Then he was moving, less concerned about checking every dark space and more concerned about getting to the woman. Running through one store after the other without thought to the fact that there might be a bad guy waiting to shoot him was reckless and stupid. But when someone was in trouble, helping them was the only thing his head would let him do. It was the way he was wired.
Diego let his instincts guide him as he worked his way through the confusing twists and turns of the shops, running all the way to the far end of the interconnected strip mall without seeing anyone.
Where the hell is she?
He turned to retrace his steps when he heard a soft whimper, so quiet he barely made it out over the thud of his own heart. Sure it came from somewhere to his left, he headed in that direction, keeping his flashlight and weapon pointed forward as he slipped around a metal storage rack.
Three dark-haired women huddled on the floor behind it, holding on to one another as tears ran down their faces. None of them could have been more than twenty-five years old, but the one in the middle looked a hell of a lot younger than that as she lay between them, blood soaking through the white blouse she wore and the yellow rain slicker she had on over that. In the glow of his flashlight, he could see she was in pain and pale as death. Crap, she was almost certainly bleeding out. Even as he watched, her eyes fluttered open and closed as she fought off her body’s attempt to pass out.
He hurried over, dropping to a knee beside them. Still holding onto the flashlight, he reached out and gently pulled back the edge of the injured girl’s raincoat to check the bullet wound in her stomach. Oh, shit, it looked bad. If she didn’t get help soon, she was done for. Thumbing his radio, he requested EMS with air evac.
“Officer Martinez,” he said, quickly introducing himself to the trio of women. “Where are the people who did this?”
The woman on the left shook her head, gray eyes darting left and right like a terrified rabbit. “We ran in here to get away from them, but they found us. They’ve been messing with us for the last ten minutes, saying all kinds of psycho stuff they were going to do to us.”
“We tried to hide, but one of the guys found us,” the other woman added. She had pink streaks in her straight hair and a diamond stud in her nose. “He didn’t even say anything. He just walked up and shot Tina, then took off. Maybe they left when they heard you come in.”
Diego hoped she was right, but his gut told him there was no chance the men had left. More likely, they were hiding somewhere, waiting to make their move. Hell, they might be close enough to hear him and the women talking. The smart thing to do would be to stay here and protect the women until backup arrived, but he knew if he did that, Tina would be dead.
Holstering his weapon, he handed the flashlight to the girl with the pink streaks in her hair, then leaned forward to scoop up Tina in his arms.
“Shh,” he whispered when she groaned in pain. “I know this hurts like hell, but I have to get you out of here. You just have to hold on. Can you do that for me, Tina?”
She murmured something that might have been agreement, but he wasn’t sure. Regardless, he headed back the way he’d come, the other two women close behind. He stopped at each doorway, poking his head out to make sure the coast was clear. After more than a few times of doing that, he started thinking maybe the girls were right about those guys bailing.
He was halfway across a store that must have once carried ladies’ fashions—at least judging by all the female mannequins eerily watching them—when he heard a crunching sound. He snapped his head around to see a man standing in the shadows.
Diego had a fraction of a second to shove the two women with him aside and twist his body around in an attempt to protect the girl in his arms before the sound of a large caliber handgun going off shattered the darkness. A bullet hit him in the back, and his vision went dark as pain engulfed him.
“Run!” he shouted even as another gunshot rang out and a red-hot lance of agony sliced across the top of his right shoulder inches from his spine. “Go…go…go!”
He was forced to stay behind the two women running and losing their collective minds in front of him. Tina screamed in his arms, the jostling too much for her, but there was nothing he could do to avoid it. They had to run, or they’d all die.
When the shadow of a man emerged out of the darkness ahead of him, Diego didn’t pause to think. He simply tucked Tina closer to his body and lowered his shoulder, slamming into the guy at full speed. There was a grunt followed by a weapon going off, then all three girls were screaming.
Diego felt something stab through his stomach above his left hip, right below his tactical vest. When the pain showed up this time, there was no doubt in his mind that he was screwed.
He went down hard, Tina slipping from his arms to tumble across the floor. The fact that she didn’t make a sound as she skidded across the linoleum and thudded into a pile of boxes worried him, but then the man he’d crashed into—a big, burly guy matching the bartender’s description—pointed his gun in Diego’s direction, and that situation sort of required all his attention. He had to stay alive long enough to get the women out of here.
Diego lunged forward, landing on the man and shoving the pistol in his hand aside as it went off again. Out the corner of his eye, he saw the two women whose names he still didn’t know scramble to their feet and run. He only prayed they didn’t run straight into the second guy.
A punch came his way and he ducked, letting the blow graze the side of his head instead of taking it straight in the face. The move was purely instinctive on his part. Just like it was instinct that had him throwing a punch of his own. Something crunched under his fist and the man let out a grunt of pain. Hoping that meant the guy was at least temporarily stunned, Diego reached for his own gun.
The flash of a blade glinted in the dim light coming from the street, and he twisted to the side, his weapon forgotten. The knife plunged deep into his right shoulder, bringing with it a whole hell of a lot of agony. Diego had never been shot before tonight—or stabbed—but he’d take a bullet over a blade any day. His shoulder was on frigging fire.
Diego rolled one way and then the other, managing to get the weapon dislodged from his shoulder and punching the man in the face again. He was able to keep the man’s pistol away from him, but the knife came close to his throat more than once before he was able to get in a punch to the man’s temple that took the fight right out of him.
As Diego pulled out his handcuffs, he realized he couldn’t feel the rough metal under his fingers. In fact, he couldn’t feel his legs either. Breathing seemed to suddenly be a lot more trouble than it was worth, too. And the pain spreading through his body was way worse than before.
That was probably really bad.
The guy he’d knocked unconscious was slowly coming to, but Diego somehow managed to get the gun and knife shoved away before cuffing him.