Wild Hearts Read online

  “You would too!” Kate stared at him like he’d grown another nose on his face. “If someone dropped to the ground in a faint down the hall, you’d run over and help.”

  “But that person isn’t going to shoot me!”

  She shrugged. “How do you know?” Her lips pressed into a thin line. “How many times have you dealt with a patient high on drugs, got knocked on your ass by a woman half your size on PCP? I’ve heard the stories. It’s the same thing.”

  No. No, it wasn’t. Kate was his sister, and even though they’d only become family later in their lives, he loved her just like he did Walker. Maybe more because she wasn’t as big of an ass as his brother was. He loved them, and heaven help him he loved Pilar too. Not that he’d told her in so many words. And no, he didn’t love her the same way he loved Kate or Walker.

  Losing her, even at that moment when he hadn’t revealed the depth of his feelings for her, wouldn’t keep him from feeling like his own heart had been ripped out of his chest.

  She was it for him. The one woman who had ever just become a part of him from the first time he saw her smile. He just didn’t know how he would be able to live his life, day to day, just waiting for her to be taken away from him.

  Was he a coward?

  Yes. Completely.

  And he knew he was failing her. Failing Pilar.

  But by walking away from her this way, he could be there for her in another. He could still do everything in his power to save her life if the need ever arose.

  The phone in his coat pocket beeped and he pulled it out. The message on the screen told him he was needed in the ER.

  “I’ve-”

  “Go,” she told him as she stood up and stepped out of his pathway to the door. “Someone needs you.”

  The front of the Sacred Smoke Vape warehouse looked pristine. As the first unit on scene, Pilar followed Burke as they walked around to the side door where the alarm had been triggered.

  Together, they moved inside and scanned the room. The emergency lights had provided the thieves with sufficient light to break open boxes and dig around. As Pilar and her partner moved around the room, they stopped short. A hallway at the far end of the room had a door barely cracked open. It was enough to see intermittent lights casting about. Flashlights or some other illumination sources meant that there were still people in the building.

  Looking over at Burke, they communicated in a couple of hand signals and nodded in agreement. He was taking the lead and together they would enter the back room and hopefully surprise the thieves.

  Pilar had been drilled by her brother on top of the police trainers in San Antonio, and she saw a difference in how she moved compared to Burke. She was lighter on her feet and more attuned to everything around them. On his six, she continued to look back at the room, peering into the shadows to make sure that they weren’t going to be surprised by an ambush.

  It wasn’t likely, but many law enforcement officers had lost their lives to things that weren’t ‘likely’ to happen.

  Burke was almost to the door when something under his boot crunched and the sound seemed to shout from the walls.

  A flurry of motion from inside the room could be heard and she jumped forward to grab the back of Burke’s vest. It took every ounce of her weight to pull him back from the doorway. If he’d had the chance, he would have likely chewed her out for interfering, but two loud reports punched holes in the door right where he had been standing.

  Glass breaking inside the room was punctuated with shouts.

  “They’re escaping through the windows!” Burke was shouting, likely because his ears were ringing just like her own.

  She nodded. “Let’s go back out through the side door!”

  He hesitated, his eyes glancing at the holes in the door, and then thought better of it. “Okay. Follow my lead.”

  She fell into step behind him because there was no point in arguing.

  Outside, they could hear feet pounding the pavement. The area was full of warehouses and they all looked alike. Same color. Same big boxy shapes. And there were hardly any lights to go by.

  Approaching sirens told them that back up would be arriving soon, but before she could say a word, Burke nailed her with a look. “They’ll catch up. Come on.”

  She hesitated for a moment, wanting to go for the shotgun in their trunk. “I can go and grab the shotgun with beanbag rounds. We can rendezvous with the other units.”

  “Let’s go.” They rounded the back side of the building and saw shattered glass all over the pavement. There wasn’t much in the way of grass or dirt so following any kind of trail wasn’t going to happen. A sharp hiss of pain reached their ears and they looked up at the same time. They could see people passing between the buildings.

  Together they ran after them, Burke calling out, “CCPD! Stop!”

  They ran and closed some of the distance between them and the thieves. Burke repeated his order and in reply, someone sent a bullet winging in their direction, splitting the air between them.

  They both darted to the side, taking their eyes off the ground in front of them. When they came to the next open alley, Pilar stopped, listening for any sounds echoing off the buildings around them.

  “Follow me.” Burke gestured to her and pointed in the opposite direction. “Come on! They went this way!”

  She shook her head and jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “I hear footsteps in that direction.”

  “They’re not going to split up. Let’s go.”

  Her instinct rode her hard, but she remembered that Kate had already been called to mat for her once. Causing a problem on her first day back after her leave? That wasn’t going to look good for Kate.

  “Okay.” She followed him, taking time to look behind them every ten feet or so, but it was hard. Burke’s boots were pounding on the pavement and with that echoing off the walls, she was having trouble listening for sounds around them as well. She heard more footsteps, but it could just have been an echo of his steps as well.

  Her head was almost swimming with noise and her heart was pounding wildly in her chest.

  When Burke came to a sudden stop, she almost collided with him.

  “How did we lose them?” He sounded mad... at her.

  “I don’t know.”

  “If you weren’t so damn slow.”

  Heaven help her, she wanted to clap her hand over his mouth and listen.

  He huffed and grumbled at her. “We should just go back and-”

  Pilar lifted her gun and threw out her arm. She connected with Burke's shoulder, pushing him away as she fired. She hit the man square in the chest and his bullet was fired up above their heads as he fell backward onto the ground.

  She heard a shout behind her and turned, but it was a second too late. She didn’t know who shot her or exactly where he hit, but one moment she was on her feet and the next she was flat on the pavement staring up at the night sky.

  15

  Nurse Danielynn Ichihara wheeled in a brand-new cart of sterilized instruments and supplies, past the nurses’ station. Roan heard her sigh and turned in her direction. “You need a break?”

  She shook her head. “No more than you do, or anyone else on the floor.”

  Standing up behind the desk, Nurse Thuy Nguyen lowered her voice to a near-whisper. "No kidding. If I didn’t know better, I’d think it was a full moon tonight.”

  Dani leaned closer and whispered. “I was wondering that too and checked when I had a chance to pull out my phone in the restroom.”

  Roan shuddered a little. “That’s a little...”

  “TMI, Doctor Ashley?” Thuy shook her head. “You mean to tell me guys don’t take their phones into the restroom with them?”

  Wincing a little, he lifted his eyes from the chart he was working on. “Most of the time we... uh-”

  Thuy waved him off. “I get it. Your hands are busy.”

  Dani pushed her cart on and Roan went back to his report.

  The p
hone rang and Thuy picked it up from the cradle, tucking it between her shoulder and her cheek as she wrote down a few notes. “How far out?” She scribbled furiously and Roan paused for a second. Had she just looked at him out of the corner of her eye?

  “GSW chest. Possible collapsed lung. Uh huh. Anything else? No? Okay. We’ll be waiting.” Hanging up the phone, she ripped the notepaper off the pad and started to walk around the desk.

  Roan held out his hand, but she kept her gaze away from his face and continued walking. He jogged after her, put a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll take that.”

  She looked up at him and he saw how pale she looked, but she didn’t give him the paper. “I’m sorry, Doctor, you can’t.”

  With that non-committal comment, she moved around him and practically ran down the hallway.

  Roan moved down the hall and out the automatic doors. If there was an ambulance with a gunshot victim coming in, he was going to be there to meet it. It didn’t take longer than thirty seconds for him to hear the sirens.

  It wasn’t long after that when he saw the lights reflecting off of buildings. They’d built Cole Medical Center on raised ground so they had a good view of the surrounding areas. As the ambulance turned onto the road leading up to the ER, he felt a hand on his shoulder.

  Turning around he saw Kay looking at him. It wasn’t unheard of to see the head of Emergency Services working the floor. Kay was always on hand to help, but he’d never seen her look at him in that way before. She felt sorry for him. That was clear, but why?

  The doors opened behind him and he saw Baldwin, Danielynn, and Thuy step out into the night air and everything fell into place.

  He knew it wasn’t Kate. No, he’d seen her earlier, and if it had been her, Kay would have just come out and told him. This was different.

  This was his worst nightmare.

  Proof that he’d been right. It wasn’t even cold comfort, knowing that the ambulance less than a hundred feet away held the woman he loved.

  “Roan.”

  He tore his gaze away and looked down at Kay.

  “I think you should go to the lounge. We’ll get you... later.”

  “No.” He spoke without a thought. He didn’t need to know what would be best. He knew what was right. “I’m staying.”

  “Roan, you can’t-”

  “I’m not going to treat her, but if you think I’m not going to stay close by, you’re insane.”

  She nodded, slowly. “Fine. Just stand to the side. Let us take care of this.”

  He didn’t answer her in words. He just stepped back and kept going until he bumped straight into the wall.

  The ambulance backed in and the doors were thrown open. The EMT inside jumped down and started shouting out all the pertinent information that the ER staff needed to know.

  What they didn’t say was how she liked to hog the bed. Or how she looked when she lazed in the hot water of her tub. And they had no way to know that when she laughed so much that she couldn’t control it, she ended up almost choking on her laughter.

  But that didn’t matter to the people who were wheeling her past him and into the ER. They were focused on her and that’s where their heads needed to be. As the automatic doors closed the driver from the ambulance came up beside him with a worried look. “You okay, doc? You need to sit down?”

  “No,” he shook his head. “I... I don’t need to sit down. Thanks.”

  Shrugging, the EMT didn’t look all that convinced. “Okay, just try to sit down before you fall down. Yeah?”

  He moved away and started cleaning up the back of the ambulance. Roan had to move then. He didn’t need to see the bloodstained refuse in the back of the ambulance. He didn’t need any concrete reminder of what he’d just seen.

  What he’d just realized.

  That even if he did walk away from what was building between them, he’d never be able to treat her again. His hands were already shaking. He needed to do something. He needed to do something to keep his mind off the woman they were wheeling into the elevator and then straight into an Operating Room.

  Her brother.

  Shit. He needed to contact her brother. It would take him time to fly up to Center City from San Antonio. He was breaking a bunch of rules, but that didn’t matter. He’d already disqualified himself from her care. The least he could do was let her family know so that they could be with her in case...

  In case.

  “Fuck!” He kicked the trashcan and was satisfied to see it bounce and topple over before it rolled into the bushes. Striding into the ER he went straight to the nurse’s station and pulled a chair over to one of the computers. He needed Pilar’s next of kin information from her records. He had every hope that the surgeons would heal her wounds, but her family needed to know. And he was going to be the one to tell them.

  Special Agent Vicente Bravo walked into the ER less than four hours later, his steps tempered by the woman at his side. She carried a baby who was asleep on her shoulder. Roan stepped into the hallway to speak to them. “I’m Roan Ashley.”

  He nodded. “I’m Vicente. This is my wife Sloane, and our baby, Lora.”

  Roan jumped right in. “She’s still in surgery, but they should be done by the time I take you upstairs.”

  Vicente gestured down the hall. “Show us the way.”

  Roan led them down the hall to the elevators. He could leave the floor since they’d called in another doctor to finish off his shift. Kay knew he wasn’t going to be any good to anyone with Pilar in the operating room. It seemed that everyone knew him better than himself.

  They kept their voices down in the elevator, Roan’s gaze straying to the baby sleeping away on her mother’s shoulder.

  “My sister Kate can tell you more about how it happened. I can tell you what I know about the surgery. Other than that. I’m sorry.”

  The look Vincente gave him told him that wasn’t good enough, but he wasn’t going to push the issue. At least not in front of his wife, or maybe it was because of the baby.

  The baby that he couldn’t help but compare to Pilar. The shape of their faces were the same, even though the baby’s coloring was more like her mother, he felt like he was getting a glimpse into the past.

  The elevator doors opened and they walked out together. Kate was in the hallway outside the OR. She walked over and offered her hand to Vicente, giving him a strong shake as she introduced herself and then cooed over the baby. She looked much more comfortable with Pilar’s family than he felt. Wanting to avoid any issues, he started to step back, but Kate put her hand on his lower back and held him in place.

  He hadn’t talked to his sister about the shooting and wasn’t planning to. At least not until he knew Pilar was in recovery. He was barely holding onto his anger, and his frustration was wearing on him.

  Gesturing over to a bench down the hall, Kate walked them over. Roan watched the gentle way that Vicente helped his wife sit down, and how his hand smoothed over the curly cap of mahogany colored curls. He felt like he was seeing the future in an odd way, but he couldn’t consider that, not at that moment.

  Kate was already explaining the situation. Roan’s ears didn’t hear everything she was saying, but he caught the gist of it. Pilar had been shot protecting another officer. Ironically, that officer was Burke Pelton.

  “She shot one man who was aiming at her partner. As she turned to look for other suspects, another perpetrator shot her. The bullet hit just above the edge of the vest near her shoulder blade.”

  “And the perpetrators?” Vicente’s voice was deceptively calm.

  “The one that Pilar shot was pronounced dead at the scene. We’ve rounded up another three and from what I understand they’re all trying to pin the blame on each other.”

  The nearly stoic FBI agent folded his arms across his chest. “Tell me you have more than confessions and finger pointing?”

  Kate didn’t bristle at his tone. She looked him straight in the eye and shook her head. “They’ve all b
een tested for GSR and we know which one-”

  “I want to talk to him.”

  Kate lowered her chin and shook her head. “Out of the question.”

  “No, it’s not. He shot my sister, and I’m going to talk to him. You’re not going to stop me!”

  “’Cente.”

  A hand grasped at his coat and Roan watched as Sloane stood up. She pressed a gentle kiss to his cheek and spoke softly to him.

  Roan watched as the anger in Vicente’s face softened, and he saw tears in the other man’s eyes. Unfolding his arms, Vicente wrapped them around his wife and child, managing to cling to them without waking the baby.

  Kate wrapped her arm around Roan’s waist, her fingers digging into his side. He didn’t wait for her to move. Instead, he turned and wrapped his arms around Kate. The moment he felt her shake against him he lost the battle to hold in his pain. Gasping in a breath, he pulled Kate closer and clung to his sister as pain coursed through his body. “Oh God.”

  Kate hugged him tight, rubbing her hands over his back as he struggled to stay on his feet.

  “She’s going to be okay.” Kate’s voice was soft in his ears, but it didn’t reach all the way down where he ached. “She’s going to be okay.”

  She’s going to be okay.

  He repeated the words over and over in his head, but he couldn’t quite feel the truth in them.

  The door to the OR opened and everyone turned. Doctor Ed Lane stepped out and surveyed the group. “Is her family here?”

  Roan watched Vicente and Sloane move past him, and he had to tamp down the urge to stand beside them. It wasn’t his place. He’d failed her.

  He’d put up a wall between them. He’d stayed away from her after the robbery. He didn’t deserve to stand beside the people who really loved her.

  As soon as he saw relief on their faces, he did the only thing he could do.

  He walked away.

  “Roan?”

  He heard Kate call after him, but he didn’t stop. Even when she caught up and put her hand on his arm, he kept moving.

  “Where are you going?”