Kane yanked her to her feet, took the pistol from hands she realized were shaking and holstered it for her. “You did good,” he said, his voice deeper than usual.
Then he was pulling her against his chest, and she could have sworn his hand stroked the back of her hair before he let her go, started talking logistics.
Ana Sofia was hurt. Not shot, but knocked cold when the SUV crashed. Evan had taken a bullet to the arm, Just a nick, he’d said. Laura had a nasty bruise on her forehead and blood on the side of her face. But they were all alive, their suspects all dead. Not even remotely the plan, but better than the alternative.
Melinda sank to the ground, her heart rate—so calm in those important moments—now off and running again. She closed her eyes, tried to will away the nausea, as she let her teammates handle the logistics. Dead suspects still needed guns moved away from them, hands cuffed. It was procedure. Calls had to be made, to deal with the bodies, to report back to Pembrook.
Through her haze, Melinda felt Laura’s hand on her arm, her calm, understanding words. “It happens to all of us. Just breathe through it. You’ll be okay.”
Then, from farther away, JC’s voice, obviously on a phone call. “What do you mean we don’t know where Davis is?”
She tried to focus, to contribute in some meaningful way. She was FBI, for crying out loud. She could handle this.
But the buzzing in her ears just got louder, the uneven cadence of her breathing got worse. Then, somehow, it was Pembrook forcing her head up, staring back at her. Her voice that finally snapped Melinda out of it.
“It’s over, Melinda. We’re getting help from the Knoxville field office to manage the scene. We’ll need statements, but right now, we need your profiling brain. We need to figure out where Davis might have gone.”
Melinda frowned, took a deep breath. “Last I heard, he’d left the Petrov Armor office. He’d gone home.”
“We’re going to send an agent there now. Davis’s phone is off, so we can’t track it, but Hendrick is doing his magic back at the office. In the meantime, maybe Davis went back to Petrov Armor headquarters or—”
“He said he was finished there.” The brief text she’d gotten earlier from Davis said he strongly suspected Eric Ross, flat out announced his undercover time was over. She’d texted back, asking for more detail, but hadn’t gotten a response. “Did you ask Kane?”
“Kane said he had nothing more to offer on this,” Pembrook replied, and something about the way she was scowling made Melinda glance around.
JC was still on scene and Rowan was here now, too, looking a little queasy. But the rest of the agents had cleared out. Probably some of them had gone to get medically checked out, some had gone to the office to either fill out statements about tonight or help with the search for Davis. And yet...
“Where’s Kane?”
Pembrook shook her head, her face scrunching up apologetically. “He’s gone.”
Dread made her press a hand against her chest. “Gone?”
“Back undercover.”
“What?”
“It came up days ago, new movement on a major drug smuggling operation where Kane had a deep cover a few months back. We’d pulled him, but his cover was intact. It’s not great timing, but—”
“He’s really gone? Just like that?” After everything that had happened tonight? After all their hard work to bring down the members of BECA? And not even a goodbye?
Pembrook stood, dusted off the knees of her pants. “You’re the profiler, Melinda. You should understand.” As she turned away, she added, “Get moving. I need you.”
Grimacing at the stiffness in her arms and legs and back, Melinda stood. Her mind whirled as she followed her boss.
Kane was gone.
She’d thought that the way she’d proven herself tonight, the way the entire team had banded together to survive, would have shown him that being part of a team could be a good thing. That being part of a partnership could be a good thing. Instead, it had just reinforced his desire to run.
Pain sliced through her chest, not at all connected to her sore limbs being forced to move again after she’d held them so stiffly while under the SUV and during her panic attack afterward. But she ignored it and hurried after Pembrook.
She couldn’t worry about Kane now, couldn’t think about losing him as a partner. Couldn’t think about how much she wanted to keep working with him. How much she wanted to keep seeing him, talking to him, arguing with him.
Right now, she needed to focus on Davis. Right now, she needed to help find Davis.
JOEL PETROV HAD ambushed him.
The realization hurt more than whatever Joel had used to knock him out when Davis had arrived at the remote testing facility.
He’d come here full of excitement about a new lead on Eric Ross, but as he slowly sat up and discovered himself in the middle of a firing lane, Davis knew. Joel had planted all the records leading to Eric, the security card access times and the supply orders.
“When did you know?” Davis asked. His words didn’t sound quite right, his tongue heavy in his mouth. He pushed himself up to a kneeling position, got ready to try to stand.
“Don’t,” Joel warned.
Davis looked up and his vision blurred, but when he blinked a few times, the two versions of Joel merged into one. And that Joel was holding a pistol, aiming it straight at Davis. Close enough not to miss, far enough that there was no way Davis could rush him.
Subtly, Davis used one hand to pat his pocket, searching for his phone. The other pressed against the back of his head, felt the sticky evidence of blood.
He wasn’t sure how long he’d been out, but it was long enough for Joel to have
