Police Protector. Elizabeth Heiter

past the first car. He was ready to continue past the second after the shooter when his mind registered the make and model of the first one—he recognized it. He slammed on the brakes, yanked his truck into Park and had his weapon out of its holster before he’d even cleared the door.

      “Shaye!”

      “Cole?”

      Her voice was weak, but relief hit him hard, a wave that almost took him to his knees. She was alive.

      He rounded the second car and found her huddled near the back tire. The flat back tire, Cole realized. The gunman’s final shot must have just missed her.

      But relief was short-lived because she was hit. There was a trail of blood alongside the car, as if she’d dragged herself here. He yanked his cell phone out, calling Monica directly. “Gunman ran east out of Roy’s parking lot on foot. Male, white, average height and build, wearing jeans and a dark hoodie, carrying at least one pistol. Send backup. And get me an ambulance to Roy’s right now.”

      He barely paused as he knelt next to Shaye, who was abnormally pale, her freckles standing out more than usual against her porcelain skin, her red hair tangled around her face and her pretty brown eyes huge. “Talk to me. Are you okay?”

      He didn’t wait for an answer, but tucked his phone against his shoulder, holstered his weapon and found the source of all that blood. It was coming from her right leg, up near her hip. Finding where the bullet had entered, he grabbed the fabric of her khakis and ripped so he could see the wound.

      “Hey,” she complained, but her voice was even weaker, and she leaned her head against the car as he prodded carefully around her wound.

      It was bleeding badly, but not as badly as it would have been if the shooter had gotten a major artery. He slid his hand down into the leg of her pants around to the back of her thigh and found what he suspected. An exit wound. The bullet had gone straight through.

      “How bad is it?” Shaye whispered, her eyelids dropping to half-mast.

      “You’re going to be fine,” he promised.

      “What’s happening?” Monica asked in his ear. “Backup is close. Two minutes out.”

      He cursed inwardly, hoping the shooter wouldn’t be long gone before officers arrived. Two minutes was too long. This guy had shot Shaye. Cole wanted him in handcuffs now.

      Monica’s voice sounded in his ear again. “I’m getting that ambulance now.”

      “Cancel it.” Cole shifted his weight and warned Shaye, “This might hurt a little.” Then he wiped the blood on his hands onto the leg of his pants and scooped her into his arms. “Shaye Mallory was hit,” he said into his phone as Shaye’s arms went around his neck and she tucked her head against his chest, almost before he saw her wince with pain and clamp her jaw closed.

      “I’m driving her to the hospital myself,” he told Monica as he hurried back to his truck, deposited her in the passenger seat and then ran around to the driver’s side. “I’ll call you when we get there. Send me updates as they come in,” he said, then hung up the phone and hopped in the truck, yanking it back into Drive.

      As he sped out of the parking lot, Shaye asked, “Were you on your way to a date?”

      “What?” He frowned over at her, both at the oddity of her question and the way her voice sounded like she was in a daze.

      She gestured to her feet, and he looked down, realizing she was talking about the bottle of champagne on his floorboard, which was still miraculously unbroken.

      “That was for you,” he replied, seeing her confusion before he yanked his attention back onto the road and drove as fast as he could through the surface streets toward the freeway.

      “For me?”

      “Put pressure on your wound,” he said, instead of explaining that he’d gotten it to celebrate her returning to work.

      He risked a glance at her as her head dropped forward. As if she’d just realized how much blood there was, she pressed both hands down frantically against her leg.

      She was coming out of her shock. He’d seen enough shooting victims to know what was coming next: panic.

      He tried to stave it off as he merged onto the freeway and punched it up to ninety. “We’ll be at the hospital in three minutes,” he promised, keeping his tone calm despite the fear he felt. “You’re fine. It’s a flesh wound. I know it looks like a lot, but the bullet went through and you haven’t lost enough blood for it to be a problem.”

      He’d seen enough bullet wounds to know when they were life threatening. But he’d also seen enough to know that sometimes they surprised you. He’d seen people operate on adrenaline, actually getting up and running, when their injuries said they should already be dead. And he’d seen minor wounds turn fatal.

      Not for Shaye, he promised himself, speeding off the freeway. A few more too-fast turns and then he made an illegal turn into the hospital parking lot and slammed to a stop. He tossed his key at the valet and ran around the other side to open Shaye’s door.

      An orderly was coming their way with a wheelchair, but Cole ignored him, reaching in to lift Shaye himself. If it was possible, she looked even more pale and terrified, reminding him of that day almost exactly a year ago and the drive-by at the station. Shaye had been caught in the middle of it all.

      “Why does this keep happening?” she whispered, then promptly passed out.

       Chapter Two

      Shaye woke in a hospital bed, a warm blanket pulled up to her chin and a frowning nurse strapping a blood pressure cuff to her arm.

      “How are you feeling?”

      She’d recognize that voice anywhere. Shaye turned her head, and there was Cole, perched at the edge of a chair next to her bed, his reddish-blond hair rumpled and concern etched onto his normally laid-back expression.

      Embarrassment heated her. Had she actually fainted?

      Okay, yes, she was a lab rat, and gun battles—except for the gang shooting that still gave her nightmares—were way outside her experience. But she’d managed to make a run for that second car, hiding until Cole had magically arrived. She’d managed to stay relatively cool until they’d made it safely to the hospital.

      Yet she’d fainted in front of Jannis’s best detective, the guy who’d led the charge to bring down the entire gang’s network after that shooting. Cole was one of the bravest people she knew.

      And she was most definitely not.

      “I’m okay,” she said, surprised when her voice came out weak. She realized just how tired she was.

      “We stitched up your wound,” the nurse told her, jotting something down and then taking the blood pressure cuff off her arm. “You were lucky—it went straight through and didn’t hit anything crucial. The doctor is going to want to watch your vitals for a few hours, but then we’ll send you home. You should be feeling fine in a few days.”

      Shaye nodded, trying not to focus on the dread she’d felt as soon as the nurse mentioned leaving the hospital. Would she ever feel safe again? Or would everywhere she went become like the forensics lab, requiring her to psyche herself up to leave her house? Tears welled, and she shoved them back, refusing to show any more weakness in front of Cole.

      Once she knew no tears were going to escape, she looked over at him, hopeful. “Did they get the shooter?”

      He frowned, shaking his head. “Not yet. But we’re already reaching out to the news stations. We’ll be putting out a call for information on all the evening shows. Someone will know something. We’ll find him.”

      She shivered, suddenly cold, pulling the blanket tighter around her. Would they really? The department