But I have to hold on. Tomas needs me. I can’t let go. I can’t let go.
The Russian waves over another man who was busy rounding up the last Italians and traitorous Russians. “Move back, miss.”
He’s going to try to lift Tomas. If there’s one thing I know, it’s that if that bullet is close to his heart and we move him and it shifts, he could die.
“Wait! We need something to keep him lying level.”
Mr. Tall, Dark, And Big Enough to Carry Tomas on One Shoulder And Me On The Other shakes his head. “We don’t have time for that. He’s going to bleed to death.”
I’ve had a hell of a week, I’ve been shot, and no one’s listening to me. So I don’t have the faintest idea where I’m getting this strength and pain tolerance from as I yank the gold-plated gun from the holster under his arm and aim it at him. “And if you move him again, I’ll kill you with your own fucking gun. Now get something to lay him on so we can keep him flat and do it now.”
If he calls my bluff, they aren’t going to have to worry about getting shot. I’ll die. Because Tomas will die. The guy whose gun I’m holding walks to one of the shipping crates but there’s no tool. No way to open it, and Tomas is bleeding to death.
He’s going to die on the floor of a warehouse instead of old and gray in our hypothetical front porch rocking chairs with me beside him.
That can’t happen.
I just found Tommy again.
Nothing else matters but saving him.
Nothing else matters but loving him.
Somehow, the soldier gets a panel off the crate. He and another man carry it over. The four of us tug Tomas onto the wood and they carry him out to an Escalade the panel won’t fit into. Too many seats. My heart is breaking.
“Alright. Lay him on the back seat.” They do as I say, carefully and efficiently. I climb in and hold his hand, bring it to my lips and beg him not to die. I love him. I don’t care if the guys up front—the blond one behind the wheel and Mr. Tall and Dark riding shotgun—know it. I wish I would’ve told Tomas while he was awake to hear it. As we drive, I pray that I get the chance to tell him.
Halfway across the bridge, he squeezes my hand faintly and I think he’s going to wake up, but then his fingers go slack. “How much longer?”
I’ve lived here my entire adult life, been to any number of hospitals because I’m a computer geek who likes to rollerblade and play tennis and hike. But I have no athletic ability and more often than not, I end up in an emergency room. So I should know where the hospital is. I do know where the hospital is.
But we’re driving away from downtown. Away from every hospital I know.
When we’re on a highway away from the city, I lean forward. “Where are we going? He’s going to die.” My voice shakes and I’m one left turn away from bursting into tears and shooting one or both of them.
“Those are gunshot wounds. We can’t just show up at Mount Sinai Hospital. Don’t worry. We’re gonna get him taken care of.” The bastard pats my hand like I’m not still hanging onto his gold-plated gun. “We have a place.”
“Is it close?” Clenched teeth. Venomous anger. The metal of the slide pulling a bullet into the chamber. It’s all louder than the four-hundred-twenty horsepower V8. I know enough about cars to know that this one can practically fly despite how Tall and Dark is babying it.
“Two minutes.”
“Faster.” I lower the gun and look down at Tomas. “Please.”
My whisper is full of every emotion I’ve ever felt about Tomas. My Tommy. Love and hate, anger and ecstasy, happiness and pain.
I lean down, kiss Tommy’s cheek, and whisper, “Don’t you die on me. Don’t you dare leave me again.”
It’s not until he is in surgery that I learn Kostya and Petr are the men who drove us out to this farmhouse that isn’t really a farmhouse. It’s a hospital, high-tech, well-disguised, staffed by real doctors and nurses who sew me up and insist I wait for Tommy in a wheelchair.
I look at the men across from me. Petr smiles. Kostya smiles and stares.
“I’m Corinne.” I don’t bother with shaking hands because it just doesn’t seem appropriate. We’re in an under-the-radar hospital seeing that their boss gets surgery to save his life from the gunshot wounds he sustained trying to save mine. I don’t think handshakes are designed for this kind of situation.
“Aren’t the cops going to find DNA at the warehouse? And bodies?”
Petr shakes his head but doesn’t elaborate or speak. My mind spins with scenarios of FBI headquarters and bright lights while Riggs and Murtaugh or Mulder and Scully interrogate me about my connection to the mob, my dead boss, my DNA being present in a room where the son of an Italian mobster is lying dead.
Kostya says only, “We have people taking care of it.”
Of course they do. Because doesn’t everyone have a cleanup crew like that? But it makes sense the Russian mob would. And judging by how calm and cool these guys are, the cleaning folks probably get a lot of overtime hours.
But I look horrible in orange jumpsuits and I want some control over my destiny. I want to be the one with the bottle of bleach and the scrub brush getting rid of the evidence. What the hell does that say about me that I’m so willing to break the law?
Then I remember I got a young man killed, and I feel the urge to puke again at the thought alone.
Maybe I should leave matters to the cleaning crew after all.
I look at Tomas’s men. His so-called friends. Able-bodied. Healthy. Uninjured. Maybe it’s a combination of everything I’ve gone through—the kidnapping, near-oral-rape, a book that felt like a sledgehammer to the face—but suddenly, I suspect everyone is against us.
“Why’s Tomas the one in surgery? Isn’t it your job to make sure he’s protected? Like the Knights of the Round Table or something? Like an all for one and one for all kind of thing?”
Kostya smiles and cocks his head. If I didn’t know better, I would say they all practice that arrogant, overconfident look. “Have you met him?”
Petr smacks him in the chest. “Of course she has. She’s the reason he ran in before we were ready.”
“Oh? This is my fault?” I don’t really need their confirmation. I already know who’s to blame. Because I got involved with him. If I’d just kept my head down—not that I would’ve ever stayed with Alvin—and been smarter. Instead, I decided to get re-involved with the guy who broke my heart, kicked the shit out of my ex-husband, and also happens to be a hitman for the Russian mob. Totally my own fault.
Now, Petr smiles the mysterious Russian guy smile. But he doesn’t speak.
“Okay. I know. But I wasn’t in that building for the sole purpose of having his back. You were.” My throat is thick, and it hurts to talk. “And he’s in there. And I don’t know what’s going on.”
“He’s going to be okay.” Through the tears blurring my vision, I can’t tell who said it.
“You don’t know that for sure.” It’s killing me because I don’t either and all I can think of is how I can’t lose him again. I won’t survive it this time. Every part of me belongs to him.