Page 142 of Gabriel: Duke of Bencalor

An­neliese opened a com­part­ment along the side of the limo and pulled out a first aid kit. “Let me take a look.” Bend­ing low, she stepped across them to kneel be­side Quinn. Tak­ing a pair of scis­sors out of the kit, she cut a larger hole around the wound.

“I think you got hit by one of the chips of con­crete that the bul­let kicked up,” she said.

“How bad is it?” Vin­cent asked. “Can we treat her at the air­port?”

“Yes!” Quinn said as Gabriel said, “No!”

An­neliese looked at Gabriel. “Sir, I can dis­in­fect and ban­dage it now, and we’ll have a doc­tor meet us at the plane.”

Quinn gave Gabriel a death glare. “I am the in­jured party, and I agree to hav­ing it ban­daged now.”

“Quinn—” Gabriel be­gan.

“It’s. My. Leg,” Quinn bit out.

Gabriel nod­ded to An­neliese. “But we will com­pro­mise by hav­ing the doc­tor meet us on the plane. Please.” His voice turned to vel­vet. “You were hurt by a bul­let meant for me.”

Rec­og­niz­ing his need to ex­pi­ate the guilt, Quinn said, “Okay. Doc­tor on the plane.”

An­neliese ripped open an an­ti­sep­tic wipe and gen­tly cleaned the wound, which stung like the dick­ens. Es­pe­cially when the car hit a pot­hole and caused the body­guard to press too hard. “I’m sorry, but there is def­i­nitely some side­walk grit in here. Have you had a tetanus shot re­cently?”

“Yup. All vac­ci­na­tions are up to date.” Quinn looked at Gabriel. “Mikel in­sists on that, so I’m not say­ing it just to get you off my back.”

He laid a hand against her cheek, his eyes dark with pain. “I’m so sorry, car­iño mío.”

“It’s not your fault. It’s—” She stopped.

Who had shot at Gabriel? Had they wanted to kill him or send a warn­ing of some kind?

She glanced at An­neliese, want­ing to ask the body­guard’s ex­pert opin­ion about the shooter’s in­ten­tion. How­ever, An­neliese was fo­cused on ap­ply­ing oint­ment and a ban­dage to Quinn’s wound.

“It’s the fault of who­ever hired the sniper,” Quinn fin­ished.

“And we don’t know who that is,” Gabriel said.

“Yeah, but we’ll find out. I prom­ise you that,” Quinn re­sponded. Who­ever it was, she wanted to kill them with her own hands for ru­in­ing Gabriel’s mo­ment of ju­bi­la­tion.

“I don’t doubt you.” Gabriel pressed a kiss on her fore­head be­fore he asked An­neliese, “Are we per­mit­ted to sit up now?”

“I’d pre­fer you didn’t, sir,” Vin­cent re­sponded in­stead. “We’re on an is­land, so we have a lim­ited num­ber of ways to get off it. That sniper was a pro. He or she could have a team tail­ing us. At some point, they’ll be able to fig­ure out which bridge we’re headed for, and the sniper could set up again. I don’t want to take that chance.”

An­neliese flipped up the bench cush­ion of the back­ward-fac­ing seat. “These should make you more com­fort­able,” she said, hand­ing Quinn and Gabriel two pil­lows and two blan­kets be­fore she re­turned to her post on the back seat.

Gabriel folded both blan­kets to­gether into a thick pad. “Roll to­ward the front for a sec­ond, and I’ll spread this out so you can lie on top of it.”

“What about you?” Quinn asked as she shifted away from him.

“The car­pet is thick enough for me.”

She de­cided he would feel bet­ter if she ac­cepted his small sac­ri­fice, so she rolled back onto the blan­kets with­out fur­ther ar­gu­ment. The ex­tra pad­ding felt good.

Sud­denly, Gabriel wrapped his arm around her waist and pulled her into his body so her face was against his chest. “You could have been killed.” An­guish qua­vered in his voice. “Be­cause you were with me. Dios mío! Now I un­der­stand how Raul feels.”

Quinn squirmed in his grasp so she could look him in the eye. “You could have been killed.” The ter­ror of that hit her in the gut. She’d been fo­cused on who the cul­prit was rather than what might have hap­pened. She bur­rowed her face into Gabriel’s chest again, hand­fuls of his T-shirt bunched in her fists.

“But I wasn’t, thanks to ev­ery­one in this car. I am a lucky man.”

He’d been kid­napped, mu­ti­lated, and shot at, and yet he con­sid­ered him­self lucky. How could she not love him?

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