Triumph Read Free Page A

you from the second you stepped inside the building,” Laura said.
    “Watching from where? I didn’t see any other footprints,” Kelly protested. Then she remembered the slab staircase that she’d passed. And the rickety scaffolding in back. Could have been either. She hadn’t been alone in that building.
    “Maybe he can fly.” Gordon again. Sarcasm was his default mode. “No cape, though. Just that leather jacket. I don’t know why you assume he’s a good guy, by the way.”
    “I hope he is,” Kelly replied honestly. “Anyway, we just happened to be there for the taping. If no one at the station knew where we were, how would anyone else?”
    “My name wasn’t on the whiteboard,” Laura said.
    “I assumed you’d entered mine.” Gordon stared at the laptop screen as it flickered and went dark.
    “I didn’t.”
    The assignment editor listed every reporter at WBRX and where they were, hour by hour, on the all-important whiteboard. In case of breaking news, it took only seconds to find the people nearest the scene and match them up with a crew. Kelly hadn’t bothered to fill in the information, short on time after she’d skipped the afternoon story meeting, not mentioning she was heading out to tape an intro with Gordon and Laura.
    “I just thought of something else. The GPS unit in the van transmits to the station,” Gordon pointed out. “Someone around here is going to find out where we were soon enough. And then we’ll catch hell. I need a drink. A big, stiff drink.”
    Kelly caught Laura’s worried glance. The last thing they needed was Gordon shooting off his mouth at the bar near WBRX. “Go with him. I’ll cover for both of you here if I have to.”
    “I don’t drink, Kelly. You know that.”
    “Then I’ll treat you to a ginger ale from the vending machine,” Gordon offered, “I mean, if that’s okay with your mommy.”
    He looked toward Kelly, who only nodded.
    Shakily, Laura rose and followed him out of the editing room.
    Kelly sat back and tried to think.
    What, where, when —she made a mental outline. A routine location taping at an abandoned building had exploded into unexpected violence. What she didn’t know and couldn’t begin to guess at was who and why . Gordon could be right about it being gang warfare.
    Terror had fractured her sense of time. It hadn’t taken long. She’d been pinned for only a few seconds. But Kelly still tingled where the man’s powerful body had pressed against hers, held her so tightly it was hard to breathe—and risked his life to give her a chance to escape.
    He must have had backup somewhere in the half-finished building. Nobody was invincible. She hadn’t noticed body armor under that leather jacket. Just a T-shirt.
    An adrenaline rush flushed her cheeks with heat. Kelly pushed her long blond hair away from her face and wound a hand through it, avoiding the tender spot where her head had connected with the concrete pillar. She lifted the silky strands away from her neck to cool down.
    Preoccupied, she listened to the bulletins coming from the emergency response scanners on the assignment desk, trying to make sense of the brief exchanges between the speakers and remember the codes. She got the gist of it—she’d had a lot of practice.
    SUV rollover, entrapment reported, calling for door pop . . . Fire, first story commercial building, contained . . . Assault, perp fled scene, minor injuries to vic . . . Car versus pole . . .
    Not a word about a shoot-out at an abandoned construction site.
    She closed her eyes, trying to visualize the man who’d saved all of them. As the seconds ticked by, the feeling that she knew him from somewhere got stronger. Kelly had an excellent memory for faces, a knack that had been honed to a skill as part of her job. Celebrities, politicians, crooks, ordinary citizens—she had to remember them all.
    There wasn’t anything ordinary about her guardian angel, and she’d gotten only a glimpse of his profile. But