Forged in Ash (18 page)

Sounded good to Kait.

She reached for Demi, who’d frozen again, but before either of them could escape into the lobby, the van struck the cop car.

The crash was so loud the sound seemed to swell in her ears until all she could hear was that horrific
boom
, followed by ringing. The ground shook beneath her feet. The windows and glass doors behind her shattered. She didn’t hear the collision; she felt it instead as stinging fragments of glass rained down on her.

Amid that percussion ringing in her ears, the squad car slid past them, pushed by the van’s blunt tail end. It hit the coffee cart, which crumpled beneath the impact. A spray of coffee jetted into the air, but vanished almost immediately.

The van’s sliding door came into view.

Mac leapt for it and tried to wrench it open. When it didn’t budge, he dove for the driver’s door.

“Shoot her!” Kait screamed, the memory of that maniac driving directly into a crowd of people fresh in her mind.

He had his gun out. Why wasn’t he using it?

The driver’s door didn’t budge either. The van slowed, but inexorably rolled forward, shoving the cruiser along in front of it.

Using the butt of his pistol as hammer Mac shattered the driver’s window and leaned forward, halfway through the shattered window, reaching for something—probably the keys. The woman slammed her elbow into his face, wrenched the wheel to the left, and gunned the engine, angling the nose of the van toward the building.

Mac rocked back as her elbow struck his face, but held on with silent, grim determination. If he didn’t let go and jump back, the van would crush him against the side of the building when the recessed alcove ended. Kait leapt forward and grabbed the back of his shirt, yanking as hard as she could.

The shirt split beneath the force of her pull, but he staggered back out of range just as the van accelerated backward again, and the shattered window slammed into the edge of the building.

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing?” Mac roared, swinging toward her, frustration and fury flashing like black lightning in his eyes.

His words wavered, first loud, then hushed, then loud again.

“Saving you from getting crushed,” Kait snapped back.

He turned a grim look on the van and the edge of the building, before snapping at her. “Get in the lobby.”

This time his demand was crystal clear as her hearing adjusted.

Kait pushed Demi through the shattered doors, broken glass crackling beneath their feet, and into the lobby as what sounded like a hundred sirens started wailing in the distance. The officers on the scene must have called for backup, and judging by the increasing volume of the screaming, their brethren were coming fast.

Thank God.

Through the empty lobby doors, Kait watched the van come to a sudden jolting stop with only its nose visible. Mac stood there in the middle of the alcove, waiting, his body tense. He fired twice at the front tire and brought his weapon up again.

“Why doesn’t he do something?” Demi whispered in a shrill voice.

Good question
.

Why wasn’t he targeting the driver instead of the car? It made no sense. It was drilled into first-year plebes to take out any potential threat immediately. This woman was a definite threat. To Mackenzie, Cosky, Rawls, and Zane, but also to the dozens of bystanders. She apparently didn’t care who she hit or crushed in this insane vendetta against Cosky and his teammates. Commander Mackenzie
knew
better. So why wasn’t he stopping her by any means necessary?

Just what was going on here?

Of course there wasn’t much he could do at the moment. If he bolted in front of the van in an attempt to line up a shot, he ran the risk of her hitting the accelerator and running him down before he could hit his mark.

But there had been plenty of opportunities before this to bring her rampage to a quick end. Why hadn’t he taken them?

Was it because she was a woman?

Because she was a civilian?

The front tires cranked to the right.

And the van shot forward again, its sides scraping against the building as it cut hard toward the street; once its back doors faced the lobby entrance, it screeched to a stop and shot backward, roaring straight toward Mac.

The woman would have crushed him too, if she’d judged the distance better. But rather than sliding between the two sides of the alcove, the van slammed into the right wall. It stopped dead and jolted forward.

The building shook. The floor bucked beneath Kait’s feet.

Mac aimed for the back tires and fired.

The screams of sirens pulled closer.

Mac edged slowly back, into the lobby. Kait and Demi backed up as well, easing to the right, out of the line of fire and behind the safety of the lobby’s wall.

Another massive collision. The building shook again. Plaster rained down from above. A crash sounded behind, along with the crackle and tinkle of falling glass. Kait spun around. A chandelier had hit the ground maybe fifteen feet behind them. She glanced up at the chandelier swinging wildly overhead and grabbed Demi’s arm, dragging her back.

Some of the sirens were close now. Very close.

The van’s engine revved again, barely audible beneath the wail of the approaching sirens, and then it shot past the lobby window.

Kait just stood there, shaking, staring hard at the window to see if it came back, while Mac bolted for the street.

“Do you think she’s gone?” Demi whispered in a quivering voice as a black-and-white cruiser went screaming past the lobby window.

“I think so,” Kait whispered back as her arms and legs started trembling. Suddenly she went light-headed and weak as a newborn.

Mac appeared in the window, his fists on his hips, staring in the direction the van had hurtled. Another cruiser screamed past him, flashers painting the lobby walls blue and red, before vanishing, still screaming, into the distance.

Zane skidded to a stop next to Mac. Talking intently, the two turned and jogged back down the sidewalk toward the parking lot.

Kait took a deep breath. Regrouped.

Zane and Cosky had hit the ground hard and while Zane seemed little the worse for wear, Cosky had flopped back down to the pavement when he’d tried to rise. It had taken both his buddies to drag him to safety.

While the man put “ass” in the word asshole, and she had no intention of ever opening herself to him again in either a physical or emotional capacity—that didn’t mean she wanted to see him physically hurt, certainly not crippled.

If Demi had been right, and her abbreviated healing had helped his knee enough to alleviate his limping, maybe a second, more intensive healing would provide some benefit, give his leg a healing boost she feared it was desperately going to need.

Because God help her, from the way his leg had flopped so uselessly beneath him as Zane and Rawls dragged him to safety, he was going to need all the help he could get.

Cosky braced his palms against the hood of his Ford, watching the sidewalk. The unmistakable shriek of the van’s engine was fading, a clear indication the vehicle was in flight. A cop car, its siren wailing, raced past them.

“Go check on Mac and Zane,” Cosky ordered Rawls, without tearing his gaze from the sidewalk.

Kait was back there. So were Zane and Mac. His chest tightened. He couldn’t see a damn thing with the building in his way. All three of them could be crushed. Dying. Because of that crazy bitch’s vendetta against him.

He’d brought this danger to Kait’s door. Him.

He needed no further evidence that his profession, along with the shit he was currently swimming in, made it unwise in the extreme to establish a relationship. He had no business getting involved with anyone. Let alone Kait.

“Let’s wait a second,” Rawls said, his Southern drawl absent, tension radiating from his long, lean frame.

He wanted to go. Cosky could feel Rawls’s need vibrating in the air between them. But he wouldn’t. At least not yet. Because he was intent on protecting Cosky instead.

Frustrated rage exploded through Cosky, and seared him from the inside out, leaving him raw. “Goddamn it, I don’t need a babysitter. Go!”

“Not yet.” Rawls’s voice was calm.

“She’s gone,” Cosky snarled, his fists clenching on his truck’s hood. “Hell, Mac riddled her tires and engine block with bullets. She’s got half of Coronado’s police force after her. She’s not coming back.”

Rawls shot him a flat, unbending look. “You know damn well it takes time for air to leak out of tires. Same with the radiator fluid. She could double back. You can’t walk, let alone run. Mac and Zane know what they’re doing.”

Cosky’s face tightened. Kait didn’t have the kind of training his CO and LC had. But Rawls was right, he couldn’t walk, which meant he couldn’t go check on Kait himself. He’d just opened his mouth to ask Rawls to go look for her, when Zane and Mac came into view.

“Kait?” he shouted at them as they headed across the parking lot toward him.

Rawls went still at the shouted name and turned to stare at him.

Great. Now he had Rawls on his back too. Still, Kait was bound to come up sooner or later. Rawls hadn’t been on hand when that bastard of a cop had informed them Kait had substantiated his timeline, but with Mac’s mouth running a thousand miles a minute he would have heard the reason behind Cosky’s presence at the apartment complex sooner or later.

“She’s fine,” Zane said. He turned to Rawls. “Have you checked him out?”

Rawls shook his head. He waited until his two commanding officers were closer, glanced at the cops headed their way, and dropped his voice. “I pulled some prints off the steering column. But
then the excitement hit. In the interest of joining the fun, I stuck it to the back of Zane’s van as I passed.”

“Go,” Mac said simply.

“I’ll get my kit,” Rawls said loudly enough for the approaching cops to hear, and took off for Zane’s minivan.

“You look like roadkill,” Cosky said dryly, staring at Zane’s bloody shoulder and scraped right arm. Mac hadn’t fared any better. Both his arms were skinned and oozing, so was his right cheek.

“You don’t look much better,” Zane said just as dryly; his gaze dropped to Cosky’s right leg. “How bad is it?”

“Bad,” Cosky said after a minute, his throat closing.

Mac swore. “I’ll call for an ambulance.” He made a grab for his belt and came up empty. “Fuck.” He glanced around the pavement, swore again, and headed off to intercept the cops.

Aware that Zane was watching him, Cosky glared down at the pavement.

“You should be on the ground,” Zane said after a too long pause.

No doubt. Cosky scowled harder at the pavement. “When Rawls gets back.”

Once he went down, Christ only knew how long before he’d be able to get back on his feet.

“Thanks for saving my ass back there,” Zane said, breaking after another long, throbbing pause.

“Yeah.” Cosky cleared his throat, knowing damn well the comment had been thrown out as a distraction. Ass saving was priority one for the team. Taken for granted. Unless you were newly finned and fresh from BUD/s, you didn’t thank your teammate. Odds were you’d return the favor sooner or later. “The ass saving went both ways today.”

Zane grunted, no more comfortable with the gratitude than Cosky was.

“Let me guess.” Cosky looked up, raising his eyebrows. “You had another of those damn visions.”

With a hand swipe down his face, Zane nodded.

Cosky swore, shaking his head in disgust. “That damn
gift
of yours about turned us
both
into roadkill.”

A frown gathered on Zane’s forehead; he glanced around the parking lot, his gaze lingering on the metal and glass littering the pavement. “This scene resembles the flash.”

At least that was something; he didn’t have to worry about imminent death from a different direction. Although, considering how determined that crazy bitch was, he couldn’t completely rule it out either.

The cell phone clipped to Zane’s belt rang as Rawls loped back over, the black bag that housed his personal medical kit in hand.

Zane checked the caller ID and lifted the cell to his ear. “Hey, babe. Everyone’s fine.” He glanced at Cosky and moved off.

“That must have been hard,” Rawls murmured, stopping next to Cosky.

“What?” Cosky asked, shifting slightly to ease some of the pressure on his back, which ached. His scraped and bloody elbows, on the other hand, stung like they’d been skinned, which they had. His left shoulder hurt more than his arms and back combined—a deep, constant throb and burn, like it had taken a major pummeling; which wasn’t far from the truth considering how hard he’d landed on it.

His left leg, however, didn’t hurt at all. Not even a twinge. Or a tingle. The damn thing was locked in numbness. He swallowed
hard, forcing himself to look down. It just dangled there, useless. The extent of the injury was hidden beneath his ripped and dirty sweats.

Pain he could ignore, but this frozen, thick numbness scared the shit out of him.

“Beth,” Rawls said. “She must have picked up on what happened through that bizarre connection she shares with Zane.” He continued at Cosky’s blank look. “But she didn’t call. Not until after the attack was over. It must have been hard to wait until it was safe, until she could be sure she wasn’t distracting him. I don’t envy either of them after we go wheels up.”