He was afraid now that he might never have the chance. The gunfire continued. They had to have automatic weapons—maybe even armor-piercing bullets. The vest probably wouldn’t help him—neither would the SWAT helmet he and the other agents wore.
Ignoring the risk, he returned fire. He had to take out these threats to Maggie and the baby. He had to make sure that they couldn’t hurt her or Drew ever again. One man, wearing the zombie mask and trench-coat disguise, stepped out of the cabin. Blaine hit him, taking him down, but as the man fell, his automatic weapon continued to fire.
And Blaine felt the fiery sting as a bullet hit him. He ignored the pain as another robber exited the cabin, aiming straight for him. Even as his arm began to go numb, he kept squeezing the trigger. The zombie fell, but so did Blaine. He struck the ground hard.
His ears ringing from the gunshots, he could barely hear the others calling out for him. “Blaine! Blaine!”
“Are you hit?” Reyes asked.
“Where are you hit?” Ash asked.
He didn’t even know—because what hurt the most was his heart—at the thought that he might never see Maggie again. “Tell her...”
But he didn’t have the strength to finish his request. Like Mark Doremire, he was afraid that he was about to bleed out in the woods.
All he managed to utter was her name. “Maggie...”
Maggie had suspected the worst even before Ash Stryker and another man walked into her hospital room. Their faces were pale with stress, and their clothes were smeared with blood that wasn’t theirs. They looked unharmed but yet devastated.
“No...”
He couldn’t be dead. Blaine couldn’t have died without learning how much she loved him. How much she needed him...
He had always been there when she had needed him. Why hadn’t she been there when he had needed her?
She was already out of bed, standing over Drew’s clear bassinet. She stepped away from it, so that she wouldn’t startle the sleeping baby. But her legs trembled, nearly giving way beneath her. Truman grabbed her, steadying her with a hand on her arm.
Ash shook his head. “He’s not dead, Maggie,” he said. “He’s not dead.”
“But he’s hurt.” They wouldn’t look the way they did if he wasn’t. “How badly?”
Ash shook his head again. “I don’t know.”
“Where was he shot?” she asked. “How many times?”
“What the hell happened?” Truman asked the question before she could add it to her others.
“We went back to that cabin,” the other agent replied. “The woman told us the others were there getting the money she and her husband stashed somewhere on the property.”
Maggie gasped. “Tammy wouldn’t have helped Blaine. She wanted him dead.”
“It was an ambush,” the agent confirmed.
“But Blaine was expecting it,” Ash said. “We got them all. It’s over, Maggie.”
But so might Blaine’s life be over. “Where was he shot?” she asked again. “How many times?”
“Just once,” the other agent replied. But from Mark’s and Sarge’s deaths, she knew once was enough to kill. “The bullet grazed the side of his neck.”
“It nicked an artery,” Ash said. “He lost a lot of blood.”
“But he’s alive,” she said, clinging to hope.
Ash nodded but repeated, “He lost a lot of blood, though.”
“The doctors aren’t sure he’s going to make it,” the other man added. “After they stabilized him, they flew him here.”
“Why?” There were hospitals closer to the cabin. Good ones.
“The last thing he said was your name,” Ash told her.
So they’d thought he wanted to be with her? He had probably only been worried that Tammy had set a trap for her as well as him. She’d wanted them both dead.
But Maggie didn’t care why they had brought Blaine here. She had to see him. She turned to Truman. “Can you keep an eye on Drew while I go see Blaine?”
“Of course,” the big man replied, but he looked nervously at the tiny baby as if afraid that he might awaken.
“This way,” Ash said, as he guided her down the hall to an elevator. They took it to the ground floor and the intensive care unit.
“Only one person at a time,” the nurse at the desk warned them.
Ash waved her forward, so she followed the nurse to Blaine’s bedside. Her golden-haired superhero looked so vulnerable and pale lying there. An IV dripped fluids—maybe plasma—into him, probably replacing the blood he’d lost. A bandage covered the wound on his neck. The injury had been treated.
Now he just had to fight.
“Please,” she implored him as she grasped his hand. “Please don’t leave me.” Tears overflowed her eyes, trailing down her face to drop onto his arm. “I can’t lose you. You have to fight. You have to live.”
Panic had her heart beating frantically, desperately. What could she do to help him fight? How could she lend him some of her strength, as he had always given her his? She wouldn’t have survived without him. Even with all the robbers dead or in jail, she wasn’t sure that she could survive now without him.
“Please,” she implored him again, “please don’t leave me.”
His hand moved inside hers, his fingers entwining with hers. He squeezed. She glanced up at his face and found his green-eyed gaze focused on her. He was conscious!
Embarrassed that he’d caught her crying all over him, she felt heat flood her face. “I’m sorry,” she said.
“Sorry?” he asked, his voice a husky rasp.
“I—I’m crying all over you,” she pointed out. “And I’m making assumptions.”
“Assumptions?”
“I shouldn’t have assumed that you’re with me,” she said. “I know that you’ve just been protecting me—that you’ve just been doing your job—”
He tugged his hand from hers and pressed his fingers over her lips. “Shh...”
The man was exhausted, and here she was, rambling away. She had always talked too much.
“I’m sorry,” she murmured again—against his fingers.
He shook his head—weakly. “You’re wrong...”
Before he could tell her what she was wrong about, the nurse stepped back into the area. “He’s awake? Mr. Campbell, you’re conscious!” She leaned over and flashed a light in his eyes.
Blaine squinted and cursed. “Yes, I’m conscious.”
“I have to get the doctor!” the nurse exclaimed as she hurried off.
“I should go,” Maggie said. “I should tell Ash that you’re awake.” His friends had been worried about him, too.
“I think he probably heard,” Blaine pointed out, as the nurse’s voice rang out.
“Then he’ll want to see you,” Maggie said. She tugged on her hand, trying to free it from his so that she could escape before she suffered even more embarrassment. But before she could leave, a doctor hurried over with the excited nurse.