Chad was still talking but Jennie couldn’t hear what he was saying. She knew Caroline would start shooting her way out of the room if the desperate, cornered look on her face was any indication.
“No,” Jennie whispered. She wasn’t speaking to Caroline or Chad or even herself, for that matter.
She was speaking to the universe in general. To whatever it was that thought it was okay to take two men from her. To take first her husband and now the father of her unborn child. Jennie’s fists clenched and she felt the bite of her nails breaking the skin of her palms.
“No.”
She wouldn’t let this happen. She lost Kyle, but there was no way Jennie would lose Chad, too. She lunged at Caroline, aware in the back of her mind that Chad was screaming at her and charging for her. Jennie heard a gunshot but didn’t feel anything as she tackled Caroline to the ground.
The gunshot was louder than she expected it to be. Her ears were ringing and she thought to herself that the whole world seemed to be moving in slow motion. Everything sounded fuzzy. Everything looked fuzzy, she thought with a strange dazed feeling.
Jennie felt Chad’s arms around her, lifting her as she saw Mike subdue Caroline. He secured the gun Caroline had dropped when she fell to the ground.
Jennie turned to Chad and ran her hands over him, frantically trying to figure out where he’d been shot. As she ran her hands over his chest, his arms, desperate to know where he’d been hit, he lifted her up.
He ran through the door with her, holding her in his arms. Jennie saw other agents in the hallway and heard someone call out that an ambulance was waiting downstairs.
Why is Chad carrying me if he needs an ambulance? This is so silly.
She looked into his face as he entered the elevator and pushed the button. He cradled her in his arms and was talking to her, but she couldn’t hear him over the ringing in her ears. Jennie must have been closer than she realized to Caroline’s gun when it went off.
She followed Chad’s line of sight to her arm and stared in shock at the blood pouring down her arm and dripping onto her hand. Chad’s hand was wrapped around her forearm, applying pressure to try to slow the bleeding, but the blood was seeping through his fingers. It was only after seeing it that her body seemed to register the sensations, the pain.
The blood was hotter than she’d thought it would be as it dripped over her hand and onto the elevator floor. And her arm felt numb, except for the back of it.
The back of her arm felt like someone had dug into it with a stick made out of salt. It burned like nothing she’d ever felt before. The pain was so intense, her breath seemed to stop and she stared up at Chad, finally understanding.
He hadn’t been shot.
She had.
Chapter 38
Chad tried to calm himself as he waited for the elevator to make the interminably long ride to the lobby of his building. He knew the truth about gunshot wounds. It was a myth from the movies and television that you could get shot with a through and through in the arm and not have any real damage.
In reality, the arm was full of arteries and nerves. Jennie could bleed out or lose enough blood to harm the baby in a matter of minutes if the bullet hit the right spot. She could permanently lose some of the use of her arm or the feeling in her hand. If the bone was shattered, fragments of that bone could hit other arteries and nerves, multiplying the damage.
Flashes of Chad’s fallen team members, their eyes vacant and unseeing, tore at him as he tried to stay focused on Jennie.
When he’d seen her dive for Caroline, throwing herself between Chad and the gun, he nearly lost it. The fact he had survived two tours of duty in war zones and years of dangerous privately funded missions, would mean nothing if he couldn’t share his life with Jennie.
He knew then that he needed Jennie in his life more than he’d ever needed anyone.
He saw the moment she realized she’d been shot. He watched as the pain kicked in and he thought to himself as he stepped off the elevator with her in his arms, that he’d give anything to have taken that bullet for her. He’d trade her pain and take it on as his own in a heartbeat if he could.
He was met in the lobby by two EMTs with a gurney and he knew one of the agents must have called down to the ambulance. He placed her on the gurney and told them she was pregnant. He took her good hand in his as he raced alongside to the ambulance where a pressure bandage was applied over her wound.
“She’s pregnant. Thirteen weeks along,” he said.
Jennie was getting pale and Chad knew she was losing blood fast.
He followed the gurney into the ambulance, staying out of the way as he watched the EMT hang a clear bag above her and sink a needle into her good hand.
He knew it would most likely be saline. He’d seen it used in helicopter evacs in the military. Since they couldn’t carry around blood on an ambulance, they’d try to compensate for the blood loss with saline until they got her to the hospital.
He kept his eyes on her face during what seemed like the longest ride of his life. His only thoughts were of Jennie and the baby. If he lost them now, he didn’t know what he’d do.
Chapter 39