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Camera, he realized, blinded by the flash as the man wearing black sweats, a ratty ponytail and round, steel-rimmed glasses, snapped away. With a curse, Ace raised an arm to block his camera shot, spinning away to hide his face.
“Give me that! I’ll take that memory card!” Sierra advanced on the photographer, a man Ace suspected was a stringer hoping to sell dirt on him to whichever news outlet would pay the highest dollar for the images.
“No! Hey, let go of my camera! You can’t—this is public property!” Short and scrawny as he looked, he held on to the strap for dear life as she fought to jerk it away.
“I’ll give it right back. I promise,” she said.
“Let it go. Let him go!” Ace called to her, worried she’d be injured—or possibly haul off and slug the photographer in her frustration.
Several parking spaces over, a commotion erupted. A woman screamed, and an older man yelled, “Security!”
The sounds were Ace’s only warnings before he heard the roar of an engine and the triple crack that he instantly recognized as gunfire. A clunk-clunk followed—the sound of a body or bodies slamming the side of a vehicle as both Sierra and the man she’d been struggling with went down in a writhing tangle of limbs.
His pulse booming in his ears, Ace shouted Sierra’s name and lurched forward but was cut off as a dark-colored luxury car—the shooters’—pulled between him and the pair.
Two more rounds exploded before the sedan peeled away, wheels squealing. As the black Mercedes fishtailed, Ace turned his head in time to glimpse a gun barrel swinging toward him. As he dove, another burst popped against the sheet metal of a parked SUV behind him and Sierra’s earlier words ran through his mind. In their line of business, witnesses are liabilities.
But with the shrieks and cries of witnesses multiplying, the shooters didn’t stick around to make sure.
Pushing himself back to his feet, Ace scrambled to the spot where he’d seen Sierra and the photographer tumble down beside the truck.
Neither one remained there, but there was a dark gleam on the otherwise dry pavement that had his heart plunging through the soles of his boots. A thick, crimson smear that led behind the pickup’s front tire.
“Sierra, are you under there?” he called, wanting to cough up his own pounding heart. “They’re gone now, and help’s on the way.”
At least he presumed that was the case, judging from the sounds of fast-approaching sirens. But it all faded to background noise as he dropped onto his knees and crawled forward, not caring about the dampness on his palms and knees as he lowered himself to peer at the limp arm flung out before him.
“Sierra!” he screamed.
The hairy arm jerked away—the photographer it belonged to groaning as he drew himself into a fetal position. At the s
ame time someone laid a hand on his back, saying, “I’m here, Ace. Right here. But let’s get him help. He’s been hit, I think...”
Turning abruptly, Ace pushed himself onto his knees to where Sierra had knelt behind him. Squeezing her tight, he said, “I was—was sure you’d been shot. Are you—I thought they’d killed you.”
“I’m—I’ll be fine. It’s just, when I fell, I hit my—” She pushed back from him, pain tightening her face as she cupped a hand over the back of her head. “Hurts so—”
Her green eyes rolled back, shuttering as she collapsed.
“Sierra!” he yelled, catching her and lowering her limp form to the pavement—and praying he wouldn’t find a bullet wound that he had missed at first.
Chapter 11
With the night strobe-lit by the flashing lights of emergency vehicles, Ace tuned out the sounds behind him. The frantic voices, running footsteps and the engine sounds all faded as his senses focused in on the essentials. Was Sierra bleeding? Breathing? Was that her heartbeat throbbing beneath his fingertips or his own leaping pulse?
Though he found little in the way of blood, one thing was for damned sure. She wasn’t responding to his desperate pleas—“Open your eyes, look at me!”—any more than she did when he shook her roughly by the shoulders to try to rouse her.
Feeling as helpless as he ever had in his life, he remembered the loud thumps he’d heard when she and the photographer dove for the pavement along with her pained look when she’d reached to touch the back of her head. Before he could check for an injury, however, someone touched his shoulder.
A red-haired man in a blue uniform was holding some sort of medical kit, his younger female partner a half step behind him. “We need you to step back, sir. I’m an EMT, and she’s a paramedic. Our ambulance was just leaving when we heard the shots, but we’ve got the vic—is this your wife?—from here.”
Now that the danger appeared to have passed, others were rushing to help, as well, Ace saw, heroic men and women coming out of the hospital in scrubs, street clothes and uniforms. But his focus was on the man’s startling question. What the hell did it matter what Sierra was to him when he couldn’t even tell if she was still alive?
“Just help her, please! I don’t know if she’s breathing!”
The smaller paramedic, with her curly, dark hair and a birthmark partly covering her face, squeezed between the men, kneeling to check Sierra’s vitals before giving her partner the pulse, respiration and blood pressure results. Ace felt his own breath hitch, what felt like his heart restarting. She hasn’t died on me. Thank God.
Recovering his voice, he explained, “She slammed her head pretty hard. Against that truck, I think,” as the pair continued their examination. “And the man wedged underneath—I believe he’s been shot.”
