Emma blinked and swiped at her eyes, squeezing his hand tighter. Wait. Had he just slipped something into Jason’s pocket? She frowned.
Her informant’s eyes closed and his arms went lax.
“No.” Without thinking, she leaned over the ashen-faced man, gripping his lifeless hand.
Jason checked Viktor’s carotid artery and swore as he launched into chest compressions.
“Stay with us—” she barely stopped herself from saying Viktor’s name. “Hang on, okay? Your family needs you.”
But she could tell it was already too late.
He’d originally kept his mouth shut about Renfro’s predatory nature to protect his wife and two daughters, but eventually developed a guilty conscience.
And now he was dead.
Emma swallowed against the painful lump in her throat as paramedics raced into the plaza.Dammit. Regardless of how it had happened, she couldn’t allow Viktor’s death to be in vain. No matter what it took, she had to get the information he’d died to deliver.
After the paramedics took over resuscitation efforts, Jason sank back onto a concrete step, his left leg throbbing from kneeling for so long.
Based on experience, his hopes for the man’s recovery were low, but he could never have let him lie injured on the cobblestones without attempting to help. The fact that Viktor had probably been meeting someone to sell his employer’s secrets was irrelevant, except maybe to the timing of his death.
Jason had come close enough to dying himself nearly a year ago. Between that and all his years in Afghanistan, he’d learned that sometimes a quick responsecouldmake a difference in even the most disastrous of injuries.
But not today. The medics eventually ceased their attempts to revive the patient and turned the body over to the police, who had cordoned off the area and asked the witnesses to stick around for questioning.
A deep shudder ran through Jason. He thought he’d left all this behind. The adrenaline, the fear…the pain of losing a patient that bit into his chest.
He lifted his hands to rub his face and froze. They were still covered with dirt and blood.
A shadow fell over him and he looked up at Emma. God,Emma. He hadn’t initially recognized her beneath the huge hat and shades that she’d since removed, but now she stood before him looking so much like she had in college that it took his breath away. He hadn’t talked to her since…well, since the morning after he’d walked in on her in bed with another football player.
And not just any player, but Trey Harding. The too-slick NFL-bound lineman who’d thought he was God’s gift to football and women. He never missed an opportunity to give Jason shit about modeling or to remind him that his days of playing football were coming to an end.
He’d been fucking giddy when Jason walked in on them just as Trey was pulling up his pants. “Bro, it was only a matter of time before she traded up,” he’d said with a cruel smile, while Emma just stared at Jason with complete indifference, her pretty blue dress pushed up to her hips.
The sense of betrayal had been so damn familiar, but cutting far deeper this time because he’d thought she was different. He’d started to see himself the way she professed to see him: smart, honorable, worth more than his looks or his reputation on and off the field. As a man worth knowing in his own right, beyond all the flash.
Seeing her with Trey had made him feel like a fool.
The next day, Emma had appeared equally shocked and cheated to find a woman inJason’sbedroom when she showed up claiming a killer headache, fatigue, and a convenient case of amnesia, wondering why he’d abandoned her at the party. He’d expected to feel some satisfaction at hurting her back, but he’d only ended up disgusted with them both.
It was only when he started medical training that he realized Emma had probably been drugged, that he’d likely walked in after an assault. And done nothing.
The familiar guilt burned in his gut. Maybe this was his chance to apologize.
Standing over him now, she tucked her hair behind her ears. It was still the color of a coffee bean, but chin length rather than hanging past her shoulders. Her stunning blue eyes were no longer hidden behind those hideous sunglasses, and smudged mascara stained her pale cheeks, prompting more unwelcome memories.
“Here.” She pulled a cloth from a travel-sized pack of baby wipes and held it out to him, like some kind of goddess of cleaning products.
He took it and began wiping the dirt and blood from his hands. “Thank you.”
When the first cloth turned brown, she handed him another.
“You’re a lifesaver,” he said.
“Technically,youare.”
“Not today.”God. He’d missed his old job in the Air Force, but not this part. Never this part.
