Cold Blooded

by Toni Anderson

  Pip tried not to worry while helping to take Fuller’s weight. “She lost a lot of blood.”

  Hunt nodded. He raised Fuller’s shirt and revealed two seeping bullet holes.

  “I think the fact she isn’t dead already means it didn’t hit anything vital.” Pip was searching for something positive to get out of this situation. There was still a very good chance this woman might die. It reminded her of how much good law enforcement agents risked when they headed to work every single day.

  Hunt checked Fuller’s pulse. “Weak, but there.”

  “It’s a miracle.” Her lungs felt tight. “Did you find Adrian?” She caught a faint whiff of smoke and wanted to cling to Hunt and never let go.

  “Not yet.”

  She forced herself to say calmly, “The building is on fire I take it?”

  Hunt nodded.

  “You came looking for us anyway.” She smiled. “I don’t know whether to be horrified or impressed.”

  “Please be impressed.” His gaze held hers, more focused this time.

  “I’m sorry for leaving your house.” She glanced around wildly. “Really sorry.”

  He nodded again.

  “I’m so sorry I betrayed your confidence with Adrian. He was acting a little unhinged and I was trying to calm him down and convince him Cindy hadn’t cheated on him.”

  Hunt nodded. “We’ll talk about it later.”

  That sounded ominous but considering he’d risked exposure to freaking anthrax to save her and Fuller she couldn’t complain. The water slowed, then stopped. A quiet snick as the doors released.

  “Okay, let’s get the hell out of here.”

  Hunt carried Agent Fuller, but made Pip hold onto his belt as the smoke started to get thicker. “I don’t want to lose you.”

  She told herself not to read anything into those words. What future could they hope for after this mess?

  She stumbled along behind him, following blindly through a maze of gray corridors thick with smoke. Finally, they got to a door with an exit sign and he went through it backwards.

  It opened into a cavernous loading bay and precious fresh air. Flashing lights appeared. Uniformed cops and firefighters milled around, staring as the three of them stumbled through the doorway.

  Someone wrapped a blanket around her and rolled up her sleeve, driving a needle home. She was so numb it didn’t even hurt. She was hustled onto a stretcher and loaded inside an ambulance. She watched a group of people hovering around the female agent. Fuller was getting a vaccination shot, as was Hunt. Someone was setting up an IV. Activity seemed to intensify and all of a sudden someone was starting compressions.

  It took her right back to finding Cindy’s body on Monday morning and trying to revive her dead friend.

  “Please live.” Pip closed her eyes and prayed. She opened them and they were whisking Fuller into the back of a different ambulance, someone riding astride trying to get Fuller’s heart beating again. The bravery of these people, the constant danger they faced every day they went to work hit her with renewed force. The prospect of facing that worry for Hunt every single day…

  Her throat burned from holding back emotion.

  She turned her head and spotted Dexter in the back of a squad car, smirking. Out of nowhere, Adrian Lightfoot walked up to the window of the police car and fired three shots into the man who’d killed her best friend. She jolted in time with each bullet. He raised his hand and Pip was terrified he was going to blow his own brains out but instead he dropped the gun onto the roof of the squad car and put his hands on his head. He fell to his knees and was swarmed by armed officers. A woman screamed.

  A redhead Pip remembered as Pete’s PA tried to run towards Dexter. The woman he’d been seeing behind Cindy’s back their entire relationship, she recalled. She was in handcuffs. Judging from her grief she’d actually cared about the asshole.

  Pip stared out at the low hung moon shining bright in the sky, same moon she and Cindy had lain on the deck and watched so many times at the cottage. “See you soon, Cindy.”

  A star shot across the sky just as she started to fall asleep.

  “Oh, no you don’t, Pip.” Hunt’s voice cut through the dense fog that was trying to take over her brain. Her throat hurt.

  He went to kiss her, but she turned away. “Don’t. I might infect you.”

  He leaned over her and suddenly she realized the ambulance was moving and they were traveling fast, sirens blaring.

  “What the hell were you thinking going there without backup?” he asked, angry now.

  She frowned. It had seemed to make sense at the time, but looking back? Maybe not the most sensible thing she’d ever done. She caught his gaze. “I guess I wanted to prove I wasn’t the bad guy. I wanted to prove I had guts.”

  His lips disappeared as he visibly held back emotion. “If you weren’t so sick I’d tell you how full of shit that is. You didn’t need to prove yourself. Not to me. Not to the FBI. You hadn’t done anything wrong.”

  She squeezed his fingers. “I’m sorry.” Apparently, the words were easier to say with practice. “How is Agent Fuller?”

  Hunt’s expression became even more grim. “She’s alive. That’s all I know right now.”

  “She’s strong.” Pip tried to comfort him. “She’ll come through this.”

  Her eyes started to close, no matter how hard she tried to keep them open. What she did know was Hunt held her hand all the way to the hospital.

  * * *

  Hunt was ready to punch the agent they’d put on Pip’s room. She had a fever and had been placed in complete isolation. He’d changed, made his report, and rushed back to the hospital, only to find the room barred and a guy the size of the Empire State Building guarding the door.

  Hunt was pretty sure he could take him.

  But then he’d lose his job for sure. And he wanted to keep his job and keep Pip. He wanted it all.

  The fire department had been unable to gain control of the fire at Universal Biotech. Although Simon Corker denied it, the arson investigator figured someone had poured gasoline somewhere on the second floor and purposefully lit up the building. Given the nature of everything inside they’d decided to let it burn, killing the hazardous microbes in the raging inferno that developed.

  Simon Corker, Bea Grantham, Angela Naysmith and Adrian Lightfoot were all in custody. Pete Dexter was DOA.

  Not that Hunt gave a shit. He hoped the sonofabitch roasted in hell.

  “How is she, Doc?” Hunt caught a specialist coming out of Pip’s room. He could see inside but she was covered by a plastic tent so he couldn’t see her features.

  “She’s sleeping, Agent Kincaid. She has a fever and a concussion so we are monitoring her carefully. She’s received more vaccine, which should defeat any pathogens in her system before they start producing toxins, but it’s going to take a few days to know for certain. How are you feeling?”

  Hunt looked sideways at the WWF bouncer. “Thwarted.”

  The doctor grinned and patted his arm. “Look, it’s going to take time and there is really nothing you can do here. If you write her a note I’ll make sure she gets it.”

  Hunt nodded. Good idea. Maybe he could get on paper some of what he was feeling.

  Mollified, he went in search of Will Griffin.

  Fuller was still in surgery. He put his arm over his buddy’s hunched frame as the agent sat in the waiting room, skin waxy with worry.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do if she dies, Hunt.”

  “She’s not going to die.”

  But the clock ticked loudly as they continued to wait for the surgeon to get out of the operating room. Bourne came in a few minutes later and gave them a look. Although, really, what else could they have done? Hunt and Pip had helped save their fellow agent, but the longer the surgery dragged on, the more worried they all became.

  Finally, the surgeon entered the room, but they knew it was bad news even before the man opened his mouth. Mandy Fulle
r had died on the operating table. The bullets had fragmented and severed two veins, one fragment lodging in her lung and another nicking her kidney. Despite everything they’d tried to do for her, she’d lost too much blood. She was gone.

  Hunt stood, dazed. Mandy was gritty and determined, as capable and as strong as any of them. A coldness washed over him at this devastating loss. Will squatted on the floor. Hunt tried to comfort him but no one could get past the grief. Other agents swarmed into the waiting room as news filtered out.

  Shell-shock reflected on every face. The idea they’d lost one of their own…

  Hunt slumped into a chair and tried not to lose it. Mandy had been an incredible agent. Smart. Tenacious. The idea this was his fault…but it wasn’t. It was the job. She’d be pissed if he tried to take responsibility for her decisions.

  He started to shake with that old familiar fear. That knowledge of how impotent he was when it came to keeping people he cared about safe.

  People died. He had to figure out a way to understand that it wasn’t his fault. Death was a basic fact of life. He remembered what he’d put Pip through on Monday when he’d questioned her just yards from where her best friend lay lifeless. His stomach turned.

  He might love his job, but sometimes it sucked.

  He held his face in his hands and didn’t know he was crying until he felt a hand on his back.

  He looked up. Bourne sat next to him. “Not your fault, Kincaid. It was a miracle Fuller lasted as long as she did. Corker has made a deal to avoid the death penalty. He told us she turned up at Bea Grantham’s house unexpectedly and Dexter panicked and shot her. They’d been quietly moving their operation to Chile. Corker told us where all their samples were shipped to. We have agents en route to intercept and make sure they don’t fall into enemy hands. We found videos online of human subjects they tested the vaccine on. These people are all going down.”

  Hunt stared at him blankly.

  “We caught the bad guys, son. We’re going to track down every move they’ve made since they climbed out of diapers. Agent Fuller’s death will not go unavenged.”

  Hunt forced himself to nod. His gaze found Will’s but his friend seemed like an empty husk. He wasn’t even in the room.

  Hunt recognized the reaction and couldn’t blame the man, but Hunt wasn’t going to run this time. Not mentally or physically. Not from Pip. She deserved better. Maybe he did, too. He pushed to his feet and went back to watch over Pip from the corridor outside her room. He wasn’t leaving her. He wasn’t going anywhere.

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Pip sat up in bed, writing on the pad of legal paper Hunt had sent her a few days ago when she’d finally felt well enough to keep her eyes open for more than five minutes.

  Her headache had taken a couple of days to disappear and since then she’d been bored stiff inside her little plastic tent that had allowed her to see only blurry outlines of people. Hunt had started sending her things. She apparently wasn’t allowed electronics. A legal pad. A pen. Books—including a copy of Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind, which she’d never read, and a new copy of Rachel Grant’s Firestorm that had a bullet-hole right in the middle of the “O.” The book had literally saved her and Hunt’s life.

  He sent her poetry, messages, and quotes from the books. The first had been: “You’re the strongest person I know. Fierce. Determined. But if you do shatter, I will hold you until you’re back together.”

  Then, “Please don’t die” with a love heart and the initial H written in shaky handwriting beside it.

  She’d held that note against her chest for two whole days. Later, when the doctors were optimistic she was going to survive she allowed herself to hope and think about the future. About Hunt. About her friend, and what had happened. It was Cindy’s work on vaccines that had saved her life, and Pip knew her friend would be happy at the thought.

  Hunt kept on writing to her. Cindy would have been happy with that, too.

  “I just know that when I’m with you, I get a charge of energy, pleasure. A zing that’s missing without you. And when I’m inside you, I feel a connection. More than sex. Deeper. More intense. More than I expected. More than I want.”

  The second part of the quote arrived just before Hunt went home that same night. She heard his voice as he spoke to the nurses and saw the pale outline of his body near the observation window. The message he sent made her hot and weepy.

  “You’re addictive in a way that scares me. You’re like a drug I’ll never get enough of. I want that zing. That intensity. The thrill of being with you. In you. And that scares the hell out of me given the risks you take.”

  She could barely breathe after she read it because she felt exactly the same way.

  “I’m afraid of how I feel about you. Afraid to care. Afraid to love.”

  He added, “I love you” to the note and her heart pinged against her ribs when she realized those words weren’t from the book.

  Yesterday, he’d written:

  “I’ve waited for you longer than I’ve waited for any woman.”

  She eventually found those words in Margaret Mitchell’s epic Civil War-era novel. Pip wrote back that he’d waited five days.

  He’d replied with a sad face and she giggled.

  She was curious about what he’d come up with next and stared at her watch, willing it to get to six o’clock when he usually turned up. He didn’t sleep here but he was here more than any sane person should be.

  And she loved him for it.

  She just hadn’t figured out how to tell him or what to do about it.

  This time he’d have a surprise when he arrived. She’d been declared anthrax free and noncontagious. She’d had all those uncomfortable tubes removed and her tent had been taken away.

  Now she sat in bed in a pair of pajamas Hunt had picked up for her from the hotel. His notes sat on the bedside cabinet, beside the books. His presence had made the last few days bearable, especially when one of the nurses had told her about Agent Fuller. Pip had sobbed when she’d heard. They’d tried so hard to save her and the woman had fought so valiantly for life. It didn’t seem real. Or fair.

  She still wasn’t sure she could deal with the fact that as a federal agent, dangerous situations were the norm for Hunt. How could she watch him walk out the door every single day, not knowing whether or not he’d return?

  And she worried the adorable little things Hunt had been doing were borne of guilt and a reaction to Fuller’s death. Maybe when he recovered from the shock of what had happened to his colleague, he’d realize the emotions he felt were fleeting and not real. She wasn’t sure she could cope with that either. Being alone, guarding her heart, was so much easier.

  Hunt had postponed Cindy’s funeral.

  There was a lot to sort out but Adrian had been doing what he could for her from jail. She had no idea what would happen to him, but would be willing to testify on his behalf. The guy had clearly suffered a breakdown. He hadn’t been sane or rational when he’d shot Pete Dexter.

  The world was strangely ignorant about the facts of the events of that day. The public didn’t know about the super-deadly anthrax or Cindy’s amazing vaccine that had saved Pip’s life. Pip had no intention of revealing any details that might upset the delicate balance in the fight against biological weapons. She was writing again, but it wasn’t articles for a paper. It was fiction. She’d found herself penning a tale that involved a deadly virus and a beautiful researcher who just happened to fall in love with an FBI agent investigating a suspicious death.

  She wasn’t sure what it would lead to but it was better than staring at the wall.

  A figure appeared behind the glass of the window and Pip’s breath caught while her heart gave a little squeeze. She’d brushed her hair and even slicked on a little lip gloss. She smiled and Hunt grinned at her, looking so handsome, tie askew, hair sticking up on end. He turned to speak to someone and suddenly the door was opening and there he was walking towards her.r />
  Her heart started pounding again. Not in panic. Not in fear. In anticipation. He took her hand in his and rubbed her fingers, before leaning over and brushing his lips against hers.

  The connection was shocking and made her gasp. He smiled against her mouth and held her for a moment.

  “Pip,” he said finally, softly.

  He pulled back and she ran her hand over his jaw, the stubble just starting to break through the skin.

  “I missed you,” she said.

  He kissed her again, hungrily. Her notepad dropped onto the floor with a slap. She wrapped her arms around his neck and held on tight.

  A few seconds later, a loud cough interrupted them and they pulled apart.

  “Maybe you two should continue this conversation at home?” the nurse said with a grin, handing Pip back the notepad.

  “I can leave?” asked Pip excitedly. She couldn’t believe she was actually escaping.

  The nurse nodded and Hunt jumped up to pull the curtain around the bed. He’d brought in some clothes for her when he’d fetched her PJs. She dragged everything out of the cabinet. Leggings. T-shirt. Socks. Sneakers. She looked up suspiciously. “You forgot my underwear.”

  He bobbed a brow and gave her an exaggerated wink. “I sure did.”

  She laughed. “You were not thinking about sex when you packed my clothes.”

  “No, but I might have been if I’d gone through your lingerie. Anyway,” he said, suddenly serious, “you don’t need them. Doctors said at least three full days of bed rest. That was a condition of early release.”

  “Fine.” She was just happy to be let out. He stepped outside the curtain when the nurse stepped inside. Pip quickly pulled on her clothes—sans bra and panties—and gathered the books, all the notes, and other things Hunt had sent over the last few days and placed them carefully into a plastic bag. Funny how those notes and that notepad had become more precious to her than diamonds or prestige. She said thank you to the nurse and the other staff who’d cared for her so wonderfully.

  When she was finished Hunt held out his bent arm to her and cocked his brow. They hit the exit and kept walking. She was desperate to put this chapter of her life behind her.