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A moment later a muted male voice called out from farther down the corridor. Sierra didn’t make out the words, but judging from the swing of the black ponytail and the way the nurse’s assistant went sprinting off in that direction, it might’ve been a call for help.
Though the coast was clear, Sierra hesitated a moment longer, carefully opening the closet door wide enough to hear a series of short, sharp shouts and the slap of running feet.
Had someone thought they’d spotted her—or was another patient suffering a medical emergency? Either way, she seized on the distraction and broke from her hiding place, bolting toward the stairway as fast as she could run.
She had nearly made it when she heard the steps pounding and the sound of someone breathing hard coming up behind her—too fast for her to hide, to run, even to change course. All she could do was brace herself, turn her head just enough to make out the blur of a smallish, slim male, his head topped in a cap of messy, dark brown curls—and about to mow her down.
At the last instant he reached out, hooked her right shoulder with a hand. “Out of the way, bitch!” he yelled before giving her a hard shove sideways.
“Hey, jerk, watch it!” was all Sierra had time to shout as she toppled to the floor, the reading glasses flying. Mad as hell, she scrambled back up in time to see him disappearing through the stairwell door—
And Ace Colton barreling down the hallway, his face a mask of fury and a drawn gun in his hand.
Tough as Sierra liked to consider herself, she shrank back reflexively as the sight of Ace waving around the weapon.
“Get back to your room now!” he shouted at her, his brown eyes wide and his face flushed. “I found my father’s shooter in his room! He was about to stage a murder-suicide with Dad and me when I grabbed his gun, but he’s still dangerous.”
Recovering her wits, she answered, “Let me help you catch him. And please point that barrel down, will you? You’re giving me palpitations here—and not the good kind!”
“I said get back in your room. You have a head injury, and—”
“And you don’t have nearly enough zip ties to keep me in this place.” She glared a warning that she w
asn’t above demonstrating another left cross if he tried such a stunt again. “So unless you mean to shoot me with that thing, why not bring along someone with some experience at apprehending violent criminals?”
“There’s no time to argue. He’s getting away.”
“Well, that’s at least one thing we’re agreed on,” she said, hurrying to open the stairwell door and waving him in ahead of her. “So how about we call a temporary truce—just until we catch this guy and I can be on my way?”
* * *
Ace knew Sierra was right about one thing. They couldn’t afford to waste time, not with his father’s shooter getting farther out of reach with every passing second.
Nodding, he forced himself to slow his breathing, manage his panicked thoughts and sort his priorities. “Just a second. I need to make sure Callum’s watching my dad.”
Though he’d flagged down a nurse who had called others to help deal with the bleeding and unconscious guard, there was no way his father could be left without security, in case the shooter had an accomplice...or somehow managed to double back for another attempt on the senior Colton’s life.
Fortunately, the phone he’d picked up off the floor before sprinting down the hallway still worked, though the screen had been cracked when it had been knocked from his hand. After sending a terse message to his brother, Ace looked up to spot Sierra donning a pair of reading glasses, her hair wound up into a precarious-looking updo. Along with the white coat she was wearing, it made for a reasonable disguise—one that convinced him that the confusion he’d witnessed in her this morning had cleared up.
Raising his brows in appreciation of her quick thinking, he nodded his approval before once more pulling out the gun and starting for the stairs. Sierra ran after him, lagging behind only a little as he pounded down the steps.
They were still too late, just as he’d suspected they would be, considering the delay. Or at least he was certain they were as the two of them emerged into the long, slanting rays of the late-afternoon sunshine, where they looked around the parking lot frantically.
Seeing no one except a white-haired couple, a man using a walker, and a young woman pushing her child in a stroller toward the hospital’s main entrance, Ace turned on Sierra. “If I hadn’t been held up arguing with you, I might’ve caught him! I might have finally had the man that my father told me shot him—”
Sierra gaped at him. “Your father—he’s talking?”
Ace nodded. “He’s just starting to, yes.”
“I’m glad to hear that, but if you could hold off on the jumping down my throat a second—”
Chagrin tightened his jaw. “You’re right. That was out of line. I’d already been slowed down getting help for the injured guard and grabbing my phone, not to mention making sure Callum’s back in the room with our dad—”
When she held up a hand for silence, he half expected her to tell him what he could do with his apology. Instead, she took the practical approach, rattling off priorities like the professional she was. “We need manpower—the cops and hospital security—to search the building, especially the first and second floors, in case he ducked out onto one of the lower floors and never left the building.”
“Agreed,” he said, reaching for his phone again, but before he could pull it out, her head turned abruptly toward the throaty revving of an engine. Following her gaze, he spotted a bright yellow coupe across the parking lot—some kind of muscle car—peeling out onto the road before squealing off down the street.
“That’s gotta be him,” Ace guessed, imagining that a young guy bold enough to commit the flagrant acts this shooter had would be drawn to the flash and power of such a vehicle—and too shaken by their physical altercation to make a quieter getaway. “Let’s go.”
