Page 23 of Her Ruthless Protector

“Gwen. Susan. You were magnificent. Are you okay?” A.J. asked the two acrobats. They nodded as they rubbed their palms against their thighs. Kane understood. The damn lights had been hot. He and A.J. turned to the injured while Ed came rushing onto the stage.

“What in the bloody hell happened?” he thundered.

“Focus on getting those people help, then we can worry about what happened,” A.J. bit out. “Have you called for an ambulance?”

“Already did, let me check their status,” Ed said as he pulled out his phone and started speaking in Arabic.

“Good,” A.J. said as she knelt next to one of the young women who was unconscious. Kane crouched down next to the teenage boy whose leg had a compound fracture. He was crying, his pain was severe. He was speaking rapidly in Spanish and Kane was only understanding every third word.

A.J. turned to the young man from yesterday. “Troy, I need you to go to my trailer and get the first aid kit. The big one.”

Troy jumped off the stage and headed for A.J.’s trailer at a dead run. Ed leaned over the last victim. She was conscious but bleeding from a head wound. One of the bystanders gave him a scarf to staunch the blood.

“Don’t move, Letty. Stay still,” A.J. said in Spanish to the girl she was kneeling over as she began to move and moan. Kane let out a sigh of relief that she was alive and then focused on his patient. Besides the compound fracture, the kid also had cuts on his forearms and chin from one of the shattered lights.

“Look at me,” Kane commanded the young man in Spanish. He wanted to see if he could focus. When he stared at Kane clearly, Kane gave a quick nod. “The ambulance will be here soon. You’ll be taken care of.”

“The contest. I won’t be able to perform,” he gasped.

“Who cares,” Kane said. “You’re alive, that’s the important thing,” Kane muttered as he wiped away the blood, trying to discern how deep the cuts were.

The boy grabbed Kane’s wrist in a surprisingly strong grip. “I have to perform. I have to.”

The kid was getting agitated and tried to sit up. He didn’t even notice the tears falling as pain gripped him.

“Lie back down,” Kane said as he gently pushed him to the stage floor. “You’re just making it worse.” Thankfully he heard the distinctive sound of the siren of an Oman ambulance. “The doctor is going to fix you up,” Kane continued in Spanish.

“He will?” the young man’s expression was desperate.

“Absolutely,” Kane promised. He just didn’t say what kind of timeline. He glanced over at the two other women, girls really, who were being administered to. The one that A.J. was working on, was in bad shape. As soon as he thought that, two ambulances careened to a stop at the base of the stage and EMTs jumped out of the vehicles and raced on stage with their medical bags. They began asking Kane, A.J., and the other woman who were administering assistance, questions in Arabic. Kane answered in kind. When A.J. and the lady acrobat couldn’t, the EMT’s immediately switched to English. They soon had everything well in hand and A.J. was on her feet and looking pissed as hell as she marched across the stage to confront Ed.

“You told me nothing like this would ever happen on your watch. What in the hell happened?” she demanded as she got into the older man’s face.

“Trust me, I’m going to find out.”

They stared at one another for a long moment. “Ed, we can’t afford for shit like this to go on.”

“I know A.J.” he said.

Kane looked around, he could see that Ed’s men had a loose perimeter started around the stage and were stopping people from leaving and had already begun questioning others. They were taking the appropriate steps.

“Kane, this isn’t the type of thing you were worried about, was it?” A.J. asked.

He went over and joined the two of them. He looked down and saw that blisters had already formed on her left hand. He caught Troy’s eye and tilted his head, the kid picked up the first aid kit to bring over.

“No, this isn’t the type of thing that I was concerned about,” Kane assured her. He was careful not to mention anything about the terrorist threat that would worry the performers.

“He’s right, that’s not how that lot operates,” Ed echoed Kane’s words.

Kane bent down and pulled out the necessary supplies from the first aid kit that Troy had brought over and pulled A.J.’s hand into his.

“Kane, that’s not necessary,” she protested.

“Humor me,” he said. He dabbed some antibiotic cream onto her palm and then wrapped some gauze around her hand. “Make a fist.”

She did.

“Is that comfortable?”