Page 13 of Her Chosen Protector

I only see one of the two,” Eden snapped into the radio.

“Patel here.”

Then there was silence. As their driver made a shuddering right between the security gate into the bank’s courtyard, he bellowed, “Rivers! Where the fuck is Rivers?!”

Eden’s SUV slammed to a halt. Carlson leaned over and made a grab for the radio in Eden’s hand.

“Give me that.” She shoved it at him.

“Rivers, check in, goddamnit.” His voice oozed authority.

Nothing.

Eden opened her passenger door and Schlessinger shoved her out of the way as he dove out of the vehicle. He ended up falling to his knees. Serves him right. Leland Hines was coming out of the third-row seat. Eden moved back so he could get out first.

“Beauty before age,” he said as he waved her toward the closed passenger door. “Let’s go this way and avoid the blubbering blob, shall we?”

Whatever would get her to Suzanne the fastest was fine by Eden. She looked over the front seat and saw Carlson giving her aid, but she wanted to look over the wound. She’d learned a few things in college. It might not have been how to work on two-legged animals, but it still applied.

She jumped out the passenger door, then opened the front passenger door where Suzanne was. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Heinrich Becker, Sharon Foster, Kaito Nakamura, and Professor Nilsson all pile out of Patel’s Escalade.

She ran over to the group. “Sharon, I need your pashmina.” At least she had asked before ripping it off the woman’s shoulders.

The woman was pale and looked frightened to death.

“What?” she whispered. “What’s going on? I don’t understand. Why were people shooting at us?

Are we going to die?”

Eden saw all of the people who’d been in the vehicle with Sharon looking at the woman with various expressions of disgust or pity. Apparently, she had been the group’s “Schlessinger.”

“Sharon, Señora Azua is injured. I need something to stop the bleeding so we can get her into the

bank. Give me your pashmina.” She watched as Patel peeled away from the group to talk to a couple of men from the bank. She turned her attention back to Sharon who was still clutching the wrap around her shoulders.

“Give it to her,” Heinrich Becker commanded. Sharon’s hands reluctantly loosened and finally, she gave it to Eden. She then ran back to her Escalade.

“Eden, explain this to me,” Schlessinger practically screamed in French from where he was sitting on the ground propped up against one of the SUV’s tires. She ignored him and bent into the front seat to see Carlson with his t-shirt off trying to staunch the bleeding.

“Move,” Eden said. “I need to see what we have here.”

“Are you a medic?”

“I have some training,” Eden prevaricated.

“It’s just a flesh wound,” Carlson explained. “Didn’t hit anything major.”

“I’m fine,” Suzanne insisted.

She didn’t sound fine.

Eden pulled back Carlson’s shirt. All it was doing was applying pressure against the wound.

Which, thank God, showed that the bullet had just grazed her neck. It could have been so much worse.

The shirt wasn’t helping much since it required someone holding it all the time, and Suzanne’s arms were now getting floppy and her eyes glassy. Eden pressed the shirt back in place and nodded to Carlson to hold it again. She looked at the light blue cloth in her hand and tried tearing it. No go. She took ahold of it with her teeth and tried again.

Success.