Keep Me Safe (24 page)

She honed in on the killer, regretfully shoving aside the tumultuous explosion of the victim's cries for help and justice. She knew, as she'd known with the last one, that it was too late. There was no sense in focusing her energy there when she needed all she could get to unravel the layers surrounding a maniac. A very intelligent, cunning psychopath.

Each random flash was like having still photos cataloging the entire gruesome crime. She studied and quickly absorbed each, much like she was thumbing through a photo album containing memories. Only these were not meant to be saved, cherished or remembered.

Underneath the thin overlay of each chronicled step the killer had taken with his victim was a hazy image that Ramie couldn't quite make out. She concentrated harder, trying to bring it into focus.

Every time it seemed she'd manage to go beyond the carefully orchestrated façade, pain seared through her head, choking her with nausea.

It was camouflage. Despite the intensity of the pain and overwhelming nausea, excitement lit a spark inside her. One that couldn't be extinguished by the killer.

Where before she would have been deterred by the macabre sight of blood, suffering and death, she now braced herself and forced herself to push past it. He was hiding traces of . . . ​one of his thoughts? What was it he didn't want her to see?

She sensed victory and it imbued her with strength she hadn't imagined she had.

Her head ached so vilely that she was afraid one of the blood vessels would burst. She shoved her face into her hands, scrubbing, trying to refocus on the blurry memory strategically hidden behind the images of the victim, bloody, eyes glassy with the knowledge of her own demise.

Then she smelled blood. Felt it on her hands. She frowned because that wasn't what she was seeing. It took a moment to realize that she was the one bleeding. From both nostrils.

The pressure in her head was mounting. The pain was becoming unbearable. And yet she refused to back down and retreat. Not when she was so close to . . . ​something. She just had no idea what.

In the silent battle of wills, Ramie was determined that this one time she wouldn't lose. She wouldn't fail.

Damn it, what did he not want her to see!

And then the images covering his secrets shattered, sending shards of agonizing pain blistering through her skull. Warm blood spilled from her nose, but she ignored it, knowing this was it.

She went utterly still, refusing to even breathe as she waited for the pieces of the puzzle to assemble. They coalesced and took shape right in front of her very eyes until the pieces were one solid image hanging in the air for her to see.

It was like pushing back a curtain and seeing the unthinkable.

Oh dear God!

“No!” she screamed. “Back! Get back! There's a bomb!”

TWENTY-EIGHT

CALEB
froze when Ramie's scream rent the silence. There was a split second when
everyone
seemed frozen, looks of absolute
what the fuck
reflected in their expressions.

Then everyone dove in opposite directions, rolling and scrambling for cover. To Caleb's horror, Ramie tripped in her haste to descend the fractured wooden steps of the trailer. Time slowed and he hoarsely yelled her name as he dove for her, trying desperately to get on top of her.

He grabbed her wrist, yanking her against his body before turning and propelling them both behind the Hummer they'd driven to the scene. And then an explosion rocked the earth beneath them.

An orange fireball erupted around them, heat scouring their skin. The very air seemed to be on fire and the smell of smoke choked Caleb, making it impossible to breathe.

Debris rained down on them from the sky, pelting the vehicles and their exposed bodies like a storm from the bowels of hell itself.

“Ramie!” he shouted.

They'd been separated in the blast. Smoke was so thick that he couldn't see her. He felt frantically along the ground in front of him, to the side and then behind him. She'd gone down underneath him but the explosion had ripped him away from her and flung him several feet.

He heard coughing but couldn't be sure who it was.

“Caleb!” Dane yelled.

“I'm here!” he yelled back. “I can't find Ramie!”

“Here,” Ramie croaked.

He followed the sound of her voice, crawling on hands and knees until finally he fell on her as he nearly mowed right over her. Rage overtook him when he saw that a burning piece of wood had hit her square in the middle of her back. He wrenched it away from her and then rolled her frantically over.

“Ramie, thank God. Are you all right? Damn it, I can't see anything!”

“I'm okay,” she said faintly. “Or at least I think so. I can't really feel anything right now.”

The woozy note to her voice worried him. He waved the smoke from his vision and then placed a hand over her forehead, lowering his head so he could better see her.

“Don't move,” he said urgently. “We don't know the extent of your injuries.”

Damn it, he shouldn't have been so rough when he rolled her over, but he'd been desperate to make sure she was breathing, that she was
alive
.

As the smoke began to clear, Caleb got a better picture of the area and he stared in horror at the leveled space of land where the trailer used to stand. One of the vehicles that had been parked too close to the home had been blown over on its side. Men were sprawled in every direction. It looked like a military zone that had just been air raided.

Trees were on fire. The long grass around the trailer had been flattened by the force of the explosion. Windows were busted out of the remaining vehicles and a tree had been knocked over, T-boning another SUV.

“I need help over here!” Eliza yelled. “Man down!”

“You help her!” Caleb hollered at Dane. “I'll take care of Ramie!”

Where the hell was everyone else? With bodies scattered everywhere it was impossible to tell who was okay and who wasn't.

Several groans, mutters and curses arose as everyone began stirring. Then to his relief he heard Detective Ramirez urgently calling for backup and ambulances, radioing their location to dispatch.

Detective Briggs crawled to where Caleb was hunkered down over Ramie. Blood streamed from a cut in his forehead and a large bruise was already forming on his jaw. He spit blood on the ground and then asked, “Is she okay?”

Caleb's eyes narrowed. “I think she's a hell of a lot better than you. You should lie down, man. You're spitting blood and even I know that isn't good.”

“Just a busted lip,” Briggs said in disgust. “This son of a bitch has to go down. Now he's conspiring to take out an entire police unit?”

Caleb made a sound of agreement. As he glanced back down at Ramie, his hands began to shake. He touched her cheek and then ran his fingers down her body, checking for any bleeding wounds that required immediate attention.

God, he'd come so close to losing her. If she hadn't touched the railing. . . . ​He closed his eyes, unable to continue with the current direction of his thoughts.

She wouldn't have been the only one to die. Thanks to her everyone looked as though they were moving at least.

Dane crouched down next to Caleb for a brief moment, his gaze assessing Ramie's condition.

“Shock,” Dane said grimly. “I'm going to help Lizzie triage the rest so that when the ambulances start rolling in the higher-priority cases will go first.”

Caleb nodded. He was in shock himself. He couldn't get his shaking extremities under control. Every time he tried to touch her to reassure himself that she was alive, he had to pull back or risk injuring her with twitching hands and complete clumsiness.

Once Dane disappeared, Ramie's eyes moved, her head turning slightly so she found his gaze.

“Go help with the others, Caleb,” she whispered. “I'm all right, I swear. I don't even hurt anywhere.”

“I think you're hurt worse than you think,” he said grimly. “There's blood all over your face and I can't figure out where it's coming from.”

She blinked in surprise and then lifted a hand, wiping it over her nose and mouth. When she did so, he saw that blood covered both her hands too.

“Jesus,” he swore. “That's it. You're taking the first ambulance.”

She shook her head and he swore again, immediately framing her face so she couldn't move her neck again.

“Be still, Ramie,” he said forcefully. “You have no way of knowing if you have a spinal injury or not.”

“It's not from the explosion,” she said, her voice louder and stronger this time.

He looked at her in puzzlement. “What isn't?”

“The blood,” she said patiently. “It's not from the explosion.”

“Then what the hell is it from?”

“Nosebleed,” she said simply. “The pain was horrible.” She grimaced as she said it as if recalling just how painful it was. “I had to fight hard to see past the images he wanted me to see. I was scared I'd have a stroke or an aneurysm or that my head would just explode from the pressure. My head has never hurt like that. My nose started bleeding heavily. My back must have been to you or else you couldn't have missed it. And then finally just when the pain was too much to bear any longer I saw the bomb through his eyes.”

Caleb cursed viciously. “This is
enough
. You're done with this. I won't let you risk yourself anymore. I don't give a fuck if that means you live the rest of your life hiding. At least you'll
have
a life. You can't keep this up, Ramie. Even you have to see that.”

“I was so scared, Caleb,” she said in a dazed voice that told him she hadn't even registered his statement. “God, I thought you'd all die.”

And that pissed him off even more. He was fuming, his fingers curling into tight fists because he didn't want to chance touching her and hurting her.

She hadn't said she was afraid
she'd
die. No, her only concern had been for the rest of them. He had enough panic for her for them both but damn it, if he couldn't instill that same vehemence when it came to her own life, how the hell was he supposed to make her start caring for herself?

In the distance sirens wailed, drawing closer and closer until they screamed in Caleb's ears. He remained on his knees, surveying the damage in an attempt to make sure everyone was accounted for.

The two detectives had taken the lead going into the trailer while Caleb's men had fallen behind Ramie. To his relief he saw Detective Ramirez bending over one of his fallen police officers but then his blood chilled when he realized the man Ramirez was tending to wasn't moving.

“Ramirez!” Caleb shouted. “He okay over there?”

“He's breathing,” Ramirez called back in a pissed-off voice. “Unconscious and bleeding like a stuck pig. He was impaled by debris.”

Caleb swore, his fury mounting with every passing second. Medics from three ambulances swarmed the area while multiple police cars screeched to a stop a short distance away.

“Caleb, how is she?” Eliza demanded as she crouched down next to him.

“I'm okay,” Ramie said weakly. “My head hurts like hell though.”

Eliza's eyes swam with concern. “Did something hit you? Or did you hit it going down?”

“She wasn't hit,” Caleb said through clenched teeth. “She damn near gave herself a stroke fighting to pick up the image of the bomb underneath the crap he
wanted
her to see.”

“So that's how you knew,” Eliza murmured. “I saw your nose start to bleed, but I didn't know if that was normal or not.”

“It didn't used to be,” Ramie said drowsily.

“Baby, stay awake,” Caleb said in alarm.

He exchanged worried glances with Eliza, whose sharp gaze was already scanning Ramie.

“Kind of hard to sleep when your head hurts this bad,” she mumbled.

Caleb lifted his head up, looking quickly for an available medic. He was starting to get extremely worried. Ramie needed medical attention regardless of whether she thought so or not.

“You know they'll just think I'm crazy if you take me in and explain how and why my nose bled and my head hurts,” she said dryly.

“There is that,” Eliza muttered.

“No way am I not bringing her in just because she'll have to explain why her head hurts,” Caleb snapped. “They don't have to know she didn't hurt her head in the explosion. How do we know she
didn't
?”

Eliza held her hands up. “I'm not arguing. That's between you and her. Certainly wouldn't hurt to get her a prescription for those headaches after the one she had earlier.”

He hated the idea that she suffered at all. And the idea that until now no one had ever been there to care for her when she suffered was more than he could stand.

“It's not normal for a headache to cause nosebleeds,” he said fiercely. “What if she has a brain bleed? With the kind of pain she was describing and the mental strain she was under, it certainly seems possible.”

Eliza shrugged and then stood, motioning for one of the medics.

“Guess the best way to know is to bring her in and get her head checked out,” Eliza said.

“Traitor,” Ramie grumbled.

For some reason, that slight complaint completely unraveled Caleb. Maybe it was the fact that she was injecting levity in a situation fraught with turmoil. Whatever the case, his behind slumped downward to rest on the backs of his legs and he found his strength gone.

The adrenaline that had given him superhuman strength and focus just moments before was over in an instant and he felt too old and weary to even push himself to his feet.

Even after Ramie had been placed on a backboard and boosted upward to one of the stretchers, he remained where he was, hands shaking.