Page 6 of Deadly Target
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Cooper was in critical condition.
Even with his siren going, it took Victor nearly two hours to drive south to the hospital. Due to the severity of the gunshot wound, Cooper had been transported to San Diego where a team of specialists continued working on him.
Victor, Olivia, and Taz hustled through the emergency room doors, Liv flashing her badge at the security guard and then at the nurse at the admitting desk when she called, “You can’t bring a dog…”
Her sentence died before she finished it at Liv’s stony glare.
Thomas Mann was waiting for Victor and waved them all into a small alcove that held a Virgin Mary statue.
“How’s he doing?” Victor asked. Thomas had sent several updates to his phone while Victor was driving. “Anything new?”
Thomas, second in command of the SCVC Taskforce, wiped a hand over his face and then raked his fingers through his short hair. “Not much. He and Celina were taking Via to an Easter egg hunt at the park not far from their house. They’d walked there and just entered when he was shot. The bullet missed his heart by centimeters, punctured a lung, and he nearly bled out. It went all the way through but did a lot of damage on the way. No one else was hurt, and there was only the one shot.”
It was deliberate and calculated. Not some random drive-by shooting, and done very publicly, with lots of witnesses. Kids and their families. The potential collateral damage made Victor shudder, but the shooter had known exactly who his target was, and thank the heavens for the fact he hadn’t hit any of the children.
“How’s Celina?” Olivia asked.
“She’s a mess.” Thomas shook his head. “He was shot right in front of her and Via.”
Jesus. Who did that? But Victor already had a good idea. Gang members, mobsters, drug dealers. Someone making a point, sending a message. Through the years, Cooper had racked up dozens of enemies, but which one had decided to take revenge for him ruining their criminal enterprises and sending them to jail?
“The shooter?” Victor wanted whoever it was hanged, drawn, and quartered. “Do we have any leads?”
“Working on it.”
Victor started for the waiting room. “Work faster. Someone saw something. I want to know who and what they witnessed.”
Celina sat in a chair, bowed forward, head in her hands. Ronni Punto, FBI agent and full-time SCVC Taskforce member, sat next to her talking softly. Nelson Cruz, another taskforce agent, and his wife, Sophia, had taken Via home with them.
Celina looked up when they entered and rushed into Victor’s arms. How strange that only a few years ago she was on the taskforce and would have never dreamed of throwing her arms around his neck. He didn’t tend to show emotions with coworkers—or anyone else for that matter—and kept a respectable distance, but in this case, he was glad he could be here for her. The men and women on his Southern California Taskforce were not only the best agents from the FBI, DEA, NSA, and ICE, they were also family.
My family.
Celina sobbed against his chest and he hugged her close. “He’s going to be okay. You and I both know what a tough SOB he is.”
She nodded, stepping back. Her eyes were bloodshot, her face puffy from crying. “He was just standing there, perfectly fine, laughing at Via, and then the next second…”
Her voice hitched, her eyes darted around, as if witnessing the scene all over again. “All that blood, Victor. I know they say the bullet missed his heart but… he lostso muchblood. Via was screaming and I couldn’t stop the blood and I didn’t know where the shot had come from or if they were going to shoot us too. Everyone was screaming and running, and I just…panicked.”
Liv moved in and hugged Celina as Victor squeezed her hand. “I’m so sorry this happened,” Olivia said. “We’re going to figure out who did this and make sure they pay.”
“Thanks for coming.” Celina tried to smile. “I can’t believe we only saw you a few hours ago. He was just buying diapers.”
Celina was a tough FBI agent. She’d been through some pretty extreme circumstances in her career. But this? Seeing her husband gunned down in front of her and her daughter? This might take the cake. The shock of it was still too fresh, her mind a horrified, chaotic mess.
“Ronni is going to stay with you and I’m taking Thomas,” Victor told her. “We’ll follow up with the police, and start working on our own leads on who shot him.”
She dashed a hand at the tears on her cheeks. “I want to help.”
A spark of that kick ass agent he knew so well shone in her eyes. He squeezed her hand again. “I know you do, and the best way is to be here when Cooper wakes up after surgery. Your face is the first one he’ll want to see. And he’ll be hell bent for leather to get out of that bed and hunt down the perpetrator, and you’re probably the only person, besides me, who can keep him here, no matter how badly he’s hurt. You know how he is. I need you to keep him in that bed and listening to the doctor’s orders. You feel me?”
She nodded, knowing he was right. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do from here to help catch the bastard who did this.”
“Any ideas who the shooter is? Did Cooper mention anyone he pissed off lately?”
The hint of another smile. “He pisses off a lot of people, so there could be more than one candidate.” She tried to chuckle, but it came out more like a hiccup. “But no, there’s no one I can think of. I’ve been racking my brain, but I’m drawing a blank.”
