Hide My Light: A Romantic Suspense Thriller Novel (Hide Me Series Book 3) (7 page)

Jordan sat next to Blaise’s bed, her face a study in contentment. Occasionally she tried to feed him a few ice chips or fluff his pillows for him, but mostly she sat still, holding his hand, and speaking quietly with Katerina and West.

Katerina stood and stretched, then gave Jordan a hug. “I’m so glad you came,” she whispered into Jordan’s ear. She touched Blaise on the arm and asked him how the pain was.

“I don’t have any pain right now,” he said.

Katerina nodded, but actually she was listening to what his body was saying more than the words coming out of his mouth.
Good
, it said.
Healing well
, it said. She smiled, thrilled to know it, while at the same time fending off the sharp guilt that shot through her every time she looked at him. It was her fault he was shot. Fixing him couldn’t change that.

A single knock sounded at the door and Agent Masterson walked in, his sharp eyes taking in Jordan, then turning to Blaise. “Officer Cornwall, it’s good to see that you are doing well,” he said quickly, nodding once to Jordan and then turning to Katerina and West. “Say your goodbyes please, you won’t be coming back here until Kane is caught.”

West stood up quickly, his face concerned. He crossed the room and shook Blaise’s hand gently. “That’s enough bullets inside you for a while,” he told Blaise with a smile on his face.

“Yes sir,” Blaise said, smiling back weakly.

Katerina hugged Blaise and said her goodbyes to him and Jordan. She looked expectantly at Agent Masterson and he led them out into the hallway, then stopped in the waiting room to face them.

“We need to talk for a few moments and then I’m going to take you down to the front door where I have an agent waiting to drive you to a safe house. It will be safer for Officer Cornwall if you two are not here in the hospital.”

West nodded. “Agent Masterson, will your agents stay here to protect Blaise?”

“Call me Craig. And yes.” He turned to Katerina. “Before I take you to the driver, tell me exactly how you knew what had happened to Deputy Director Ronan. I’ve heard a few different stories but I’m not sure exactly what to believe.”

Katerina blushed, then looked at West. He gave her a nod of encouragement and grasped her hand, giving her the strength to go on. “I saw it in my head when I touched him. It’s a, uh, ability that I have.”

Katerina watched Craig closely as she spoke. His lips tightened and his eyes bore into her. She didn’t have to touch him to see he didn’t believe her.

West broke in. “It’s true. She caught two serial killers that way. She can touch anyone and see what they are most upset about or happy about. Anything that has a lot of emotion behind it.”

Craig held up his hands. “It doesn’t really matter if I believe you or not. No matter what, that information is not prosecutable. There is no way I can go up in front of a judge and a jury and tell them what you just said. I’d be laughed out of the courtroom. When we catch Kane, and we will, we’re going to have to get him to confess somehow. Obviously he did it, or he wouldn’t be shooting so many people now, but I can’t work with what you just told me.”

Katerina scuffed her shoe against the tiled floor and pulled back slightly behind West. She hated this
ability
, as she had called it, but to be labeled a liar or a crackpot was even worse. She should have made something up.

West took a step forward and she felt hostility in the tension of his spine. She looked at his face where pure anger was written. He stared at Craig, then opened his mouth to say something. Katerina plucked at his shirt weakly, scared he would alienate the FBI agent.

A radio on Craig's belt crackled, interrupting whatever West was about to say. Craig plucked the radio off his belt and held it to his ear. West caught a few of the words. “Shooting at us … Basement … Three of them …”

West pulled Katerina close and looked around the waiting room and down the hallway as if expecting more gunmen to come after them on this floor. Craig’s entire demeanor changed from one of relaxed authority to tense, subdued action.

“10-4, I’ll be down in two minutes after I get the subjects to their destination. Break. Barnes, you copy? Your station still clear?”

“10-4, I copy. I’m clear and ready.”

“Finch and Drew, report.”

“Clear here.”

“Clear.”

“Andrews, is your location clear?”

“Yes copy, clear here.”

“I’m sending them to you right now. Be ready.”

Craig turned his attention back to West and Katerina. He spoke quickly. “I have to head to the basement, there’s been a breach down there. You two meet my agent at the front door and he’ll take you to the safe house. Follow me into the stairwell and go directly to the first floor.”

He took off at a run not waiting to see their acknowledgment. West nodded anyway and pulled Katerina after him.

The three of them pushed through the stairwell door and pounded down the stairs. Craig moved faster than West and Katerina and when he reached the first floor they were still on the third. He pushed the first floor door open and looked around, then turned back to them and yelled, “It’s clear, just run through the lobby to the front door, quickly!” Then he pounded down one more flight of stairs and exploded into the basement. Before the door swung shut behind him West could hear yelling and crackling, like fireworks or maybe an actual fire, or possibly worse, gunshots.

As Katerina and West passed the doorway to the second floor, almost to the first, the door flew open and a young girl ran in, running directly to the opposite wall and hiding her face in her hands. Great wracking sobs shook her body. Katerina pulled West to a stop, not letting him continue to the first floor. The girl appeared about five or six, with baby-fine blonde hair pulled inexpertly back into a ponytail. Her clothes looked rumpled and dirty, as if she had slept in them for a few days.

Katerina walked behind her, trying to think of what to say. The girl was so young, too young to be alone in a hospital, and so obviously in great misery, that Katerina couldn’t keep heading to her own safety. “Sweetie? What’s wrong?” she asked, her hands hovering over the girls shoulders.

The girl’s sobs intensified and a great wailing came out of her throat. She would not look away from the wall. Katerina touched her gently and tried to turn her away from the concrete wall to hug her. The girl resisted and Katerina felt like crying. She was so young. She shouldn’t have tragedy in her life already.

The door the girl had come through opened again and a man appeared, calling out a name. “Amelia?” When he saw Katerina and the little girl he skidded to a stop. “Amelia, baby, please, you have to come back.”

The girl looked backwards at the man Katerina assumed was her father once and then screamed into the wall again. “I hate him! I don’t want to see him!”

“Baby, he’s your little brother,” the man said.

“But Mom might die! If she dies, he killed her!”

The man’s face collapsed and tears dropped from his eyes. Katerina stepped back as he moved towards his girl and tried to hug her. Katerina held a hand out to West who took it and tried to pull her down the stairs, but she stopped him, heading towards the second floor doorway instead.

Katerina pushed open the door and walked down the hospital hallway a few feet, looking left and right. West tried to pull her back. “Kat, we have to go. It’s not safe for us to be here.”

Katerina looked at him, her eyes beseeching. “I don’t care! That little girl’s mom is dying.” Her voice grew quiet and she leaned close to West, whispering. “She just gave birth to the girl’s little brother and the doctors say she lost too much blood and they can’t help her. They’ve given up on her completely.”

West’s face twisted. “Do you think you can fix her?”

“I have to try! I won’t do what that man in the parking lot did to us.”

West nodded. He understood, even if he hated it.

Katerina pulled him down the hallway and through the heavy double doors that led into the obstetrics ward. She took a left past the nurse’s station as if she belonged there, trusting West to follow her. She pushed open a door that looked like every other door in the place. Inside, there was only one woman on a hospital bed, wires attached to her body and then attached to multiple machines, crisscrossed and running every which way. One slow blip thudded across the heart monitor, confirming that she was still alive. For now.

The woman looked young, certainly no older than thirty. Her thick black hair cascaded across the pillow, the picture of health. Her eyes were closed and a tube protruded from her mouth, where a machine was pushing air into her lungs for her, keeping her alive. For now. Until everyone had said goodbye to her and
they
decided to pull it.

Katerina crossed the room quickly and touched the woman’s wrist. She asked her special sense what was going on with the woman and got an answer immediately.
Bleeding in a secret place in the brain from a tiny aneurysm that sprung an infinitesimal leak
during her hard labor.

Not sure exactly what to do, Katerina grazed her index fingers lightly at the woman’s temples.
Yes, right in there.

Heal
, she thought.
Stop the bleeding
, she commanded.
Heal the vessel wall. Absorb the blood.
Her hands grew hot immediately, and she pressed them to the side of the woman’s head. On the monitor, the woman’s heartbeat sped up. Katerina glanced at it but did not pull her hands back. The nurses would be coming at a run soon. Hopefully she would be done before they arrived. She couldn’t stop now. The raging hunger spread through her body like a wildfire again. She ignored it. But weakness came with it and she didn’t know how long she could hold on. Her knees gave way slightly. West came up behind her and braced her and she smiled gratefully.

“Katerina, are you hurting yourself?”

Katerina shook her head and concentrated.

The woman’s eyes flew open and she shared a knowing, terrified look with Katerina, then she lost it. She gagged. Her hands fluttered up and pulled at the tube coming from her mouth.

Katerina felt the heat in her hands recede. She moved them down the woman’s face to her neck and then pulled away. “You have to relax, then it won’t be so bad. You won’t be able to pull it out. I will have a nurse remove it,” she told the woman.

The door to the room slammed open and two nurses rushed in. “What’s going on here?” one of them yelled, both of their gazes on the bed.

“Oh my God she’s awake,” the other nurse said, her face disbelieving.

“Get that tube out of her before she pulls it out,” Katerina told them.

The first nurse rushed to the head of the bed and quickly pulled a syringe out of her pocket, then bled the air that was keeping the tube locked in place in the woman’s trachea out of its bubble-like compartment. In one smooth motion, she removed the tube from the woman’s mouth and the woman coughed violently. The other nurse, her eyes wide, turned and fled the room. “I’ll call the doctor!” she yelled over her shoulder.

Katerina backed away, wanting suddenly only to leave. She knew the woman would be OK. West pulled her towards the door, thinking if they were still there when the doctor arrived, there would be questions to answer. The woman spoke from the bed. “My baby?” she said, in a searching voice.

The nurse patted her arm. “He’s just fine. Big and healthy. I’ll bring him to you after the doctor says it’s OK.”

“I had a boy?” the woman said, tears in her voice, and Katerina smiled. It had been worth it, no matter what happened now.

The door opened again and the father from the stairwell came in, holding his little girl’s hands. Her eyes were downcast, red, and puffy. Katerina could feel grief coming off of him in waves.

Katerina and West pushed past them, tiptoeing out the door behind them, but not before they heard a word from the bed. “Amelia?”

“Mommy!” The girl cried, joy and wonder in her voice. She ran to the bed and climbed onto it and as the door swung shut behind Katerina, she saw Amelia’s smile and her father’s grateful tears. They would be OK.

Katerina felt her burden lighten just a little bit, before dizziness overcame her and she fell to the ground.

“Katerina, Katerina wake up. Are you OK?”

Katerina blinked and opened her eyes. “Hungry,” she whispered.

“I’ll get you some food,” West said. “Just as soon as we get out of this hospital, I’ll have the FBI agent stop and get you food. I promise.”

Katerina looked around. She was being carried down the stairwell by West. She felt more hungry and more tired than she’d ever been in her life. These sensations made what had happened to her earlier seem like nothing. She was convinced her body was eating itself from the inside out.

West reached the first floor and pushed through the doorway, heading for the main entrance and exit doors. “We’re almost there,” he whispered to Katerina, looking left and right. “I think I see the FBI agent. He looks pissed.”

Katerina turned her head and saw him too. A man in tactical pants and a gray shirt in front of a large black SUV, talking animatedly into a radio.

“West, I think I can walk,” she whispered, seeing the strange looks they were getting from random people in the large open waiting room they were crossing.

West put her down gently and held onto her waist. She took one tentative step in the direction they had been heading when a woman screamed to her right. Katerina whipped her head that way and immediately saw Kurt Kane, a gun in his hand, not three feet from her. He closed the distance in an instant and jabbed the gun painfully against her ribs, then dislodged West's arm from around her waist. On the other side of them, a man did the same thing to West, disrupting any plans of action he might have had. Katerina felt Kane grab her arm, then propel her across the waiting area.

“Just keep moving, and no one will get hurt,” Kane commanded into her ear, but his eyes were on West.

Katerina looked at West and saw murder in his face. She flashed him a warning with her eyes. She was getting a low level of emotion from Kane, from his hand on her arm. He would kill them in an instant. Shoot Katerina through the heart, then shoot West in the head, then shoot his way out of the hospital, not really caring how many people he killed or if he lost his own life in the aftermath. He was doing a job, and he didn’t care about anyone, not even himself. His soul had died long ago. You couldn’t reason with a man like that. You could only do what he said, or fight him. And they were in no position to fight right now.

The four of them walked quickly across the hospital lobby and out the door. The FBI agent saw them coming, and his eyes widened. He dropped his radio and went for his gun. Kane’s voice rang across the concrete. “Touch it and the woman dies. I’ll be able to shoot her five times before you even get it out of your holster,” he said, the truth in his words obvious to anyone who heard them.

The FBI agent froze, his hands splayed out in front of him. “Smart man,” Kane said, his gun still digging into Katerina’s ribs.

The two men propelled them towards a full-size white van that was idling at the curb, a dark-haired man behind the wheel, watching them intently. Katerina and West were thrust into the van, Katerina in the very backseat with Kane, and West in the second seat with the other man.

The driver pressed a button and the side door slid closed behind them. He pulled away into traffic and Katerina saw the FBI agent at the hospital screaming into his radio and gesturing after them.

Kane turned to her, not giving her even a second to react to what had just happened, malice lacing his words. “They say you are psychic. Is that true?”

Katerina nodded, knowing it would do no good to lie.

“Tell me what you saw that made you call the police that night.”

“I saw you, with that gun in your hand, holding it up to Ronan’s head and telling him to
take another pill, swallow another pill
.”

Kane nodded, his black eyes glittering dangerously and the scar on his neck thickening and lengthening as his chin rose and fell. “Tell me what else you saw.”

“Nothing, there was nothing more,” Katerina said as the van shot through the streets of Westwood Harbor, ignoring traffic signals. Her heart slammed against her breastbone and she wondered if they would get out of this alive.

Kane watched Katerina closely, then swung his gun towards West, never taking his eyes off of Katerina. “Perhaps if I shoot this man? Perhaps then you will remember what else you saw, what else Ronan knew?”

“No!” Katerina cried. “I swear there was nothing else-”

The gunshot boomed loudly in the confined space. Kane had never taken his eyes from hers, and yet he had pulled the trigger as if he had nothing to lose. Katerina’s gaze flew to West. He was turned towards them in his seat, his eyes open wide, staring. His hands flew to his chest and Katerina saw blood burst from between his fingers. She screamed, one loud piercing scream that sounded impossibly loud in the enclosed space. Louder even than the gunshot had been.

No! This couldn't be happening. Not West! Not ever West!

Katerina flung herself towards West, trying to climb over the seat to get to him, completely unaware that Kane even existed anymore. Kane put a hand on her chest and shoved her back into the seat, then brought the gun around to settle on her forehead. Bright, hot hate filled Katerina. He had shot West and she hadn’t been able to stop it, but Kane would not keep her from going to West, from helping him. No way.

Kane leaned forward and hissed in her face. “What else did he know? Tell me quick before I put a bullet in your boyfriend’s face. He can die with a face, or without, your choice.”

Katerina’s hands, her healing hands that had been reaching for West found Kane instead. In her anger, in her rage, all she could think was
die, you bastard, die and let me reach West
. Her hands went to either side of his head and immediately grew hot. Before Kane could react, before his expression could even change, his eyes flopped shut and his head drooped to his chest. He fell forward on Katerina and she pushed him away from her, feeling the heat in her hands disappear as soon as she broke contact with him. Blood leaked from the man’s ears and nose and mouth and she scrabbled away from him, not seeing it. She only had eyes for West.

The man in the seat with West cried out. “What did you do to him?! Oh my God, he’s dead!”

Katerina looked back at Kane for a moment and she could see it. His eyes were glassy and staring. His color had gone a dark, dusky gray, like dead blood had leaked behind the very skin of his face.

“What?” the driver yelled, craning his neck to see in his rear view mirror. Katerina’s eyes drew back to West. Kane was of no importance to her as long as he wasn’t going to shoot West again. West’s hands still covered the hole in his chest but his gaze had started to go soft. Katerina knew that look. He was dying.

She shot up and climbed over the seat in front of her, her mind only on West, completely unable to think of what the other men with guns would do to her. The man next to West jumped up from his seat and pushed backwards towards the front of the van as Katerina approached the seat he was in. “No, don’t touch me!” he shouted, his eyes transfixed on Katerina. The man driving slammed on the brakes and they all flew forward.

The driver turned around in his seat and lifted his head so he could see Kane over the other man. “Jesus, Mary, and Joseph,” he breathed, then threw the van into park and opened his door. He jumped out in one swift motion and ran away down the street. The man next to West looked at the gun in his own hand, then looked at Katerina who was only a foot from him. His whole body shook violently and his gun hand went limp. He climbed over the center console, following his partner out into the road.

Katerina paid them no mind. They could go. They could run forever for all she cared.

She put her hands on West’s chest as tears leaked down her face. “No, no, not West.” she said under her breath, then stilled herself long enough to look inside and see what she knew.
Heart stopped. Shock. Bullet nicked it
.
Hole in it. Losing blood.

Katerina took a deep breath, and poured every ounce and essence of life and breath and being that she had inside of herself into West. He couldn’t die. She pressed hard against his chest, giving him everything she had, everything she was, and whispered, “Come back to me, West. I can't lose you," as she ignored the furor inside herself at her actions. She told his heart
heal, stop bleeding, patch the hole. Fill back up with blood. Beat
.
Beat!

West remained motionless, his face white and slack. Katerina pressed her hands harder against his chest and repeated her commands. They were not requests. They were commands and demands and she would succeed! She would not fail him.
Beat. Heal and beat.
The raging hunger tore through her again but she paid it no mind. She felt her body being consumed from the inside as it used up all of her fat stores and started working on her muscles. The energy she needed for whatever she was doing was way beyond her normal stores and capabilities. Still, she pressed on, as her hands grew hotter and hotter, until West’s shirt began to smoke.

Finally, spent, she collapsed on top of him, as her hands went cold and motionless.