Page 130 of Viral Justice

She raised a brow and stepped toward him, her arms reaching for him. “You’re crazy, you know that?”

He picked her up, one arm under her knees, the other behind her back. “Cough a little, would you?”

She wilted and her coughing became hoarse and wet sounding, like she really couldn’t draw in a good breath.

He purposefully allowed his own breathing to speed up, like he was barely managing to carry her weight, but she wasn’t heavy at all.

How could such a tiny, curvy woman wreak the havoc that she did? Holding her like this made her seem fragile, breakable. She was nothing of the sort. She was a tornado touching ground.

It went against his every instinct to carry her into the fight like a husband carries his bride over the threshold, but she’d have his hide if he didn’t respect her skills and use her like the weapon she was.

He was in love, not an idiot.

His stride faltered as the word registered.

The situation was even worse than he’d thought.

No time to change anything, he’d been spotted by an armed man, so he staggered into the dirtiest reception area on the planet, huffing and puffing.

“She’s got the flu,” he moaned in Arabic. “And she’s been shot. She’s dying.” Max made sure to cough deep in his chest where it would sound like he was sick too. “Where’s Akbar? I have information for Akbar.”

The men pointed their weapons at them and took at least one step backward.

“I need the medicine he took. She’ll die without it.”

There were six. Four of them stared at him with growing horror, but two glanced at each other.

So, not all of them knew Akbar’s plans. He took a step forward.

One of the men said in Arabic, “Stay back. Take her away.”

“She needs medicine,” he moaned again.

“Take her away or we’ll shoot you both,” the same man said again. He was a little bigger than the rest, but not one of the two who’d reacted to his mention of medicine.

One of those two stepped forward and whispered something in the self-appointed leader’s ear.

He froze for a moment, then his expression changed to one of practiced indifference. “Go. Take her back there.” He pointed into the hospital.

Max turned slightly, as if complying with the order, then let the arm under Ali’s knees drop as he pretended to stumble on some unseen thing on the floor.

Ali slipped out of his hold and lunged at the leader.

She had him down in the next three seconds and was working on taking down two more when Max joined her. He didn’t try to make it fancy or even fair. They would kill his Ali if they could, so he wouldn’t let them.

He crashed through them like a linebacker, using his body to knock them off their feet. Shots went off, but he didn’t feel anything hit him, so he elbowed and kneed his way out of the tangle of limbs.

A rifle muzzle was pointed at him. Before it could go off, he grabbed the barrel, pulled it hard past his ear, then shoved the butt into the face of the man holding it. That stunned the militant long enough for Max to twist the weapon out of his enemy’s hands and into his own.

The boom of another shot rang hard on the other side of his head. Instinct had him ducking away, just in time for another one. Who was doing the shooting? He couldn’t tell who’d taken the shots.

A woman screamed and everything inside Max came to an abrupt halt.

Ali?

Where was she? He searched, stumbling over the legs of a man who lay unmoving on the floor, but she wasn’t anywhere he looked.

More shots rang through the building, each one seeming to come from farther and farther away. There was a confusing mass of bodies, limbs and weapons filling his vision, but he couldn’t see Ali anywhere.

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