Undercover Attraction (14 page)

Her face had gone white when she saw the
gun, her hands clenched tightly on the dashboard. She was deathly
afraid.

The silver BMW turned the corner and Jacob
was sure that the driver knew where they were. He slammed on the
gas, shooting up the ramp in the parking garage for level two, just
as the BMW pulled into the garage.

Two shots were fired at the back end of the
Tahoe, and he reached over to shove Jenna's head down as he shouted
for Amy to do the same. He rolled his window down, and stuck his
arm out, firing off a few shots of his own, shattering the BMW's
back windshield and rear passenger window.

He barely had time to register that the
passenger had a weapon aimed right at them before another round of
shots were fired in quick succession. Cutting a hard right, he slid
around another turn of the garage level, spinning until he faced
the BMW.

It was risky, he knew. If the passenger was
a good shooter, as he suspected he was, then Jacob only had one
shot to take him out once they reached the top of the ramp. But he
refused to be penned in the garage, and the exit was too far on the
other side to make it without taking more hits.
Please let this
work
, he prayed silently.

The hood of the car peeked over the wall and
Jacob floored the pedal. Jerking forward, he aimed and fired off
four shots just as the passenger did the same. The quick
tink
of bullets passing through glass registered as Amy and
Jenna both screamed.

And in slow motion, he watched as his own
bullet pierced the skull of the shooter, spraying blood all over
the driver.

The BMW swerved, giving Jacob just enough
time to peel past and exit the garage. His unit was entering as he
finally reached the blacktop street.

His phone rang, loud in the deathly silent
vehicle. Flipping it open, he muttered a few quick orders and then
disconnected.

"Is it over? Please say it's over," he heard
Amy ask from the back seat.

He nodded, praying he was right. He dared a
glance at Jenna. She had one hand pressed against her chest, and
the other still clutching the dash. He reached over and grabbed her
hand in an effort to offer comfort. Her breath was rushing hard and
fast from her, and she seemed as if she would hyperventilate.

He linked his fingers with hers, noticing
that her hands were sweaty. Looking down at their tangled fingers,
his heart stopped. Blood. Not sweat.

"Shit. Jenna, baby, where are you hit?" He
slammed on the brakes in the middle of an intersection, ignoring
the horns blaring around him.

Amy leaned forward, a panicky expression on
her face. She slid forward, leaning over the center console.

Amy reached across Jenna, turning her face
in her hand, and Jenna winced.

"Shoulder and neck. Shoulder looks worse
than her neck, but I think there's too much blood," Amy sobbed, her
voice catching on the last. "There's too much blood, Jacob!"

Jacob floored the pedal again. "Put pressure
on the wounds, try to stop the bleeding."

Amy did as she was told, sliding behind
Jenna in the back seat and using her foot to lay the seat back
almost into her lap so she could reach Jenna's wounds more
easily.

Jenna vaguely realized what was happening.
Jacob's voice kept fading in and out and Amy was pressing against
her neck and shoulder so hard it was all she could do to keep from
crying out. The damn vest was making it harder to breathe, but her
hands were too sweaty to pull it off. She felt Jacob holding her
hand again, his larger warm palm chasing away the cold that had
begun to seep into her bones.

"Stay with me, honey. You're gonna be okay."
His words made no sense to her. She was just fainting, right?
Becoming light-headed enough that spots danced in front of her eyes
from lack of oxygen because of the damn vest.

"She's about to pass out, Jake!" Amy. That
was Amy's voice, and Jenna looked up to see her baby sister's
frightened face.

She became confused. Why did they look so
scared? Even Jacob's face had become pale, his dark eyes wide in
fear. But she was too tired to make her mouth work. Exhaustion
seeped into her, chilling her even though Jacob's hand was burning
hers.

She smiled up at her sister and shook her
head, trying to tell her she was going to take a nap, not to worry
about her, but the darkness took her.

#

"Jenna!" Jacob watched as Amy tried to slap
her sister's face to wake her, but to no avail. Just a few more
blocks to the hospital.

Jenna's hand in his was like ice, and fear
had taken root in his soul. He knew that the vest had protected her
vital organs, but she could still easily bleed to death, especially
with a neck injury. He was more worried about that than the shot in
her shoulder. He pressed the button on his steering wheel that
directly linked him to headquarters.

"Yeah?" his dad's voice rang out over the
speakers.

"Have a stretcher waiting for us at the ER,
Jenna's been hit. I'm less than two minutes away." He tried to keep
the fear out of his voice, mainly for Amy's sake, but he knew that
it was eating him alive inside.

"
How bad?"

"Shoulder and neck. Nothing too serious I
wager, but she's unconscious."

He knew his dad could hear the panic in his
voice, and after a few endless seconds of silence his dad replied,
"Got them on standby. Oh, and Jake, we have the driver in custody.
For questioning."

"Good." He hung up. Yeah, he would
definitely be there whenever they interrogated the asshole. And he
would get every ounce of information that the fucker had, no matter
what method he had to use to do it.

The paramedics were indeed waiting at the
emergency room entrance, and he slammed the Tahoe in park and
jumped out, running to the other side to open Jenna's door.

"Sir, please stand back, we'll-" one of the
medics tried to push him aside, but Jacob lifted Jenna ever so
gently from the seat and lay her on the stretcher. He quickly
unclipped the bulletproof vest and slid it from her, carefully so
as not to disturb her.

His heart was in his throat and he noticed
his hands were shaking. The medics pushed her through the doors,
firing rapid questions at him and Amy as they followed closely. Amy
answered most of them about Jenna's blood type, allergies, and the
other various questions he had no clue about.

Then they asked what happened as they
reached the elevators. Jacob quickly recalled the story, leaving
out various parts for security purposes.

They rolled out of the elevator and through
two sets of double doors, before one of the medics stopped him.
"You can't go any further. The OR is restricted to anyone but
physicians. You both may have a seat at the end of the hall in the
waiting room. I am sure there is quite a bit of paperwork to fill
out and the doctor will be out as soon as he can."

Jacob watched helplessly as Jenna was rolled
away, feeling his heart lurch with every swing of the double
doors.

Amy stood next to him, her hands pressed to
her mouth, and he knew that he had to be strong for her sake,
despite the fear clenching his insides.

He touched her arm, and they turned towards
the empty waiting room. Amy had the foresight to grab Jenna's purse
when they left the Tahoe, and dug through her wallet to find the
needed information for the paperwork.

Jenna had it all together. Insurance card,
driver's license, a list of regular medications- which was just a
regular Tylenol for headaches- a copy of her campus ID with
employer information, social security card, and a spare key. Amy
didn't have to dig through anything else since it was so
organized.

When Amy came to the responsible party on
the billing section, he took the clipboard from her and quickly
wrote in his own information. He was responsible for the accident,
so it was only fair he paid the expenses.

An hour later he was up pacing the small
room like a caged animal. He felt so helpless. Occasionally, he
glanced at Amy, who still sat nervously at the edge of one of the
uncomfortable seats. She held a cup of coffee in her hands, rolling
the styrofoam cup back and forth, not really sipping at the
coffee.

Why hadn't someone come out yet? It couldn't
have been that bad, right? As the minutes ticked by, he became more
and more frightened that the bullet had actually pierced something
vital, despite the fact that he had made her wear the vest.

The stupid bulletproof vest. There was a
reason that he had her put one on, and the irony almost made him
cringe. To think that with the vest she was shot, but without it,
she may have been fine. Fate had a certain way of working around
things, of making you question your own actions even though you
know deep down disaster couldn't have been diverted.

But it was his fault. He should have just
kept driving instead of trying to lose the bastards in the garage.
Guilt was eating at him, making him restless. He had been the
reason Jenna was hurt, the reason her skin would be marred from the
deadly kiss of a bullet, the reason why she could very well be
dying on a surgical bed.

He stopped against the wall and leaned his
head on his arm against it.
Be okay. Please be alright.
He
kept repeating the litany in his head, hoping the prayer would be
answered.

The phone rang, a loud, pealing, irritating
sound in the middle of his misery. The receptionist answered then
held it out towards Amy.

She quickly jumped up and answered it,
listening to the report of the surgeon on the other end. Jacob
almost fell to his knees when he heard Amy's deep sigh of
relief.

Amy hung up and turned to him, "They said
she is fine. She had to have a blood transfusion because of the
blood loss, but nothing was seriously injured. The neck wound was
just a nick, but her shoulder was pretty bad. The bullet was lodged
against her collarbone, but they removed it fairly easy. We can go
in to see her in a few minutes, once they move her to recovery, and
we should head down there to wait now."

He barely heard anything other than she was
okay. He kept repeating it in his head and knew he had never felt
the same urgent sense of relief as he had just then. He followed
Amy out of the waiting room to another one, one floor down, and
took a seat.

"She's okay, Jacob. You don't have to look
like you are going to panic anymore. Take a breather. Everything is
fine now. Besides, I should be the one freaking out- she's my
sister," Amy told him as she sat next to him.

He did take a deep breath and let it out
slowly. "I know. But she wouldn't be in here if I had done my job
in the first place."

Amy pat his shoulder. "You did what you were
supposed to. Had you not been there, it wouldn't have been an
almost, and she wouldn't be alright now. She would be dead. But you
saved her. Trust me, this is nothing compared to the things she has
been hospitalized for as a teenager."

"Yeah, but I bet she hadn't been shot
before," he said guiltily.

Amy smiled. "No, but she was in a coma for
two weeks when she was nineteen. And for various broken bones quite
frequently. Jenna wasn't always so calm and collected. She used to
be a demon. In fact, that's why she shies away from men now. A few
bad choices that landed her in the ER, and she's sworn you off
entirely."

"What does that have to do with
anything?"

Amy looked resigned. "I shouldn't be
spilling her secrets, she'll kill me if she found out."

Jacob crossed his heart. "I won't tell,
besides if she is going home with me, I need to know a little bit
about her."

"Well, in that case… Number one, I don't
think she'll like that idea. And as for the secret; her ex
boyfriend beat her. Repeatedly."

A haze of anger washed over him. "Who?" he
heard himself asking.

Amy shrugged. "Some guy from college. She
had been dating him for a year, and they finally got engaged and
moved in together. Next thing I knew, she called me while he was
gone, and I picked her up. She was swollen from head to toe, but
refused to go to the hospital. I let her stay in my dorm room, but
the next day, he found her in the campus parking lot. He hit her
with his car because she had left him a message saying she wasn't
coming back. She spent two weeks in a coma, with several broken
bones and head trauma. She dropped all of her wild habits and
donned a
stay away
attitude after that."

"His name?" Jacob demanded.

"Tom Easley. He's already locked up, though,
for quite a while. When she pressed charges, his exes came out of
the woodwork to testify."

Tom Easley. He filed the name away to check
into later. He wanted to make sure the bastard was suffering
enough.