Active Defense (Danger Never Sleeps #3) - Lynette Eason Page 0,1

partway off, the duct tape loosening, some of it tearing. He held it out to the right side of his body, and for a moment she thought he might succeed, let go of it, and run.

The explosion rocked him, lifted him, then dropped him onto his back on the hard-packed dirt. Heather screamed. She raced toward him, pulling gloves from her pocket, hearing others yelling at her to get back, that there might be a second bomb, but she couldn’t leave him like that. She dropped to her knees next to him. His right arm was gone, his right side a mangled mess. Blood pumped from the shoulder where his arm had been, and she clamped a hand over it.

“Hold on!” she yelled at him. “Hold on!” He was conscious, his eyes never leaving hers. “What’s your name?”

“Abdul,” he whispered. “I am sorry. I—”

And closed his eyes.

Heather looked back over her shoulder. “Someone get over here and help me!”

Another doctor raced from the tent, and time blurred as Heather went to work on the boy, who couldn’t be more than fourteen or fifteen years old. “Please hold on.”

She was acutely aware of others arriving to help transfer him to a portable stretcher and then to the OR. She raced alongside him, keeping her hands clamped around his open wound. And finally, they were in the operating room. Minutes turned into hours as they tried to put the boy back together. Another doctor worked to reattach his arm. Heather did her best with his torso. She pulled the last stitch and sucked in a breath.

“That’s it,” she said. “Now, we wait.”

Two hours later, in recovery, Heather dozed in the chair next to Abdul’s bed.

The alarms on the monitor woke her and she bolted to her feet. His heart had stopped.

Feverishly, she pumped his chest. “Please, please, please, don’t give up. You asked me to help you and I will, but you have to live.” More pumping. Sweat rolled from her in waves.

She had no idea how long she worked until Gina laid a hand on her shoulder. “Heather . . .”

Heather stopped, panting, heard the flatline—and knew it was over. They’d lost him. She blinked up at her friend, trying to keep from breaking down. “What are you doing here?”

“I came back just after the explosion to see if I could help. To make sure you were okay. I’m sorry.”

Heather let out a low cry and swung away from her, stripped off her gloves, and darted out the door. The sun was setting, turning the sky all kinds of beautiful colors. But she didn’t want to see beauty when she was surrounded by death. Not tonight.

“Heather!”

“Give me some space right now, Gina, please.”

The woman hesitated, then turned and went back inside with Abdul.

Heather paced near the trash heap, working hard to get her emotions under control. She wanted to weep, to scream, to lash out at the evil that had overtaken this country, but she didn’t. She couldn’t.

She took a deep breath and had turned to go back in when she spotted the full trash bag against the wall.

And the navy-blue T-shirt laying on top of it. She picked it up, noted the white paint stains on the left shoulder. Pictured it on the teen who’d come to kill them.

She buried her face in it and wept.

JANUARY

GREENVILLE, SC

Heather pulled to the curb of her best friend’s house, put the SUV in park, and cut the engine. Brooke James lived in a middle-class neighborhood in a cottage-style home with a perfectly groomed yard. Even in the dead of winter.

But that was Brooke, a woman whose friendship Heather deeply appreciated. Most of the time, she couldn’t wait to get together with her. But at the moment, Heather wasn’t in the mood to put on her party face. Her left leg jiggled up and down—a sure sign she was anxious and stressed. She didn’t even bother to try and stop it. “Just go home,” she muttered. “If you go home, you can curl up on the couch and read a good book.” While intermittently checking the alarm system, windows, and doors to ensure no one could get in.

No one, meaning the stalker she seemed to have acquired. Four months home from active duty in a war zone and she still wasn’t sleeping much. She found herself ducking at loud noises, avoiding crowds, but managing to function at work without too much trouble. Which was weird, but she’d come to accept that was the way