Time of Attack by Marc Cameron Read Free Book Online Page A

boil.”
    “It was his grandson,” Bedford corrected. “And the poor kid died from complications after doctors lanced his boil—which is exactly what your cutthroat brother-in-law will do if I go to see him.”
    “You can’t see it, but I can,” Marta said. “I’m making you an appointment for tomorrow morning.” She pooched out her bottom lip as a sign that any further argument would be futile.
    “Okay, okay,” he said, hobbling to the bathroom, appalled that he was beginning to move like his dairyman father. He cleared his throat to hide a cough. “Set it up. This is probably just all the crap I absorbed in Afghanistan working its way out of my system.”
    He coughed again. This time it was a rattling, phlegm-filled cough that he was unable to hide. Maybe a visit to the doc wasn’t such a bad idea.

C HAPTE R 4
    Colorado
     
    K im’s heart stopped twice on the frantic ride between the Academy and the hospital. The paramedic at the wheel of the ambulance bypassed the closer St. Francis in favor of the Level II trauma center at Penrose Hospital just off I-25, south of the Academy. By the time they crashed through the ER doors with her strapped to the gurney, Kim had lost roughly a third of the blood in her body.
    Emergency room staff had pushed her straight through to surgery. Quinn found himself scraped off as she went through the stark double doors. He couldn’t help wondering if that was the last look he’d ever have of her, covered with bloody sheets and surrounded by stone-faced medical personnel.
    She’d been in there for hours and Quinn had yet to bring himself to sit down. Instead, he paced, staring out the windows and beating himself up, oblivious to the fact that he wore only his dress blue slacks and a blood-soaked T-shirt that made him look like he’d been on the receiving end of a messy appendectomy. He could focus on nothing.
    An orderly brought him a towel, and Quinn did the best he could to wipe Kim’s blood off his hands and face. There was little he could do about the sodden T-shirt.
    At the far end of the room, a young couple huddled together under the buzzing television, waiting for their child to get out of some procedure. The woman shot furtive glances at Quinn and whispered repeatedly to her husband. After a short time, the man walked slowly toward Quinn.
    Breathing heavily, with no intention of getting into a long conversation over his present circumstances, Quinn wheeled with the beginnings of a snarling grimace.
    The man stopped, then held out his jacket on tentative hands. “Here,” he said simply. “Take this. You need it more than I do.”
    Quinn forced a half smile as he accepted the fleece. No matter how much he’d scrubbed with the towel, Kim’s blood still rimmed his fingernails and stained the back of his hands.
    “Thank you,” he said.
    “No worries,” the man said over his shoulder, already retreating toward the safety of his wife.
    Quinn shrugged on the jacket and zipped it up to cover the blood. He was thankful that he’d met one of the rare, decent people in the world who didn’t feel compelled to dish out advice. He looked up at the sound of a chime. Measured relief washed over him as Thibodaux and Ronnie got off the elevator with two men. OSI was a relatively small organization, especially when it came to officers. Quinn knew the detachment commander at the Academy but wasn’t familiar with either of these agents. One, an African American man in his mid-twenties, wore 5.11 khakis, a blue OSI polo, and a light cotton jacket. The other, older by a decade, had a blond goatee and wore pressed jeans. The senior man’s sport coat was tailored too close to hide the fact that he was wearing a pistol on his left side.
    Garcia snaked her arm around Quinn, oblivious to the blood. They’d all been close enough to the action that each looked as though someone had taken a red paintbrush to their clothes. The stains stood out starkly against Garcia’s bright yellow