Sniper Fire (Love in the Crosshairs) Read Online Free PDF Page A

damage. She’d dealt with a few bullet wounds before, but nothing quite so…massive. And Kyle had more than one wound.
    Farrah examined them all, cataloging the injuries in her head. The one wound she didn’t examine lay beneath a blood-soaked piece of cloth held in place by a makeshift tourniquet cinched tight around Kyle’s thigh. The material might have been white at one time, but was now a solid red. Has to be a damaged femoral artery under there. Too much blood for anything else.
    “I can’t believe you brought him here!” she muttered fiercely. Moving him in this condition was the last thing she would have recommended.
    The silence in the room suddenly grew heavy. She didn’t know why until Joshua stalked around to stand opposite her on the other side of the table. “He’s dying, Farrah,” he said harshly. “Sorry to interrupt your little save-the-world campaign, but you’re the only one within a hundred klicks I can trust. You don’t want us here, fine, we’ll go. But not before you do your doctor thing and get him stable enough to move. Do that , and I promise we’ll be gone before sunrise. No one need ever know you helped us.”
    Farrah fought the urge to slap Joshua the way his words hit her. Stupid, stupid man. Did he really think so little of her? She shot him a glare before returning to her assessment. “I thought you knew me better than that, Josh Colby. It’s not me I’m worried about, you idiot.” She motioned to Kyle’s leg with her blood-stained hand. “Moving him in this condition could have killed him. I would rather have gone to him.”
    Another long silence, this one not so heavy. Finally, Joshua cleared his throat. “Wasn’t safe.”
    “Well, it’s not very safe here, either. The Egyptian government sends people to check on us almost every day. If they find any of you here, the least they’ll do is shut us down.”
    “We’ll stay out of sight.”
    “See that you do.” She didn’t waste any more time berating him. Just looking at Kyle told her Joshua had made the only call possible. Blood leaked from the ragged wounds every precious second, pooling on the exam table. Blood Kyle couldn’t afford to lose. Pulling a penlight from her coat pocket, she leaned over and checked his pupils, then felt the pulse in his neck. Dear God, Joshua was right. They were losing him.
    “I need to go in and stop the bleeding.” She shuffled her mental list of the injuries, putting them in order of importance. The nicked artery came first. If she couldn’t get that plugged, all the others wouldn’t matter. He’d bleed out right in her hands.
    “What’s his blood type?” She pulled the little chain from under her coat and nightshirt. Several keys jingled until she found the one she wanted.
    “O-positive,” Joshua and one of the men said together.
    Farrah nodded and unlocked the small cooler bolted to the floor. Donated blood was precious and closely monitored. She’d have to explain the shortage somehow, but that was the least of her worries. Stitching flesh back together was one thing. She was good at that. Stitching arteries? That was another matter entirely. She wasn’t yet comfortable doing something that delicate without a more seasoned doctor looking over her shoulder.
    “I want to wake one of the other doctors,” she said, removing three bags of O-positive from the cooler. “That arterial wound could get tricky.”
    “Are you saying he’ll die if you operate on him?”
    She shook her head and tucked one of the bags of blood under her arm to start warming it. “No, that’s not what I’m saying. I’d just rather he have someone more experienced.” She locked the cooler and grabbed another IV line from a drawer.
    “Too risky. It’s best if no one else knows we were even here.” Joshua touched her shoulder as she stopped at Kyle’s side. “You’ll do fine, Farrah. If I didn’t believe that, I wouldn’t have brought him to you.”
    Farrah let the matter drop.