Guns drawn, both she and Matt gave the area a quick scan, both re-holstering their weapons when they found no trace of the black SUV Holloway had described.
“Kat! Zade!” Matt took off on a sprint. Neither responded.
The car had evidently spun around, its front now facing the direction opposite the flow of traffic. The officer on scene was leaning down by the driver’s door. He glance up at them from over his shoulder.
Matt opened his mouth to identify himself when Casey beat him to the punch.
“Detective Laurie Casey, Long Beach P.D. My partner, Detective Holloway is in that car!”
“He’s…on the other side,” the officer said hesitantly. “I’m sorry.”
“What the hell do you mean, you’re sorry?” The woman rushed around the car to the side her partner was on. From the loud cry of denial, Matt knew the man was already gone.
Focused on getting to his own people, his dress shoes slipping in the grass as he went. The other officer moved out of the way, and the second Matt saw Zade, he knew something was wrong. Very wrong.
“K-Kat…gone,” his injured teammate stuttered, his voice strained with obvious pain. “Took her. C-couldn’t…s-stop.”
“He was more alert when I got here,” the officer explained from behind where Matt was now standing. “Said they were forced off the road, the car rolled. A man approached them when they came to a stop. Shot the officer in the head, shot your guy in the shoulder, and pulled a woman out of the back seat and took her. I tried getting him out, but the door’s jammed shut. Fire’s gonna have to pry it open.”
Ah, Jesus. They took her.
Matt’s legs damn near went out from beneath him. His world began to spin, but as hard as it was, he forced himself to remain focused. He had to stay strong. For Zade. For Kat.
Reaching inside the car, he put pressure on his teammate’s wound to help stop the bleeding. Zade groaned loudly, the sound escaping through his clenched teeth.
From what he could tell, the bullet appeared to have missed anything major, but that didn’t mean his teammate wasn’t at risk for bleeding out.
“Sorry, man. But we need you to quit losing so much blood.”
“S’okay,” Zade whispered weakly. The man was pale and beginning to fade. Fast.
Tuning out Detective Casey’s quiet sobs, Matt shot a look at the other officer and growled, “Where the hell is that ambulance?”
Just as he said it, they heard sirens approaching. While waiting for the paramedics to get the stretcher to them, he tried to get as much information as he could.
“Okay, man. The medics are here. They’re gonna get you fixed up, good as new, but I need to know as much as you can remember before they take you. Did you see the man who shot you or who took Kat?
The other man nodded, sweat beading on his creased forehead. “W-walk…er.”
It took Matt a second to realize what Zade had meant. Once it clicked, his blood turned to ice. “Adrian Walker?He’sthe one who shot you and took Kat?”
Zade’s eyes closed, but he gave another slight nod. “B-bastard said…tell…you…h-hi.”
Matt felt like he was going to be sick.
“S-sorry.” A tear fell from the corner of Zade’s eye. “Tried…s-stop.”
Wanting to cry himself, he held back for his teammate’s sake. “Hey,” Matt said sternly. “Not your fault, man. We’re going to find her. You just worry about getting better.”
“Okay,” his teammate whispered. He closed his eyes again, having lost the battle to stay conscious.
Matt moved out of the way so fire and EMS could work to get Zade extracted from the car and onto the stretcher. As they loaded him into one ambulance, Detective Holloway’s body was transported in another.
At the top of the hill, a distraught Casey quickly gave her statement to a different detective who’d arrived on the scene. When she was finished, she slid a glance to Matt before climbing into the back to be with her partner as they took him to the county morgue.
In his own statement, Matt told the questioning detective how he and Zade had been hired to protect Katherine. Though he didn’t go into specifics, only that she’d felt threatened after the break-in at her apartment, he shared everything he knew about Marsh’s death—which was pretty much nothing. And Matt also told the man the cliff notes version of what he knew about Adrian Walker.
After giving the man Jason Ryker’s direct extension at Homeland and instructing him to call for further questions regarding Walker, Matt was driven to the hospital by yet another detective.
