“Shut up, Laura!” He swung her around to face him, forcing her thighs around his waist, one large hand clutching her buttocks, the other a steel harness behind her back, carrying her like she’d once carried her baby brother and sister. “Hold on—tight!”
She did, clamping her legs around him, clinging for dear life. Not that she needed to. He crushed her if he were trying to hide her inside him. Her flesh felt battered into his, her breath took in his heat and sweat and anger.
Her senses sharpened, receded. Fear and anger and awareness dragged her under. She made herself surface, frantic to see what was happening around her, where he was taking her. One eye’s field of vision was all she managed to free. The hundred and four jarring steps she’d counted had delivered them from danger and to one of La Clínica’s beat-up ambulance vans.
One violent yank brought one of its double doors crashing back on its hinges. Expecting to be thrown inside with the same vehemence, she braced herself. The next second she couldn’t hold back her surprise at his extreme gentleness as he deposited her on the paramedic bench. Her eyes darted to his face. Nothing could have been harsher.
So what else was new? Ignore him.
Impossible to do that, as usual. Especially now, with his bulk blocking her view. Then he moved, followed her inside, and she could finally see the woman they’d left behind. She and the other victims were still motionless in the middle of the street. The mob had veered into a side street, some persistent elements still going back to pelt the police forces, provoking more warning shots.
She’d made a lousy call before, going out there before the riot had receded enough. Now there were only the police in the background. If they made a run back for the victims, shouted that they were doctors, they could reach them, carry them back. She measured the distance, gulped down a steadying breath then moved. Armando moved first, shoving her down again. No gentleness this time.
“Por Dios, get down and stay down! I didn’t risk getting my head smashed in to get you off the street just so you’d dash out again and succeed in getting yourself killed.”
She would have ignored him now if she wasn’t losing the wrestling match with him. Better luck wrestling with steel handcuffs! Impotence and fury crackled on her lips. “What kind of doctor are you to just leave victims behind, Salazar?”
“I’m not leaving anyone behind, but you’re staying put!” He hauled a hard collar and a rebreather mask with an oxygen reservoir from the shelves lining the ambulance walls, sprang from the van, slammed the door behind him and locked it with the remote control.
For a few moments rage threatened to burst her skull. How dared he? What made it OK for him to run back out there and not her? And he couldn’t possibly carry them all! What was he trying to prove? That he really was a superhero? What was his special power, Latin chauvinism? Just because he’d managed to swindle her out of her position as aid operation leader…
Blasts erupted again amidst a new uproar, startling her out of her fury. This time nature joined in, then drowned the human frenzy as a sudden, violent downpour started pounding the van. From the rear window she saw another horde, this time bigger, tens of thousands turning the corner of the main street and heading for the police forces. And in between there was Armando, carrying the woman and leaning over one victim, then the other.
Seconds stood between him and being squashed in the middle of the mob. And he was wasting them!
Buy him time. The thought screamed in her mind.
She flopped back on the stretcher, prayed that he’d armed the van’s alarm system by locking it and rammed both feet into the rear window.
She didn’t even hear her own shouted ‘Yes’.
The siren blared, jarring enough to cause the antagonistic sides’ momentary hesitation. A hesitation Armando used to rouse one of the fallen men by pressure on his forehead, to shove him out of harm’s way and, with the woman held high in his arms, to squeeze between the two waves of hostility before they collided.
Laura returned her attention to the door. How the hell did that doorhandle work? She’d definitely unlocked it but the handle just wouldn’t budge. Frustration roared in her ears, seethed from her lips. “Dammit—damn you, Salazar!”
She had to get out, meet him halfway, help him. Yes—the oxygen tank!
The window withstood the first swing, fragmenting but holding up. A cry of rage and a second swing made a big enough hole for her arm. In a second she’d worked the handle from outside, got out and was already running to him—only to watch him lurch over the woman in his arms.
His name was torn from her. “Armando!”
He’d been shot. He’d die.
God, please, no, not again!
Her feet pounded the hot, wet tarmac, every step shattering a pool of rain and transmitting a bolt of agony to her right side, a reminder of how close she’d come to dying herself. She didn’t care. She had to reach him, save him…
He fell to his knees, chest heaving, still clutching the woman. Laura’s heart stuttered and stopped for the moments it took him to struggle back to his feet, hauling the woman in a more secure grip, staggering onwards. Her heart was hammering again, almost bursting with a brutal mix of confusion, dread and hope. There was no blood on him—but if he’d been shot in the back, she wouldn’t see it. Were they shooting real bullets now?
Had he or hadn’t he been shot?
A hundred feet away, his hoarse warning hit her, explaining everything. “Tear gas…” Then he succumbed to a fit of uncontrollable coughing.
So that was it. In his exertion he must have gulped deep of the irritant chemical. Like breathing in fire…
The next second, her instincts kicked in. She couldn’t risk exposure too. She ran back to the van, as far away as possible from the incapacitating fumes that she could now see rising, even among the sheets of rain pounding down on the combatants. But in their desperation to escape, the mob was getting even more dangerous, spreading towards Armando in nightmarish tentacles.
But he was ahead, fast and strong and heading to…
Oh, God, where was he going?
He was no longer heading in her direction. He’d end up in the middle of the riot again, the way he was blindly… But of course! He was blind. His eyes must be burning, profusely tearing, lids squeezed shut with blepharospasm—beyond his ability to open them again.
Her mind raced. Rushing out to lead him back was out of the question. One way, then—she had to be his eyes. If he could hear her frantic shouts over this nightmare…
“Armando—turn right! Right!” He stopped. He’d heard her, thank God. “Make a ninety-degree turn. A bit more. Yes, yes—that’s it. Keep going in a straight line now. Faster. There’s a sidewalk in about twenty paces. I’ll shout to you to stop before you reach it.” She had to stop then, to catch her breath, grind her teeth. Every shouted word was lancing a hot arrow into her chest and abdomen.
“Stop!” He did, still heaving with racking coughs. She forced more directions out. “Just one more step and you’ll hit the edge of the sidewalk—yes, you’re there. It’s high, more than a foot. Yes, yes—now four of your paces and you’ll come off it. No—watch it!” He stumbled off the sidewalk and fright forced the air out of her. He straightened, his body language hesitant and anxious as she gasped for oxygen, fighting against the mounting pain. She failed in both but still shouted, “It’s all clear to where I’m standing. Just follow my voice.”
In twenty seconds he’d stumbled to her and she took some of the woman’s weight off him, directing him until they had her on the stretcher. She harnessed her in, then turned to him.
His