Serve ‘N’ Protect by Tee O’Fallon

Chapter Four

“You’re where?” Captain McMurray’s bellow was so loud, it went straight through one ear and headed directly through his brain to the other.

He eyed the young Latina doctor who was examining his stitches. Dr. Martinez, her badge said. If she or the assisting nurse, Amani, had heard the captain, they didn’t let on. He lowered the volume on the phone just in case.

“St. Mary’s Hospital in Leonardtown.” Going to the hospital—any hospital—directly contradicted McMurray’s orders. Defying those orders meant Markus had just put himself at the top of the man’s shit list.

The captain of the U.S. Secret Service’s Uniformed Division had a legendary temper, which made itself known by the string of innovative curse words Markus heard in the background. Despite his temper, McMurray’s dedication to the men and women working under him was unquestioned. Markus would walk through fire for the man. They all would.

“What name did you give them?” McMurray asked.

“The one we agreed on,” he said. In one of his jacket pockets were his real creds. The other pocket contained a wallet crammed with a full set of ID in the name Alex Adessio, including a valid credit card. The chief would shit a brick when he got the hospital bill. “I should be out of here in about half an hour.”

“How did you get to the hospital?” McMurray asked. “I hope to God you didn’t call an ambulance.”

There was no avoiding it. Markus would get verbally whiplashed for what he was about to say next. “My next-door neighbor drove me.”

“Your what?” Despite having lowered the volume, Markus jerked the phone from his ear so both his eardrums wouldn’t get shredded.

Dr. Martinez arched a brow but kept stitching him up with the precision of a seasoned quilter.

“She found me passed out cold on the floor.” His father would have berated him six ways from sundown and told him in no uncertain terms that he was weak and stupid for putting himself in that position. Bastard that Steven was, even Markus had to agree. “If I hadn’t let her take me to the hospital, she would have called 911.”

McMurray let loose with another string of invective colorful enough to make a sea captain blush. “How much does she know?”

“Nothing.” For her safety, he planned on keeping it that way.

“Good. I’m leaving D.C. now,” McMurray warned. “I’ll meet you at the house. Make damn sure you’re there by the time I arrive. We’ll figure out whether we have to move you.”

McMurray hung up.

F. Bomb. Markus’s entire body felt as if it had been run over by an Abrams tank, and he could barely keep his eyes open. He didn’t relish relocating. He’d only just gotten comfortable in his friend’s house.

Dr. Martinez arched that eyebrow again. “Half an hour is a bit premature. You need to stay here until we get those images back. I won’t discharge you until I’m sure you didn’t tear open anything internally.”

“Yes, ma’am,” Markus lied, having no intention of sticking around that long.

The meds he’d taken were finally wearing off and he could see without a gray film clouding his vision. As for internal damage, he’d been hurt on the job before and knew his own body well enough that he was reasonably certain he hadn’t ripped his guts open. As soon as the doctor added a few stitches to replace the ones he’d busted, sayonara.

He wasn’t sure if the woman who’d driven him to the hospital—Cassidy—had actually waited for him. Then again, his K-9 was still in the back of her tiny tin can of a car, and he got the distinct impression that she liked dogs. Given how protective Ghost was of him, it was a miracle his dog hadn’t sunk his teeth into her.

The doctor deftly tied off the last new stitch in his abdomen. Unfortunately, on a scale of one to ten, the soreness and achiness in his gut was a solid eight.

He clenched his fist, still angry as hell that he’d been so completely taken off guard like a first-year rookie. That had never happened to him before. And never will again. When he found the guy who had done this to him and murdered Jack Barnes, he’d annihilate him.

“What’s with all the reporters?” he asked, checking his phone when it vibrated with an incoming call. John Freeman. He let it go to voicemail. Getting past those reporters again without being seen wouldn’t be easy. He could only hope they hadn’t picked up on his identity on the way in. If they had, things would only go from bad to worse. And McMurray would skin him alive.

“Tammy Teague is filming a music video at Leonardtown Wharf Park,” Amani, the nurse, said. “Apparently, she fractured her toe on the flagpole, poor thing.” She made a tsking sound, clearly not as impressed with the music industry’s next Britney Spears as most people were. “You’d think they’d have more important news to cover than that.”

Yeah. Like two Secret Service cops getting knifed in the back. Literally. Four days ago, his face had been plastered all over the news from coast to coast. Jack Barnes’s, too. If only Jack had made it. Markus barely knew him. They’d only worked together once, but he’d liked the guy. The man’s death was a loss not only to his family but to the entire agency. Losing one of their own would not go unpunished.

“That ought to do it,” Dr. Martinez said, inspecting her work. “Try not to break these. I’m guessing you tried doing too much?” Reluctantly, he nodded. “Lesson learned, I hope. You need to take it easy for a while. You’re starting from scratch with these new stitches. Give it seven to ten days, then make an appointment with your personal doctor to have them taken out. Amani will put fresh bandages on.”

“Thanks, Doc.”

Dr. Martinez left, leaving him alone with the nurse. Markus waited impatiently as she taped clean gauze to the gashes on his abdomen and back then rolled more gauze around his waist to hold everything in place.

“There you go.” She tied off the gauze. “Don’t sneeze too hard. Or let your boss bully you into more than you’re supposed to be doing,” she said, her brown eyes sparkling with mirth.

“I won’t,” he reassured her, adding just before she left, “Could you ask my, uh, girlfriend to come in? She’s about five-five, blond hair, walks with a cane.”

“I’ll tell her.” The nurse smiled then left.

Again, he wasn’t sure if Cassidy was still in the waiting room. Not that he could blame her if she wasn’t. How could he possibly know she’d nearly had her leg amputated? He couldn’t, but he’d been an insensitive jackass. Blaming it on the meds and his condition might work, but he wasn’t one to make excuses. He’d been shitty to her, and she’d helped him anyway.

While he waited for Cassidy, he listened to the message from John.

“Markus, it’s John. Thought you should know, Cassidy Morgan—my next-door neighbor—called to check on you. She thinks you’re a criminal hiding out from the FBI.”John chuckled. “I set her straight, but don’t worry, I didn’t tell her anything except that she should trust you. Cassidy’s good people. Her whole family is. Stay safe, and be well.”

Markus grinned. So Cassidy was playing amateur sleuth behind his back. That meant she hadn’t recognized him, which was a damn good thing. Then again, he probably looked like crap at the moment, nothing like the now-famous photo the media had dug up from somewhere of him and Ghost on patrol at the White House.

“Hey.”

He looked up to find Cassidy standing in the doorway. “Hey.” She appeared tired. Or in pain. Even from this distance, he couldn’t miss the tightness of her mouth. “Is your leg bothering you?” He had a feeling that he wasn’t the only one who’d overdone it today. Dragging his ass around had obviously taken its toll on her. At six-foot-three, he was no lightweight.

“A little,” she admitted, coming inside and sitting heavily on a chair. “Since the accident, I’ve gone to physical therapy, but it hasn’t gone quite as well as I’d hoped.”

“Then you should find another therapist.”

“Working on it.” She tucked a lock of wavy blond hair behind her ears. He hadn’t noticed how long it was, falling to the tops of her breasts. “You should know that I checked up on you.”

“I heard.” He held up his phone.

“John called you already?” Her brows scrunched together. “He said I should trust you. And that if you want to tell me what happened, you’ll tell me in your own time.”

“That’s true.” Although, if she couldn’t figure out who he was on her own, he wasn’t about to tell her. Again, it was safer that way. For her.

“He said you saved his life.” She cocked her head. “When I asked him about you, I called you Markus because that’s the name you gave me. When the nurse came to get me, she called you Alex Adessio. Which is it? Markus or Alex? John only knows you by the name Markus.”

So much for his undercover skills. In his drugged-out stupor, he must have told her his real name. Good thing he hadn’t applied to the CIA. He’d make a shitty spy. “Markus is my middle name,” he lied, hopefully sounding smooth enough to be convincing. “Alex is the name on all my ID, so that’s what the hospital logged me in under.”

“Alex Markus Adessio it is, then. You know that sounds like a Roman soldier’s name, right? I can already see you swinging a sword from a horse-drawn chariot as you go charging around the Colosseum.”

The image she’d conjured up had his lips twitching. Snarky and sharp-witted, something he’d do well to remember. Right now, there were more pressing matters. Like escaping from the hospital without Dr. Martinez knowing.

His next words would be difficult. Just do it. Ask. You have no choice. “I need your help getting out of here.”

“Fine,” she said. “As soon as you’re discharged, they can wheel you outside and I’ll take you—”

“That’s not what I mean.” Cautiously, he sat up, waiting for the bed to spin, but it didn’t. “Hand me my jacket.” He pointed to where a nurse had draped it on another chair.

She stood and helped him shrug into it. “Have you been discharged? Did they give you any instructions, any prescriptions?”

“I’m not waiting around to be discharged.” He eased off the gurney, wincing as a sharp pain dug into his wounds. The room began spinning again and he wobbled on his feet. Contrary to what he’d thought, those drugs were still in his system, dragging him down and threatening to blanket his vision with that same gray cloud cover.

Cassidy wrapped an arm around his waist. Yet again, her slim frame was the only thing keeping him upright. “I really don’t think this is a good idea. Why don’t you wait for a wheelchair?”

“There’s no time.” Instantly, he regretted the sharp edge in his tone. “Besides, an orderly won’t bring a chair until the doctor signs me out.” Which could be another hour, at least, and he’d already been there for close to two. “I need to get out of here, and I need to do it now. Think you can find a wheelchair and sneak it in here?”

“Oh, sure.” She looked at him as if he didn’t have a brain in his head. “I’ll just tuck it under my jacket so no one will see it.”

“Cassidy,” he said, gazing down into ocean-blue eyes that were bluer than he remembered. “Please?”

For a long moment, she continued watching him as if he’d lost his marbles, then her expression softened. “Okay. John said I should trust you, so I will.” She maneuvered him to the chair she’d been sitting in, helping him to lower onto it.

As she leaned on her cane and limped from the room, he was struck by the steel core in this woman. She reminded him of some of the vets who’d returned home from the Middle East with severe injuries. Some had pushed through the pain and managed to make new lives for themselves. Others hadn’t. He wasn’t sure yet which category she fell into.

A few more minutes ticked by before she came back, rolling a wheelchair in front of her. She gave him a snarky smile that seemed totally in line with her personality. “Your chariot awaits.”

“Cute,” he grumbled.

This time, she smiled sweetly. Tartly sweet. “I am, aren’t I?”

Kind of, he had to admit. She had nice even white teeth. With her help, he slid onto the wheelchair. “Let’s roll.”

Before pushing him out the door, she furtively glanced both ways down the corridor, looking about as natural as a spy in a room full of polygraph examiners. “How ’bout it, Mata Hari? Think the coast will be clear anytime today?” Every second they lingered in a public place meant more unwanted exposure.

“Cute,” she mimicked, pursing her raspberry-red lips and coming around behind the wheelchair. She pushed him into the corridor and through the ER doors, hesitating before taking him through the main entrance. “The press is still out there. If you haven’t heard, they’re waiting for Tammy Teague to flash them her broken pinkie toe. Rumor has it there’s a diamond-studded gold ring on it.”

“We need to find another exit.” He pointed down the corridor past the elevator bank.

Warm breath tickled his ear as she leaned down and whispered, “You sure you don’t want to stick around and see Tammy’s pinkie toe?”

He didn’t have to see her face to know she’d be sporting an impish, sarcastic grin. “I’ll pass.”

Still leaning in, she added, “Are you ever going to tell me why you don’t want to be seen?”

“No.” Not if he could help it. To emphasize the point, he twisted his neck, nearly bumping his nose into hers and causing her to jerk back. “Keep going. I see another exit door up ahead.”

She started pushing. “What’s with all the cloak-and-dagger antics?”

“I’d tell you, but—”

“Then you’d have to kill me. Blah, blah, blah.” She continued rolling him past the elevator bank where half a dozen people waited. “You really have been watching too many cop shows. Let me guess. You wanted to be a police officer when you were a boy.”

Markus held back a snort. The woman was nothing if not entertaining. Too bad this wasn’t a movie. If it were, he could call cut and walk off set. With his entire upper body throbbing harder than Ricky Ricardo on a set of Bongo drums, walking anywhere at the moment was going to be a bitch.

At the end of the long corridor was a single exit door with a small window. A sign on the lower half of the door said: No Return Access. With his height, he could easily see out the window into another parking lot. Most likely the hospital’s gated employee parking lot, which meant Cassidy wouldn’t be able to drive into it.

“Now what?” she asked.

“Drive around back and meet me as close as possible to this door. I’ll wait for you to get here before I step outside.”

“Oo-kay. Don’t run away, now, ya hear?” she said in a sarcastic voice.

Markus pivoted the chair to watch her start making her way back in the direction they’d come. Considering how out of it he’d been he couldn’t be sure, but he thought her limp was more pronounced than when he’d first noticed it.

Five minutes later, he was ready to crawl back to John’s house when he spotted Cassidy’s green VW bug outside the metal arm blocking the parking lot. Ghost’s enormous body took up the entire rear compartment, looking like a full-size marshmallow crammed inside a green M&M.

This is gonna hurt.

Bracing himself, he pushed to a standing position, gritting through the pain then waiting a few seconds to make sure he didn’t face-plant. When he was satisfied the floor wouldn’t rise up to meet him, he peered through the window. With his limited view, executing a proper threat assessment wasn’t possible, but he couldn’t hide in this hospital forever.

Given that they were in the sticks, not Metro D.C., the lot only had about fifty cars in it instead of hundreds, plus a smattering of bare deciduous trees and row after row of green hedges parallel to where he stood and tall enough for someone to hide behind. Not good. Behind the lot was a public access road abutting a housing development. One car, a dark red sedan, was parked against the curb on the road.

He’d been so out of it during the ride to the hospital he hadn’t been remotely capable of conducting adequate countersurveillance. In fact, he’d barely been able to keep his eyes open. It didn’t seem likely that anyone had tracked him to Podunk, Maryland so quickly. But after two tours in the Middle East and witnessing just how many crackpots actually thought they could scale the White House fence without getting body slammed to the ground, anything was possible.

He leaned against the metal bar, cracking the door open a few inches. The green bug was about twenty yards from where he stood, parked just outside the gate. Leaning one hand against the building’s brick siding, he began hobbling to the car. Halfway there, hairs on the back of his neck tingled and he stopped, scrutinizing every inch of the parking lot that he could see. No people, and nothing but parked cars stared back at him, all of them devoid of passengers. He hoped. But something had his heart beating faster.

Markus continued on, foot by agonizing foot as the movement jarred his wounds, sending pricks of pain to his waist and back. He faltered, nearly stumbling over his own feet. Cassidy opened her door, leaving it open as she started limping toward him. Christ, he felt weak. Being debilitated and weak grated his ego to shreds.

“Are you all right?” she called out, still a good thirty feet away and gradually closing the gap between them. “I couldn’t get any closer.”

“Don’t worry about it. Let’s just get out of here.”

Ghost scrambled into the front seat and leaped through the open driver’s side door, running past Cassidy to greet him with a look of pure joy on his doggie face.

“Hey, buddy.” He gave his dog a quick pat on the head, continuing his slow but steady trek.

When they were twenty feet from the car, Cassidy reached him, wrapping her arm around his waist, and it seemed natural to drop his arm over her shoulder. Again, he looked at the parking lot, not understanding exactly what was bothering him. But something still was.

Markus picked up his pace, but Cassidy couldn’t go any faster. With each successive step, he searched the lot, dissecting it visually into ten-degree slices of pie. The hairs on his neck were standing up straighter than the Washington Monument. They were about ten feet from the car when he saw it. A man’s head, barely visible over the top of one of the hedge rows near the back of the parking lot. And in the man’s outstretched hand…

…was a gun.

“Move!” he shouted, his muscles tightening as he practically pushed her in front of him, shielding her body with his as they both speed-limped the rest of the way to the car.

“Why? What’s wrong?”

“Just do it!”

A shot rang out. The bullet pinged off the hood of the bug.

Still shielding her body with his own, he flung open the passenger door and shoved her onto the seat. “Get down!”

Ghost took off in the direction of the bushes.

“No!” Ghost’s body was a white blur as he tore through the parking lot. The last thing he wanted was his dog charging into gunfire when the best course of action was to haul ass. It wasn’t like Ghost to ignore a command, but he knew what his dog was doing. Buying them time.

“What is happening?” Cassidy looked up at him, wide-eyed. “Was that a gunshot?”

“Yeah, so get the hell down!” Markus’s heart hammered as he slammed the door shut in Cassidy’s shocked face. A muscle in his jaw popped from clenching his teeth so hard. Leaving an active shooter in place went against every one of his finely-honed instincts. But even if he had a weapon on him, in the condition he was in, he couldn’t run down a sloth.

“Ghost, come!” Goddammit. Leaving Ghost behind sat about as well as an acute case of appendicitis, but given that he was the target, the longer he remained on site, the longer he’d be putting Cassidy and anyone else within shooting distance in the line of fire. The best thing he could do to protect others in the vicinity was to remove the target—him—from the kill zone.

He hunkered down below the level of the VW, which wasn’t saying much. The car really was about as high off the ground as the beetle it was named after. Leaning over as he was, every step crunched his wounds, sending bolts of pain straight to his gut. He maneuvered around the hood then opened the driver’s door.

Hot breath on his neck sent relief gushing through his veins. Ghost had returned. He motioned with his hand and Ghost leaped in, wriggling to squeeze his body between the seats and into the back of the car. Another shot whizzed by Markus’s ear, nicking the hood only inches from his head. He slid onto the driver’s seat, cranking the gear shift into reverse before he’d even closed the door.

At the first opportunity, he slammed on the brakes and shifted into drive, gunning the car through the visitor lot. Another car started backing out. Markus braked then swerved, pounding on the horn and just missing the other vehicle as he sped past.

The bug lurched dangerously to one side as he hit the turn onto the main road at nearly forty miles an hour. Ghost lost his balance and fell against one of the rear doors. Cassidy’s head bumped against the side of Markus’s rib cage. He winced, hoping to fuck he hadn’t busted his stitches open again. So much for following Dr. Martinez’s orders.

He dug his phone from his pocket and, using his thumb, dialed 911—the very thing he’d warned Cassidy not to do. Since it wasn’t possible to mask a call to 911 by punching in *67, he didn’t bother trying. “There’s an active shooter at St. Mary’s Hospital in Leonardtown,” he said when the dispatcher answered. “Last known location, employee parking lot. Single male shooter with a handgun. No known victims.” Unless you counted Cassidy’s VW bug.

Knowing the dispatcher would only pepper him with questions he couldn’t or shouldn’t answer, he hung up. If they tried tracing his cell number, it would come back to a fictitious individual—Alex Adessio, and they’d need a subpoena to get an address which, of course, would also be fictitious. If they bothered to try, it would be months before local police could figure out that Uncle Sam was footing the bill for his phone.

Markus pushed the car along the access road, glancing in his rear and side-view mirrors to see if they were being followed. Only after he’d taken the ramp for the highway and his breathing had slowed did he look at Cassidy.

She lay partially over the center console with her head down. One of her hands was clenched into a fist, her other gripped the handle of her cane so tightly her knuckles were whiter than Ghost’s fur. Ghost, on the other hand, sat calmly in the back seat, his mouth open and his big pink tongue hanging out and lolling to the side. For his dog, it was a good day’s work.

Even in the rearview mirror, Ghost detected he was being watched and draped his head over the seat to lick Markus’s ear. Next, the dog moved to Cassidy, leaning over the console to sniff her hair and nuzzle her cheek.

“Are you okay?” How could she be? Most people weren’t accustomed to getting shot at.

“W-well, um, I’m not shot, if that’s what you’re asking. But am I okay?” She fisted her hand tighter. “No.”

Again, he looked in the rearview. None of the cars behind them appeared to be following. “You can get up now.”

Slowly, she did. He felt the heat of her stare like twin laser beams singeing matching holes in his flesh. “You weren’t delusional,” she said softly. “Somebody really is trying to kill you.”

“Yeah.” How the hell did they find him, and so quickly?

The night they’d whisked him from a D.C. hospital, his friends Kade and Matt, along with Captain McMurray, had taken every possible precaution.

He moved into the right lane, heading for Leonardtown. Could be there was a leak, but he could count on one hand the number of people who knew where he was. Aside from his friends and his captain, the only others were John Freeman…and Cassidy. The first four he trusted with his life. Based on the “five seconds” he’d known Cassidy Morgan, he didn’t see why she would have dimed out his location to anyone. Besides, she didn’t know who he was and even if she did, she wouldn’t know who was trying to kill him. Hell, even he didn’t know.

Markus braked for the stop sign at the end of the exit ramp. When their gazes met, the most foreign thought hit him like a baton to the side of his head. He didn’t understand where the feeling came from, let alone why now and under these circumstances.

It was crazy, but for the first time in his life, his gut told him to trust someone he barely knew.