Matt knew he was right, but fuck.
“At least we saved your girl,” Kole mused.
“Actually,” Gabe corrected. “She saved herself.”
Matt looked at the woman next to him, his chest swelling with pride again. “Hell yeah, she did.”
Ghost and Fletch met them at the building’s front entrance, giving added coverage, just in case.
Knowing there’d be time for introductions later, Matt simply made sure Kat knew they were the good guys as they followed them across the grass where the choppers were waiting.
About ten yards away from theirs, Kat began to move a little more slowly. All of a sudden, her steps faltered, and she would’ve gone down had he not had his hands on her already.
“Hey.” Matt held her upright. “Easy, sweetheart. You okay?”
“No.” Kat shook her head, her face grimacing with pain.
“Book it, man,” Derek yelled from inside the chopper. “We gotta get these birds in the air before someone around here figures out what we did and decides to take us out.”
With his eyes still on Kat’s, Matt started to pick her up. “Come on, baby. I’ll carry you the rest of the way.” Her fingernails dug into his shoulders, causing him to pause. When he looked back up at her, his chest tightened.
Pain clouded her eyes as Kat shook her head again. “C-can’t.”
Everything had happened so fast, he hadn’t had a chance to assess her physical state. His thoughts worked overtime to figure out what was going on.
He’d seen the blood on her hands earlier but had assumed she’d gotten cut in the explosion. She’d been acting fine, otherwise, so Matt had guessed any cuts she had gotten were superficial. Now he wasn’t so sure.
He yanked his small flashlight from the pocket at his thigh and hurried to grab her hands. Turning them over and back again, Matt saw plenty of drying blood but no visible cuts.
“I don’t see any injuries, sweetheart. Where are you hurt?”
Kat swallowed, her face grimacing as she lifted the bottom of her black scrub top. Matt lowered the light to see, choking out his denial when he saw the wound there.
No.His world began to spin. “You’re hit?” he nearly choked on the words.
Her head bobbed in a weak nod. “S-sorry.” Kat barely managed the whispered word before her knees gave out completely.
Matt caught her before she hit the ground.
Looking up at him, her eyes fluttered shut as she said, “L-love…y-you.”
“No!” He shook his head with the fierce denial. “I won’t lose you. Iwon’t!”
Lifting her limp body into his arms, Matt held on tightly as he raced to the chopper. They were literally right next door to a hospital, but given who they were and what they’d done, he knew going there would be a suicide mission.
Insurmountable fear turned his blood to ice, but he fought against it and kept going.
“What happened?” Derek’s concerned expression matched the others as Matt reached their chopper. He handed Kat off to the other man long enough to climb inside.
“She’s been shot!”
There was a loud and collective,“What?”from the others.
“But she seemed fine.” Kole sounded as confused as Matt felt. The man grabbed his fist and pulled him up. “How the hell did she manage to fight off Bukhari?”
“I don’t fucking know!” Matt shouted as he fell to his knees by her side. Bile churned in his gut, panic threatening to take him over. “Adrenaline maybe? Doesn’t matter.” He swung his gaze around wildly. “Where’s the goddamn med bag?”
He’d no more said the words, and it was there. With frantic movements, he unzipped the bag, rummaging through it to find what he needed as the chopper lifted from the ground.
