, which limited her clumsiness as she dragged out her keys and unlocked the door. She entered the pass code to her burglar alarm as the agents came up the sidewalk.

Both men had thinning hair and slender builds. They looked more like accountants than law-enforcement officers. They certainly didn’t look like bodyguards. The taller one stepped onto the porch and introduced himself as a special agent from the San Antonio field office. Maddie greeted him politely and just as politely asked to see some ID.

“We’ve got instructions from Special Agent Dulles to check the house.” He tucked his credentials back into his pocket. “It shouldn’t take long.”

“Check for what, exactly?”

“It’s a security precaution,” he said, not answering her question.

Maddie had a loaded pistol in her purse, and that was about the only security precaution she was prepared to trust at the moment, but she stepped back to let them in. As they started poking around, Brooke shot her a look.

“Think you got the second string.”

“I think you’re right.”

“You hungry?”

Maddie hesitated. “A little.”

“You go shower. I’ll throw something together.”

Maddie smiled gratefully and headed for her bedroom,
where she dumped her stuff on the bed and toed off her shoes. Next her yoga pants, which were hard to wrestle out of one-handed. Her shirt was torn, and she decided it was history, so she cut it off her body with a pair of scissors.

She set her pistol beside the sink and stood before the bathroom mirror, naked except for her sling. Her face and hands and calves were smudged with mud. She had mud in her hair, too, and leaves and even a few twigs. She turned and lifted her ponytail to see the goose egg at the back of her skull from where she’d crashed into the tree. The doctor had said she had a mild concussion, nothing serious. The local anesthetic they’d given her had worn off, so she popped a few Tylenols and washed them down with a gulp of water as the shower heated.

Maddie eyed her sling, which was going to be a pain in the butt over the next few weeks. The wound was a two-inch gash on the inside of her arm beneath her elbow. She didn’t really need the sling, because the bone wasn’t broken, but the nurse had recommended it as a reminder to be careful about bumping into things.