Page 14 of Dangerous Passion

Grace was so shocked, it took her long seconds to realize what the sharp cracks were.

“Goddammit. A sniper.” The deep, low voice was speaking right into her ear, so close she could feel the puffs of hisbreath. He lifted and pulled her closer to the curb until she was resting against the front side of a big black vehicle. “The engine block should stop a bullet. Stay here and don’t move.”

Another crack sounded and his heavy body jolted.

Grace lifted her head slightly to look at him. His words didn’t process in any way. She looked back down the street to where a limp collection of clothes lay sprawled across the doorway to the gallery, the rain washing red then pink into the gutter. None of this made any sense at all, least of all the remains of her best friend, a shattered mass of pink and gray flesh.

“Harold,” she whispered, her voice shaking so hard she could barely articulate.

“Is dead,” the man said brutally. “Now we have to stay alive. No, dammit.” He brought an arm like iron over her back. She’d been blindly trying to rise up, putting her shaking hands on the ground to lift herself up to … to go to Harold.

To dosomething.

“Staydown,dammit,” the man on top of her hissed. One huge hand covered the back of her head and pressed until her cheek lay on the rough pavement. She watched the big raindrops ping and bounce off the concrete, her mind completely blank, empty.

The heavy man on top of her shifted and started talking in a low deep urgent voice. What was he saying? Whatever it was, there was no possible response in her. She was too shocked to make out more than a few words here and there.Sniper … west side of Lexington, second story window, come from Park…

It took her several seconds to realize that he wasn’t talkingto her but into a cell. He was discussing some kind of strategy. The words flew into her head and then right back out again. The only thing that penetrated the fog in her head was the deep calm of his voice, the assurance. He could have been a man discussing the menu of that night’s meal. It was amazing to think that voice came from a man under fire.

Even his body was calm. His coat must have been open because she could feel the heat of his wide chest against her back. His heart beat was strong and steady, unlike her own trip-hammering one, beating wild and high in her chest. His breathing was calm, regular, while she was gulping in great gasps of air that choked her and burned her lungs.

He stopped talking.

Tears were running down her face, lost in the rain.

“My men are coming.” That deep calm voice next to her ear again. It was insane but somehow it calmed her, just a little. “I’ll get you out of here, I promise.”

A huge hand planted itself next to her face on the pavement. He was holding his gun, big and black and oily-looking. Something else caught her attention. A big pool of deep red forming underneath her, spreading and turning pink in the rain.

She was shot! Oh my God, she’d beenshot!

Grace stopped breathing for a moment, trying to take stock through her shattered senses. She was freezing, lying in a puddle of red-tinged water, her cheek grinding against the rough pavement, trying to breathe, though the man on top of her weighed a ton. She was cold and shocked and terrified.

But not wounded.

The amount of blood that was now flowing freely down into the gutters was from a serious wound and wasn’t coming from her. Couldn’t. She’d have felt a wound that deep.

“You’re—“ Her voice wasn’t coming out at all. She tried again. “You’re wounded.”

He grunted in answer and shrugged, the movement sending a fresh welling of red onto the pavement.

Grace chanced a look upwards, trying to gauge how badly he was wounded. God, if he were dying, what could she do?

But he didn’t look like he was dying. His face didn’t in any way betray that he was wounded. He wasn’t grimacing in pain, he wasn’t pale. His skin was that same smooth olive tone as before and he looked as if he were trying to figure out a particularly difficult chess problem, not as if he were in a life-or-death situation with a hole in his chest and a man with a rifle just waiting for them to show. Shockingly, when he met her eyes, he even smiled.

It was faint and over almost before it began, but it was definitely a smile. Dying men don’t smile. Or at least she imagined not.

Only one way to find out. “Are we going to die here?” she whispered.

“No.” His jaws clenched. “Nothing will happen to you, I swear. I won’t let it.”

He rolled away from her, gun at the ready. Grace twisted her head to watch him. His parka had a big hole in it and underneath that, a big hole in the shoulder, oozing blood.

“My God,” she whispered. “That’s serious.” Her fingers scrabbled for her purse. It had fallen in the middle of the sidewalk, the long strap facing them, thank God. She caught the tip and started pulling it towards her. “I’ve got a scarf in my purse. I can use it as a pressure bandage tostop?—“

The world blew up in her face. One second her purse was inching its way to her and the next there was a big crater in the pavement and tiny pieces of black leather floated in the air.

Grace’s ears rang as all outside sound cut out. Her face and neck hurt. When she put her hand to her face, it came away wet and red.

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