Free The Second Lie (Immortal Vikings Book 2) by Anna Richland Page A

to avoid being knocked over by Stig and Skafe, who were still locked together. The pistol had fallen to the floor, but Stig wouldn’t let go of the other man’s arms, so Skafe dragged them both step by step toward the doors.
    The policemen closed in, and she put her hands up on command. They didn’t know she’d been kidnapped.
    Stig dropped his arms and collapsed to the floor, freeing Skafe to sprint toward the exit.
    The dog kept after him, followed by its handler, but the younger officer stopped next to her and Stig.
    Skafe hit the doors with both arms full out in front of his body at the same time the officer fired. Glass shattered, more people screamed, but the fleeing man disappeared.
    “Stig?” She crouched and pulled his jacket wider to look at the now-red shirt clinging to his torso. She didn’t know much first aid, but in the movies, rescuers always ripped apart the shirt to get to the wound. “Hang on.” No one ever mentioned that good fabric was impossible to tear, so she hunted for the slippery buttons. “Help’s coming.”
    She hoped she spoke the truth. Someone must have called the British equivalent of 9-1-1.
    His eyes looked glassy and fixed, but he managed to move his lips. “Plan,” he whispered out one side of his mouth. “Closer.”
    She leaned toward him until her hair brushed his face. “What?”
    “Say I’m a cop. Undercover.” He panted shallowly a couple of times. “Name is Will.”
    “Undercover cop?” Tears dripped on his cheeks, and she realized she was crying. “What do you mean? What’s going on?”
    “Stay. With me.”
    “Don’t worry.” The emergency medics had to get here and help him. “I won’t leave you.”
    “Stay. Safer.” His grip was still strong on her fingers. “Promise me.”
    “Of course.” Over the long night he’d become her ally, and this crazy thing he’d done, shooting himself to save her, was a debt she could never repay. “I promise.”
    * * *
    Christina tried to think while she processed the dozen things happening in the back of the ambulance as it veered through one turn and then another en route to an emergency room at a hospital called St. Mary’s. The paramedics who had loaded Stig on a gurney had pulled his hand from hers, but he’d gestured for her to follow. Climbing into the ambulance, she’d recognized his maneuver as a way to evade the police swarming into the station, but one officer had popped through the closing doors to join them.
    The uniformed man stared at her with narrowed eyes and she remembered she had more than one problem of her own. Outside of Napa, there was no Big Frank, either in person or in public memory, to provide a protective cocoon. In addition to her lack of citizenship and the passport issue, she was wearing the holster for a pistol at center stage of a crime scene. Her brain knew the holster was empty, but it felt like it weighed more than a quadruple-sized jeroboam bottle.
    “How do you know this officer?” the real policeman asked.
    Assuming Stig wasn’t part of law enforcement, she’d lied about that too. “He— He—” She let her lips tremble while she remembered her fear in the drug store and the pain of Skafe’s elbow pinch. That was enough to help her eyes fill with legitimate tears. “He saved me. The other two—” She’d better stutter, because she had no idea what to say. “They-they— kidnapped me.”
    While EMTs adjusted intravenous fluids and an oxygen mask, the cop stared from the remains of Stig’s white shirt—now a bloody rag stuffed in a clear plastic bag—to her dress and black jacket. “From where? A cocktail party?”
    “They made me buy packing tape.” Her shudder wasn’t fake. She’d never prepare a box to be mailed without that memory. “And cough medicine.” She wrapped the battered dinner jacket closer to her body, wanting to make sure that no pothole threw it open enough to reveal the holster. “They’re in a plastic bag at the station.”
    He