I’d just leaned over the seat when I saw the dark stain spreading across Thomas’s shoulder, visible even in the dim light from the dashboard. It was too dark and too much to have belonged to Otto. It washisblood.
“Thomas!”
His head lolled against the window. His eyes were closed.
“Bisch, Thomas is hit.”
Bisch’s eyes flicked to the rearview mirror, then back to the road. His jaw tightened.
“How bad?”
I reached over the seat, pulled Thomas’s coat and shirt aside. The bullet had gone through the meat of his shoulder. I found an entrance wound in front and an exit wound in back. He was bleeding steadily but notspurting.
“He needs a doctor. Now.”
“Twenty minutes. Keep pressure on it.” Bisch’s voice was flat, focused. “He has survived worse.”
I stripped off my coat, wadded it against Thomas’s shoulder, and pressed hard. He groaned but didn’t wake. His skin was cold and clammy, his face draining of color.
Shock was setting in.
“Stay with me,” I told him, panic threatening to claim me. “You don’t get to die. That’s not how this ends.”
He didn’t answer.
I pressed harder, feeling the wet heat of his blood soaking through the fabric onto my hands. As the Mercedes hurtled through the darkness, I counted Thomas’s breaths.
They were shallow, too shallow.
“Talk to me,” I said, though I knew he couldn’t hear. “Tell me about Paris. Tell me about the flat. Tell me about the terrible coffee you make every morning that you think is good but isn’t.”
Nothing.
“Damn it, Thomas. Tell me about Rome or about the day we met.”
His chest rose. Fell. Then rose again.
“Please, Thomas.” I was begging now, tears falling so freely my vision clouded. “Tell me what you’re going to say when this is over when we’re back inParis. Just . . . tell me anything, babe. God, please say something.”
The road curved.
Bisch took it too fast, and I had to brace myself with one hand while keeping pressure with the other. Thomas’s blood was everywhere now—on the seat, on my clothes, on my skin. I could smell it, all copper and salt, the smell of a body trying to hold itself together.
“Don’t you fucking dare,” I whispered. “Don’t you leave me.”
The minutes crawled past.
Each one felt like an hour.
Each breath Thomas took felt like a gift I didn’t deserve.
Fifteen minutes.
Ten.
Five.
“There,” Bisch said, pointing. “Just ahead.”
