He was barely aware of his own wounds, some scratches and contusions from the blast. The docs at the hospital had patched him up, too, despite his protests.
Tina headed toward the monitors on the right side of the bed.
“The docs gave her a sedative to help her sleep.”
Tina paused, then glanced back at him. “Is that what they told you?”
He didn’t like her tone, not a bit. Suspicious now, he kept a wary eye on her.
Tina reached for the clipboard. “It looks like she’ll be just fine.” She put the clipboard down and turned to face him. “Now let me check on you.”
Cale grabbed the hand that lifted toward him. “What’s going on, Tina?”
She glanced down at his hand. He felt the tremble that shook her. No, Tina didn’t like leaving the safety of her labs at the EOD. But she’d come there tonight, on Mercer’s order?
Is that what they told you? Her words rang in his head again.
“What’s going on?” He wanted to know. He and Tina hadn’t exactly gotten close during his time at the EOD. Tina and Sydney were tight, though, best friends from what he could tell.
“I’m following orders,” Tina said. “We all have to follow orders, don’t we?”
He was getting tired of the orders. Before he’d joined the EOD, he’d been a free agent working to help those who needed him. A mercenary? Maybe he hadn’t liked that title. Maybe he’d wanted to see what it would be like to be part of a team.
And being a Shadow Agent did have its moments.
But it could also—
“If Cassidy was awake, she’d fight.”
He almost missed Tina’s whispered words.
But as they sank in, a cold fury spread within him. “What’s happening?” As if he didn’t already suspect—Mercer. The director was happening. His schemes and plans.
“A transfer team is waiting outside. Since her location in D.C. has been compromised—” serious understatement “—Mercer wants her taken out of the city. When she wakes up, Cassidy will be far away.”
He shook his head in denial. “Mercer didn’t tell me about any transfer. He didn’t—”
“That’s because you’re not going with her.” Tina didn’t look him in the eye as she revealed this information.
The hell he wasn’t.
Tina stared at his neck. “He says the threat to this asset is too strong. That she has to be relocated before her position can be compromised again.”
This wasn’t happening. “You’re just going to take her while she’s unconscious? While she can’t say or do anything to stop you?”
“It’s not me.” Her gaze flew back up to hold his. “You have to understand, Mercer is—”
“Screw Mercer!”
She flinched.
No, he couldn’t take his fury out on Tina. He brushed by her and went back to the bed. “Get the IV out of her.”
Tina didn’t move.
“Get it out, Tina!” Because that IV was pumping the drugs into her body. Not to stabilize her, as he’d been told, but to keep her unconscious so that Mercer could whisk her away again.
Cassidy’s weak voice whispered through his mind. Get me out of here. Had she made that plea because she knew what Mercer would do? Had he done that to her before?
Probably.
But he wasn’t doing it again.
Cale heard the light shuffle of her footsteps as Tina inched closer to him. “If you go against Mercer, you know what will happen.”
He could kiss his career in the EOD goodbye. Fine. Whatever. “It should be her choice.” That was exactly what it would be. She would be awake. Aware. Cassidy would be able to choose—the path Mercer wanted for her, or...
Me.
Because he could protect her. If she needed to get away from D.C., then he could make that happen. He already knew exactly where he wanted to take her.
Home. Whiskey Ridge, Texas. The only home he’d ever known.
“I—I—” Tina’s halting steps stopped. “He said she was in danger. That we had to move her.”
And Tina was following orders, trying to protect a civilian.
“Get the IV out of her.” Or he would. He just didn’t want to hurt Cassidy. But one way or another, that IV was coming out.
He looked over his shoulder and leveled his stare on Tina. Waited. “It should be her choice. You know it, and I know it.”
Tina gave a small nod.
Then she reached for the IV.
* * *
GUNNER APPROACHED THE VAN slowly, his weapon up, two other EOD agents at his back. They’d kept regular law enforcement personnel in the background as much as possible—not like it had been easy to cover up the explosion in the park.
The van’s back doors hung open, its cavernous interior dark.
As the men closed in, one agent swept a light inside.
The light fell on a dead body.
Gunner’s eyes narrowed. Two shots. One had hit the man in the stomach. One had blasted right into his heart. From the look of the wounds, both had been administered at a very close range.
Cassidy had told Cale that she shot her attacker—that she hit him once.
Had she been mistaken, or had another scene played out here?
His gaze searched the van. No driver. But someone had been behind the wheel while Cassidy had been held captive in the back.
His stare returned to the body.
Cassidy shot him in the stomach. That would make sense. The first bullet, ripping through him, gave Cassidy the precious moments that she’d needed to escape.
But that wound hadn’t killed him.
The wound to the heart had ended the man’s life.
His partner shot him in the heart.
It was the partner that they had to find.
He turned away from the van and began to slowly scan the street. He was good at tracking, almost as good as his grandfather had been. He’d been trained on the reservation as a child, and when it came to hunting, he did the job well. Maybe too well.
Gunner crept to the edge of the road. Let his light sweep over the grass.
There. Bent grass, broken by feet running too quickly.
He followed those telltale marks. The bent grass, the snapped twigs.
The driver had come this way for a reason. He’d abandoned the van in that spot for a reason.
A few more feet, and he found that reason.
Tire tracks. A second vehicle had been stashed there.
The killer was on the move again, and he could very well be closing in on Cassidy.
* * *
CASSIDY’S EYES SLOWLY opened, the green color muted, her gaze confused. “C-Cale?”