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When he glanced over, he saw the photographer had been moved, and two women, one in a lab coat and another wearing scrubs, were tending to the injured man. He was lying on his back, clutching his right shoulder as he wailed in pain.
Someone else grabbed Ace’s arm, turning him around. “I need you to come with me. Now.”
Ace blinked, his daze evaporating at the sight of Sergeant Spencer Colton in uniform, his normally boyish face aged both by tension and the flashing red-and-white lights of his K-9 SUV parked at an angle nearby, its driver’s-side door thrown open.
Still shaking, Ace pulled away. “I can’t leave. Those bastards in the black Mercedes—they hurt Sierra, maybe bad. She needs me here, in case they come back for her.”
“Are you a doctor or a bodyguard?” Spencer demanded bluntly. “Because unless you’re either, there’s nothing you can do for her right now—nothing more important than getting in this car and helping me catch these shooters right now. As far as I know, you’re the only one who got a good look at them.”
“Bodyguard... I should call Callum,” Ace stammered, thinking of his brother. But still in shock, he hesitated, his feet rooted like tree trunks as Sierra jerked partly upright with a groan, rolled onto her side and started retching. With the two medics in his way, he couldn’t tell if she was fully conscious, only that she was seriously hurting.
“Come on,” Spencer said gruffly. “There’s no time to make calls at the moment, and she’s in good hands here. I’ll leave an officer standing guard. Hospital security, too, and the ER’s right here, filled with all the machines and medicine and expertise she needs. Now, let’s go and help her in the one way only you can—by stopping these people before they have a chance to strike again.”
Ace nodded numbly before calling to Sierra, “I’ll be back soon,” though he seriously doubted she was in any shape to register his words. Still, he needed to say them, if only to assure himself that he would find his way back to her. That he would find her well again and safe.
Inside Spencer’s SUV unit, which smelled faintly of the dark brown K-9 Ace had spotted riding in a cage in the rear, the sergeant asked as he drove, “Just how good a look did you get? Maybe a license plate? A partial?”
“You’ve got to be kidding. They were too damned fast—and I was too busy dodging bullets. I got a glimpse, at best, of both the driver and the shooter—both white males with dark hair, one with a goatee maybe—but nothing I could swear to.”
“It’ll have to be enough. And I’d bet my next paycheck the car’ll turn out to be stolen anyway,” Spencer said. “We had a patrol in pursuit, but they lost sight of the vehicle somewhere near the industrial area. We’re going to see if we can intercept them, maybe heading out of town.”
Fresh fear tightened Ace’s gut. “The industrial area? I need to call my family.” Fumbling for his cell phone, he said, “I have to warn them, in case these shooters have somehow connected Sierra to me and know about my condo there.” An image of his sleeping daughter flashed before his eyes.
“Why would they want to go there?” Spencer darted a glance his way, his hazel eyes intense. “Do you think you might be a target of these—It’s the Las Vegas underworld again, isn’t it? This has their filthy fingerprints all over it, and after the motel shooting, Sierra told me how she’s tied up with those gangsters.”
Bristling at his tone, Ace said, “She might’ve been in over her head, but she’s no criminal, Spencer. She was working her tail off—honestly and legally—to pay off her father’s gambling debts when Ice Veins came after her once he’d passed. She only ran into real trouble when she refused to allow herself to be corrupted.”
“So she’s a bounty hunter with a code,” Spencer allowed, still sounding dubious. “But she’s still mixed up with the wrong people. People intent on turning my town into a war zone, leaving heaven only knows how many innocents as collateral damage if that’s what it takes to punish her. Including maybe you and whoever’s at your place if they suspect Sierra might’ve escaped their drive-by shooting and they head over there to hunt her down.”
“Speaking of which, I’m making this call now,” Ace said gruffly, pushing a number from his phone’s list of frequent contacts. Moments later he was briefly explaining the situation to Grayson, who was fortunately still at the condo with Rafe, Ainsley, Nova and Nikolas. Grayson was able to quickly grasp Ace’s concerns regarding security. He then promised to take charge of making certain the property and everyone inside it remained secure until Ace or Spencer assured them that the threat had passed.
As Ace disconnected, a call came over Spencer’s police radio, the dispatcher reporting a vehicle fire in progress at an address only a few blocks from their location.
Cursing in frustration, Spencer goosed the accelerator before taking the next corner fast enough that his police dog barked in alarm from his crate.
“Sorry, Boris, buddy,” Spencer called back before turning his attention to Ace. “That’ll be the shooters’ car, I’m betting. Dumped and torched in favor of whatever getaway vehicle they had stashed and waiting. Which means they’re one step ahead of us.”
“That’s the car, all right,” Ace said as the two of them came upon the flames, which were leaping high enough that he had no doubt the someone had doused the black Mercedes in an accelerant before setting it ablaze. With its front doors standing open, it had been abandoned along the street outside the security fencing surrounding the metal sheds that comprised a local storage facility.
“Could be they stole it out of one of those storage garages in the first place.” Spencer drove past the burning car to point his headlights at what turned out to be a cut chain on the lot’s main gate. “Mostly, the larger bays at these facilities are used for recreational vehicles and boats and such, but occasionally, somebody’ll tuck a vehicle away for long-term storage.”
“An almost-new, high-end Mercedes?” Ace asked, glancing back toward the burning sedan and hearing sirens in the distance.
“Could belong to a drug dealer. Which would make this theft a crook-on-crook crime. Right now, though, I’m more worried about the shooting than any property crime.”
“But how will we find them now that they’ve switched vehicles?”
“It could take some legwork—and a little luck,” Spencer admitted as the first fire engine came into view down the street. “I’ll call in Kerry,” he added, referring to Rafe’s detective fiancée, “have her drag the facility’s owner out of bed to review the security camera footage, assuming any of them are actually operational. Though by the time we get all that accomplished, these guys’ll likely be long gone. Unless they decide it’s worth sticking around to try again.”
“Surely they won’t risk that,” said Ace, a slippery feeling low in his gut as he remembered being cut off from Sierra as the shots rang out, “not after shooting up a parking lot in front of witnesses.” After talking to Grayson on the phone, he’d nearly convinced himself that he’d been overreacting with his earlier fear that the killers might head over to his condo. Or maybe—he had no idea—his overblown fear of something happening to his newly discovered daughter was a normal part of this whole parenting routine.
“Like you said yourself before, they were in and out too fast to see much. Maybe they’ll figure they were quick enough to chanc
e it. What else can you tell me?”
Ace frowned, remembering his final, frustrating conversation with Sierra before all hell had broken loose. “She’d just told me she needed to take off, run from Mustang Valley before she got me or anyone I cared for hurt. Her cop friend in Vegas had told her there might’ve been a hit put out on her because of Ice Veins. By his nephew, most likely.”
The hydraulic air brakes of the fire truck momentarily captured their attention, its flashing emergency lights splashing the streets in garish illumination that competed with the leaping flames.
