Home > A Thin Disguise(5)

A Thin Disguise(5)
Author: Catherine Bybee

“Ha! Even as my teacher you didn’t stand a chance of telling me what to do. Now leave the casino.”

Even though he knew she was right, he grumbled and bitched before hanging up.

He left the inside of the hotel, but that didn’t mean Leo was gone.

And when the blonde in shorts walked out and headed toward the Strip, Leo abandoned his post and followed her.

Yeah, maybe it was creepy, but something told him to keep his pace.

It was the first time a woman turned his head this much since . . . well, in a long time.

And now his flirting had resulted in her unconscious with a gunshot wound.

Her breathing was steady and fast, and although there wasn’t an excessive amount of blood on the pavement, it didn’t mean she wasn’t bleeding on the inside.

When the paramedics arrived, Leo finally stood back.

It took only a few minutes for the team to expose her chest and find the hole the bullet had put in her.

The older medic on the team found a small wallet in her pocket and a cell phone.

Once they put a collar on her neck and had her on a gurney, they were rushing toward the ambulance.

Leo followed and climbed inside after them.

“Has she been drinking? Drugs?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

He needed to call this in. Let his boss know what was going on. The person who did this was likely long gone by now. Or waiting for another shot.

The medic spread his fingers and pushed around on her head.

That’s when they noticed a wig.

Leo looked closer as they attempted to remove the blonde and reveal the brunette. Because some of the blonde strands were trapped inside the cervical collar, the medic found a pair of scissors and started cutting at the thing.

He pulled bits of the wig away, and with it, a significant amount of blood flowed.

A moment of panic struck Leo. “Was she shot in the head?”

The medic looked closer as the driver wove through traffic.

“I don’t think so. I don’t see a hole. Probably happened when she went down.”

Minutes later they backed into an ambulance bay at the hospital.

Leo jumped out first, and the medics rushed past him to the waiting staff members, who hurried the woman out of sight.

He walked in and stopped at the trauma bay doors while the emergency room staff did their jobs.

“Damn it!” He pulled out his phone to call his boss.

Blood stained the tips of his fingers.

 

Gunshot victims always generated a lot of activity in emergency rooms. But bullets put into people while in the presence of the police or, in Leo’s case, a federal agent generated a small army.

Las Vegas police had a good showing of force, and a few agents from Leo’s team joined him. Leo’s boss was en route to an airport along with that small army.

“Who’s the girl?” Kelsey Fitzpatrick, or Fitz, as everyone called her, had partnered up with him as soon as he finished his undercover assignment six months ago. They both lived in Southern California and were in Vegas for the trial.

Fitz was eight years older than him and had celebrated her fortieth birthday a few years back by divorcing her husband of ten years.

They were both in transition, and so far, the partnering was working out.

But the way Fitz was looking at him, with her sharp eyes and hair pulled back to the nape of her neck, Leo felt as if her words were more of an accusation than a question.

“Just a girl.”

Fitz looked down the length of her nose with a practiced stare.

“I swear.”

“She come to you, or you go to her?”

Leo sat back in the waiting room chair. The staff had designated a small space for the officers and agents to come and go. Isolated and out of the way.

The woman they were talking about had been rushed from the ER to the OR where they were working on her.

“I approached her.”

“Why?”

He’d be asking the same questions if it were Fitz who’d nearly gotten shot.

“She’s attractive.”

Those eyes that were focused on the tip of her nose closed, and Fitz shook her head. “You were picking her up?”

“No.” That wasn’t exactly the truth. “I was looking for a name . . . maybe a phone number.”

Fitz wasn’t amused. “Trying to hook up.”

“For later. After the case.”

“Tell me again how she went down.”

Leo sighed, told the story again. “We were talking. She was facing the oncoming traffic. Suddenly she looked behind me and shouted. She must have seen the shooter. She grabbed me, and the next thing I knew we were both on the pavement.”

“How many shots were fired?”

“Couldn’t tell you. I didn’t hear the shot. They obviously used a silencer. The people around us didn’t react until the car sped away.” If he concentrated hard enough, he could remember the dull thud of a gunshot through a silencer, but the commotion of being pulled to the ground and tires . . . yeah, he wouldn’t swear to what he heard.

Fitz started to pace. A habit when she was thinking. “Did she push you away, or pull you toward her?”

“She didn’t push. She grabbed my arm.” He looked at his forearm as if seeing her fingers gripping him.

“Let’s hope she wakes up so we can question what she saw.”

Leo ran a hand through his hair. “Let’s just hope she wakes up. We both know that gun was pointed at me. If she hadn’t yelled, and I hadn’t moved . . .”

“I don’t know what the hell you were thinking going in there after Navi.”

“I was watching. Seeing who he talked to . . . met with. It’s called investigating.”

“Doesn’t do any good if you’re seen.”

Leo knew Fitz’s words were going to be repeated once their boss arrived.

“Can’t imagine Navi is dumb enough to try this after talking with me face-to-face.” Mob bosses might be complete scumbags, but they weren’t stupid.

“Unless the alibi for him and his men is rock solid.”

“I’m sure it is.”

“Which means you almost got popped for nothing. Did you at least get her name?”

“I was working on it.” The hospital had her listed as a Jane Doe. The wallet in her pocket had some cash and a casino voucher for two hundred and change. No ID. They weren’t able to get into her cell phone without facial recognition, and no one thought to try and unlock it until after she’d been wheeled off to the OR.

That had been two hours ago and no word on her condition.

“I need a cigarette,” he said aloud.

“You don’t smoke.”

He’d quit two years prior, but that didn’t stop his desire to smoke.

Leo pushed out of the chair and rolled his head around in an effort to clear the kinks.

It didn’t work.

The door to the waiting room opened, and the surgeon walked in, still wearing blue surgical scrubs complete with a hat. “She’s going to make it,” he said.

Leo released a long breath and sat back down.

“The bullet made a bit of a mess before exiting her body. A centimeter more and she would have likely bled out on the street before getting here. She’s lucky.”

Hot Books
» House of Earth and Blood (Crescent City #1)
» A Kingdom of Flesh and Fire
» From Blood and Ash (Blood And Ash #1)
» A Million Kisses in Your Lifetime
» Deviant King (Royal Elite #1)
» Den of Vipers
» House of Sky and Breath (Crescent City #2)
» The Queen of Nothing (The Folk of the Air #
» Sweet Temptation
» The Sweetest Oblivion (Made #1)
» Chasing Cassandra (The Ravenels #6)
» Wreck & Ruin
» Steel Princess (Royal Elite #2)
» Twisted Hate (Twisted #3)
» The Play (Briar U Book 3)