Mistaken Target by Sharon Dunn

Author:Sharon Dunn
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2015-05-15T00:00:00+00:00

THIRTEEN

Diego turned his head slightly. He sensed that he was being watched.

“No fast moves,” said the officer standing next to him. “Put your finger on the ink pad.”

Instincts honed from his days on the street told him he was under threat. The hairs on the back of his neck stood up. He felt that heated prickling of his skin that told him danger was close by. As he went through the motions for fingerprinting, he separated out the different sounds in the processing room. Low mumbling, papers being shuffled, fingers tapping keyboards. Then he heard it. Footsteps moving at a rapid pace and growing closer.

He whirled around, scanning the crowd.

“Hey.” The officer fingerprinting him gripped Diego’s upper arm.

It took him less than a second to lock on to the menace on the face of the dark-haired man approaching him. Though he slowed his pace when Diego spotted him, his intentions were obvious.

The officer squeezed Diego’s arm. “Face forward.”

Reluctantly, Diego took his eyes off his would-be attacker. Maybe Diego’s glare had been enough to ward him off. He’d lost the element of surprise.

“You might want to check out the guy in the red shirt,” Diego said to the officer.

“Let’s just get through this,” said the officer.

He couldn’t see the man out of his peripheral vision.

The crowd of people seemed to draw closer to him. A woman a few feet away from him screamed. He felt a sting across his upper arm where a sharp object plunged into his biceps. His body went into shock as he reached out for his assailant, who held a jagged piece of metal.

The officer grabbed him and pushed him back against a wall. Blood gushed from his arm. The cut was deep. He saw black spots around the edges of his vision.

Then Samantha’s face popped into view. Her lovely blue eyes reflected his own fear. “I saw. I got down here as fast as I could.”

The crowd whirred and mumbled around him. Another woman gasped in a way that sounded more like a soft scream. He slipped in and out of consciousness as he was lifted onto something and moved through space on his back. Ceiling tiles clipped by.

A hand slipped into his. And he heard her voice again. “I’m here, Diego.”

He was aware that he was being wheeled somewhere, but his strongest impression was of the softness of her hand in his.

He slipped into unconsciousness. When he woke up in a hospital bed, Samantha was sitting beside him.

He felt light-headed. He stared down at the bandage on his upper arm.

“It was a pretty deep gash, but it’ll heal. He was aiming for your heart.” She leaned toward him and twisted a corner of the bedsheet in her fingers. “I guess the fact that he missed is the good news.”

He stared at his surroundings. The room was small and without windows.

“It’s the infirmary in the jail. They said you could stay here until your bail hearing tomorrow morning. Now they believe me that your life is at risk, so they let me see you even though I’m not family.

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