She watched as a different heavy vehicle cleared the curb and slammed to a halt. Then another. Her heart sank. Someone’s cavalry had arrived. Either that was a fresh batch of assassins and this was the end or—
The battle sounds changed from AKs screaming to the steadier, heavier growl of—custom made rifles? Yesssss! Those were TEAM weapons and TEAM vehicles! Damn them! They were late, but The TEAM was here!
Hotrod glanced over his shoulder, taking in the latest threat, as if he’d heard the change in artillery cadence, too. His split-second distraction worked for Persia. Pissed as hell, she jerked that door inward, enough to knock his arrogant ass off-balance.
“Damn you,” she cried as she pulled this stupid, stupid man inside. “You’d better not die!”
“For you, sugar, anything,” he wheezed.
Then she wished she hadn’t screamed. Hotrod stumbled forward. His eyes rolled back in his head. With a grunt, he collapsed into her, a dead, bleeding weight.
“Thank God!” Izza exclaimed from somewhere behind her. “They came, Hans. The TEAM is here. We’re saved!”
Persia sank to the floor with Walker, her rifle still at her side. “He’s been hit, Izza! He’s dying!”
Cradling him, she ran a quick hand over his sweaty head. Her fingers came away drenched with red. One round had definitely grazed his skull, but the other was a through and through, high on his left shoulder. Red rivers poured from both wounds. “Don’t leave me, Hotrod. Walker, please. Don’t you dare leave me again…”
“Crap! Stupid damned SEALs,” Izza hissed as she dropped to her knees alongside them. “He saves my life, then throws his away? Dumb shit! I’ll kick his ass if he dies!”
It was times like this that Persia adored Izza. With her blowout kit already spread on Hotrod’s belly, she worked quickly and expertly. Fiercely, as if she were at war with yet another enemy. Izza applied a hearty dose of QuikClot to stop the flow pouring out of his head wound, closed it with a bulky, sticky pad, then went to work on that through and through.
“Here,” she snapped as she handed Persia a small plastic bag of cotton plugs. “You know what to do with these. I’ll take the exit.”
“I’ve got the entry,” Persia replied, her heart pounding at how much this was going to hurt him. Yet it had to be done. The plugs were compressed cotton. Designed to expand when saturated, they’d slow the blood loss until medics arrived. One after another, she pushed several plugs into the bleeding hole just under his collarbone. It was battlefield first-aid at its best.
Hotrod groaned and tensed every time her fingertip penetrated his muscle. But he never opened his eyes. A bullet to the head, even a near miss, a graze, still impacted a man’s skull with enough kinetic energy to crack bones and cause concussions. He hadn’t yet recovered from his first concussion. He needed real medics and a Life Flight helicopter, damn it!
“Harder,” Izza growled even as she leaned down to peer at the exit wound she’d treated. “Men are so stupid.”
“He sacrificed himself for us,” Persia murmured.
“I know. I saw that damned white flag. Still a dumbass move.” The harder Izza worked, the more she cussed. “Fuckin’ hero move. Not smart, Hotrod.”
“You’ve done this before.”
“Too many times.” For as tiny as she was, this fierce Hispanic woman didn’t know the meaning of quit.
“Connor?”
Izza shook her head. “No. He was gut shot. Whole different dumbass. Whole different problem.”
“When?”
Izza growled, pushed hard on Hotrod’s shoulder while she compressed the last plug into his back. “During that same Utah op. We got into a little trouble with our Mexican friends. Had to fight for our lives. No biggie.”
“Was that when he killed those guys in that hangar? The time he rescued you? You call that no biggie?”
Izza shrugged. “Yeah. I saved him first, then he saved me last. So what? That’s the way it works, Persia. If you love a man, you’ll die for him, cuz if he’s the one for you, he’ll die for you without thinking twice. This guy just proved that in spades, huh?”
Persia swallowed hard. “You could say that.”
She couldn’t look away from Hotrod’s rugged face. He’d grown pale. Even his scruff seemed lighter. As if he were fading away before she’d had time to tell him how she felt.
But she wasn’t ready to whisper the L word yet. Didn’t know if she’d ever be ready. Commitment was one of those final absolutes. A forever. Like death. She’d seen so much heartbreak