Keepers & Killers (The Alchemy Series) by Donna Augustine Read Free Book Online Page A

and pretended my hands weren't shaking.
    I flew up the ramp into the private garage, everything was open , just as promised. Standing in front of the door, only about ten feet from my trailer, stood Dodd, Dr. Sabrina, who I remembered from the night I'd gotten radiation overdose, Buzz and Ben. I drove the last couple of feet before I hit the brakes.
    Dodd had Cormac out of the car before I'd even screeched to a complete stop.
    "Lay him down and sit right here , Dodd," the doctor instructed as she kneeled next to him without a thought to the pretty white sun dress she wore.
    A tube was already hanging from Dodd 's vein and the doctor inserted it into Cormac's arm a second later.
    "Well?" Dodd asked, the first of us to utter the question.
    She felt his pulse, opened his lids and gazed into his eyes with a light. "We're good."
    "Should we move him?" Ben chimed in, as we all looked at Cormac , lifeless on the ground.
    "I wouldn 't bother. He'll be up soon enough. With the new injection of blood, he'll be standing on his own in another ten minutes."
    I felt the tension slip away like a storm wind blowing in after a boiling summer day , bringing a new set of issues with it.
    "What happened?" It was clear Dodd instinctively took charge when Cormac couldn 't, and his ease in the position made me wonder how often that was.
    I gave them all a quick recap as Dodd grilled me for details I couldn 't answer.
    "This doesn 't make sense. How could a sniper have snuck up on Cormac? He smells a sniper from ten miles away. There has to be more. What were you doing?" They all stared at me.
    "I don 't know how. He just did. That's all I remember," I said defensively. Why was everyone looking at me as if it was my fault?
    "And when you pulled away, the senator was just gone?" Dodd continued to interrogate me.
    "Yes. Can you grill me later after we know he 's okay?" I asked, I was still uneasy at the sight of him lying there. I had an irrational urge to kick him and scream at him to sit up.
    "Relax . Doc gave us the thumbs up." I saw him look over at my trailer. "Hey, do you have any beer in there?"
    I threw my hands up, aghast at the question. "No, I don 't."
    "That sucks. Okay, so you thought he was scared of you?" The last question had a tone I found hard not to be insulted by.
    "Yes. I think he was scared of me." I spoke a bit slower to get my point across.
    "If that was the case, why didn 't you take a shot at him?" He shifted in his spot still seated next to Cormac.
    Sabrina knelt down next to the two of them and started to withdraw the transfusion of Dodd 's blood.
    "I didn 't try to take a shot because of your almost dead friend? Burrom, on the roof, with a gun aimed at us?"
    Sabrina looked at me as I talked with my hands as I became more and more agitated.
    "Do you want me to take a look at those?" she asked, looking directly at where my sleeve hung, shredded.
    I held up my arm and got a good look at the road burn already scabbed and healing. "No, I 'm fine."
    "I think you could 've gotten one good blow in," Dodd said, having trouble letting the subject drop.
    "He was bleeding out on the pavement."
    "Look, no judgment here, I just think I could've pulled off at least one shot is all," he replied, clearly passing judgment.
    "Leave her alone," Cormac said and startled me from my annoyance at Dodd. All eyes fell to him as he started to sit up, not even eight minutes after I'd pulled in. Were the doctor's calculations wrong or was he just one tough S.O.B.?  I'd guessed the latter.
    He was on his feet a minute later, looking l a hundred percent, other than the fact he was wearing clothes soaked in blood, riddled with bullet holes, that is.
    "He disappeared completely?" Cormac asked as he took off his bloodied shirt.
    "Yes. You heard all of that?" I asked, a bit startled. Did his brain work better than mine? He'd just almost died blocking bullets meant for me; was it wrong to feel jealous?
    "Nothing? Not a trace?"
    "Yes. That's what I said." I