“Are you sure,”Cedric asked Vincent in French,“he was the one who followed us in his car? It wasn't someone else?”
“I’m sure.”
Jude’s heart contracted painfully with each beat, but he'd trained his body well. He blocked outward signs of agitation, allowing only confusion to show.
Cedric glared at Jude with accusation. “Is that man with you?” he asked in English.
“No. I’ve never seen him before.” He spoke with steely calm.
Backup should have swarmed the scene as soon as the transfer had gone through. Instead, they'd given Vincent time to draw his weapon. Maybe Jude's audio wasn’t transmitting well. Maybe there was a problem communicating real-time information to the plainclothes agents.
Vincent pointed his gun at Jude. “Who's with you?” he asked furiously.
Jude raised his palms. “No one.”
“I don’t believe you.” Vincent closed the space between them and pointed the Glock at Jude's chest. “Who’s with you?”
“No one.”
The raw anger of a trapped animal flared in Vincent's eyes.“He set us up,”Vincent said to Cedric in French, keeping his focus and gun on Jude.
He started calling Jude obscenities in French. White formed against the pad of Vincent’s trigger finger as he exerted pressure.
No.
Jude's life whirred in front of him like a runaway train, stopping on the memory of Gemma’s face.
From yards away, sounds reached them. People—agents—moving fast through the woods in their direction.
“Non,” Cedric hissed at Vincent. He shoved Vincent’s arm just as the gun fired.
A bullet ripped into Jude’s flesh.
ChapterTwenty-Six
The explosion staggered Jude back. He looked down dumbly, stunned, as blood wet the front of his shirt.
Vincent hurried Cedric toward the ravine. Moving fast, they were out of sight in seconds.
Jude crumpled to one knee, then planted a palm on the rugged earth. He pressed his other palm against the injury and felt warm blood ooze down his side.
Am I going to die?
Agents flooded in from both sides. The man and woman in exercise clothing. The fifty-something guy. More.
“They went that way,” Jude rasped with a jerk of his head.
Several took off after Cedric and Vincent. Three remained behind with him.
His voice had sounded strange when he'd spoken just now and their voices sounded strange, too. They were saying things and lifting the messenger bag from him and administering pressure and calling on their cell phones and giving him encouragement. They covered the wound and helped him lie down on that side of his ribs.
Fear climbed like an evil beast up his insides toward his heart, its claws digging in.
He'd done the right things. Made the right decisions. Caught Cedric. He didn't—he didn't regret his work.
But he did regret, deeply, the way he'd turned his back on God.
God, he thought.God.
