by Paige Tyler
“You can’t go in there,” the woman hissed. “I’ll get in so much trouble if you go in there.”
Xander moved the woman to the side of the porch, then nodded to Khaki. She pulled her sidearm as she entered the house, Alex at her heels. The man’s scent was much stronger, but a quick sniff confirmed he was gone.
Alex lowered his weapon at the same time she did, letting Xander know the house was clear before following her as she moved through each room, tracking the scent. His wasn’t the only one lingering there. Khaki picked up the scent of the second bank robber in one of the bedrooms. From there it wasn’t too hard to follow her nose to a pile of black duffel bags shoved in the back of the closet.
She unzipped the bag to reveal money—lots and lots of money. Alex was calling it in before Khaki even headed out to tell Xander what they’d found.
Xander was sitting on the bottom step of the porch, the woman sobbing against his shoulder. He looked up at Khaki.
“Anything?”
She nodded, dropping down to one knee in front of the woman. “Ma’am, we found some duffel bags filled with money in the bedroom closet.”
The woman lifted her head from Xander’s shoulder to look at her with red-rimmed eyes, but didn’t say anything. The fear reflected there spoke volumes.
“You know who put those bags in the closet, don’t you?” Khaki asked gently.
The woman nodded.
“Where are the men now, Shelly?” Xander asked.
Shelly shook her head. “I don’t know.”
“Did they say when they were coming back for the money?” he prompted.
“No.” Shelly sniffed, wiping the tears from her cheek with the heel of her hand. “I didn’t even know my boyfriend, Craig, and his buddies were robbing banks until Greta and I found the money. Craig and the other guys weren’t too happy we found it, but promised they’d split the money with us if we kept our mouths shut.” Another tear trickled down her cheek. “I know it was wrong, but I never had money, and there was so much of it… Greta told me that if we stayed with them, we’d end up in jail or dead. She said that if we called the FBI and told them which bank the guys were going to rob next, they’d arrest them and the two of us could run off to Mexico with all the money.”
Shelly shook her head. “But it didn’t work out that way. The guys came back from the bank job and overheard Greta and I talking. They s-slit her throat right in front of me, then told me that they’d do the same thing to me and every member of my family if I didn’t do what they said. When they find out you were here…”
Her voice trailed off, sobs wracking her body.
“We won’t let anything happen to you, Shelly,” Xander promised. “Do you know where Craig and the other guys are?”
It took a while to get anything else out of her because she spent more time crying than talking. But working together, Khaki and Xander finally got the information they needed out of the terrified woman. The crew was hitting the third and last bank in less than an hour. After that, the plan was for them to come back here and grab the rest of the money, then head to Mexico.
Two patrol cruisers pulled up as Shelly finished. Xander promised the woman again that she’d be safe, then handed her off to a female officer.
Khaki barely got in the backseat and clicked her seat belt in place before Alex pulled away from the curb and switched on the flashing lights. As they sped downtown to the bank, Xander called Thompson while Khaki pulled out her phone and got the rest of the squad up to speed, asking the guys to meet them.
By the time she hung up, Xander’s conversation with Thompson had turned into a shouting match. After a lot of yelling back and forth, they finally came up with a plan. Since the bank robbers would probably follow the same MO that had worked so well before, Thompson and the rest of the feds would move in from the front of the bank, making sure that the suspects knew they were there. If the crew followed the script, they’d immediately head for their backup escape route, where she, Xander, and the rest of the squad would be waiting for them. If all went well, they’d catch the bank robbers completely by surprise and in no position to defend themselves.
There was only one problem. The whole plan depended on SWAT, the FBI, and the DPD reinforcements getting to the bank and setting up in time, during rush-hour traffic.
Xander kept his cell phone glued to one ear and the vehicle’s radio in the other, trying to get all the moving parts to come together on the fly. Khaki used her cell to occasionally check on the status of the rest of the squad, when she wasn’t checking the clock on the dash.
She, Xander, and Alex turned onto the street one block over from the main entrance of Suncrest Federal on Preston forty-two minutes later to hear the bank alarm ringing.
“Thompson and the feds just caught the crew as they were coming out the front entrance,” Xander said, gesturing to Alex to position the SUV diagonally across an alley between two buildings. “Some of them turned around and went out the back. They should be heading our way any second.”
Khaki hopped out of the SUV along with Xander and Alex, drawing her weapon and motioning for the people meandering down the street to get out of the area. She’d just herded the last civilian away when four men in ski masks came running out the back door into the alley. They all carried automatic weapons and black duffel bags that matched the ones Khaki had found in the house over in Oak Tree. The men skidded to a halt when they saw her, Xander, and Alex.
The suspects hesitated. Khaki tightened her grip on her Sig, ready to pull the trigger if the men tried to shoot their way out of the trap.
“Don’t even try it,” Xander warned, his weapon trained on them. “Your armored getaway vehicles won’t be coming to get you because we’ve already arrested your drivers while they were waiting for you in the parking garage.”
The four men looked at each other, then turned as one and started shooting.
The AR-15s they carried could fire a lot of rounds, but this time there weren’t any cars and innocent civilians for the bank robbers to hide behind. This time, they were completely exposed.
Two went down immediately and the other two dropped their duffel bags and took off running.
Xander ran after them with a snarl. Khaki followed. If Xander was going to chase them down on foot, Khaki was going to stay with him to cover his back.
It was ridiculously easy to catch the two men, even when they threw down their empty weapons so they could run faster. She and Xander slammed them to the ground before they even reached the end of the block.
Out of the corner of her eye, Khaki saw Xander’s suspect go limp as Xander twisted the man’s arm behind his back. Her suspect—the man whose scent she recognized from the first bank robbery—must have decided he had a better chance of getting away since she was a woman. He clawed his way to his feet and tried to go for her weapon.
Khaki didn’t even think. She simply grabbed the man’s wrist like Hale had taught her, threw her hip into him, and flipped him to the pavement so hard his teeth clacked together. He didn’t resist much after that. She rolled him onto his stomach and zip tied his wrists.
She stood, turning to smile at Xander when he was suddenly thrown violently backward. Three gaping, bloody holes appeared in his tactical vest as he hit the concrete. Khaki didn’t even realize what had happened until the boom of a high-powered rifle echoed in her ears. She looked around wildly, trying to see where the shooter was when another round hit Xander.
Khaki’s heart seized in her chest as she rushed over to Xander. Trying to stay out of the path of bullets, she grabbed his hands and dragged him across the pavement to a recessed doorway. She’d just reached the granite-edged corner when a bullet hit her in the left thigh. She ignored it, instead focusing on getting Xander out of the line of fire. Another round slammed into the stone wall just as she got him into the doorway. She dropped to the ground beside him, pulling him into her lap and cradling him there.
“Xander, are you okay?” she asked urgent
ly. “Xander?”
He didn’t answer, didn’t even open his eyes. Was he even conscious? She slapped her hand down on his chest, shocked at all the blood soaking his shattered tactical vest. There was so much blood.
Alex rushed into the alcove, yelling in his radio for an ambulance and trying to give a location on the shooter at the same time. Then he was at her side, ripping off Xander’s Kevlar vest and uniform shirt to reveal three bullet wounds.
Khaki watched numbly as Alex flipped Xander over.
“Shit,” he muttered. “There’s only one exit wound. The vest slowed the other two down. They’re still inside him.”
“But he can live through this, right?” she asked. “He’s a werewolf. This won’t kill him, right?”
But Alex refused to answer, flipping Xander back over and shoving his fingers into his chest, moving them around as he tried to find the bullets.
Khaki gently brushed Xander’s hair back from his forehead. “Hang on, Xander. Please hang on.” Tears spilled down her cheeks. “I love you, Xander. Do you hear me? I love you, dammit. Don’t you dare give up!”
Alex looked at her sharply before focusing his attention on Xander again. Khaki knew she shouldn’t have slipped up like that, but right then she was too terrified to care what Alex or anyone else heard her say.
Alex worked out one of the bullets, then went back in to look for the other. But after a few seconds, he slid his fingers out. Khaki thought it was so he could go at it from another angle, but he only kneeled beside her with a grim look on his face.
“What are you doing?” she said, trying to keep her voice calm—and failing. “You have to get the other bullet out!”
“I can’t,” he said. “The round hit some ribs and shattered them. There are bullet and bone fragments all over the place, and I’m worried some of them may be lodged in his heart. I could kill him if I go rooting around in there and do something wrong. He needs a doctor.”
Khaki’s heart was pounding in her chest like a drum. It felt like she couldn’t breathe. But she squeezed Xander’s hand and forced herself to get a grip, for his sake.
“What if a doctor figures out what he is?” she asked through her tears.
“We can’t worry about that,” Alex said. “If those fragments are lodged in the wall of his heart, and one of them tears through… Even a werewolf can bleed out from a wound like that.”
“That’s not going to happen,” she said fiercely, as if she could make it true by a force of will.
“Not if we can stop it,” Alex agreed.
Khaki sat there with Xander’s head in her lap, smoothing his hair and telling him to keep fighting, that he was going to make it. She knew he could hear her. As long as she kept talking, he wouldn’t give up.
It seemed like an eternity before the ambulance arrived and the two paramedics rolled in the stretcher. When they reached for Xander, she shooed them back with a growl and a glare. Khaki refused to watch the two paramedics struggle with Xander’s two-hundred-and-forty pounds of muscle, not if jostling him could kill him. The medics didn’t say a word as she and Alex carefully lifted him up and gently put him on the stretcher, nor did they complain when she climbed in the back of the ambulance with him, then knelt down out of the way and begged him to keep fighting.
Khaki looked up as the paramedic closed the back door of the ambulance to see Alex standing there with Xander’s blood soaking his arms up to the elbows. Cooper, Becker, Max, Hale, and Trevor stood beside him, their faces etched with the same fear and concern.
Khaki looked down at Xander. She could hear his heart beating over the sounds of the monitors and sirens. His heartbeat was weak and irregular, but it was still there.
She squeezed his hand. Xander wasn’t going to die. She wouldn’t let him.
* * *
Khaki was still standing in the waiting area outside the trauma center when the rest of the squad arrived. She couldn’t say how long she’d been rooted in that spot, staring at the doors that led to the operating room, but it felt like a lifetime. She vaguely remembered a doctor asking if she’d been shot. She’d looked down at the blood on her thigh and told him it wasn’t hers. He’d left her alone after that.
Sergeant Dixon strode in right behind Cooper and the other guys, looking half-pissed, half-worried.
“What the hell happened?” he demanded.
“Cooper, Hale, Max, Becker, and I found the two getaway vehicles and took them down,” Trevor said. “At the same time, Xander, Alex, and Khaki caught four of the bank robbers as they were fleeing the rear of the bank.”
“We had all four suspects cuffed when a sniper hit Xander with three rounds in the chest,” Alex said, picking it up from there. “Whatever the sniper was shooting, it went right through Xander’s Kevlar vest like it was nothing. One of the bullets fragmented too close to his heart for me to dig it out. I made the call to get him to the hospital.”
Dixon nodded. “You did the right thing. What has me confused is why the sniper waited until after his guys had been arrested to start shooting.”
Nobody had an answer to that. Until that moment, Khaki hadn’t given a single thought to the sniper and why he’d done what he did.
“We had a helicopter conduct a sweep of the area where the sniper had been positioned moments after he shot Xander, but he was already gone,” Trevor said. “We questioned the other bank robbers before the FBI took them into custody, and according to them, they didn’t have a sniper with them. Whoever the guy is, it’s going to take a lot for those assholes to give him up.”
Dixon’s mouth tightened. “We’ll worry about that later. The only thing that matters right now is Xander.” He looked at Alex. “How bad was he when you rode in with him? Was he conscious?”
Alex hesitated, giving her a quick look. “I didn’t ride in with Xander. Khaki did.”
The entire squad held their breath as Dixon turned his attention to her. “You rode in with Xander?”
She nodded.
Something flickered in Dixon’s dark eyes, but it was gone too quickly for her to figure out what it was. “How bad was he?”
Khaki tried to report in the same calm, professional voice Trevor and Alex used. But the moment she opened her mouth, her throat locked up and she could barely get the words out.
“The…the surgeon came out a little while ago and said they had to open him up. The bullet fragments nicked a lot of vital areas, and a big piece is lodged in the wall of his heart. The doctor couldn’t believe Xander even lived long enough to get him on the operating table. He said Xander was still holding on, but he…he warned me…us…to prepare for the worst.”
Tears stung Khaki’s eyes. She didn’t bother to wipe them away when they ran down her cheeks. She’d been telling herself the doctor had been wrong, that he just didn’t know how strong Xander was. But now, standing here in the middle of the hospital with its pungent antiseptic odor and the rest of the Pack around her, she wasn’t sure about that.
No one said anything for a long time, and when Khaki finally lifted her head, it was to see Dixon regarding her with that same curious expression. She tried to wipe the tears away, aware that she was acting way too emotional about a fellow cop getting shot. But fresh tears fell, taking their place.
“Khaki, is there something going on between you and Xander that I should know about?” Dixon asked quietly.
She wanted to lie and say there wasn’t, but with Xander lying on an operating table, she couldn’t. It would feel like she was denying everything he meant to her. She blinked back another rush of tears and nodded.
Dixon swore. “What the hell were you two thinking?”
Khaki didn’t answer. What could she say? That she knew being with Xander was wrong? That would be a lie. Falling in love with Xander wasn’t wrong, and if that cost her the job, it was a small thing to give up to be with him.
Dixon remained silent, waiting for her to say something. One by one, the guys in the squad moved a little closer to her—fi
rst Cooper, then Becker and Max, followed by Alex, and finally Trevor and Hale. Their show of support made her start crying all over again.
“Okay, this isn’t the time or the place to talk about this, Khaki,” Dixon said. “But when Xander wakes up, we are going to talk about it.”
Giving her one more disapproving look, he strode off and pulled out his phone. Khaki heard him talking to Mike on the other end, telling him to get some of the guys out to the bank on Preston and figure out who that shooter was.
Right then, she cared as much about the sniper as she did about her career. All that mattered was lying on an operating room table, fighting for his life. If Xander survived, she didn’t need anything else. And if he didn’t, she wouldn’t care about anything else.
Chapter 14
Xander woke with a jerk. The sudden movement sent a harpoon of pain lancing through his chest. He opened his eyes, trying to figure out where he was and why he hurt, but that didn’t help much when the room started to fade to black. He closed his eyes again, fighting the wave of darkness threatening to overwhelm him. It felt like he’d been hit by a damn freight train. What the hell happened?
He took slow, steady breaths, searching his memory. Things came back in a rush, playing through his head like a movie on fast-forward. He remembered getting shot in the chest outside the bank, remembered Khaki on her knees beside him, remembered her begging him to keep fighting and telling him that she loved him. Most of all, he remembered her bleeding.
She’d been shot too.
Gritting his teeth against the pain, Xander pushed himself up into a sitting position. Or tried to. He didn’t get very far before a firm hand on his shoulder pushed him back down.
“Whoa, take it easy, babe.”
Khaki’s voice was soft in his ear, her breath warm where it caressed his cheek. Her scent enveloped him, taking away whatever pain he’d felt. He relaxed against the pillow and opened his eyes to see her leaning over him, relief in her gaze. He’d gladly volunteer to get shot in the chest once a week if it meant being able to wake up to her beautiful face for the rest of his life.