Homicide! (Parker & Knight Book 2) Read Online Free Page B

been turned when the men entered the bar, and before she could react, there was a man standing over her with a baseball bat, threatening to strike her.
    The two other men went in different directions, and one of them hit a customer in the arm.
    As the injured man fell to the floor, Parker entered with his weapon drawn. As he turned his head to look at the man on his left, the one on the right dropped his bat and grabbed a shotgun from a makeshift shoulder rig beneath his jacket.
    That’s when Heather stepped out and everything went to hell.
    As Parker and the man traded shots, Jo swept the feet out from under the punk standing atop the bar, sending him crashing backwards to the floor. An instant later, she reached beneath the counter, took out her gun, and aimed it at the last man standing.
    “Get down on the floor, now!”
    The man dropped his bat and laid down, even as Heather dropped the tray of food and knelt beside Parker, who was fighting back waves of agony caused by the impact of the pellets.
    “Talk to me partner!” Jo shouted.
    “I’m good,” Parker said through clenched teeth. “My vest took most of it.”
    Jo climbed over the bar and went to the man Parker had shot, to relieve him of his weapon.
    “He’s alive, but unconscious,”
    As Jo called for an ambulance, Heather helped Parker to rise and take a seat on a bar stool. She was crying as she looked at the bloody wounds in his right arm, chest, and shoulder.
    After Jo cuffed the men and called in the attack, she checked on Parker.
    “Let’s see that arm.”
    “It’s not bad, I took the hit sideways, also, I think there was bird shot in the shell, not double-ought buckshot pellets; if I’d been hit with double-ought it might have penetrated the vest.”
    Jo patted him on the cheek. “Thank God you were wearing your vest.”
    “Are you okay?”
    “I’m fine; they just came in so fast that I couldn’t get to my gun.”
    “I think this Nico just upped the stakes,” Parker said.
    ***
    T hree ambulances arrived one after the other and Parker watched as the man he shot was loaded into the first one and taken away. The man turned out to be a seventeen-year-old kid, but he stood six-feet tall and was carrying a shotgun, so Parker felt little regret at having shot him,
    The customer who had his arm broken was next and then Parker climbed aboard the last ambulance. Jo was staying behind to deal with the aftermath, in between attempts to comfort a distraught Patrick Taggart.
    As the attendant was swinging the door closed, Heather grabbed it and swung it open.
    “I want to ride with him.”
    The attendant protested but Parker overrode his objections and Heather climbed aboard. As the ambulance headed toward the new hospital, Heather took Parker’s hand and laid her head on his good shoulder.
    “You saved me. If you hadn’t jumped in front of me... I might have died.”
    “I would never let anyone hurt you,” Parker said.
    They grew quiet, and the only sound beside the wail of the siren, was the voice of the ambulance attendant as he spoke into a cell phone.
    Heather lifted her head from his shoulders and stared at him.
    “Rick?”
    “Yeah?”
    “That question you want to ask me? The answer is yes, hell yes,”
    Parker had just faced death and been wounded, but as he looked at Heather’s smiling face, he knew he was having one of the best days of his life.

5
    T he new hospital was eight stories high and sat on land that was previously a cornfield. There was also an annex building to house the administrative branch and teaching center, and despite being only three stories in height, it was sprawling, and covered nearly as much land as the hospital,
    A nurse escorted Parker past the crowd in the waiting room, but as he and Heather approached the treatment area, he heard a familiar voice cry out.
    “Rick!”
    It was Rachel, his ex-wife. She ran towards him in her white nurse’s uniform and winced when she saw his injuries.
    “Hello