Page 54 of Lethal Queen

“Put pressure on his wound, press as hard as you can—”

“What do you think I’ve been doing for minutes?” I snapped. “Where are you?”

“Almost there.”

I didn’t hear what he said next; the front door slammed open in the living room, and I snatched up the gun, pointing it at the mouth of the hall when a dark shape stumbled closer. I didn’t know the woman’s hard face, but the fact she was bleeding and dressed in the black uniform our security team wore stopped me shooting her. I didn’t drop my gun, though.

“I’m Bridget Avery,” she said, calm eyes assessing me, Damien’s pale body, Finch’s corpse,andthe blood covering the hallway. “I work for Vertex Security, I was there that day in the gallery.”

I vaguely remembered a woman, but I couldn’t place her. “You’ve got medical training?”

“Seven years as a combat medic,” she confirmed, taking slow, careful steps towards me.

“Help him,” I ordered. “But don’t expect me to lower my gun.”

She nodded and rushed towards us, kneeling beside Damien and calmly assessing his injuries. “Do you have a first aid kit here?”

I nodded. “In the kitchen.”

“Go get it. Quickly.”

I hesitated, torn between staying to protect Damien while he was vulnerable and getting the kit he needed to save his life. With a growl, I jumped to my feet and raced to the kitchen, pulling everything out of the cupboard above the sink until I located the green box.

“Here,” I panted, dropping back beside Damien and Bridget. “Is he gonna be okay?”

Please say yes, please say yes.

“Depends how fast the ambulance gets here. I can only do so much with what I’ve got here. I’ll do my best,” she said brusquely, not sugarcoating it.

Swallowing the lump in my throat, I set my hands over the gash in his stomach again, knowing exactly how dangerous stomach wounds were. A slow death, but a sure one.

“You don’t get to leave me, Damien Marshall,” I hissed. “You hold on, that’s an order.”

He didn’t respond. And he was losing more colour and more blood with every passing minute.

CHAPTER 26

VASILISA

The rasp of a paper coffee cup on Formica made me jump from sleep to startled wakefulness, and I reached for the gun at my thigh with a clumsy hand.

“It’s Kavan,” a subdued voice murmured.

I released my gun with a sigh, slumping back into the chair at Damien’s bedside.

“Sorry,” I rasped, looking from my father-in-law—tired lines cut into his deeply tanned face, his eyes sunken and flat, his steel-blue shirt rumpled from being slouched in the chair opposite me all night—to my husband. Damien was still unconscious but stable.Now,anyway. His heart crashed once last night and it was terrifying, but it hadn’t happened in hours and I was clinging to the hope that it would never happen again.

I hadn’t meant to fall asleep. I didn’t like taking my eyes off him; what if I looked away and he stopped breathing? He’d lost a serious amount of blood and even multiple transfusions later, he was still pale, still in a tentative condition. It was like lookingat a painting of my husband, familiar with the same features but… not quite accurate. Something I couldn’t put my finger on. Maybe his pallor, maybe his slack features, the lack of movement in his face or from behind his closed eyelids.

I reached over and brushed hair out of his face even though he hadn’t moved in hours and his hair was exactly where it was before I fell asleep.

“Willa says his heartbeat is stronger than it was last night,” Kavan said, sinking back into the chair across from mine and taking a long drink from his own paper cup. The scent of cheap coffee filled the air.

I nodded. “Willa?”

“Wilhelmina,” he corrected. Ah. The nurse who’d taken care of Damien since he was admitted.

I took a sip of coffee and nearly choked on the burnt taste of it. “This is awful.”

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