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Blood. There’d been so much blood on Keira, all of it hers. It didn’t seem possible for a human being to lose so much blood and still be alive. If he lived to be a hundred he’d never forget the sight of Keira bleeding out with every beat of her heart. His hands had been covered with her blood as he frantically tried to stem the tide; thanking God wordlessly both he and Callahan had paramedic training that just might save her life. Thanking God, too, that they were in the parking lot of the hospital, and help was almost immediately forthcoming. But there had been so much blood on his hands that when they’d arrived in the emergency room one of the nurses there had been sure Cody was injured, too.
“No word yet?” Callahan asked in his deep voice.
Cody swallowed hard, fighting to keep his emotions under control. “No,” he answered roughly. “Not yet.”
Callahan leaned one shoulder against the wall next to Cody. After a long pause, he said softly, “She took a bullet meant for me.”
I know, Cody wanted to say, but he didn’t trust himself to say the words out loud, not when part of him was hating Callahan for being there—well and whole—while Keira... All she ever wanted was respect, he reminded himself as another little piece of his heart shredded. Well, she’d earned that respect, and then some, even if it meant...
“No one’s ever done that for me,” Callahan continued. “Not even Mandy. That’s not how I wanted it to go down, not the way I—”
Cody’s harsh laugh cut him off. “Special rule seven,” he said bitterly. “That’s all she said. She was already in shock, but...special rule seven.”
Callahan asked quietly, “What’s that?”
“The agency’s special rule seven—protect civilians at all costs.” Cody’s voice grated on the words and nearly broke at the end, knowing the cost in this case might be Keira’s life. “That means—”
“I know what it means,” Callahan said. “I just never thought of myself as a civilian who needed protection. I was always on the other side, the one doing the protecting.”
Cody shook his head. “Not to Keira. Anyone who doesn’t work for the agency is a civilian.” He thought about it for a moment. “And even if that weren’t the case, she had another reason for walking into that bullet.”
“What’s that?”
“She promised Mandy she wouldn’t let anything happen to you.”
Callahan frowned. “When—”
“That morning at my cabin, before McKinnon took your family away. Mandy asked me first. I told her I’d do my best.” His face contracted, the memory painful. “Mandy said that wasn’t good enough. So she asked Keira, and Keira promised.”
“Guts and brains,” Callahan replied, respect and admiration evident. “She’s one hell of an agent.”
If only Keira survives to hear those words, Cody told himself. More than anything he wanted that for her, wanted her to know. He turned toward the door to the intensive care unit and stared, as if he could make someone appear there and tell him Keira was going to be okay by sheer force of will. He sensed rather than heard Callahan’s departure. But Callahan returned within a few minutes, saying, “Here, drink this.”
A cup of hot, black coffee was thrust in front of him. Cody didn’t want it. But he knew Callahan was just stubborn enough to stand there forever until Cody took the cup.
He gagged a little as he drank the hot liquid. It wasn’t very good. Wherever Callahan had obtained it, the coffeepot had probably been sitting for a while, and the consistency and taste reflected it. But it was hot. And he was so cold inside. So cold. That hard, cold knot inside him reminded him that he had failed to protect Keira. That was the bottom line. She was his woman, and he hadn’t gotten there in time to save her.
His thoughts turned inward, every detail of every memory of Keira running through his mind; from the moment he’d first seen her, terrified but refusing to surrender, to the moment he’d kissed her and realized the deep core of passion she hid from the world, until the moment they’d wheeled her away in the emergency room, fragile, broken and bleeding.
