Page 35 of Into the Veins
“There’s just one problem with your motive.” Tremors worked up his hands as the shadow behind Ember maneuvered into position. “No matter how many people you kill, in the end, you’re the one who’s going to end up alone.” He cut his attention over Ember’s shoulder. “Now.”
Ember twisted around—too slow—as Blair pulled the trigger. The killer wavered on her feet, as though confused, before she collapsed to her knees. “You.”
Blair closed the distance between them, her weapon still aimed, and stared down at the killer who’d already taken so many lives. “Me.”
Ember slumped to the ground, staring up into the raging sky.
“Thank you…for not shooting me.” Colson’s strength gave out, and he dropped onto both knees. Hand clamped over the stab wound, he tried to breathe around the pain of at least two broken ribs, but it wouldn’t make any difference in the end. Strychnine poisoning came with a 97% fatality rate, and he was running out of time.
Blair maneuvered around the killer’s body and holstered her weapon. She framed his jaw between both hands. She’d been shot. He’d heard the shot. “Look at me. How much of the poison did she inject you with? How long ago?”
“Help Brennan…” He tried to point to the other victim, but his arm wasn’t obeying his brain’s commands. Colson drifted to the ground, almost as though the world had slowed. “Help her.”
“January is with her now.” Blair centered herself in his vision, pressing her fingers to the base of his throat. Sections of her long red hair had darkened with the weight of rain. Emerald green eyes settled on him as she patted him down for secondary injuries, but all he could focus on was her voice. Not the pain. Not the lies. Not the victims. There was only Blair. Her smile, her laugh. She was everything. “Colson, look at me. Stay awake. Don’t you dare die on me.”
He did as she asked, but another flood of convulsions was rising, and he couldn’t fight the tide. “I’m sorry…I lied. In case I die, I need you to know…I love you. I don’t want the money or…the boat anymore. You…are my favorite…adventure.”
The pain crested, and his neck and back arched without his consent.
“No! Stay with me. You aren’t getting out of this that easily. I haven’t even begun to lay into you for lying to me. Come on. You’re not dying here. Because I love you, too. Nobody else challenges me the way you do, and I’m not ready to give that up. You understand me? Stay with me.” Blair held onto him, helping him roll onto his side, and added her weight to his legs to keep him from thrashing erratically. Her voice cracked. “Where the hell is that chopper!”
He didn’t hear the answer through the rolling rumble of thunder. Only the vibrations weren’t the same as he’d felt before. Not thunder. Something else. He tried to swallow around the tightness in his throat, but saliva merely mixed with the blood from the laceration at the side of his mouth and collected in his cheek. His throat hurt. It was getting harder to breathe.
“Help is on the way, Colson. I’m here. Hang on.” Blair clasped her hand in his. She shouted to someone outside of his peripheral vision. “Adult male, thirty-six, injected with a dose of strychnine within the past thirty minutes. Convulsions, trouble breathing, possible broken ribs, and torn stitches from a previous injury in his left side.” She turned that concerned expression back to him. “You’re going to be okay. I’m right here.”
“Have I told you…the name of my…imaginary friend growing up?” He struggled to stay conscious.
Her smile tunneled through the disorientation and embedded itself into his long-term memory. “You can tell me when you’re coherent.”
“Let’s get him on an IV and an oxygen mask. Now!” An unfamiliar voice. The world tipped out from underneath him. “Single injection site, left side of the neck. Sheriff, we’re going to need to take a look at that wound.”
Blair’s hand slid out of his, and an anxiety he’d never experienced squeezed him harder than his heart trying to give out. Logically, he understood she needed medical attention, but the thought of losing her all over again crushed the last bit of oxygen from his lungs.
“Don’t leave…” Colson wasn’t sure she’d heard him. He couldn’t hear himself, but she had to know. She had to know she’d become more than an opportunity to take advantage of, more than a partner. Clouds shifted overhead as the storm died down, as though sensing the waning fight inside of him. Two agents with FBI branded across their windbreakers took up either side of his stretcher, and he wanted to ask them the most inappropriate question he could think of to break their concentration. Only he couldn’t seem to form the words. Stinging pain spread from the crook of one arm followed by an icy burn. The rubber strap of an oxygen mask pulled at his hair as an EMT strapped the plastic over his mouth and nose, and a soft hiss reached his ears.
The frame of helicopter blades and the brush of gale force winds said they were going to medevac him to the nearest hospital, but Colson only had attention for the red-headed beauty across the clearing. Spotlights highlighted the paleness of her skin as she glanced in his direction from her position near the picnic table.
Orders were shouted, another crew of EMTs closed in around Ember Garder’s body, and the agent Colson had read about during the serial investigation two months ago stepped onto the scene. The head of the Violent Crimes Unit, Lawson Mitchell, surveyed the battlefield and shouted across the clearing.
Blair’s instincts had been right. The serial case she’d worked two months ago was connected to theirs. Both killers had planned every last detail, every target, but Colson’s gut warned this was only the beginning.
The door to the helicopter slid closed, blocking his view of the woman who’d convinced him to give up his childhood fantasies and look toward the future. His breathing echoed back to him above the hard thump of the chopper’s blades. One of the EMTs armed him with his own personal headset to communicate over the heavy thump of the rotors. Gravity centered over his chest during liftoff. He tapped the back of his hand against one agent’s leg to get the tech’s attention. “Have you…ever peed in a pool?”
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE
Blair pressed her hand into her bloody side.
Her descent down the mountain, supported by her sister on one side and Lawson Mitchell on the other, was automatic and disoriented. Easier than the panicked climb to get to Colson and Ember Garder’s third victim. Pain arced through her, chasing back the emptiness that’d taken up residence a few hours before. Colson’s last words played through her head over and over. You’re my favorite adventure. He’d been delirious, in shock, and dying from strychnine poisoning, but she couldn’t deny her desperation for those four words to be true. “I want to know the minute he’s stable.”
“I’ll check with the hospital staff as soon as we get you into the ambulance.” January squeezed her arm, and Blair had never been more thankful to have her sister at her side than right then, even with the knowing tone in January’s voice. “But for the record, you owe me a new pair of heels after this.”
“I warned you not to wear those damn things in the field. You’re going to break your ankles.” Lawson kept both hands under her elbow and caught her as her boot slid out from beneath her. “I’ll have the two agents in the chopper stay on Colson Rutherford’s door. I’ve already assigned another team to Brennan Jefferson and Ember Garder. Nobody is allowed in their rooms without my authorization, and I’ve put a surveillance unit on Evyn Garder.”
“Good.” She might’ve neutralized Ember Garder, but there was no telling if her sister had been involved. Not yet. Blair willed her legs to keep her upright, but exhaustion stole the last remnants of her strength bit by agonizing bit. The EMTs had their hands full, but regret burned through her at the decision to walk down the mountain on her own two feet. “I don’t want to take the chance we missed something.”
Ember Garder had survived three bullets to the torso. Narrowly. Another medevac chopper had raced her third victim to Harborview Medical Center less than a minute behind Colson, but the killer would be taking the long route on the ambulance. The case was closed. Ember Garder had abducted and poisoned three social media influencers over the course of the past week to avenge her sister. But discovering the truth didn’t ease the anxiety bubbling in Blair’s chest. Colson had been poisoned, and while the evidence suggested he’d been injected with a lower dosage than Brennan Jefferson, who’d also gotten into the chopper with a weak pulse, his body could turn on him at any time. She wanted to be there with him, wanted to be the one he saw when he woke up.
Because despite the lies, the deceit, and the betrayal that’d shredded her heart, she loved him, too. The overenthusiastic private investigator had defied her core beliefs and shown her a new perspective of the world, one that didn’t revolve around death investigations, motive, or the violence of her past. In the span of five days, he’d ripped her world from her control and exposed her for who she really was. Not the sheriff afraid of losing her grip on her life and investigations but the woman who craved to create something good in the world. Without Colson, she wouldn’t have had the foresight to see herself as anything more than the law. Without him, she never would’ve considered anything more than the cases that came across her desk. She wanted more. She wanted to see the world through his eyes, to find her own adventure. She wanted him.