She blinked her eyes open, then scrunched them up against the bright white light that tore through her system. She didn’t want to see. Why did she have to see? What if Poppy’s face had been blown off too?
Jenna flinched as the image of Lee’s head exploded in her mind.
She loosened her grip from the girl’s hair and skimmed tentative fingers over the side of her face and ear. The warmth of Poppy’s skin belied the stillness of her body.
Rough hands grabbed at her again.
With a voice as rusty as a ninety-year-old COPD sufferer, Jenna croaked out the one reply that would stop Mason from trying to get her to roll off Poppy and checking her over for injuries. She’d roll when she was good and ready and when she knew with absolute certainty the child was safe. Nothing was going to harm her now.
Jenna had her.
‘Fuck off!’
Muscles lax, she batted him off as he yanked her up and slammed her hard against his chest.
Her gaze clashed with his desperate one as he swept away the thick coating of pulp from her cheeks with fingers that shook. The horror slashed into his features and she fluttered her eyelids closed against the rawness of his emotions.
‘You stupid fucker. I thought you were dead.’
Warm wetness dripped onto her face and she risked another peep through her eyelashes. She needed him to know she was all right. Alive at least. ‘Chance would be a fine thing. Jesus, Mason. Pull yourself together.’ What she intended to come out as funny whispered from between stiff lips.
Face close to hers, Mason took a swipe with the back of his hand over his cheeks to rub away the tears trickling down his bleach-white skin. ‘You fucking scared the shit out of me.’
Shock still buzzed through her system like a loose electrical circuit. ‘Yeah, well, it didn’t do me a whole host of good either.’ She scraped her hand through her thick choppy hair and whipped it away as it stuck in the thick pulp coating her head. Numb, she stared at her hand as Mason covered it and lowered it to her side.
Muscles still liquified, Jenna struggled to sit upright with jerky uncontrolled movements. She twisted around in his arms to see Ryan crouching over Poppy’s inert body. Face down, her stillness gave Jenna a quiver of fear.
‘Poppy.’ Her voice rasped from a throat so parched, she could barely swallow.
Ryan raised his head, eyes bleak and old beyond his years.
Jenna’s heart gave a painful contraction. Jesus. Poppy. ‘Is she hit?’
Mouth grim, he shook his head as he placed his hand on Poppy’s shoulder. ‘Not that I can see.’ He lowered himself down until his ear was level with her mouth. ‘She’s breathing.’ He raised up and blew out a breath while he pressed two fingers against the artery in her neck and nodded with sober satisfaction.
‘Roll her over, Ryan. Put her in the recovery position.’ Mason’s voice came from a distance through the screech of tinnitus rattling in Jenna’s head.
She nodded her agreement and her head went on a wild revolution.
‘Jenna.’ Mason brought his face close to hers, his lips moving with exaggerated care. ‘Jenna.’ He repeated and it reverberated through her head.
Nausea clamped her stomach and she fluttered her eyes closed again. ‘My ears.’
‘We’ve paramedics on the way. They’ll be here any moment.’
Not daring to nod again in case she fell off the edge of the cliff she seemed to be hanging onto, Jenna forced words out through clamped teeth. ‘Okay.’ She didn’t want a paramedic. She wanted to push herself up off her arse and walk her way out of there. If she could only go home, she’d be fine.
She placed her hands either side of her hips and pushed up, only to have a firm hand on her shoulder hold her in place and demonstrate just how weak she still was.
‘Stay where you are, Jenna. The paramedics are on their way.’
Humiliation nudged its way past the weakness as she hung her head. ‘I’m okay. They need to see to Poppy first. I need to get up.’
‘You’ll stay exactly where you are until we get you checked over.’ Mason’s voice rang with the authority he used when dealing with the most hardened of criminals, persuading her not to argue. She’d no desire to anyway. Not really.
Her concern more for Poppy, she shuffled so she could keep a watch on her as Ryan unzipped his fleece and laid it over her repositioned body, his voice speaking words that made no sense in Jenna’s pounding head, but the tone of reassurance washed over her.
‘Is she okay?’ She clenched her jaw as her teeth chattered. The bloody ground was freezing. She was freezing. She tucked herself up tight into a ball, a vague memory of the effects of shock and hypothermia stirring in the thickness of her thoughts.
Ryan glanced over, his ashen face wobbled as he nodded. ‘She’s awake. Responsive.’ He lowered his head towards Poppy’s blonde one, stretching a small smile. ‘She said she’s okay.’ He stroked a hand over the girls’ shoulder. ‘Stay where you are, the paramedics will be here shortly. They need to check you over before you move, in case you’ve been…’ His gaze flickered over to Jenna and Mason. ‘…For injuries.’
Aware she could barely hear Poppy’s mumbled reply, Jenna shuffled her backside to get closer.
Mason’s hand gave her shoulder a light squeeze. ‘Stay where you are. We need to make sure you haven’t been shot.’
‘I wasn’t hit.’ She considered the amount of blood and guts still dripping from her and swiped her nose with the back of her hand. Revulsion skipped through her stomach as she stared at the mess she’d swiped away and then raised her head to meet Mason’s desperate gaze. ‘Not by a bullet in any event.’ Her mind refused to allow her to take the pathway through what had happened.
Features hardened by a challenging job in a tough world, concern deepened the shadows in Mason’s nutmeg eyes as he smoothed his thick fleece over her shoulders. The warmth from his body soaked through her flesh to set up another wracking shudder.
Her own pulse pounded inside her head to compete with the rhythmic throb of emergency service sirens.
She raised her hand again, this time to press her fingers against the entrance to her ear. When she pulled them away, her gaze skittered over the fresh mucus and blood-filled pus on her fingertips. It wasn’t anyone else’s. It was hers. The warmth of it seeped from inside her ear in a soft glug and dribbled down her neck. ‘I think I burst my eardrum.’ Her shocked voice echoed inside her head.
Mason nodded as he reached out to cup her cheek in the palm of his hand. ‘That’s a possibility, Jenna. That gun was fucking close to your ear.’ He glanced up over the top of her head. ‘The paramedics are here now, just getting clearance.’
Nothing more than a grunt came from her throat. Her eyes fluttered shut as she drew in a breath. There was something she needed to ask. Important. Her mind reached out to grasp the question.
‘Have you cleared the situation?’
‘Yes.’
‘Is he dead?’
The long silence held a grim warning not to push the door too far open yet. She wasn’t ready for it.
Mason stared over the top of her head. ‘Lee Gardner.’ He dipped his head to bring his face closer to hers, his eyes crinkled at the edges with his grimace. ‘There’s no doubt.’