Hide My Light: A Romantic Suspense Thriller Novel (Hide Me Series Book 3) (6 page)

He held her at arm’s length so he could look her in the eye. “Katerina, I did love being a paramedic, but there are other things I want to do too. I’ve just never had the chance to do them yet. Working forty hours plus overtime on the ambulance puts everything on the back burner.”

Katerina sniffed, but the tears had stopped flowing. He pushed on, hoping to set her mind at ease. “I want to do lots of things. Learn how to fly helicopters and planes. Have kids. Travel. And now I want to support you. Put you through medical school. Let’s just get through what’s going on right now, and then we can talk about all of our possibilities.”

West watched Katerina shake her head, her face still anguished. He didn’t want her to regret his decision. He didn’t regret it. Being a paramedic had always been his life, but here he was, thirty-one years old and never having done a few of the things he had dreamed of as a child. Now it was time. He had money, he had the most amazing woman in the world, and if she no longer worked at the fire department, he didn’t want to either. Who knew, maybe they would move to London, or Tokyo, and she could attend medical school there. The world was their playground, if they could just stay alive long enough to play in it.

West held Katerina for a long time as she tried to convince him to change his mind. Finally, she gave up. He could not be swayed. A knock sounded on the door and West held a finger to his lips. He tiptoed over and peeked out the peephole. It was Blaise, standing there in uniform, looking down the hallway.

West pulled the chair away from the door and opened it, ushering his friend in. He locked and barred the door again behind Blaise.

“Are you sure no one followed you here?” Blaise asked.

West looked to Katerina, then back to Blaise. “We don’t think so, why?”

Blaise shook his head. “I don’t know, maybe it’s nothing. I felt like I was being watched in the hallway.”

West looked back out the peephole and saw nothing. He turned around. “What’s that?” he asked Blaise, pointing to the folder in his hand.

Blaise took the folder to the small desk in the room and opened it, pulling out pictures. “This is the man who has been trying to kill you.”

Katerina and West crowded around him, eager to hear the story. Katerina gasped as she saw the man’s scar from chin to throat. It made him look hard and evil.

“His name is Kurt Kane. He’s a mercenary - a paid assassin.” Blaise paused for a moment as Katerina clutched for West and he pulled her close. “Unfortunately, he’s American-born and bred and extremely effective and deadly. He was a U.S. Marine at one time, but the story goes that our government sent his team in on a suicide mission in Afghanistan, then left them there to die. He alone survived, and when he came out of the desert demanding answers, someone in the administration tried to say he went rogue and he was never sent on the mission. They tried to charge him with desertion and a ton of unlawful action statutes, but he disappeared. Six months later he reappeared, killing people for money, especially liking to take jobs against people in the government.”

Blaise dropped his voice. “Every person on the commission that tried to charge him was already dead by this time. They turned him into a monster. And a legend.”

Blaise paced the room in front of the beds, holding one of the pictures in his fist like a lifeline. “The FBI says he’s probably working with a six-man team. They’ve identified four of those men.” He pulled out four more pictures and named each of the men in them. Katerina and West recognized several of them as the security guards at the party.

“What the FBI doesn’t know is who hired Kane. They believe he was hired by someone to kill Victor Ronan and make it look like an accident or an overdose. Kane may have had someone on the inside, at the ER, and when that person overheard that you knew Ronan had been forced to take the overdose, the only assumption Kane could make was that you had woken Ronan up on the way to the hospital and he had said something to you, something that would reveal who hired him. Kane is famous for his loyalty. He only hires the most bloodthirsty and vicious killers, people who won’t say anything at all if they are caught. Men who are just as comfortable in prison as out of it. Their current plan is to kill the both of you, and then they will disappear like smoke.”

Blaise looked at both of them, his face grave. He gave them a few minutes to let the information sink in. “Personally, I think he was happy when he thought Ronan had woken up. I think he’s arrogant, but also somehow searching for that one job that’s going to get him killed, put him out of his misery. The problem is he’s too good. And he’s now treating Westwood Harbor like a war zone, but he does it so much better than anyone else. We expect criminals to play by certain rules; to try to save their own skin. But he’s not doing that. He doesn’t care if it’s the middle of the day, or if there are fifty cops around. West, you were smart not to try to make it past him to the police station.”

Katerina shuddered, unable to get the face from the pictures out of her mind.
A paid assassin. One who didn’t care if he lived or died.
She couldn’t imagine trying to fight or escape from such a person.

Blaise left all the pictures on the table. “I have to get back to work, but I thought you should have these and know what you are dealing with. Agent Masterson wants to talk to you. And the chief wants you back in the safe house.”

“Agent Masterson?” Katerina said.

“Lieutenant Masterson’s husband,” West told her under his breath. “He’s an FBI agent.”

Katerina remembered back to her first day on the job, the tall, blonde man with the gun on his belt who had kissed Lieutenant Masterson. She shivered. He had looked very competent. But was he any match for this Kane guy?

West turned back to Blaise. “We still don’t know how these guys found us earlier today. What if they knew about the safe house?”

Blaise nodded. “Understood. Maybe the FBI will want to put you in one of their own safe houses anyway. I’ll talk to the chief or maybe I’ll go directly to Agent Masterson. I’ll call you or send him out to talk to you.”

West nodded and the two men hugged. Katerina, still studying the pictures, said a distracted goodbye to Blaise.

Blaise walked across the room and pulled the chair away from the door. “Block this door again when I leave.”

West muttered his agreement and headed that way. Blaise looked out the peephole, then opened the door and slipped quickly out, but before the door had even swung shut behind him five gunshots rang across the hallway.

Katerina screamed and West took off at a run for the door. He wrenched it open and saw Blaise falling against it, his gun in his hand, fire licking the barrel as he fired four shots back in rapid succession down the hallway.

West grabbed Blaise as he fell and carried him into the room. He kicked the door shut, then hauled his friend to the bed. “Katerina help him!” West shouted, then returned to the door to lock and bar it again.

Katerina rushed to Blaise and ripped open his smoking uniform shirt. Underneath he wore a bulletproof vest. She saw three bullets grotesquely twisted and smashed into the vest, and blood already staining the outer edge of it. She looked up into Blaise’s face. His eyes were fluttering and a bit of blood stained his mouth. Katerina heard more gunshots. She wanted to run to West, make sure he was OK, but Blaise needed her. Her fingers trembling, she ran them along his skin, looking for the inevitable hole that must be there. She found it, under his right arm. She touched the area lightly. Blaise gasped, then fell against the bed, unconscious.

Blood rushed out of the wound, soaking the coverlet. “Bring me a towel!” Katerina yelled to West, hoping he was safe and fine in the small hallway where the door was. She pressed her hand to Blaise’s wound, trying to stop the flow of blood. When he didn’t move, she pressed harder, attempting to squeeze shut the veins and arteries that were letting his blood flow dangerously out of his body.

West appeared, his face stricken, towel in his hand. Katerina grabbed it and pushed it against the wound with all her strength.

West tore the radio off of Blaise’s belt and yelled into it. “Officer shot, room 332 of the Tetam Hills Hotel, they’re still shooting at us from the hallway!”

Katerina ignored West as he continued talking on the radio and started checking Blaise’s pulse. He had a pulse in his neck, but she couldn’t feel one in his leg. That was bad. Very bad.

West threw down the radio and hovered about them. “Can you heal him, Katerina? Can you fix him? Please, you have to,” West cried and his voice broke Katerina’s heart.

Katerina continued to press on Blaise's wound with all the strength in her body, not quite getting the implication of West’s words.

“Katerina, what are you doing? Can’t you stop the blood with your … with your hands? The way you fixed your ear?”

Katerina’s eyes widened. She hadn’t even thought of that. She didn’t know what she had done to her ear. But she had to try, didn’t she? This was Blaise.

“I don’t know,” she said quietly. “Here hold pressure right here,” she said directing West. When her hands were free she looked at them like she had never seen them before. Lightly, she dropped them to Blaise’s armpit, just around his wound.
Heal
, she thought.
Stop bleeding
, she commanded the tissues in her mind. Her hands grew warm like they had before and excitement ran an electric strip through her. She kept her hands exactly where they were and asked her special medical sense what was going on inside Blaise.

Bullet in the lung
, it answered.
Blood loss
, it said.
Bruised chest and heart,
it warned her.

Can it be fixed
? she asked, not knowing who she was asking or how the answers were coming.
Yes.
A picture appeared in her mind of dark-brown, spongy tissue filling with bright red blood from a nearby artery.
Stop the bleeding
, Katerina chanted inside her head, not realizing the words came out of her mouth also. Her hands grew warmer still and a great dizziness overtook her. She shook her head and held on, urging her hands to do whatever work they needed to. A great fire swept through her body and she felt massive hunger roar through her as Blaise’s skin moved gently up and down. She could feel it with her fingertips, like something moving under there. She looked at his face. He was still unconscious, a bubble of blood on his lips. His skin was white as wax paper and his half-closed eyes looked dull and lifeless. She wanted to check his pulse again but she didn’t dare move her hands. She knew something was happening. Instead she turned inside again and asked.

Still alive?

Yes, and healing
, the answer came back.

What else can I do
? she asked, but this time there was no answer.

“Are you doing it, Katerina? Are you fixing him? Can you fix him?” West asked, desperation overtaking him.

“I’m trying,” she said, tiredness sweeping through her now. The hunger had not abated, but she was now too tired to care about it. She shook the thoughts out of her mind and focused. She had to do this - hunger and fatigue were not important. Blaise was important. He couldn’t lose his life. She had to fix him. Had to save him. She would not be responsible for another death. Especially not Blaise’s death.

Yells and footsteps sounded from the hallway. Deep, angry voices shouted back and forth. “Police!” someone yelled, pounding on the door.

West looked at her, imploringly. She nodded. “Open the door. It has to be good enough,” she said, pulling one of her hands from Blaise’s skin and taking the towel from West. He got up with a forlorn look back and then ran to the door. Katerina kept her eyes open only by pure will.

Her hands were no longer warm.

In the ambulance, West sat in the jump seat at the gurney's head, holding Blaise’s hand. He turned behind him and looked at Katerina in the passenger seat, next to Beth, who was driving them to the hospital, lights on and siren blaring, with a triple police car escort. Katerina’s eyes were closed and her head was slumped over. He wished she was back here with them, but she had told him there was nothing more that she could do and she looked so tired, so worn out. He was worried for her as well as for Blaise. What if she had done something to herself while healing him?

Blaise moaned and West swallowed hard, squeezing his hand.

Jerry Mansko bent over Blaise, working on him. Jerry took the stethoscope out of his ears and turned to West. “His lungs are both clear. His rhythm is normal. His blood pressure is low but that’s to be expected with all the blood he lost. The bleeding seems to have stopped completely. I’ve seen a lot of gunshot victims, West, and I’ve got to tell you, I think his chances are really good.”

A lump formed in West's throat.

“Is he a friend of yours?” Jerry asked.

“My best friend,” West said simply, unable to imagine a world without Blaise. Unwilling to imagine it.

The ambulance pulled into the hospital and Jerry and Beth quickly unloaded Blaise as multiple uniformed police officers hovered around them, horror written in their eyes. West ran along with the gurney, holding Blaise’s hand, talking to him softly. Once in the ER, Blaise was quickly sent into surgery and West could no longer follow. He looked around for Katerina but she was nowhere to be found.

West went back to the ambulance and found Katerina asleep in the passenger seat. He shook her awake gently. “Katerina, are you OK?”

Katerina sat up groggily. Her lips were cracked and dry. There were dark slashes under her eyes and the hollows under her cheekbones looked sunken, like she had lost weight since that morning.

“Katerina, we are at the hospital, let me take you inside sweetheart. I will get you something to drink.”

“Blaise?” Katerina asked sleepily.

“He’s in surgery.”

Katerina nodded. “A drink sounds good,” she whispered.

West helped her out of the passenger seat and was dismayed to see how unsteady she was on her feet. They walked into the hospital through the emergency room waiting room and headed to the main lobby and cafeteria area. Warm smells of good food drifted down the hallway towards them.

Katerina lifted her head like an animal scenting the air. “West, do you think we could get some food? I feel weak, like I haven’t eaten in forever.”

“Yes, of course we can,” West said, looking around quickly. Suddenly he felt very vulnerable in the open hospital. He thought hard, trying to come up with a place that they could eat and not be sitting ducks, waiting for someone to come and shoot them. He thought maybe they should leave and go somewhere else, but he couldn't think of anywhere else to go, especially without his truck. He would get Katerina some food and they would talk about it.

Katerina piled meat, rice, and desserts on her tray and carried them to one of the tables.

“Why don’t we go eat in the nurse’s lounge?” West said. It was the most private place he could think of, and there was a lock on the door that he knew the code to. He didn’t know where all the police officers had disappeared to. He led Katerina that way and noticed she had already started eating while they were walking.

Katerina ate everything on her plate and although West wanted to eat too, he didn’t have any appetite. He noticed Katerina was looking much better though so he offered her his food. She devoured it and he watched her with dull interest. His mind couldn’t stop thinking about Blaise, and only a very small part of it tried to figure out this new puzzle of how much Katerina was eating. She did look better though. The color had come back into her skin and underneath her eyes wasn’t quite as dark.

When Katerina had eaten everything on his plate too, she looked around the room with bright interest. “Think there's any vending machines in the hallway?” she asked.

“Are you still hungry?” West said, surprised.

“Starving,” Katerina said, leaning forward and lowering her voice. “Whatever I did to Blaise caused it. It’s like I can’t fill my stomach.”

West nodded and jumped to his feet. If she needed more food he was going to get her more food. He looked at the door and then back around the locked room, longingly. He would like to leave her in the safety of the locked room, but he didn’t want to leave her alone. “Let’s go back to the cafeteria, but we will have to be quick and careful.”

Katerina nodded and they walked hesitantly out of the door.

When they were almost to the cafeteria, someone tapped West on the shoulder, startling him. He swung around, his hands already raising in a defensive posture. Craig Masterson stood there, tall and strong and solid. West had met Craig once or twice at the fire station, but had never spoken with the man at length.

“West,” he smiled. “And Katerina. I’ve been looking for you. I’m FBI agent Craig Masterson, if you don’t remember me. Come, let’s walk and talk,” he said, turning and heading back in the direction that they had come from.

Katerina looked at West and he grasped her hand, giving her a relieved smile. This was good news for them. Surely food could wait a few moments?

“I don’t have long,” Agent Masterson said. “There’s a chase going on right now downtown and I need to get back to it, but we’re fairly sure Kurt Kane is not in the car we are chasing.”

Katerina watched the man’s eyes move tirelessly over the crowds in the hallway as they walked, even frequently turning around and looking behind them.

“Kane is almost certainly near the hospital somewhere. He may already be inside. Officer Cornwall is going to be in room 862 when he gets out of surgery. I’ve got agents stationed at each entrance to the floor and outside his room. There is no safer place for you to be right now, so that’s where we’re going. I need you to stay there until I return.”

He led them into a stairwell and they began to walk up the seven flights of stairs. “Sorry about the stairs, but they are much safer than the elevator in a situation like this.”

Katerina felt her strength flagging again. She wondered if they could get room service of some sort from the hospital, or maybe the FBI agent would let them order takeout.

They finally made it to the eighth floor, Katerina leaning heavily on West. Agent Masterson led them down the hallway to a room that had a solid wall of a man standing outside of it. “West and Katerina, this is Agent Barnes.” The large man nodded at them, and Agent Masterson swept them past him into the room. “I’ll be back as soon as I can. Don’t leave this room for any reason.”

West and Katerina nodded and Agent Masterson turned on his heel and was gone an instant.

“Well he’s efficient,” Katerina said, dropping tiredly into a chair.

West watched the door, still standing. “He is. I feel better now.”

“Me too,” Katerina said with a yawn and immediately curled up in the chair. “I’m just going to rest, OK?”

West turned to her, concerned. But she appeared to be already asleep.

***

Three hours later, the door pushed open and a nurse came in, followed quickly by a hospital bed with Blaise on it. West stood up and his heart gladdened to see Blaise awake and looking at him. Another nurse came behind the bed, pushing it, then a doctor wearing scrubs, with a surgical cap on his head and a stethoscope around his neck. The nurses set the bed up in the center of the room and the doctor hovered, looking uneasy. West watched him from his chair, confused. He was surprised the doctor was here at all. Usually they released the patient in the recovery room and didn’t see him again until rounds.

The doctor spoke to Blaise. “If you think of anything – anything at all that I might be interested in, please have one of the nurses call me right away, Officer Cornwall.”

Blaise nodded wearily. “You got it Doc, I promise.”

The doctor nodded once at this, then turned and left. West waited for the nurses to finish fussing over Blaise. When they finally had all of their machines hooked up to their satisfaction and had admonished Blaise that he only could have ice chips for the next couple of hours, they finally left the room and West walked to the bedside.

“Your first gunshot wound,” he said. “Next time shoot yourself with smaller caliber bullets as a way to build up your tolerance.”

Blaise tried to laugh but it turned into a cough instead. West looked on, concerned. He hadn’t meant to hurt him.

Blaise finally got himself under control. “I’ll try that.”

“What was up with the doctor?”

Blaise spoke, his voice weak, and scratchy from the tubes they had put down his trachea while he was under. “It was weird. When I woke up in the recovery room he asked me again and again if I had any clotting disorders or if I was a fast healer. It was like he was stuck on those two questions. When I told him no to both of them he asked me if anyone in my family did. I told him I didn’t think so but he kept insisting that there must be. Finally he admitted that when he pulled the bullet out of my lung he watched the hole in the lung knit itself up before his eyes. He was saying the words to me, that it had happened, but I could tell he didn’t believe it - or didn't want to believe it. The nurses were all acting strange too.”

West smiled, his thoughts buzzing. “That is strange,” was all he said.
Thank you Katerina
, he thought, looking back at her, still sleeping in the chair.

Blaise looked too. “How is she?”

“She’s tired. She’s had a pretty rough day.”

They both turned towards the doorway as a woman’s raised voice drifted in from the hallway.

“I have to see him!” the female voice said. “Look, you can take my purse, frisk me, you can come in with me. I’ll even go in naked. I’m a tiny little woman, what am I going to do to him?”

“Is that Jordan?” Blaise whispered, his face hopeful.

West hurried to the door and pulled it open. Jordan stood there on her tiptoes, nose-to-nose with the FBI agent, challenging him.

She looked at West. “Oh thank God, West, where have you been? Tell this mountain that I can come in.”

West looked placatingly at the FBI agent. “This is Jordan Jones. She is with us, is it OK if she comes in?”

The FBI agent took a step back and nodded. Jordan walked past him, throwing him a look that could have frozen the sun.

As West turned back to the room, he saw that Katerina had finally woken up. She looked mostly back to her normal self. The food and rest had done her good.

Jordan rushed into the room, directly to Blaise’s bedside. She grasped his hand, her face a patina of misery. “I’m so sorry, Blaise. You were right. I was wrong. I forgive you for everything. As soon as I saw your picture on the news, I knew how wrong I had been. Please give me another chance. Please give
us
another chance.”

Blaise wound his fingers through Jordan’s and winked at her. “Looks like we're all forgiven in here,” he said in his quiet, scratchy voice.

Jordan cried out and tears fell down her face. She bent over the bed rail and pressed her mouth to Blaise’s cheek, but Blaise had other ideas. He moved to the right and caught her lips in a gentle kiss.

West walked past the bed, towards a smiling Katerina, trying to give Jordan and Blaise as much privacy as he could in the tiny room, a warm glow lighting his chest.