As soon as Austin tipped the knife toward Lien-hua, the shooting began. “Stand down!” I yelled.
Austin’s body jerked uncontrollably as the bullets slammed into him. “Stand down. Hold your fire!” A bullet blazed past my face and punctured the windshield of one of the patrol cars near me, sending dark splinters of glass mushrooming into the vehicle. I ducked. “Stand down!” I stooped low. Rushed through the gunfire toward Lien-hua who’d dropped to the pavement and lay prone on the ground.
A moment later the shooting stopped, but with the number of bullets Austin took, even the Kevlar suit couldn’t save him.
But my attention wasn’t focused on him. I was kneeling beside Lien-hua’s motionless body, reaching my hand toward the blood on her neck. “Get a paramedic over here, now!”
Austin Hunter knew he was dying. He tried to point to the device. Tried. Tried. It was Cassandra’s only chance. He tried to move his hand but couldn’t.
As his consciousness began to dim, he softly begged Cassandra and the negotiator woman who’d been shot and looked like she was dying-her too-he begged them both to forgive him. He’d failed Cassandra. And it was his fault the cops had shot the Asian woman.
He’d been too slow getting to the rendezvous point.
Too slow. And now both of those women were going to die.
I feared the worst, touched Lien-hua’s shoulder with a trembling hand, prayed that she would be all right.
Please, O God, please.
“Lien-hua.” I pressed my hand against the wound on her neck to stop the bleeding.
She stirred.
“Lien-hua, are you…”
Then she rolled to face me and opened her mouth. My heart was racing. “I think,” she murmured. “I think I’m OK.”
“You were hit. Your neck is bleeding.” I turned to the officers beside me. “Where’s that paramedic!”
The last thing Austin Hunter saw before the final darkness chewed across his vision was a man walking toward him grinning, the very man he’d seen the night before aiming the device at that homeless man.
And the grinning guy was a cop.
As I pulled my hand away, I could see that Lien-hua’s wound didn’t appear serious or life-threatening. Maybe the bullet had only grazed her.
I hoped so. I prayed so.
As the paramedics helped her, I looked at Austin Hunter. A trickle of blood seeped from his half-open mouth, his body twitched one last time as he tried but failed to say something, and then Austin Hunter died.