Page 10 of Serve ’N’ Protect

He leaned against the metal bar, cracking the door open a few inches. The green bug was about twenty yards from where he stood, parked just outside the gate. Leaning one hand against the building’s brick siding, he began hobbling to the car. Halfway there, hairs on the back of his neck tingled and he stopped, scrutinizing every inch of the parking lot that he could see. No people, and nothing but parked cars stared back at him, all of them devoid of passengers. He hoped. But something had his heart beating faster.

Markus continued on, foot by agonizing foot as the movement jarred his wounds, sending pricks of pain to his waist and back. He faltered, nearly stumbling over his own feet. Cassidy opened her door, leaving it open as she started limping toward him. Christ, he felt weak. Being debilitated and weak grated his ego to shreds.

“Are you all right?” she called out, still a good thirty feet away and gradually closing the gap between them. “I couldn’t get any closer.”

“Don’t worry about it. Let’s just get out of here.”

Ghost scrambled into the front seat and leaped through the open driver’s side door, running past Cassidy to greet him with a look of pure joy on his doggie face.

“Hey, buddy.” He gave his dog a quick pat on the head, continuing his slow but steady trek.

When they were twenty feet from the car, Cassidy reached him, wrapping her arm around his waist, and it seemed natural to drop his arm over her shoulder. Again, he looked at the parking lot, not understanding exactly what was bothering him. But something still was.

Markus picked up his pace, but Cassidy couldn’t go any faster. With each successive step, he searched the lot, dissecting it visually into ten-degree slices of pie. The hairs on his neck were standing up straighter than the Washington Monument. They were about ten feet from the car when he saw it. A man’s head, barely visible over the top of one of the hedge rows near the back of the parking lot. And in the man’s outstretched hand…

…was a gun.

“Move!” he shouted, his muscles tightening as he practically pushed her in front of him, shielding her body with his as they both speed-limped the rest of the way to the car.

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“Just do it!”

A shot rang out. The bullet pinged off the hood of the bug.

Still shielding her body with his own, he flung open the passenger door and shoved her onto the seat. “Get down!”

Ghost took off in the direction of the bushes.

“No!” Ghost’s body was a white blur as he tore through the parking lot. The last thing he wanted was his dog charging into gunfire when the best course of action was to haul ass. It wasn’t like Ghost to ignore a command, but he knew what his dog was doing. Buying them time.

“What is happening?” Cassidy looked up at him, wide-eyed. “Was that a gunshot?”

“Yeah, so get the hell down!” Markus’s heart hammered as he slammed the door shut in Cassidy’s shocked face. A muscle in his jaw popped from clenching his teeth so hard. Leaving an active shooter in place went against every one of his finely-honed instincts. But even if he had a weapon on him, in the condition he was in, he couldn’t run down a sloth.

“Ghost, come!” Goddammit. Leaving Ghost behind sat about as well as an acute case of appendicitis, but given that he was the target, the longer he remained on site, the longer he’d be putting Cassidy and anyone else within shooting distance in the line of fire. The best thing he could do to protect others in the vicinity was to remove the target—him—from the kill zone.

He hunkered down below the level of the VW, which wasn’t saying much. The car really was about as high off the ground as the beetle it was named after. Leaning over as he was, every step crunched his wounds, sending bolts of pain straight to his gut. He maneuvered around the hood then opened the driver’s door.

Hot breath on his neck sent relief gushing through his veins. Ghost had returned. He motioned with his hand and Ghost leaped in, wriggling to squeeze his body between the seats and into the back of the car. Another shot whizzed by Markus’s ear, nicking the hood only inches from his head. He slid onto the driver’s seat, cranking the gear shift into reverse before he’d even closed the door.

At the first opportunity, he slammed on the brakes and shifted into drive, gunning the car through the visitor lot. Another car started backing out. Markus braked then swerved, pounding on the horn and just missing the other vehicle as he sped past.

The bug lurched dangerously to one side as he hit the turn onto the main road at nearly forty miles an hour. Ghost lost his balance and fell against one of the rear doors. Cassidy’s head bumped against the side of Markus’s rib cage. He winced, hoping to fuck he hadn’t busted his stitches open again. So much for following Dr. Martinez’s orders.

He dug his phone from his pocket and, using his thumb, dialed 911—the very thing he’d warned Cassidy not to do. Since it wasn’t possible to mask a call to 911 by punching in *67, he didn’t bother trying. “There’s an active shooter at St. Mary’s Hospital in Leonardtown,” he said when the dispatcher answered. “Last known location, employee parking lot. Single male shooter with a handgun. No known victims.” Unless you counted Cassidy’s VW bug.

Knowing the dispatcher would only pepper him with questions he couldn’t or shouldn’t answer, he hung up. If they tried tracing his cell number, it would come back to a fictitious individual—Alex Adessio, and they’d need a subpoena to get an address which, of course, would also be fictitious. If they bothered to try, it would be months before local police could figure out that Uncle Sam was footing the bill for his phone.

Markus pushed the car along the access road, glancing in his rear and side-view mirrors to see if they were being followed. Only after he’d taken the ramp for the highway and his breathing had slowed did he look at Cassidy.

She lay partially over the center console with her head down. One of her hands was clenched into a fist, her other gripped the handle of her cane so tightly her knuckles were whiter than Ghost’s fur. Ghost, on the other hand, sat calmly in the back seat, his mouth open and his big pink tongue hanging out and lolling to the side. For his dog, it was a good day’s work.

Even in the rearview mirror, Ghost detected he was being watched and draped his head over the seat to lick Markus’s ear. Next, the dog moved to Cassidy, leaning over the console to sniff her hair and nuzzle her cheek.

“Are you okay?” How could she be? Most people weren’t accustomed to getting shot at.

“W-well, um, I’m not shot, if that’s what you’re asking. But am I okay?” She fisted her hand tighter. “No.”