Page 40 of Unraveled

She bucked upward, and he lifted his chest from hers and stared down at her, a question in his eyes. Relieved of the weight, she dragged in a deep breath and tried to sit up. Her left arm refused to cooperate, and she struggled against him for a moment before falling to her back. Cries of fear and outrage rose around her, but she tuned them out as she stared up at Carter, his face twisted into an expression of intense concentration.

“Just stay where you are,” he commanded, flicking a glance around their surroundings once more. “The car’s gone, but there’s glass all over the place.”

She nodded and licked her lips as blinding pain radiated down her arm. “Carter…”

Not sparing her a glance, he pulled his cell from his back pocket and started to tap away at the screen. “Yeah?”

“My arm,” she panted out. “It hurts.”

Dark brown eyes laced with anger flitted over her as he sat back on his heels and rolled her slightly to the side. The phone fell from his fingers as he seized her left arm, his features twisting into a grimace. “Jesus!”

She closed her eyes against the fiery sensation, and a tiny whimper fell from her lips. Glass tinkled and crunched as Carter shifted into a crouch beside her. She assumed a shard had sliced into her arm, causing the acute pain shooting through her triceps.

“Why didn’t you tell me your arm was hurt?” Without bothering to unbutton his shirt, he ripped it open and stripped it off.

For a second, her attention was splintered. In her peripheral vision, she could see him ripping off the sleeve to wrap around her arm to stop the bleeding, but she couldn’t drag her gaze away from the sculpted muscles of his biceps and forearms exposed by the tight white T-shirt beneath. They rippled as he leaned forward and gently wove the fabric around her injured arm and tied it off.

She sucked in a breath at the sudden pressure, then forced a little laugh as she fought to focus on his question. “My entire body hurts.”

“Yeah, well, getting shot will do that.” He gave a brief shake of his head, and she twisted her head toward her left arm.

Getting shot? “What?”

He was too busy inspecting her arm to reply, so she slapped her palm against his chest and shoved to get his attention.

His gaze snapped to hers. “It’s just a graze.”

“Just a graze?” Her voice rose several octaves, fueled by indignation and bewilderment. He said it like it was no big deal, like it happened every day, and it served only to infuriate her more as the panic and fear leached away. “Are you kidding me?”

She struggled against him, intent on sitting up and assessing the damage for herself.

“Hold on, hold on.” Carter slid a hand beneath her back and levered her to a sitting position, taking extra care with her arm before placing it gently in her lap. The world spun for a moment, and she fought the nausea that roiled in her stomach. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders for support and cupped her face in one huge hand. “You good?”

She nodded shakily as everything righted itself and returned to normal—as normal as this situation could get. “I’m fine.”

Carter turned her chin toward him and searched her gaze for a long moment. Whatever he saw there must have assured him, because he gave a little nod, then picked up his phone. She rested her head on his shoulder and listened as he spoke with the 911 dispatcher, giving their location and details. When he hung up, he turned his head, and his chin brushed her hair. “Still hanging in there?”

She nodded against his chest, suddenly too exhausted to respond as the adrenaline wore off and her body began to crash.

CHAPTER

TWENTY

Carter cursed himself once more as he studied Audrey, where she sat on the bed of the small emergency room, feet crossed at the ankles, her face pale and drawn.

He couldn’t believe he left his piece in the car. The one time he should have had it, he’d forgotten to put it back on. He hadn’t been able to take it with him to court that morning, and he was in so much of a hurry to see Audrey that he had parked beside the coffee shop and practically jumped from the car.

He couldn’t get the sight of her ragged, torn flesh out of his mind. It replayed on loop over and over, serving only to increase his fury. Thank God she’d taken a step to the side when she had. Just a few inches to the right, and the bullet would’ve pierced her heart instead of her arm.

Unbidden, his hands curled into fists at his side. The neighborhood the coffee shop was in was a decent one, but he wasn’t a fool; he knew bad things happened everywhere. However, there was one detail that stuck out in his mind.

As he’d lain there on the pavement, his body covering Audrey’s, he managed to glimpse the back of the car between the bumpers of two vehicles parked along the curb, and what he’d seen, or lack thereof, turned his blood to ice. The car’s license plate had been removed.

Over the past couple of hours since the incident, he played several possibilities through his mind. It could’ve been a random drive-by shooting, but he didn’t think gangbangers would be so cautious as to remove their license plate. The bullet could’ve been intended for someone else, except for the fact that, though there were several other people milling around on the sidewalk, no one else was even remotely close to her when the shot was fired.

He had to admit that it was possible the driver was shooting at the coffee shop itself, or someone inside, but the glare of sunlight on the glass more than likely would’ve obscured the driver’s vision. It would be difficult to mark a target inside the building while in motion driving past. He didn’t like the last remaining option, that Audrey was, in fact, the intended victim. You didn’t shoot that close to someone just to scare them.

Aside from her recent trouble at the health center, she hadn’t mentioned anything unsettling. The attack nearly a month ago had resulted in several stitches, but the man who had attacked her was now dead, so that trail was cold.