Smoke & Mirrors (Outbreak Task Force) by Rowe Julie

Author:Rowe, Julie
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Entangled, Amara, Romance, Military, Protector, Race against Time, Save the World, Medical, Bioterrorism, Multicultural, Action adventure, Suspense, Native American, CDC, Virus, Hanta Virus, Outbreak, Plague, Opposites attract
Publisher: Entangled Publishing, LLC
Published: 2018-02-26T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Twenty

Smoke got in the jeep and started the engine. He turned the vehicle around and drove toward the hospital. A crowd of people going up the steps to the main entrance blocked his view of Kini.

When they passed, no one was left sitting on the steps.

He’d told her to stay there, damn it. It was hot, so maybe she’d gone inside where the air conditioning could take the edge off.

The parking lot was even fuller than before, with a couple of trucks now parked on the groomed, gravel landscaped areas adjacent to the sidewalk on either side of the steps.

He parked next to one of the trucks, got out, and ran up the stairs.

The air was far cooler inside, but no Kini was in sight. Scanning the lobby and a couple of the hallways leading deeper into the building, he couldn’t see her.

Something caught his attention and he did a double take. One of Kini’s shoes lay on the floor of one of the hallways.

He strode toward it and picked it up.

The blood splatter across it was all too familiar. These were her shoes. Kini.

He looked around and saw a caretaker washing the floor farther down. “Excuse me,” Smoke said. “Did you see the lady who lost this shoe?”

“Yeah. Her friends didn’t bother to go back for it when it fell off. Not even when I yelled at them to stop and come back to get it.”

“Friends?”

“Two of them were carrying her.”

“Those weren’t friends,” Smoke growled.

“I thought she was having a seizure,” the caretaker said, horror turning his expression slack. “One of them shoved something into her mouth, I thought it was to keep her from biting her tongue, you know? She flailed around, hit one of them, then seemed to fall unconscious.”

“They took her.”

The hallway wasn’t a direct route to an exit, but it wouldn’t be hard to get to one.

Smoke turned and sprinted for the front door, dodging a line of people coming in. Seconds later, he was in the jeep, gunning the engine and peeling out of the parking lot.

The hospital had many doors, but only two ways a vehicle could get to it. He drifted the jeep as he forced it to speed into the staff parking area and commercial drop-off zone, hoping to confront whoever had taken Kini. He braked, angling the jeep so it blocked the exit.

No one was in sight, inside or outside a vehicle.

No one.

Smoke waited. He was supposed to be good at that, but the weird groan from the steering wheel told him he’d better stop taking his frustration out on his ride.

Why would anyone take her? She was a nurse, not someone with authority, privileged information, or launch codes.

Who benefited from her kidnapping? What could they hope to gain from Kini? Was it an angry local who’d lost a family member?

Smoke pulled into a parking spot and called River’s cell.

“Kini’s been kidnapped,” he said as soon as the other man answered the call. “Two men took her about five minutes ago, made it look like she was having a seizure or something.

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