A Thin Disguise - Catherine Bybee Page 0,6

on the dirty sidewalk of the Las Vegas Strip.

He heard a horn blaring and tires screeching.

Leo rolled over to see the taillights of a car speeding off and around the corner.

“What the hell?”

Then someone screamed, pulling Leo’s attention to the woman at his side.

She was still.

Too still.

The small jacket she was wearing had moved enough for him to see blood coming from the left side of her chest.

Adrenaline surged and he pushed himself up to hover over her.

“Hey,” he said, gently touching to see if she would open her eyes.

Nothing.

He leaned down, put his ear to her lips.

The air on his face said she was alive.

Leo reached for his phone and dialed 911 as the crowd surrounded them.

He took the liberty of lifting her jacket to see if there were any other holes in her and then did a scan of her body with his eyes and fingertips as the phone rang and rang.

“Come on, damn it. Answer the phone.”

Not finding more, he moved to her shoulder. He wanted to turn her over, see if there was an exit wound, but she was out cold, and moving her wasn’t an option.

“911, what’s your emergency?”

“Special Agent Leo Grant. I need an ambulance. Single gunshot wound to the chest, female, approximately thirty years old.” He looked up. “We’re in front of the Venetian on the sidewalk.”

“Is the victim breathing?”

“Yes, but unconscious. Hurry.”

His breath came in short, fast pants. What the hell had happened?

A drive-by, of course, but who? She must have seen the gun and reacted. If she hadn’t, he’d likely be the one on the ground and not her.

Security guards from the Venetian showed up first. Then a local black-and-white.

Between them, the crowd was pushed back to keep Leo and the woman from being stepped on.

Leo disconnected from the 911 operator and stared down at the woman who’d taken a bullet aimed at him. All because he found her attractive and intriguing and wanted to know who she was.

He’d hung around the Wynn for more than two hours, watching those coming and going in an attempt to find who it was that had generated the call from Claire.

“You’re following Navi at the hotel,” she’d told him once he’d picked up the phone the second he left the restaurant.

“Do you have a bug on me?”

“No. We have one on him. And you’re messing up our intel.”

“You know that’s not your job here.”

Claire worked for a security detail that had been essential in flushing out Mykonos and all the sordid details of Marie Nickerson’s case. And while they weren’t the ones protecting the woman at the moment, he knew Claire’s team was just as invested in seeing Mykonos locked away. So having Claire call him wasn’t as much of a surprise as it would have been in any other case.

“I’m a private investigator, licensed in the state of Nevada,” she reminded him. “Navi knows who you are, but not who we have on him. So get out of there.”

“I liked it better when you were the student and I was the teacher telling you what to do.” When he met Claire, he was undercover as a high school teacher and she was in his class.

“Ha! Even as my teacher you didn’t stand a chance of telling me what to do. Now leave the casino.”

Even though he knew she was right, he grumbled and bitched before hanging up.

He left the inside of the hotel, but that didn’t mean Leo was gone.

And when the blonde in shorts walked out and headed toward the Strip, Leo abandoned his post and followed her.

Yeah, maybe it was creepy, but something told him to keep his pace.

It was the first time a woman turned his head this much since . . . well, in a long time.

And now his flirting had resulted in her unconscious with a gunshot wound.

Her breathing was steady and fast, and although there wasn’t an excessive amount of blood on the pavement, it didn’t mean she wasn’t bleeding on the inside.

When the paramedics arrived, Leo finally stood back.

It took only a few minutes for the team to expose her chest and find the hole the bullet had put in her.

The older medic on the team found a small wallet in her pocket and a cell phone.

Once they put a collar on her neck and had her on a gurney, they were rushing toward the ambulance.

Leo followed and climbed inside after them.

“Has she been drinking? Drugs?”

“I don’t know. I don’t think so.”

He needed to call this

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