Freedom at any cost.
That had been the wolf then. That was Sabrina Greenlee now.
“No,” Vivian breathed even as she bolted across the room.
Hummer was already on his knees when she reached him, and Diesel wrenched their hostage's arms back behind her back. But it was too late.
The damage was done.
Vibrant blood darkened the front of Hummer’s shirt. It gushed between his fingers and spattered onto the concrete in thick, metallic-smelling drops.
So much blood.
Too much blood.
“Don’t pull it out!” she screamed when his hand curled around the glass shard protruding from his neck.
But he’d already yanked before she could finish the sentence.
Now his throat gushed like a ruptured pipe. And the sound… Jesus Christ! That wet ffttt-fffttt-fffftt. It made her knees buckle.
“Hummer!” She slid an arm around his big shoulders, her other hand pressing down hard on his ruined neck. “Hummer,” she repeated, trying not to think about the sticky heat running thick and wet between her fingers. “Hold still. I got you.”
His eyes, dark and dazed, found hers. There was a question there. And more. There was…
Fear.
He was afraid because he knew. This was the end for him, and her cold, hard heart cracked. Just a little.
He opened his mouth, but it was only a wet-sounding wheeze that escaped, more blood than breath.
“Don’t speak,” she cooed, easing him down onto the floor, her soft tone at odds with the carnage blooming around her on the concrete like a macabre flower.
The human body held five liters of blood. Hummer had already lost one. And he was losing more with every tick of the clock. Every beat of his heart.
She could lie, tell him it was okay, that he would be okay. But she’d never pulled her punches with her men. She wasn’t about to start doing so now.
“You’ve seen enough death to know what’s coming.” Her voice sounded hoarse before she swallowed and smoothed it out. “It comes for all of us. It’ll come for me soon enough. It’s nothing to be scared of.”
His nostrils flared wide. A single tear slipped from the corner of his eye. Then, he gave a shallow nod and covered the hand she pressed over his throat.
He didn’t drop her gaze.
He didn’t try to speak again.
He simply accepted, waited, and willed himself to be brave until the last moment.
She didn’t know how long they stayed like that. It could’ve been the span of a heartbeat or the long trudge of an eternity. But, eventually, his pale lips parted on a breathless gasp, and his hand fell away from hers to lie palm-up in the ever-expanding pool of his own blood.
Gently removing her hand from his neck, she watched as the wound pulsed once. Twice. Three times. Then fizzled.
Death rattled his chest.
Muscle spasms rippled through his body as nerves fired for a final time.
His skin blanched before her eyes when the last drops of his life drained from it.
And then…it was done.
