Hard Target (37 page)

The firefighters. They were on the dialer. They would automatically be dispatched.

"Dawna?" He leaned closer to her. "Dawna, open your eyes."

She blinked them open. "What?" she breathed out, the single sound slurring.

"I have to leave you. But I'll be back."

"No! Please don't leave me."

Her painful words cut a wrenching hole in his heart. He wanted to stay with her until the police and firefighters arrived and found them. But no one except Lucy knew where they were and he doubted Lucy would volunteer that information. He couldn't wait for the firefighters to organize a thorough search of the entire building. Down here would be the last place they'd come. And that shelf was too precarious. Dawna's body too tightly wedged.

He whispered, "I have to get help for you. I want you to lie perfectly still. Don't move. Not a single muscle, do you understand? If you do, you'll get hurt even more."

Dawna sobbed. He barely heard her words. "Please, Tay. Don't leave me. Not this time."

Aw, hell
.

He didn't bother to stop the sob that jammed in his own throat. "Trust me, Dawna. I'll be back."

"I can't."

He touched his lips to her hair, tasting the dust that had settled on her. He tried to slip his hand under her head, but all he could feel was warm, wet blood. Her head was bleeding. "Please, Dawna, trust me. Just once more. I love you. I've loved you for three years."

He pulled in a deep breath. "I tried to fight your punishment, but they wanted an example. I quit my job there and the CIA asked me to do some surveillance work for them. They arranged for your unit to keep the appearance of me still working as instructor, in order to protect my identity."

He stroked her hair. "I've been working undercover ever since, on an assignment that only a handful of people know about. Right when my part in it ended, I heard about the bomb blast and volunteered to come down here. I wanted to see you again. I wanted to set things right again."

Dawna seemed more alert. "But you're still running away."

"I'll be back."

She turned her head an inch, trying to swallow a cough. "The firefighters won't let you back in."

"Too bad. I'm coming back."

"If you get injured, it won't do your career any good."

"To hell with my career!" he snapped. "I love you, Dawna. And I
will
come back for you."

He was gone. Dawna crushed another sob, but no comforting stroke on her hair followed. Tay had left her.

She shut her eyes. Warm, welcoming light greeted her. She thought of Tay, of the pain he'd caused her. He was there, in front of her, clear as a bell, telling her to trust him.

But he left.

Another voice mocked her. Smythe's, telling her she was to blame. Her hard work wasn't good enough.

Dawna cringed.
Fight it. Fight the numbness and the warmth and Smythe's taunting words
.

Blinking open her eyes, she focused on the shelter around her. She wanted so badly to move, but nothing worked. Her head ached, and she was sure she would lose consciousness if she tried to even move a little tiny bit.

So she focused. On the box in top of her. It had toppled down from the upper shelf, whole, and now sat on the floor as if someone had dropped it only six inches instead of six feet. The flickering light danced through the dust motes to play designs on the cardboard surface.

When her eyes ached from the dust, she blinked and focused again.

Please, Tay, come back
.

It would be easy to close her eyes and just let the warmth overtake her.

Something above her creaked. Grimacing against the pain, she twisted as much as her arm and side would allow, and peered up. All the while feeling the scrape of metal at her throat.

A tangled mess of metal loomed over her. The entire wreckage suddenly shifted and jerked down. Dawna stifled a scream. There, scraping her neck, hung what was left of the lower shelf, ripped apart in the blast to form a threatening twisted dagger.

She summoned the strength to move down, away from the shard, but it jerked closer, the tip pressing into her throat.

The shard was smeared with blood. Whose? Tay's? Hers?

She froze, fighting nausea and wondering if she was hallucinating.

Tay, come back
.

He had to come back. He wouldn't leave her here. He'd told her about the CIA. He told her he'd come back.

He'd told her he loved her
.

The tip of the dagger-like shard glinted at her in the flickering light. She had to shut her eyes and the tears rolled down to her temples. Even the necessary cough would force her throat to rip by the blade's tip.

No. She would stay still, not do a thing, let everyone else do their jobs.

Even Tay.

She would trust him. One more time.

Tay found the firefighters on the main floor near Dawna's office. They had begun a thorough search.

One of them grabbed him to steer him out, but he swung around. "No, Dawna's down there! Sergeant Atkinson.
Señora
Atkinson." He kept pointing down. One nodded, but Tay knew he didn't understand. He was merely placating him in order to get him out of the building.

"No! Downstairs!"

One barrel-chested man twisted Tay's arm around to his back and propelled him out the door. Despite the agony, Tay fought back.

When they were free of the mantrap, Tay doubled over, flipping the heavy firefighter over his back. Another firefighter behind him shouted. Tay grabbed him, fully prepared to drag that firefighter into the basement if he had to.

"Hastings!"

Tay spun. Ambassador Legace was striding up the broken concrete toward the front steps, a bodyguard beside him, and one behind him.

"What do you think you're doing, fighting the firefighters?"

"Dawna's downstairs in the shelter. I need help! The entire shelving unit has collapsed on top of her and is threatening to slice open her throat. I couldn't lift it off and drag her out at the same time."

The ambassador barked out several orders in Spanish to the firefighters. Several of them charged back into the building. One called out to the rescue truck just entering the compound, where two others sprang into action. Tay turned back to the door.

Again, the ambassador rattled out something in Spanish, and one of his bodyguards leapt up to latch onto Tay.

Tay swung around and plowed his fist into the man's face. The bodyguard staggered back and immediately, the other swung into action, as did a
vigilante
, both pinning him to their sturdy frames.

"Hastings!" Ambassador Legace held up his hand. "Don't be a fool! Leave those firefighters to do their job."

"No, I won't! I promised Dawna I wouldn't leave her. Not this time. And you must stop Lucy!"

The ambassador hesitated. "Lucy?"

"Trust me! Find her! But let me go to Dawna!"

He locked gazes with the ambassador, daring the older man to defy him.

A small, approving smile appeared on Dennis Legace's lips. "Go, then."

Some locals were calling out to her. Dawna wanted to answer, but didn't dare. She couldn't find the words in English, let alone Spanish. The blood on the jagged steel shard had darkened and she could feel its wetness on her skin.

Tay was coming back for her. She knew it. She refused to believe otherwise. Even if those locals found her and managed to pull this mangled shelf off her, she would not move until Tay returned.

"Dawna!"

She shut her eyes, a soft smile hovering at the corners of her mouth. "Tay," she whispered.

She could hear him plowing past the other men. She wanted to laugh out loud, but not with this knife at her throat.

"Here!" Tay was at her head. Without another word, he wrapped his hand around the steel shard and protected her throat from it. Voices, so many of them, all Spanish, all talking at once. It hardly seemed possible that they could get organized enough to lift the shelf off her, but they did.

Tay let go of the steel shard. His palm was bleeding, dripping down on Dawna's cheek. Carefully, they settled her onto a backboard. Someone strapped her in tight, at bit too tightly considering they had to twist her arm around. She shut her eyes against the agony.

Someone padded her head. She knew she was bleeding.

Tay held her hand. At that very moment, she didn't care if she bled to death, as long as he held her hand.

He'd come back. She knew he would.

Outside, more Spanish voices. Cheering, a shout from a camera crew. In English, even. Dawna recognized Ambassador Legace's face as she was whisked into the ambulance. Tay's hand slipped from hers.

But she heard his voice in her ear. "I'll follow. I'll meet you at the hospital."

I know
, she thought, unable to muster the energy to even speak.

Daylight streamed in through the high windows beside Dawna. She peered around the room.

"Awake yet?"

She looked to her left. Tay was there, holding her hand, smiling at her. The corners of her mouth twitched up. He was there. He was waiting for her.

"Welcome back."

She swallowed, her throat parched. "How long have I been out of it?"

"A couple of days."

With a groan, she dropped her head back onto the pillows. She could feel Tay's bandaged hand tighten around hers.

"But, more importantly," he added, still clinging to her hand, "you're finally awake. How do you feel?"

"Pretty good, all things considered."

Tay chuckled. "That's the morphine. You've got enough in you to keep you smiling into next week."

She tried to peer down at her arms. "Do I still have everything? I didn't lose an arm or a leg, did I?"

"All you lost was too much blood," Tay answered. "You had a dislocated clavicle and some cuts and scrapes, but they're all on the mend now."

Testing her fingers and toes, she laughed. "Everything's working, all right." Her laughter died away. "Tell me what happened."