Actual Stop (Agent O’Connor #1)(81)

My fingers twitched on the door, and I tried not to roll my eyes as I clenched my jaw. I caught movement out of the corner of my eye and turned, but it was just the shift guy who’d had to take the stairs barreling toward the car. He took the door from me with a grateful look.

“Thanks. That elevator was packed.”

I smiled. “No problem. That’s always the way.”

I clapped him on the shoulder as I scooted swiftly by to take up position next to my own car, careful not to touch the president as I slid past him. I’d made it maybe four steps before I ran almost bodily into Lucia. My pulse jumped, and an icy stab of fear pierced my heart. What the f*ck? Why was she this close to the limo? I mean, I know some NYPD guys can’t help themselves around a protectee and tend to spend more time watching them than actually doing their jobs, but this was too much. She knew better than to step into the protective bubble. Especially now.

“Luce, what the hell are you doing? Get to your car. We can finish this when we reach the next stop.” I chanced a quick peek over my shoulder toward the president, who was now lingering in the limo’s open doorway shaking someone’s hand.

I moved to push past Lucia, but she grabbed my arm and spun me to face her. I saw a blur and barely had time to register the rage on her face before I caught her left hook on the right side of my jaw.

Pain, jagged and white-hot, exploded behind my eyes, and I heard a loud crack when her fist connected with my face. It must’ve been one hell of a hit, too, because I felt a sharp stab near where my right shoulder met my neck as my head snapped to the side. Not being prepared to be sucker punched by a woman I cared about, I was a little off-balance and stumbled at the impact, smacking the area just above the outside edge of my left eye against the open trunk of the limo where a staffer had been loading bags.

I blinked, dazed for a second or two before I dragged myself up off my knees to yell at her. I winced at the agony in my shoulder as I used the bumper of the car to push myself up. The staffer was staring at me like I was a moron, and I was starting to feel like one.

I glanced toward the limo door, pleased that the staffer was the only one who appeared to have seen what’d just happened. Good. The last thing I needed was for my boss or the protectee to watch me get laid out by an officer of the law. Although we were standing so close to them, I had no idea how they could’ve missed it. Perhaps it was tough for them to see through the press of ever-present hangers-on that always had to surround the president wherever he went.

Embracing the blistering fury roiling beneath the surface of my skin, I sought out Lucia. The angry words died on my lips when I saw her lying on the ground flat on her back. I frowned. How the hell had she ended up there? And where had all that blood come from? A whole lot of it was pouring out of the area near her jugular notch. Holy shit!

“Gun, gun, gun!!” someone screamed frantically. It took me a second to realize it was me.

I dropped to my knees, straddling Lucia’s body, and covered the wound in her neck with my hands as I felt two hard hits to my back, like someone had whacked me with a sledgehammer. I glanced over my shoulder but didn’t see anyone.

I shifted my weight to my right knee and leaned in that direction to give myself room to turn Lucia to my left and into the car, but as I did, I felt another jolt on the back of my right hip. I rolled back left and tried to shimmy Lucia and myself closer to the limited cover the car provided, but not before I felt a painful slash on the outside of my right thigh.

I looked up again and saw that the working shift was busily attending to their “cover and evacuate” protocol with the protectee. As I watched, the detail leader shoved the president’s friend out of the way, elbowed a few staffers, and hurled the president bodily into the car before leaping in after him and pulling the door shut. All around me were shouts and scuffling and car doors slamming. Someone’s foot caught the edge of my biceps in their attempt to escape, and I cried out as the impact caused my shoulder to burn.

I gazed down into Lucia’s eyes and saw her terror. My heart seized, and bile rose in the back of my throat. I applied more pressure to her wound with my hands, trying to staunch the crimson flow without suffocating her. My own breathing was ragged, just this side of hyperventilation, and the horror on her face scared me.

“Go, go, go!” someone was shouting.

More car doors slammed, and the motorcade started to take off with a squeal of tires. Unfortunately, with such an enormous motorcade, it took what felt like an eternity for it to actually get rolling. It probably wasn’t more than ten or fifteen seconds but seemed like forever.

The entire situation was surreal, so close to mirroring a training scenario that I half-expected to hear a booming voice yelling, “Actual stop,” halting the action around me so we could huddle up and debrief. I would’ve given anything for that to have happened, but unfortunately no JJRTC instructor was waiting to save us by calling an end to this nightmare.

I was shaking now, perhaps a result of exertion, shock, or pure terror. Not that it mattered. It was becoming increasingly difficult for me to hold myself up enough to keep steady pressure on Lucia’s throat without cutting off her air supply completely. I wanted so badly to just collapse on top of her and close my eyes. I had to force myself not to give in.

“Luce, hang in there, baby,” I told her, trying to appear calm.

I tried to use my elbows and my knees to scoot us closer to the front of the PI car, still sitting at the curb next to us. I winced and sucked in a harsh breath at the raging inferno the motion produced in my right shoulder, clenching my teeth. Why was the car even still sitting there? Why hadn’t it started rolling with the rest of the motorcade? But I didn’t care, as it provided at least a little cover.