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Brian bolted across the lot. He kicked in what was left of the door to room 125. His gaze flew around. Bullet holes everywhere. Shattered lamps. Busted TV. Feathers floated in the air.
“Charlie!” he screamed, racing around the bed. Charlie and Haley were on the floor.
Blood was splattered on both of them.
Chapter Thirteen
In the Kimball emergency waiting room, Brian threw his arms around Charlie, thankful that she wasn’t hurt.
“I’m okay,” she said, again, for like the twentieth time.
But he didn’t believe it until an EMT had checked her.
The blood on her body had been Haley’s. Other than a gash on her forehead from hitting her head on the nightstand as she fell, and a few stitches to close it, she was fine.
He stared at the stitches and caressed her cheek.
She looked composed, but he saw the nerves beneath the surface. “If not for Haley—” she paused, swallowed “—shoving me to the ground, I might be in surgery with her.” She looked up at him, and the misery in her eyes made his chest squeeze. “I led them straight to her.”
“We led them.”
DCI Powell, who had arrived after Brian called him, spun on his heel. “This wouldn’t have happened if you had notified me of her whereabouts as soon as you had located her. We would’ve brought her in quietly. Safely.”
That was probably true. But Charlie had legitimate concerns about the way Haley had been handled by Logan Powell’s task force. Charlie felt better about bringing her in herself, and Brian had agreed to help her.
Haley had lost a lot of blood, for real this time, in the motel room and on the way to the hospital. Now she might not pull through the surgery.
He still couldn’t swallow the story Charlie had repeated about all the things that Haley had done. The way she had taken advantage of Charlie’s need to help victims of domestic abuse burned him to the bone.
The entrance doors to the ER whooshed open.
Kent strode inside. “I got here as fast as I could.”
“You called Detective Kramer?” Powell asked.
“I did. He’s my partner on the Haley Olsen case. You don’t suspect that he’s dirty, do you?”
The DCI agent clenched his jaw. “He’s not under investigation or suspicion.”
“Then I trust there isn’t a problem here.”
“Make no mistake, there is a problem. With the way you violated protocol, by taking your girlfriend on a road trip to see my informant, when you should have contacted me.”
“This is my fault,” Charlie said to Powell. “Not Brian’s. I didn’t trust you to have Haley’s best interest at heart.”
Brian wasn’t going to allow her to blame herself for this.
He stared at Powell, forcing himself to keep his cool. “She’s the one who found her. Something you couldn’t do. Your mistake, or someone on your task force, is the reason Haley bolted. I’m certain that leaking to her husband that she was having an affair is violation of protocol. It’s also what got Teddy Williams killed. So, if we’re making a tally of mistakes here, I’d say that you and your task force have a longer column.”
“For the record, the agent who leaked the information has been suspended pending an investigation.”
As Brian had suspected. “You lied.”
“I did what I had to get your girlfriend to cooperate.” He stepped away.
“Is Charlie all right?” Kent asked, easing forward.
Brian nodded. He looked at her again, hating how close she had come to dying. How helpless he had felt. The desperation that had flooded him at the prospect of losing her. He brushed his knuckles across her bloodstained cheek before going over to the other detective.
