Flicka ripped another swatch of cloth off and tossed it to Rae.
Rae caught it and dabbed at the blood seeping around the bandage. Scarlet bloomed from the inside like blood drifting through water.
Rae crooned to Dieter, “It’s okay. It’ll be okay.”
Dieter cussed like a Swiss sailor. Flicka almost laughed at him as panic whirled inside her.
An ambulance wailed and screeched to a stop beside the SUVs.
Flicka looked up. Men in black suits encircled them, facing outward and covering the area with their handguns.
She peered beyond the men to where she had seen the sunlight flash off a gun’s scope.
Beyond the security guys’ legs over by the white wall of the basilica, a man was held down by more of their security team. The gunman strained, twisting to try to escape. One of the suits punched him in the ribs.
Wheels and running feet pounded toward Flicka. The security guys around them parted to let the stretcher through.
The orderlies lifted Dieter onto the stretcher and strapped him down.
He was watching where she sat on the ground in her torn, bloody dress as they wheeled him away.
Flicka couldn’t seem to stand. Her legs had no strength now that the emergency was over. She couldn’t even push herself up, and when some of Wulf’s other bodyguards helped her to her feet, she trembled.
Damn it, she wasn’t like this.
Another security man lifted Rae to standing. Wulf sprang to his feet.
Another of Wulf’sWelfenlegionsaid, “Wulfram, now. We should leavenow.”
Wulf grabbed Rae’s arm and pushed Flicka toward another group of hisWelfenlegion. “Take her back to the hotel. It’s safer if we ride separately.”
Flicka watched them walk away and climbed into the SUV behind theirs with Wulf’s other security man.
Inside the SUV, she told the driver, “Follow the ambulance.”
“But madam,” he said, “Mr. von Hannover instructed us to take you back to the hotel where our security cordon is set up.”
“I said, to the hospital,” Flicka snapped at him.
“Mr. Schwarz will be fine. We’ll have information—”
“Take me to the hospital to see himright now.”
“Yes, Your Highness.”
At The Hospital
Flicka von Hannover
I thought he was going to die.
I had to reach him.
Flicka strode through the antiseptic-laced halls of the hospital, her lace wedding dress dragging on the tile behind her.
The cathedral-length train weighed on her arm where she had wadded the length of white silk, but it spilled over. Dieter’s blood was drying to a stiff mess on her side, and her bottom and back were stained green and brown from the grass and dirt where he had tackled her to the ground.
Every time she closed her eyes, she could see his face above her again—his dove gray eyes wide with alarm as his arms closed around her head—and feel that awful flinch when the bullethithim.
