Fourteen
Where the hell is she? Ben scanned the crowd in the area where Claire should have been waiting. No sign of her. Worry slid through him. He’d left Hutchins at the beer stand, afraid to leave Claire alone any longer, but when he got back, she was gone.
His chest felt tight. Unless someone forced her to leave, she had spotted Bridger and Sam and was following them.
Christ.
He’d come in through the west door. No sign of them there. The toilets were on the east side. Ben shouldered his way through the crowd, moving fast in that direction.
At Claire’s high-pitched scream, a shot of adrenaline hit him, jolting him into action, and he shot through the open east door. Her white blouse made her easy to spot in the moonlit shadows at the side of the barn, struggling with a man who pressed her against the wall.
“Let me go!” she demanded.
“Shut up, bitch! You brought this on yourself!”
Right height, right build. He turned and Ben recognized him as the man in the photo with Laura. Troy Bridger. Clamping his jaw against the anger pumping through him, Ben lunged toward Bridger, grabbed him by the shoulder and spun him around, went into SEAL combat mode and pounded him with a left jab-right combination, smashed an elbow into Bridger’s face, splitting his cheek wide-open and drawing blood.
“Sam’s gone to the truck!” Claire shouted and started running toward the lot. “I’m going after him!”
He got a quick glimpse of her, saw that her cheek was bruised and her lip was bleeding, before Bridger swung a blow that Ben blocked. Thinking of Claire’s battered face, a shot of fury tore threw him. Ben took great pleasure in elbow-striking Bridger again, then bringing the bastard down with a fist to the back of his head and a knee to the belly.
Bridger hit the ground and didn’t get up.
Much as he wanted to finish the man where he lay, he started after Claire, who raced ahead of him toward the parking lot. He’d only made it a couple of steps when a gunshot cracked and pain tore into his side. The bullet spun him around and he went down, dropping onto a knee.
Heavy caliber, he figured. Enough to do some damage.
Pain ripped through him as he reached for the weapon at his back. Blood poured out of a wound below his ribs and his hand was slick with it, making it hard to hold the butt of the pistol. Through rapidly blurring vision, he saw Bridger stagger to his feet. Hutchins raced up beside him, shoving a big semi-auto into the back of his pants, and both men took off running, passing Claire, who had turned and was racing back in Ben’s direction.
She grabbed him as he swayed to his feet. “Oh, my God, Ben, he shot you! How...how bad are you hurt?”
Every instinct told him to go after his son, but he was losing a lot of blood. “Help me get to the car.” He should have figured on Hutchins showing up. Stupid. He’d been sidetracked by his fear for Claire. He’d lost his focus in a way he hadn’t since he was in BUDs, trying to suck it up and make the cut to become a SEAL. He didn’t want to think what might have happened to Claire if Hutchins had been a better shot.
A crowd had begun to gather. Aiming his .45 at the curious throng, he looped an arm over Claire’s shoulder and started backing away. Since knifings and gunfights were commonplace at events like these, the guards ignored them, and the sight of the weapon in his hand kept the crowd at bay as he and Claire vanished into the darkness.
No one came after them, since they were leaving the scene. The crowd just started fading away, wandering back to the betting and blood sport inside the barn.
As Claire helped him along the dusty path, he kept his hand pressed against his side to slow the bleeding, but wetness leaked through his fingers and soaked his black T-shirt. His side hurt nearly as bad as the time he’d been knifed in the Philippines.
From the corner of his eye, he spotted Hutchins’s black Camaro peeling out of the lot. He didn’t see a white Chevy pickup, but his vision was blurry and shapes were distorted.
“We’re almost there,” Claire said, her voice shaky. “Just hang on a little longer.” He could feel her trembling as they stumbled together toward the car.
“We’ve got to stop the bleeding,” she said when they reached the SUV. Ben holstered his .45 and tossed it in the console as Claire helped him climb into the passenger seat.
“I’ll do what I can. You just drive.”
Her hands shook as she untied the tails of her blouse and tore open the last few buttons, jerked it off and shoved it into his bloody hands. “Use this.”
He watched her slide in behind the wheel in her white lace bra, had the crazy thought that she looked hot as hell, then he must have blacked out for a second. The wheels were spinning, dust flying when he opened his eyes again, Claire roaring out of the makeshift parking lot onto the narrow dirt road leading back to the highway.
“We’ve got to find a hospital,” she said, her voice shaking.
“GPS.” Tearing off a chunk of her blouse, he stuffed it into the hole in his side. “I’ll find one.”
The shot was a through-and-through, which was good news and bad, since it meant the bullet wasn’t inside but there were two holes to fill instead of one. He ripped off another section of fabric and stuffed it in the entry wound in his back. Lucky for him, the rotten bastard had piss-poor aim or he’d be dead instead of just bleeding.
As Claire neared the highway, he reached over and hit the POIs on the nav system, pulled up hospitals and punched in the one closest to their location. As soon as they left the dirt road, the faceless voice on the GPS began to give directions.
Ben leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes, remembering those moments just after he’d walked outside the barn.
“I saw him, Claire. Just for a moment after you screamed. I saw my son.”
She glanced his way and a soft sob caught in her throat. “I didn’t...didn’t want to leave without him. Oh, God, Ben.”
“I’d be dead if you hadn’t come back for me.”
She turned to look at him, and he saw the tears on her cheeks. “I couldn’t just leave you.”
He closed his eyes, fighting not to lose consciousness. “I didn’t see his face. I didn’t realize it was Sam until I saw you with Bridger.”
“Don’t talk. You need to save your strength.”
He gritted his teeth against the searing pain and his failure to save his son. “We didn’t even get a f*cking license number.”
He felt Claire’s gentle touch against his beard-stubbled cheek. “Oh, yes, we did, Ben. I memorized the number as Troy pulled out of the lot.”
Ben’s mouth edged up. “Good girl. Call it in.” He caught the worry and triumph in her pretty green eyes the instant before he passed out cold in the seat.