She pulled herself up from the footwell. He shot her a look. “I said stay down.”
“The shooter’s behind us. You put blocks between us and the structure.” She settled into the seat and reached for his arm. “Let me see.”
“Lyssa—”
“Let me see, Mack.”
He exhaled through his nose—frustration, pain, something—but he didn’t pull away when she peeled away the torn material.
The bullet had carved a furrow along the outside of his upper arm, several inches long, deep enough to bleed freely but shallow enough that she could see it hadn’t hit anything critical. A graze. A bad one, but a graze.
Her hands were shaking. She pressed one flat against his arm, and the heat of his blood against her palms was so real, so immediate, that it cut through every layer of shock and adrenaline and deposited her firmly in the present.
He’s bleeding because of you. He’s bleeding because he chose you.
“It’s a graze,” she said, keeping her voice steady by sheer force of will. “You need pressure on it.”
“Grab my go-bag behind the seat. There’s a med kit.”
She twisted around, ignoring the broken glass, and found the bag. It was packed neatly with a medical kit that contained gauze, tape, and antiseptic.
Her hands were steadier now, the way they always got when she had a task. She wiped away the worst of the blood, packed the wound with gauze, and wrapped it tightly. He barely flinched.
He pulled into the drugstore parking lot and idled as he grabbed the sat phone. Teeth gritted, face grim, he dialed.
Alyssa heard it ring on the other end once before a woman answered. Had to be Claire Dawson. Alyssa was close enough to hear her voice. “Mack? What’s going on?”
“Shots were fired at the field office parking structure. Two rounds, high-caliber, long range. I’m hit. It’s a flesh wound, and I’m still mobile. Asset is secure.” He took a breath. “I need an alternate location. Now. And you’d better figure out how we were compromised.”
Asset. She was an asset now. A thing to be secured, transported, and protected. She should mind the word, but she didn’t—not right now, not while his blood was soaking through the gauze.
“Dammit,” Claire said. “Give me five minutes. I’ll call you back.”
He ended the call and killed the engine.
“Who just shot at us?” Alyssa asked, hating that her voice came out shaky. “The cartel?”
He nodded. “They knew we were coming. Someone gave us up.”
Alyssa pressed a hand to the bandage on his arm. He was alive and bleeding and looking at her with angry eyes that were already calculating the next move, the next plan, the next way to keep her safe.
“That shot,” she said. Her voice sounded strange to her own ears. Distant. “It wasn’t aimed at me.”
He frowned. “What?”
“The angle.” She pointed to the spiderweb in the windshield on his side, not hers. The second bullet that hit the back of the SUV as he reversed, tracking his movement. Both shots had landed on the driver’s side. “They weren’t shooting at me. They were shooting at you.”
He said nothing, glancing at the windshield, the rear of the vehicle. A humorless laugh escaped his lips. “You’re right. Here I’m the sniper, and you’re the one figuring out shot angles.”
The pieces rearranged themselves in her mind with a clarity that felt almost violent. “It’s not just about silencing me anymore, is it? You were at the party. You saw the meeting. You can corroborate my testimony. And you’re the one keeping me alive.” She stared at him. “The cartels aren’t just hunting me. They’re hunting you, too.”
“Looks that way.”
“Because you chose me.” Her voice broke, a fracture she couldn’t control. “At the party. At the cabin. On this drive. Every time, you chose me, and now they’re trying to kill you for it.”
He pulled her hand away from his arm, gently, and held it. Her fingers were smeared with his blood. “I’d make the same choice again,” he said. “Every time.”
She looked at their joined hands—her blood-stained fingers wrapped in his damaged ones, both of them marked by the same man’s destruction—and something crystallized in her chest. Hard and bright and furious.