Free Fall (Elite Force #4)(69)
Author: Catherine Mann

The fact that they’d both been doing their jobs was piss poor comfort. His heart hammered in his ears. Where the hell were his objective instincts from years of training?

A hand clamped him on the shoulder. He jerked, looking to find Bubbles crouched beside him. “I’ve got things here. The Saint too. Go treat Stella. Go.”

He didn’t need to be told twice. Jose launched off the stage into the mayhem below. Jose pushed past a couple shoving back against him, desperate to get away. His eyes stayed locked on Stella, the world around him a peripheral blur.

Security had their hands full restoring order. Fang loped up alongside him, medical rucksack in hand that carried enough supplies to treat up to three patients. How f**king ironic that Stella and Brown would be sharing lifesaving gear. Fang kept pace as they dodged musicians huddled by a bandstand. There was no discussing who would treat Brown and who would take Stella.

She was his, damn it.

Fang could care for the traitorous bastard.

A trio knelt around Stella, and he could only see her feet and a trailing edge of the kanga he’d given her. If she was dead… Even thinking it threatened to knock the ground out from under him. He could rub that sobriety coin all damn day and nothing, nothing would get him through if he lost the most important person in his life.

“Move,” he shouted, to hell with control and calm, “medic coming through.”

The wall of people parted and… Oh God. The streetlamp bathed her in stark light that revealed everything, too much. Stella lay stone still, her eyes half-open and glazed with pain. A wad of bloodied handkerchiefs lay beside her head, no doubt someone’s attempt to help.

Blood streamed from a scrape along her temple. Most would have gone for that first, but he evaluated fast and ranked it as the least of their worries.

Her thigh wound pumped blood from the femoral artery. She could bleed out in about five minutes.

“Hang on, Stella.” Dropping to the ground, he slapped a hand to her leg and pushed hard while tearing into the medic pack with the other.

He had gear for a splint, tracheotomy, intubation, and countless other lifesaving measures he prayed he wouldn’t need. Finally, thank God, finally his body went into autopilot. A tourniquet for her leg. Bandages. IV antibiotics.

Beside him, Fang treated Agent Brown who kept groaning, “Let me die, let me die.”

Fang muttered, “Not a chance. You’ll face your firing squad.”

How f**king ironic—and unfair—that Stella had aimed to maim when her enemy had shot to kill.

Her fingers clamped his arm weakly. He looked into her eyes again. Bad, bad idea. Professional distance crumbled.

Her lips moved but nothing came out other than a faint whisper he couldn’t understand.

“Shhh,” he soothed, checking her vitals, willing his hand not to shake as he counted her pulse, simultaneously monitoring the drip on the IV. “You’re going to be fine, Stella. I’m that damn good at my job.”

She blinked up at him. Alive. Awake. For how long?

He shouted over his shoulder, rage and desperation chewing through his gut. “We need medical transport. Stat!” He looked back at her, adjusting her elevated feet. “Stella, stay with us. You’re going to be fine. A transfusion or two and you’ll be kicking ass again. I promise.”

As he checked her pupils he realized… she was blinking in a pattern.

“Morse code?” he asked, focusing on her while listening for updates in his earpiece. Where the hell was the ambulance? “Are you trying to tell me something?”

Yes, she blinked. Agent Brown.

“Agent Brown. We know. We’ve got him. You got him, wounded but not dead. You kept him alive for interrogation.” A siren wailed in the distance. “You did great, Stella. Help’s coming.”

She squeezed his arm again. Love. You.

“Love you too.” And he meant it, with every cell in his body that screamed for her to hold on. Not to give up.

Come hell or high water, if she lived, he would do anything to make sure he didn’t lose her again. He’d thought he was protecting her by staying away, but she was right. He’d only been shielding his heart from the possibility of losing another family. Yes, he carried a genetic flaw and he couldn’t forget that, but he’d made different choices for his life than his sister and mother. He sure as hell refused to be like his dad, enabling, avoiding.

Jose monitored her thready heartbeat and willed her to stay with him. He and Stella deserved a life together.

Without her, he had no future. “God, Stella, you can’t die, damn it. I want to spend my life with you.”

But he’d waited a second too long to tell her. Her eyes stayed closed, no more blinking messages.

She’d passed out cold.

***

Pain hovered just below the surface under a blanket of drugs.

Part of Stella wanted to stay under the numbing fog, and another part of her insisted she needed to wake up, even if that meant facing the agony of… gunshot wounds.

The hellish scenario flashed through her mind in fragments. Brown’s betrayal. Shooting him. Him shooting her.

Jose’s shout of horror piercing her headset.

Her memory filled with the sight of him leaning over her, treating her, pleading with her to hang on. The fear in his eyes had let her know just how bad her injuries were. By that time, she’d been floating in a cottony cloud of shock.

Was she alive now? Or hovering in a limbo state?

She drew in air and could swear she was actually breathing, except there was no antiseptic scent of a hospital. Her body felt so heavy, anchored by the crisp weight of a thin blanket.

A sheet? She forced her hand to grip the sheet, then move to her face where tubes pumped oxygen to her nose. No wonder she hadn’t detected the standard hospital smell.

At least she was alive. Knowing that, she fought through the hazy pain, fought her way back so she could see Jose and tell him how much she loved him. She wasn’t missing out on that chance again.

Her eyes opened and a chair screeched back against the floor. She turned her head on the pillow and found… her mother.

A smile of relief spread across her mother’s face. “Good morning, kiddo. How do you feel?”

“Mom?” she croaked, then coughed.

Her mother passed her water to sip through a bendy straw just like when Stella had the chicken pox at five years old.

How could she have forgotten that?

Annie set the cup on the bedside table. “I’ll call for the nurse.”

“No, please.” Stella gripped her wrist. “Wait. Tell me what happened first.”