Forged in Smoke (Red-Hot SEALs #3)(106)

She barely heard his response through the helicopter overhead. He dropped his hand and turned, swaying slightly.

Bull crap. Rawls was never unsteady on his feet. Never.

Ripping off her goggles, she caught his hand. The light from the burning building highlighted his palm, illuminating its wet gloss.

He was bleeding.

“You’ve been shot. Haven’t you?” Her voice was remarkably cool considering she was practically yelling. They both were.

“Maybe.”

There was a hint of irritated disbelief in his Southern twang. As though he couldn’t believe his bad luck. That, more than anything, banked her panic. He wouldn’t be annoyed if the injury had been serious . . . would he?

“Where?” she asked, already leaning down to check his arm. Through the darkness and reddish-orange miasma she could clearly see a large wet patch on his bicep.

“Right side.” He gingerly poked at the indicated area, only to freeze with a hiss.

His side?

She glanced down . . . okay, his side did look wet. Her eyes darted back up, settling on his arm. So did his arm. She swiped her fingers across the wet patch and angled it toward the burning building.

Blood.

He’d been shot. Twice!

“You realize your arm’s bleeding too. You’ve been shot twice.” Once again her voice emerged cool, in control.

In contrast, her heart was pounding so hard it knocked the breath from her lungs. With her medical history, the sudden, uncontrolled urgency of her heartbeat should have launched a major panic attack. But all she could think about was Rawls, and that he was losing more blood with each beat of his heart.

“You should sit down,” she said, catching his left, uninjured hand and tugging.

“There’s time enough to patch me up once we board the bird,” he said impatiently, glancing over to the far left where the helicopter was settling on the grass. “Right now I need to check on Mac and Cosky, and Wolf’s team—make sure we don’t have any serious injuries.”

“We do have someone with serious injuries.” Faith’s voice rose with each word. “You! You’ve been shot! Twice!”

He glanced down, his face softening. “It’s—”

“If you say it’s just a scratch—or just a flesh wound—I’m going to smack you,” she interrupted him with a scowl.

He had the good sense to close his mouth after that warning. But not the good sense to sit down. Fine, there was more than one way to accomplish her goal.

“Mac,” she yelled at the top of her lungs. When all three of Rawls’s teammates looked in their direction, she beckoned them over.

“Ah for—” Rawls locked the rest of the complaint behind his teeth.

Smart call. At least he didn’t try to scurry off. Instead he watched his buddies converge on them with frustrated acceptance.

“Problem?” Zane asked, scanning Faith from head to toe.

“Not with me,” she said, with a flapping motion toward the silent man beside her. She could practically feel the irritation rolling off him. Too bad. “It’s Rawls. He’s been shot. At least twice.”

Three intense pairs of male eyes shifted to her left and locked on Rawls.

“How bad?” Zane asked, this time he scanned Rawls from head to boot.

“I haven’t checked yet. But it feels like a graze.”

A graze? Really? She rolled her eyes at his macho posturing. Still, he’d managed to avoid describing the injury as just a scratch or just a flesh wound as she’d requested. Why in the world that warmed her belly and made her smile even in the midst of her worry—she had absolutely no idea.

“He’s bleeding,” she stressed. “In my book, that’s bad enough.”

Cosky shrugged out of his backpack, opened it up, and pulled out a flashlight, along with a plastic white box with a red cross taped across the lid. “It won’t hurt to check you out. Wolf’s crew is just starting to load up.”

“And some of them may need my help,” Rawls said, that earlier irritation sharpening his tone.

Zane shook his head. Shifting, he scanned the lawn. “Wolf’s got his own medics on the wounded. And something tells me your westernized medical approach wouldn’t be nearly as effective as their native one.”

She’d known that Wolf had healers on his team, their inclusion was one of the reasons he’d refused to allow Kait on the mission. Both Wolf and Cosky had claimed they didn’t need her services with the other healers on board.

Faith’s attention didn’t budge from Rawls’s face, even though she was curious as to whether these other healers conducted their healings the same way Kait did. He flinched a couple of times when Zane and Cosky removed his jacket and T-shirt, but stood stoically beneath their ministrations as they poured water onto gauze pads and wiped the wounds clean.

His shoulders, chest, and abdomen rippled with sleek, lean muscles in the flickering firelight. In fact, he looked like a piece of art, something Michelangelo might have sculpted in bronze or burnished copper. His sheer beauty took her breath away and sent tingles up and down her spine.

“You’re right. They barely qualify as scratches,” Zane said casually as he pressed a thick pad of gauze against his side and taped it into place. “Might need a couple of stitches so you don’t keep breaking the edges open.”