Vicky Peterwald: Survivor (Vicky Peterwald Series Book 2) by Mike Shepherd Read Free Book Online Page A

“Don’t bend the back,” was whispered softly.
    “Bend the leg if you have to, but not the back.”
    Now Vicky found herself shivering.
    A medic brought a thermal blanket to her and offered to take away the blood-splattered uniform coat. Vicky pulled it closer.
    The blanket went over it.
    The chopper lifted with Vicky and Gerrit aboard, along with two horribly burned agents who were still breathing.
    One died screaming halfway to the hospital.
    Vicky trailed Gerrit into the emergency room as far as they would let her. When they shunted her aside, she took a chair in the waiting room, staring blankly at the door Gerrit had disappeared through.
    She didn’t notice the guards until a woman with captain’s bars gently lifted the automatic out of the pocket Vicky had stuffed it in when she began to feel safe.
    The captain clicked the safety on, then handed the weapon off to a police officer.
    “Is that evidence?” Vicky asked dully. Her brain didn’t seem to be engaged in anything. Anything but watching the door with Gerrit behind it that never opened.
    “I’ve been told there will be a hearing,” the police officer replied. “Not to establish any guilt, Your Honor, but to figure out how we screwed this one up so bad.”
    “I paid a visit. Someone tried to kill me. Good people died in my place,” Vicky muttered, distracted only a bit from her vigil. “That’s the way it always happens.”
    “Yes, ma’am,” the police officer said.
    The captain brought Vicky a cup of warm coffee. Black, sugared sweet and strong. “The colonel says you didn’t eat much dinner.”
    Vicky sipped the hot liquid and winced at its taste. Under the captain’s eyes, she took another sip. “I talked a lot. Grand Duchesses seem to do that a lot.”
    “All of them?” the captain asked.
    Vicky shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never met another Grand Duchess. Now of princesses, I know at least one. She talks way too much as well.”
    Vicky considered what she’d said for a moment, then added, “Only she talks better. People do what she talks them into.”
    “Hmm,” the captain said, and settled into watchful silence beside Vicky.
    Time passed. Maybe Vicky dozed. Maybe she didn’t but stayed in a haze somewhere between asleep and awake.
    She did notice that somehow the room had sprouted a forest of armed men and women. Uniformed police. Agents who had the hard look of men who defended people with their lives and had close friends who had lost their lives to that duty. Military police.
    Vicky had to visit the restroom. Six women escorted her in and waited while she did what she could.
    As Vicky settled back into her chair, a chair that was in the same place as the one she had left but seemed to have been replaced with one a lot more comfortable, she turned to the captain.
    “Guards guarding the guards?”
    “No one should have known where you went last night. At least, no one who wasn’t with you. Someone leaked. Now we don’t trust anyone.”
    “Sorry about that. It’s the money. My loving stepmama really wants me dead.”
    “All the way out here? Hell, lady, when did you arrive?” the captain asked.
    “Yesterday afternoon?” Vicky guessed. “Don’t take it too bad. The money is hanging out there all the time. Local players spot me and see lots and lots of commas in their next paycheck.”
    Vicky paused. She knew her thinking was muzzy. “I think all that keeps me alive is that they jump at the chance and don’t really staff it out.”
    The captain’s face was grim. “There might be some truth in that. This is our first major assassination attempt since we set ourselves up to run our own show. You talk like it’s something that happens to you every day.”
    Vicky found herself laughing. It was dry and half-insane. “At the palace, we had four in one day. Maybe it was three. I forget.”
    “How do you stay sane?”
    “Am I?” Vicky answered the question with one of her own.
    After that, Vicky must have fallen