His eyelids flickered.
“Please don’t leave me,” Gwen said. Her hands were pressing to the wound over his stomach. She had to stop the blood flow. Had to help him. Nothing else mattered. Only Chance. Only him. She kept talking to him. Kept applying pressure and the minutes seemed to crawl by. The sirens were louder. Closer. Help had to be nearly there. Hurry, hurry, hurry—
“Drop the weapon!”
That was Faith’s voice.
Gwen looked up, blinking past her tears. Faith was a few feet away. The detective’s gun was in her hand and she was pointing it at Gwen.
I don’t have a weapon. I had to put it down so I could help Chance. I had to—
“I will kill you,” Faith said, voice fierce.
She isn’t talking to me.
Gwen glanced over her shoulder. Daniel was on his knees. He had a knife in his hand, and he’d been heading toward Gwen.
Ethan was still snarling behind his gag.
Uniformed cops raced in behind Faith.
Daniel dropped the knife.
“Good move, asshole,” Faith said. The cops closed in on Daniel.
Gwen looked back down at Chance. His eyes were open. On her. “Chance?” Don’t go! Don’t!
“Anything…” he told her, his voice a bare breath of sound. “For you.” His fingers slid toward her. “Anything…”
Medics rushed in and they pushed Gwen back. She watched as the team swarmed into action. “Devlin,” Gwen said, voice sounding like a stranger’s to her own ears. Too cold. Too hollow. But she had to tell Faith about the other man. “He’s out back. Daniel said he attacked him. Dev needs help, too!”
Faith motioned with her left hand and cops rushed toward the back of Wicked.
When the medics hoisted Chance on a stretcher, Gwen raced after them. Snow was falling outside. A light covering, reminding her of so many other times.
Reminding her of a kiss with Chance, a kiss hot enough to melt that snow.
“Gwen!” Someone grabbed her arm. No, not just someone. She shook past the fog of memories that had surrounded her and found herself gazing into her father’s frantic eyes. He stared at her a moment, almost as if he were afraid to believe she was really there, in front of him, then he yanked her against his chest and held her in a grip that hurt. “I was afraid,” he told her, voice gruff, “so afraid I’d get here and you’d be dead. When Faith called me…she was already racing over here and I didn’t think either of us would get here in time.”
Her tears fell harder. “Dad…it’s Chance. He was shot protecting me.” She pulled away from him and saw that Chance had already been loaded into the back of the ambulance. “I have to go with him. I can’t lose him!”
Her father glanced over at the ambulance. Swore. And then he was running with her to the back of that open vehicle. Gwen tried to jump in the back, but the EMT waved her away. “No, ma’am,” he said, “this man is critical. If you aren’t family—”
“She is his family!” Her father shouted. “She’s the woman he loves and you’re letting her back there or your ass will be on the street next week looking for a new job.” He puffed out his chest. “Son, you don’t know what kind of hell you’re—”
Gwen shoved her dad back before he could finish his threat. She jumped into the back of the ambulance just as its siren roared on again. Gwen scooted over so she wouldn’t get in the way of the EMTs and then…
“I love you…” Chance’s hand reached for her. “My…Gwen.”
She wrapped her hand around his. The ambulance lurched forward.
“Won’t go…anywhere…” Chance told her, even as his eyes drifted closed, “without you.”
“You’d better not,” Gwen said. Because she didn’t want to imagine the rest of her life, not without him in it.
***
By the time the ambulance rounded the corner, Will Hawthorne already had his phone out. He knew where the ambulance was headed—and it just so happened that he was on the board of that hospital. So his phone call was immediately put through to the emergency room director, and he started barking orders. “When Chance Valentine comes in, he’s to get the best care, you understand? That man will not die. Anything that my daughter wants, anything she needs for his care, you give her immediately. You put your best doctors in there with him and nothing can go wrong, do you hear me? Nothing. My daughter wants that man healed and—”
“They’ll take care of him, Will.” Faith’s soft voice came from right behind him.
His shoulders stiffened. “I’ll be there in fifteen minutes,” Will snapped into the phone. “And he’d better already be back in surgery by then.” He hung up his phone and turned to face Faith.
Her gun was holstered, her hands folded over her chest and her eyes—still beautiful enough to break me.
“You should really learn to ask nicely for things instead of always barking out your orders,” she told him. Her voice was mild, but there was sympathy and worry in her eyes.
He stepped closer to her. “You saved Gwen.”
“I did my job.”
He took another step. “You saved my daughter. Anything you want, you have. I know you’re up for a promotion, I can make that happen, I can make—”
Her hand lifted and touched his chest. “I was doing my job, and you don’t need to make anything happen for me. I do that for myself. Always have. Always will.”
Yes, she did. Just one of the many things he admired about her.
“Chance is the one who took the bullets for her, and from what I can gather…he’s also the one who shot Daniel Duvato.” She pointed to the right, toward the man who’d been strapped in the back of another ambulance, a man under police guard.
Two more ambulances roared up to the scene.
Will kept his gaze on Daniel Duvato. “Will he make it?”
“Maybe. Hard to say at this point. Chance wasn’t exactly looking to spare the guy when he pumped his bullets into Daniel.”
If Daniel lived and Chance didn’t…
“But he won’t hurt your daughter again, that’s for sure. Because if he does survive, he’s going straight to jail.”
Another team of EMTs rushed by. This time, they were carrying Devlin Shade on a stretcher. Devlin saw Will and called out, “Chance! Gwen! Are they all right?” His shirt was covered in blood.