Under Fire (Love Over Duty #1)(82)

Six pulled them from his pocket and dropped them into Cabe's palm. 

"I opened the side door," Mac said, nodding his head toward the side of the building. "He's going to pull your truck inside, just in case you did gain a tail."

Action was going on all around her. Cabe ran outside, slamming the main door behind him. Mac locked everything down and then offered his shoulder to Six, who was leaning on the front desk, leaving a bloody smear with one hand while the other pressed the towel to his waist.

"Let's get you into those medical rooms," Mac said. "Nice of you to have given the paint the chance to dry before you got yourself shot up."

"Funny, asshole," Six replied. When he turned and winked at her, she could see the sweat on his brow and the way his skin had taken on a pallor. It was taking a lot for him to remain standing, she could tell, and she wondered how much of that was for her benefit. She should feel safe in a secure compound with three men trained to kill. Without Six's intervention, she would certainly be in the hands of the people who wanted her. Her entire body shook at the thought. But they'd nearly killed him. She'd seen the bullet wound with her own eyes. Ten inches higher, and his heart would have been in a whole world of trouble. Part of her wanted to tell them that the contract was canceled, that she didn't want their help in protecting her if it put Six's life at risk. But she was too much of a coward to go it alone, and too smart to truly consider it.

She shuffled after them, still wearing her pajamas, through another key-coded door, down the hallway, and then through a wide-open space. It had the proportions of a small airplane hangar, but that couldn't be possible given its location so close to the university. Six's truck roared into the building through the wide-open door, and no sooner had Cabe brought it to a stop than he was out of the cab and lowering the heavy roller shutter into place.

They passed through a small gym into a series of rooms at the back that looked, and smelled, like a locker room. Six pushed the door open to a room that looked part medical, part dorm. At Mac's instruction he hopped up on the bed.

"Here." Cabe dropped a large fleece around her shoulders. "We don't have any women's clothes, but it will help you get warm."

Louisa struggled to get her brain to function. It was hot outside, yet she was frozen. She watched, almost impartially, as Mac cut away Six's shorts and then stuck a needle into his side. Over the years, she'd dissected animals and even humans, but somehow the sight of Mac fixing Six made her feel ill. Despite how cold she felt, she needed air. She turned and ran into the gym before throwing up in a garbage can.

"Lou?" she heard Six shout. But she needed a moment before she went back to see him. You're fine. He's alive. He'll be fine. It will all be fine. Except it wasn't fine. She threw up again.

Once she'd finished heaving, she wiped her mouth with the sleeve of the fleece and sat back on her knees.

"Here. Drink this." Cabe offered her a bottle of ice-cold water, and she placed it against her forehead. "You're doing great, Louisa. Stressful night for everybody."

"Lou?" Six yelled again.

"She's fine, Viking. Stay where you are," Cabe shouted back.

"They shot him," she blurted. "So I shot one of them. He's on the floor. I think I killed him."

Cabe sat down on the floor next to her, resting his forearms on his knees. "Yeah. That happens sometimes. And it's really rough that you experienced it. But if you hadn't, what do you think the outcome would have been?"

"They would have killed Six and taken me."

Cabe fiddled with the watch on his wrist. "You're a scientist, right?"



       
         
       
        

Louisa nodded.

"So you know all about how to design experiments, alter variables, and trade off options, right?"

She took a sip of water. "I'd like to think so," she said quietly.

"Well, here's the thing. In the moment you stepped up to fire that gun, your brain had already made the decision that Six's life and your safety were more important than the other guy's life. And from what you told me, there were more of them than there were of you. All those shots did was even the scales. You didn't do anything wrong, Louisa. In fact, for someone who hates guns-and yeah, Six told us how much you don't like 'em-I'd say you did everything right."

In the past, Louisa had never had any difficulties putting emotion to one side to look at things clinically. Despite her deeply personal connection to Huntington's disease, she'd never felt panic in her attempts to find medication to help people living with it. Certainly she'd spent a number of years feeling a burden of responsibility to find a treatment quickly, but never had she felt the torrential river of feelings that currently coursed through her body.