Page 75 of Beautiful Vengeance

Numb all over, blood pulsing in his ears, he dropped his empty rifle and forced himself to his feet. He staggered forward a few steps, fell to his knees. The smaller Griffin was flying off now, abandoning the Architect because the approaching Puma was coming in fast.

“Marcus!”

He jerked his head around to see Brody leaping down from the top of the wall. He ran to Marcus, grabbed him around the ribs and hoisted him upright. “What happened?”

“I shot her,” he croaked out. She’d seen the laser dot a moment before he’d fired. He’d seen her lips move. Bloodythankinghim for what she’d assumed would be a lethal shot. He wanted to puke.

Brody stared at him in disbelief, then horror. “What?”

Marcus tried to shove him away but Brody muscled him forward. “Trinity’s still on the other side. I didn’t want to move her.”

Marcus couldn’t take his eyes off Kiyomi. He had to get to her. Had to stop the bleeding, save her. The shooters were all down but more were coming. “I’m out of ammo. The Puma—”

“It’s our team,” Brody shouted back over the noise. “Amber called me a minute ago. They’d been trying to reach us for the past half-hour, but the reception out here’s too spotty.”

Marcus glanced up at the approaching Puma and recognized Megan leaning out the open door. She waved an arm to signal him as the pilots slowed the aircraft and dropped into a low hover. “Just get me to Kiyomi,” he told Brody, voice ragged.

Brody clamped an arm around his back and draped one of Marcus’s across his own shoulders. Marcus hopped along as fast as he could go on his good leg, his lungs tight, heart racing frantically.

“You’re hit,” Brody said.

Marcus didn’t answer, just kept going, his gaze locked on Kiyomi.Come on, love. Move. Please move…

He’d aimed for her shoulder, but Jesus Christ, she’d moved. What if he’d killed her?

Grief and panic clawed at him, sharp and agonizing. The Puma set down fifty yards or so from them.

Megan and the others jumped out and raced toward them, rifles at the ready. They surrounded the downed shooters as Marcus and Brody raced for Kiyomi and the Architect, who had managed to crawl a dozen or so yards away.

When they got close Marcus pushed away. Brody immediately moved to secure the Architect while Marcus stumbled toward Kiyomi.

She lay completely still, her eyes half-open. His heart lurched, terror rocketing through him as for an unbearable moment he thought she was dead. But then she blinked and slowly focused on him.

He fell heavily to his knees beside her, ignoring the brutal wave of pain in his leg and hip, and slid a hand beneath her head. “Kiyomi,” he choked out, a rush of tears blurring his vision.

There was a pound coin-sized hole in the front of her left shoulder, where the vest couldn’t protect her. Blood stained her chest and arm, soaking into the grass beneath her.

Marcus rolled her slightly. The exit wound on the back of her shoulder blade was worse. But nothing was spurting—the shot appeared to have missed her subclavian artery—and she was breathing all right, no blood coming from her nose or mouth that would indicate the bullet had hit the upper lobe of her lung, butJesus.

He ripped his vest and shirt off, then wadded up the T-shirt and used it to pad the entry and exit wounds as best he could. She writhed a bit when he pressed down on the front of her shoulder, her face blanched of all color, contorting with pain. She was in shock, but there was something more to her reaction. Almost as if she were drugged.

“It’s all right, love, it’s going to be okay,” he told her, his voice rough as sandpaper. She was staring through him and it scared the hell out of him. He was hyperventilating, his hands shaking as he stared down at her.

He glanced up when someone came running toward him. Megan raced over and dropped down on Kiyomi’s other side. “How bad?” she asked.

“She’s breathing okay. Think she’s been drugged.”

Megan’s lips pressed together and she cut a rage-filled look over at the Architect. Brody had cuffed the woman’s hands behind her back and was pinning her to the ground, with his hands on the wound in her shoulder.

Megan’s eyes cut back to Kiyomi as she tapped on her earpiece. “We need to medevac them both immediately.” She looked up at Marcus. “Can you walk?”

It killed him to admit it aloud, but getting Kiyomi to the hospital and into surgery as soon as possible was the only thing that mattered right now, and he would only slow the process down if he tried to carry her. “No.”

Megan nodded, eyes grave, and spoke to someone else on comms. “Need a hand carrying Kiyomi.” She bent over Kiyomi and put a hand on her cheek. “Hey, sweetie. We’re gonna get you out of here, okay? Just hang on for me.”

Marcus kept pressure on her wounds with his left hand and stroked her hair back from her face with the other, overcome with guilt and helplessness. He might have saved her life, but in doing so he’d probably cost her the use of her arm.

His guts twisted, nausea churning in his stomach. “I’m so sorry, love,” he told her raggedly, his throat burning along with his eyes and hip. “So, so sorry.”

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