And then she’s dead.
Adrenaline rushes through me when I see J hurtling from the rooftop. It’s a clean shove.
I don’t even hear her screaming.
She moves fast, a shadow skating through darkness and air.
“This way! This way!” I yell at Kurosaki’s men.
Ren translates in Japanese, and with the help of twenty men, I drag the inflatable rescue cushion under the target.
Sweat pours down my face and my heart slams into my ribs.
If my calculations are off even by a milliliter…
An object smashes into the inflatable cushion and bounces back up, but it’s not too aggressive of a ricochet as she remains on the rubber material.
I let out an animal-like sound that’s part relief and part rage and scramble on top of the inflated mat.
J sits up in a daze. Her hair is out of its ponytail, the clip probably wrenched free by the wind’s fingers. She’s not bleeding,and nothing seems broken, but it’s hard to see because there aren’t that many lights at the back of the hospital.
I want to cradle J’s body against me, but I resist the urge. If something is broken, moving her might make it worse.
Instead, I look up at the rooftop. Gina peers over. From this distance, I can’t see her expression, but I think she’s covering her mouth with a hand in shock. When she notices that I’m looking up, she pulls out of sight.
“Ren!” I growl loudly.
“Hai.” He dips his head, gestures for Hayato to follow him, and races into the hospital.
“Gina won’t get away,” I tell J. “Hold on.” I glance around. “Dr. Kenji! Where the hell—Kenji!”
“So… loud,” J rasps.
I look down at her, noticing that her watch is flashing red and beeping to the point that it’s one long shriek. What the hell did they do to her?
J struggles to sit up, but the cushion is like a trampoline that bounces with every movement. I put a hand to her shoulder, a silent instruction not to move.
However, she stubbornly keeps trying to sit up. Her head sloshes around like the bobble head Zane stuck to our tour bus dashboard last summer. I move closer to her and catch her when she teeters sideways.
“Stop moving,” I growl.
“Finn?”
“What?” I snap.
“Your… heart… is beating… so fast.”
I grit my teeth together so hard that it almost breaks.
“J! Finn!” Dr. Kenji scrambles on top of the cushion, making us jolt and shift on the mat. I hand a half-conscious J over to him.
He peels one of her eyes open and flashes a light across her irises. “We need to get her inside.Now.”
Dr. Kenji slides off the cushion first while I move more gingerly with J in my arms, trying not to shake her too much. One of Kurosaki’s men steps forward to accept J from me. My instinct is to keep her to myself, but the cushion is so unsteady that I might drop her while dismounting.
I hand her over, slide to the ground, and then snatch her back.
“Thanks,” I mutter.
