Montana SEAL (Brotherhood Protectors #1)(38)

“Hank. I’m okay, but I’m afraid Carla isn’t. I barely got out of the car before it caught fire.

Hank frowned. At first, he couldn’t comprehend helping the woman who’d tried to kill Sadie and Fin. When his heart stopped racing, he knew he couldn’t leave the woman to die in the falling snow. “Show me where she is.”

Sadie took his hand, and led him toward the burning vehicle, and around to the other side where the doors stood open. “What the hell?” Sadie looked around. “She was here.”

“But not as dead as you thought I was.” Carla stepped out of the shadows, pointing the handgun at Sadie, blood dripping from a gash in her forehead. “That wreck should have killed you.”

“Carla, give me the gun.” Hank held out his hand.

“No f*cking way.” Her hand shook, but she refused to back down. “That bitch has to die.” She aimed at Sadie.

Hank couldn’t bank on the woman missing again. He threw himself at Carla, hitting her low, like a linebacker, plowing into her belly. The gun went off as they both hit the ground.

For a moment, Hank lay still, waiting for the searing pain of a gunshot wound. When none came, he leaned up on his elbows and stared down at Carla.

Her face was pale in the glow of the burning vehicle. When Hank pressed his fingers to the base of her throat, he could feel a weak, but steady pulse.

Sadie hurried to his side and bent over Carla. “Is she…”

“She’s alive.” He grabbed the gun from the ground and handed it to Sadie. “Whatever you do, don’t let her get her hands on that.”

“Gotcha.” Sadie slipped the magazine from the weapon and cleared the chamber.

Hank rose onto his haunches, his leg screaming with pain, the scar tissue stretching, threatening to pull apart. Scooping his hands beneath Carla, he lifted her into his arms, when he’d rather be lifting Sadie and carrying her out of the woods.

Step by painful step, he climbed the hill, slipping twice. If not for Sadie, walking up the hill beside him, steadying him when he would have fallen, he wouldn’t have made it.

Fin stood at the edge of the road. “Carla?” His gaze met Sadie’s.

“She’s alive, but pretty banged up,” Sadie said.

Fin hobbled to the back door of the SUV and flung it open. “I was just about to climb into the driver’s seat, and go to town for that ambulance.” He stood back so that Hank could settle Carla in the back seat. Then Fin climbed in with his wife.

Hank closed the back door and held open the front door for Sadie.

She paused and leaned up on her toes to kiss him. “We have a lot to talk about.”

“Yes. We do.” Hank wrapped his arm around her waist and hugged her to him, his mouth finding hers, kissing her hard. “But first, we have to get to the hospital.”

Sadie smiled, her eyes filling with tears. Then she slid into the seat and buckled her belt.

The arctic wind found Hank, blowing through the thin shirt he wore, sinking all the way through his skin to his bones. He and Sadie needed to talk, but what did she want to talk about? Was she going to push him away again?

He limped around to the driver’s side, the pain returning to his leg in full force. He gritted his teeth and climbed into the SUV.

All the way to Eagle Rock, he held it together, refusing to start the conversation with Sadie until everyone was taken care of. The best urgent medical care Eagle Rock had to offer was the volunteer fire department’s first responders. The town was too small to afford a trauma center or hospital, and, as they discovered when they pulled into the station’s parking lot, the town’s only doctor was on vacation.

Carla and Fin were stabilized and loaded for transport to the hospital in Bozeman. Hank learned that Allie had heard the explosion and noticed the light in the sky from the White Oak Ranch. When she’d called the ranch’s number, and didn’t get an answer, she’d dialed 911 to have the fire department take a look. They were preparing to send the full contingent in response to handle the blaze. Volunteers were already on their way. Hopefully, they would be able to save the barn even though the house, and everything in it, were a complete loss.

Sadie leaned into Hank, tears falling silently down her face as she listened to the emergency medical technician’s account of what had happened since they’d left the ranch. “All the pictures of my parents. Their wedding rings. My grandmother’s rocking chair…”

“Things can be replaced. People can’t.” He brushed the stray strands of hair away from her damp cheeks. “And nothing can take away your memories.”

She smiled. “I know all that. But it still hurts.”

Hank’s heart squeezed. He wished he could take away the pain of her loss.

He and Sadie followed behind the ambulance, both quiet on the trip into Bozeman.

While the emergency room doctors worked on Fin and Carla, Hank insisted on someone checking Sadie over.

Allie arrived while Hank waited for Sadie.

“Thank goodness you’re all right.” She hugged him and stood back, checking him from head to foot. “What the hell happened?”

He filled her in on everything, his gaze shifting to the ER doors every time they opened.

“And Sadie? Will this make her cut her visit short and go back to LA?”

“I hope not.” Hank wouldn’t let himself believe that after all they’d been through together, she’d leave him behind. But he didn’t know for certain, and it was eating away at his insides.