Page 44 of By the Time You Read This

Out of the corner of her eye, she saw a blur, movement that shouldn’t be there.

A second later, she could only watch as a dark SUV slammed into Kilkenny at full speed.

Chapter Fourteen

Raisa

Day Two

Blood. Sirens. The heavy, dead weight of a body in her arms.

Raisa couldn’t breathe but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered right now beyond helping Kilkenny.

There was blood on her hands, warm and slick, his skin going slippery beneath her fingers. Frantic, she searched for the source of his worst injury, and found it at the back of his head.

A whimper escaped her lips, and she moved so she could cradle his skull in her lap.

Breathe. Think. Concentrate.

Raisa finally let herself glance at Kilkenny’s face, only to find it ashen.

Everything in the world stilled.

He was alive, he was. She could see his heart still pumping in the hollow of his neck.

It didn’t matter what his face looked like right now.

She glanced down again at her hands, the cracks in her skin dyed red.

Someone gripped her arms and she curled over Kilkenny’s body as if they were in a war zone.

“Ma’am, ma’am, let us get to him.”

It was the paramedics.

“His head,” Raisa said, as she kept it off the pavement, all while shifting back, away from him.

They needed to work on him.

They needed to save him.

The sunlight caught on their scissors, on the railings of the stretcher, on the pool of copper on the pavement.

Raisa shifted, retched, her body rejecting the images.

“Ma’am?”

The paramedics again.

Hands on her arms again.

“Do you want to ride in the ambulance?” It was a question, but it really wasn’t. He was already helping her up the stairs, onto the seat next to the bed.

Kilkenny wasn’t conscious.

She took his hand anyway. The other had wires and IVs and a Pulse Ox attached.

Beeping filled her skull, pinging off the bone inside.

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