fired once before Strauss fell back, dead. And Faith collapsed to the deck, pain burning through her in one bright, blinding flash before darkness swallowed her up.
“Faith!” Shane screamed, the sound tearing up from the depths of his soul. “Faith!”
He fell to his knees on the pitching deck, turning her over and lifting her limp body in his arms. With shaking fingers he found the pulse in her throat, then he dug a handkerchief out of his hip pocket and pressed it to the wound in her shoulder where blood gushed freely, soaking into the white polo shirt she wore beneath her cardigan.
Tears of anguish streamed down Shane’s face. He’d done it. He’d killed the one good person in his life. He’d known from the start not to touch Faith Kincaid. She wasn’t from his world, but he’d dragged her into it, and like everything good she would be destroyed by it.
“God, please don’t let her die,” he mumbled, stroking her damp curls back from her cool, pale cheek. A horrible, empty ache filled his chest as he sucked in a breath. “Please don’t let her die.”
With gentle, trembling fingers he lifted the delicate heart pendant she wore and pressed a kiss to it. Then he simply held her and sobbed as the spotlight of a coast guard helicopter cut through the gloom and fell on the deck of the Brutus.
ELEVEN
“WELL, WHAT’S THE verdict, doctor?”
Pulling the ear tips of her plastic stethoscope down to hang around her neck, Lindy stepped back from her mother’s bed. She pursed her lips and planted her chubby hands on her hips. “You’re gonna be okay, but I think you prob’ly need lots of ice cream, and you have to take naps when I say so.”
The love that shown in Faith’s eyes as she smiled at her daughter was absolute and unrestricted. She couldn’t begin to describe how it had felt to see Lindy again after the ordeal she’d been through. The thought had crossed her mind more than once when Strauss had held a gun to her head that she would never see Lindy again, that she would be robbed of the joy of watching her daughter grow up.
On returning home from the hospital the first thing she’d wanted to do was take her baby in her arms and hold her for hours on end, but the sling binding her left arm to her body had prevented her. It would be a week or two before she could give Lindy a proper hug. For the time being she contented herself with running her right hand over her daughter’s soft curls.
“I’d say that’s very sound medical advice, young lady.”
Lindy beamed a smile up at Dr. Moore. The pudgy, bespectacled doctor slipped her a lollipop from the pocket of his tweed jacket and winked at her.
Anastasia’s general practitioner of two decades had insisted on seeing Faith settled in at home. He had advised a longer stay in the hospital, but two days had been more than enough for Faith. She had been driven by the need to go home to Keepsake, to surround herself with familiar things and familiar faces—Lindy’s chief among them. Having survived a nightmare, Faith had felt compelled to return to the house that had been her dream.
Now the good doctor gave her a very paternal look, his bushy gray eyebrows drawing together over twinkling green eyes. “I want you to get plenty of rest. You’re darn lucky that b-u-l-l-e-t didn’t do any major damage,” he said, spelling the word out so as not to upset Lindy. “As it is, you’ll be a few days getting your strength back. Just lie back and let your friends wait on you hand and foot.”
“Sounds good to me,” Faith murmured obediently, though the idea of having people wait on her had never set very well with her. She had always done for herself. As weak as she felt, though, she figured she could stand having Jayne and Alaina turned loose in her kitchen for a few days, despite their decided lack of domestic skills. The two of them together couldn’t boil water.
“I’ll check in on you again tomorrow, honey,” Dr. Moore said, moving toward the door, black bag in hand. “Call me if you need me.”
Faith thanked him, tucking her smile into the corners of her mouth. Dr. Moore had let the women’s movement bypass him entirely. He still doled out casual endearments as easily as he did lollipops. Faith knew he didn’t mean to be