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 heartbeat 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.
A click and the cell phone closed.
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 been shot!
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 upward, trying to gauge how badly he was wounded. God, if he was 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 toward her. "I've got a scarf in my purse. I can use it as a pressure bandage to stop-"
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 was cut out. Her face and neck hurt. When she put her hand to her face, it came away wet and red.
All her senses were gone. She was screaming but she couldn't hear herself. She'd lost all sense of up or down and it was only when the man's face came into view that she realized she'd been blown on to her back.
His mouth was moving, the strong cords in his neck were standing out, so it was entirely possible he was shouting, but she couldn't hear a thing. It was like being dead, or halfway into a coma. Large hands were frantically touching her all over. His long fingers sifted through her hair, feeling every inch of her skull.
She winced when he touched the back of her head. It was incredibly painful. Maybe she wasn't dead, after all.
The man threw his black parka onto the sidewalk and when that was blasted away, he lifted himself up, big black gun in hand. He grasped the gun with both hands, sighting over the top of the roof of the car, and shot three times. She couldn't hear anything but she could see his hand buck slightly with each shot, then come straight back to the position it had been in before. Three pretty, bright brass casings twirled in the air. One fell on her hand and she jerked to roll it off. It was hot and burned her.
Then suddenly she was lifted to her feet, an iron arm around her waist, and she was half carried to a waiting car on the street. Men were all around her now, in a tight circle, backs to her. Big men, dressed in black, all carrying weapons.
She was literally thrown into the backseat of a large car, her head banging against the far window. Another body piled in, the door slamming closed just as the car took off so fast it pressed her against the seat.