The shooting stopped suddenly. The gunman with her Glock was dead on the floor. The other men raised their hands over their heads in surrender.#p#分页标题#e#
“Agent Bailey?” one of the agents called.
“Here,” she answered loudly. “Don’t shoot the guy on top of me. He’s one of the good guys and he’s injured. Please help him.” Her voice was desperate. Tate was covered in blood, and it was all his own.
“I’m good,” Tate told her in a low voice beside her ear. “You okay, baby?”
He was good, but he was far from healthy at the moment. Lara could hear the pain in his voice, but he wasn’t going to show it. “I’m all right,” she reassured him as he came to his feet and lifted her gently into a standing position and quickly untied her hands.
“You’re bleeding and the bastard hit you so hard he left a handprint on your face,” he answered, enraged. He touched a finger lightly to her cheek and he swiped away a little blood.
Lara looked over at the dead man. “He’s wearing a ring. I think it just caught my skin,” she said dismissively as she reached out to rip his T-shirt and get a look at his wound.
Tate had blood soaking his T-shirt, on his face, and large stains on his jeans. There were also a few puddles on the floor. “You’ve lost too much blood. You need help.” She put a hand firmly over the laceration that was right between his chest and collarbone, and put as much pressure as possible on the stab wound to stop the bleeding. She used her other hand to give her counter pressure on his back.
One of the team of agents ran over to them. “I think we have them all contained, Agent Bailey. There were seven total?”
“Yes. Including the dead guy on the floor. The use of deadly force was necessary,” Lara told the tall, dark-haired agent who looked to be in his early thirties in a sharp, businesslike voice. “This is Tate Colter. He’s Special Forces and he helped me out. He needs treatment. He was stabbed by one of the perps.”
“You need us to carry you out to the car, Mr. Colter?” the agent asked, suddenly realizing the amount of blood Tate had lost. “We’ll get you to the hospital.” The agent glanced at Lara. “You look like you need to get checked, too. Your face is a mess.”
Tate grunted. “Nobody carries me unless I’m dying or dead. Right now, I’m neither one of those things.” He put an arm protectively around Lara. “Let’s go.”
She rolled her eyes. “I’m trying to hold pressure here,” she told him angrily as his protective hold dislodged her hands from holding tension on his wound.
“It’s fine. I want a doctor to look at your injuries. Let’s get to the car,” he growled as he steered her toward the entrance. The agent trailed right behind them.
Tate stopped suddenly near the door, his eyes murderous as he watched his brother approach, being led to the exit in handcuffs by a federal agent.
Lara’s breath hitched and time seemed to stop as the two brothers finally looked at each other. She could feel Tate’s whole body shudder as he slowly lowered his arm from around her shoulder and approached his brother.
Marcus looked as though he was barely affected by what was taking place, but his eyes were assessing as he watched Tate walk over to him.
Without a word, Tate drew his arm back and let his fist fly, punching his brother squarely in the face. The agent behind Marcus needed to steady him to keep Marcus on his feet.
“That’s for betraying your country and letting Lara get hurt—you selfish prick,” he said in a husky, menacing voice before he turned his back on Marcus and returned to Lara’s side to grab her hand.
Tears rolled down her face. Her heart squeezed inside her chest at the betrayal that Tate was suffering from at the moment. It wouldn’t end here. She knew that. Tate would be wounded more than physically from having his loyalty forsaken by his older brother.#p#分页标题#e#
She squeezed his hand in a show of support.
He pulled her forward and out of the hangar, never once looking back at Marcus as he got her into the car and the agent drove like a maniac toward the hospital.
Gabe Walker swung his big pickup truck into a vacant spot along the main road of Rocky Springs, his gut in knots over what he had to do.
He exited the truck and shook his head slowly as he plopped his black Stetson on his head. People jokingly referred to him as the billionaire cowboy, but he never took offense. He’d lived most of his childhood in Texas, born wealthy because he had a father who had made his fortune in oil. Like Blake, his dad had also had a cattle ranch. So Gabe guessed he was as much a cowboy as any other, even more than Blake, who many referred to as the cowboy senator because he had a cattle ranch.