Page 123 of Surrender to Me
“I can see that.” His tone stays cool, clinical. “I need to know if she’s bleeding through the bandage.”
The medic gives me a cold stare. “Let me get a look?—”
“You can look when I say you can look.” My voice is low, dangerous even to my own ears.
Hawkeye’s attention zeros in on me.
But he doesn’t bark back. Doesn’t challenge me.
He studies me the way he studies explosives—patient, calculating what sets them off.
“Allie.” His tone is even as he addresses her, not me. “I’m not trying to separate you two. I’m trying to make sure you live through this flight.”
She pulls in a thin, ragged breath. “I’m fine.”
That’s not true. She’s ice-cold in my arms.
The medic looks at me, hard. “I need to check her blood pressure.”
“Reading won’t be accurate around her coat.”
The woman sighs. “Ma’am…” She attempts to appeal to Allie. “If we can just have you pull one arm up a little…”
She doesn’t respond.
Finally the medic gives up.
Hawkeye’s jaw clicks once. “Stryker. I need the rest of the sitrep.”
I shake my head. Not happening. Not with her in my arms.
Hawkeye grabs his phone. If it pinged, I didn’t hear it over the chopper’s noise.
After studying the screen, he gives me a hard stare. “Looks like you took out three hostiles.”
“Yeah.” No sense denying that. The way the bodies fell, the shell casings, all lines up.
“Had a previous shot. Allie’s gun? Doesn’t match unknown civilian’s firearm.”
She gives the tiniest nod.
“One was taken out by one of their own rifles.”
I lift a shoulder. “Allie saved my ass.”
Hawkeye shifts, bracing his forearms on his knees and gives her an assessing look. “Nice work.”
Allie jolts. A small, broken sound leaks from her throat.
Jesus.
The impact of everything that happened doesn’t hit me till now. This is a normal mission for me, nothing I haven’t seen a thousand times. But this is likely her first kill, and that causes trauma.
I thought this was all about Hawkeye and why she’s on the run from what may be Russians.
No doubt that factors in, but she also got grazed by a bullet and watched her rescuer get shot.
By my reckoning, she should be half comatose by now. I pull her more tightly against me.
