The Rookie (The Intelligence Unit #1) - Kimberly Kincaid Page 0,4

help you.”

“He said…he was here, and he said…” Her voice trembled with raw fear, her body following suit beneath Xander’s hands, but nope. Not today.

He parked himself directly in her line of vision, holding her glassy eye contact with his own steadier stare. “I’ve got you, now. No one’s going to hurt you.”

The woman blinked, her body relaxing after a beat. Quinn and Luke crossed the threshold into the tiny bedroom less than five seconds later, working briskly to complete the Rapid Trauma Assessment that deemed a C-collar, backboard, and an immediate trip to Remington Mem necessary.

“On my count. One, two, three,” Luke said, lifting the backboard in perfect tandem with Quinn and moving it to the gurney they’d had to leave in the hallway for the sake of space. All the better, really, since this place was clearly a crime scene.

Speaking of which…

“We’re going to need to figure out what happened here,” Xander said to Dade, who nodded her agreement as they followed about ten paces behind Quinn and Luke, heading back out into the muggy night.

“I’ll call it in. One of us should—”

Her words cut short at the sight of a redhead in a skirt and blouse that looked like they cost the rough equivalent of Xander’s monthly rent, beelining directly toward the ambo.

“Amour! Oh, my God. Are you okay? Is she okay?”

The sound of the woman’s voice sailed straight past Xander’s Kevlar and into his chest. No way. No fucking way. It couldn’t be.

Quinn stepped in to intercept the woman before she could get too close. “Ma’am, I need you to calm down and take a step back, please.”

“No, I will not calm down, and I sure as hell won’t step back,” she said, hands planted against her pinup-model hips as she glared at Quinn, and God damn it.

Tara Kingston was in the middle of his crime scene.

2

Adrenaline replaced the fear that had taken up residence in Tara’s chest the second she’d seen all the flashing lights in front of Amour’s house. But at least the buzz of energy taking a swipe at her composure right now was familiar territory—occupational hazard of arguing with people for a living—and as nice as the paramedic standing in front of her seemed to be, the woman was entirely misguided if she thought Tara was going to sit idly by.

“Tara Kingston, DA’s office,” she clipped out. Oh, God, Amour looked so frail and helpless strapped to that gurney, her head bundled in a pile of blood-tinged gauze. That bastard Sansone had to be behind this. “She’s a CI,” Tara added, much more quietly, because she couldn’t be too careful. Or, apparently, careful enough. “One of mine.”

The paramedic—Q. Slater, according to the name stitched over the RFD logo on her shirt—flicked a heartbeat’s worth of a glance over Tara’s shoulder before saying, “Okay, but she’s got a head injury and we need to get her to Mem. Quickly.”

Tara’s fear made a comeback tour, tightening her rib cage beneath her slate gray blouse.

“I’m going with you.”

“Sorry, but it’s family only for transport,” the other paramedic, a guy with light brown skin and a serious voice that brooked no argument—not even from adrenaline-soaked attorneys—said quietly. “Plus, we need to keep her stable, which means we need room to work.”

Wait, how had he opened the back of the ambulance so fast? “You don’t understand,” Tara tried again as they collapsed the gurney’s wheels with a hard clack. “She called me. Instead of nine-one-one, she called me. She doesn’t have anyone else she can trust.”

The female paramedic paused. “You can follow us to Mem if you want.”

“Actually, she can’t.”

The male voice coming from behind Tara made her pulse stutter as she turned toward its source of origin. But the police officer standing in front of her didn’t make sense. That voice, somehow both rough around the edges and quiet all at once, belonged to someone the DA’s office had considered prosecuting. Someone she’d initially pushed to pursue. Granted, it had been two years ago, but the case had been pretty unforgettable. Arson. Fraud. Murder.

And Xander Matthews had been smack dab in the middle of the whole thing…

Right up until he’d broken the whole case wide open and helped the Intelligence Unit catch a killer.

“Xander? What are you doing here?” Tara blurted, her cheeks instantly heating at her lack of decorum.

“It’s nice to see you, too, Ms. Kingston.” The muscle that pulled across Xander’s unfairly chiseled jawline translated the words into a lie, but Tara didn’t have