Page 19 of Fully Loaded

She whirled on him. “So what happened?”

He reached inside his jacket and placed a gun on the console between them. “That’s yours.”

She fingered the smooth, hard metal. The tendons in her hand resisted, but she forced them to pick up the weapon.

“I have one already,” he said.

“How did you . . . ? These are from the guys who were watching us?”

“Yeah.” The word came out clipped. He turned out of the parkade, heading in the opposite direction of the library. He reached into his pocket again and handed her a brown leather wallet. “I took that off the guy who shot at you. Check his ID.”

She snapped open the wallet. A silver badge was clipped to the leather.

Switzerland Polizei

“Holy shit, Brock. He’s a cop.” She lowered the wallet to her lap so it wouldn’t fall on the floor. Her trembling fingers couldn’t bear its weight.

Brock snatched it up and read the badge then flipped to the ID in the clear plastic window. “The other guy said they were working for Ubrigg. Look at his picture—is he the same guy who was in your apartment?”

She accepted the wallet again and stared at the small image on the driver’s license. It had been dark that night. Much too dark to make out all his facial features.

“I don’t think so. He has a buzz cut. The man in my apartment had longer hair, and I stabbed him in the back of the thigh, so I highly doubt he’d be able to run like he did at the library.”

“Shit. The bastards are multiplying.”

“The cop who broke into my house had to work for Ubrigg. There’s no way the police would have caught me so quickly. Something must have tipped Ubrigg off and made him check the cameras from his building that day.”

“I agree. If the cops were legit, they’d have had squad cars there long before you escaped.”

She placed the gun in her other hand and turned it over. She and Serena had learned to shoot as teenagers. Milo, Serena’s fiancé, had taught them both. She hadn’t held the foreign object in almost a decade, but her brain acted on memory and switched the safety on. Then she placed it on her lap.

“What else happened at the library?” She let her gaze travel up his body. Seeing the dark red liquid coating his right bicep, she gasped and slapped her hand to her mouth. “You’re shot!” She stretched across the console and snagged his elbow. In all the emotion of the last few minutes, she hadn’t noticed the blossoming stain a few shades darker than the material of his long-sleeved shirt.

He winced, and tendons jumped under his skin. “Yeah, it hurts like a bitch.”

“We need to clean it.” She pinched the material of his shirt and shifted it to better see the wound. He jerked and she cringed. “Sorry.”

“I have a small first aid kit in my suitcase. It probably looks worse than it is.”

She curled her fingers away from his arm and pressed her back against the seat. Nausea sloshed inside of her with every turn. He’d been shot because of her. A few more inches to the left and the bullet would have hit him in the chest. A cold chill rippled over her skin. If he’d died, she’d have been alone, stranded in Geneva with people trying to kill her and the formula to a virus that could wipe out half the world’s population . . . and she would have had to endure living in a world without him.

He pulled up to the hotel and drove down the ramp to the parking garage.

“Aren’t you going to use the valet?”

“No. I want to know where my car is in case we need to leave quickly. And I don’t want anyone to see my arm if I can help it.”

“Good point. We’d stick out like a sore thumb.”

He drove down another ramp and parked. Dani gravitated to Brock’s side as they got out, hoping to block his arm from view, but the top of her head barely reached the wound. He chuckled and wrapped his right arm around her shoulders as he yanked open the door to the stairwell with his left hand.

“If you don’t mind getting blood in your hair, this will work—but only if you play along.”

Her cheeks warmed. Footsteps sounded from the floor above as they climbed the stairs. He lowered his face to her ear. “You look like my hostage right now.”

She laughed and intertwined her fingers with his over her shoulder. She kept her gaze pointed at her feet as they ascended. The woman moving toward the parkade mumbled a greeting in German as she passed. By the time they’d reached the eighth floor, Dani’s legs burned. She opened the door and they moved down the hall to their room.

Brock kept his arm slung around her as he towed her into their suite. He reached for the gun at his back and held it at his thigh. He left her side to sweep the room and then returned to the entrance, where she waited.