Tactical Advantage. Julie Miller

back a step. And then she stopped.

      She’d lost too much blood. She was passing out.

      Halting in his tracks, Nick quickly unzipped his coat and shucked out of it. He draped it around her slender shoulders to add some warmth and stave off shock. But like his sister earlier that night, she shrugged it off. “Of all the stubborn...”

      He saw the focus of her eyes and understood it wasn’t stubbornness or bravado as much as something else had caught her attention. She lurched forward and Nick grabbed her arm to support her. She touched the pink, slushy smear on the brick wall where the blood had been. “He wiped away the handprints.” She brought her glove back to her nose and made a face. Even Nick could smell the bleach from where he stood. “He’s contaminated everything—cut the anchor ropes on the tarp. Snow’s getting into...” She pulled away and dived into the pile of trash. “Oh, no.” She tossed aside one bag, then two. “No, no, no, no.”

      “Annie.” Nick slung his jacket around her again, looping his arm about her waist and lifting her away from the mess she was making. “We need to go. You’re not thinking straight. We need to get you to the hospital.”

      “No.” She spun in his grasp, fisted her fingers in the front of his sweater. “My kit is gone. He took my spare kit.” She blinked away the snowflakes and blood from her upturned eyes. “Along with the evidence I’d gathered inside it.”