Long Road Home(59)

The metallic bite of blood filled her mouth. She forced the panic away. She wouldn’t die yet.

With every ounce of her will, all her love for Manny, all the hatred she felt for the senator, she pushed herself upward, nearly exploding from the effort. In the distance she could see the senator. And beyond, she saw Manny racing toward her.

She raised her gun and pointed it at the senator.

Manuel had pulled open the door and touched his fingers to Sanderson’s still-warm neck. He was dead, and Manuel didn’t have time to waste on the bastard anyway. He’d run for the gardens adjacent to the cathedral.

He’d charged down one of the paths, pausing at the top of the incline to look down over the gardens. His heart had nearly stopped when he saw the senator and Jules. She had a gun pointed at Denison, but suddenly she’d crumpled to the ground.

He shouted her name and started forward. The senator turned around and walked rapidly toward them. Manuel charged forward, his gun raised.

The senator raised his own arm and pointed a silencer at Manuel. A loud shot rang through the air. A look of surprise funneled across Denison’s face just as a thin stream of blood trickled out of his mouth. Then he sank to the ground, the gun falling from his hand.

Jules stood in the distance, holding the gun that had just felled the senator. But all Manuel could focus on was the blood. God, there was so much blood on her.

He ran for her as she sank to the ground. His heart pounded furiously. Time slowed. He couldn’t get to her fast enough. His damn feet felt like they were encased in cement.

Finally he flung himself to the ground beside her and gathered her in his arms. Blood. There was blood everywhere. Oh God. His throat swelled. Pain lanced through his chest. Despair pounded him relentlessly

“Jules! Jules, wake up, baby. You have to wake up!”

He buried his face in her hair and rocked her back and forth in his arms.

“Goddamn you, Jules. Don’t die on me. Don’t you dare die.”

Sobs welled and tore from his throat. He couldn’t breathe. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t live without her.

He touched her cheek, shook her gently, covered her chest wound with his hands, anything to try and save her. He felt for a pulse and found only the slightest whisper of one in her neck.

“That’s it, baby. You hang on,” he said fiercely. “I’m not giving you up again.”

He gathered her closer in his arms. “Someone get a goddamn ambulance!” he yelled. He’d never felt so damn helpless in his life.

“Manny.”

The barest whisper filtered to his ears.

He drew away and saw her eyelids flicker weakly. She’d said his name.

“Jules, sweetheart, I’m here.”

She licked her lips, the action seeming to take every ounce of her strength.

“Let me go, Manny,” she whispered. “The things…the things I’ve done. I’m beyond redemption. Just let me go.” Her voice cracked and blood bubbled from her mouth.

“Never,” he said fiercely. “You’re so all-fired determined to protect me. Well, you can’t protect me unless you live. Now fight, damn it.”

An eerie smile curved her lips, completely incongruous with all the blood and the mask of pain she’d worn just seconds ago.

“I smell…vanilla.” Her eyelids fluttered weakly, and she stared seemingly beyond him, through him. “Mom? Pop?”

Panic flooded him. “Shhh. Don’t talk. Save your strength.” He turned and looked back to where Tony stood a few feet away. “Where’s the damn ambulance!” Desperation raced up his spine.

She arched her back, her lips working up and down. “I love you.” It slipped from her lips in the frailest of whispers. Then she closed her eyes, and her head lolled to the side.

No! No! No! No!

He gripped her tightly to him uncaring of all the blood. “Live, damn it! Don’t you give up, Jules. I love you too much to let you go.”

Tears streaked down his cheeks.

“Don’t leave me,” he croaked out.

He was pushed aside as two paramedics bent over her. In quick succession, one of them intubated her while the other started an IV. Within seconds, she was hoisted on a stretcher and hustled into a waiting ambulance.

Manuel stumbled after them, watching as they squeezed oxygen into her lungs with an Ambu bag.

Tony shoved him toward the SUV. “I’ll drive you.”

“The senator?

“He’s being taken to the hospital. He’s alive.”

“He deserves to die.” Manuel only wished he’d done it.

He climbed numbly into the SUV and stared blindly out the window as Tony raced after the ambulance. He’d failed Jules. Not once but twice. Twice he’d not been there when she needed him most. And now she might die because of it.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Manuel paced the surgery waiting room, about to go insane. She’d been in surgery eight hours. The longest eight hours of his life.

He knew it wasn’t good. A bullet to the chest, all the blood she’d lost. But still, he wouldn’t allow himself to lose hope, to admit that he might lose her.

Tony had been on the phone nearly the entire time. They hadn’t trusted anyone at the CIA. Not over something this big. Hell, they’d had a hard enough time spilling the story to the feds, but they had to trust someone.