Chapter Fifteen
They picked their way toward the mouth of the mine, ducking under a curtain of cobwebs strung thick between two support beams.
Sinead batted one out of her hair with a small, disgusted noise. “Well, the mine didn’t collapse on our heads. I’m calling that a win.”
“Low bar, but I’ll take it.” Hawk tossed her a wry smile.
Daylight bloomed in the opening of the mine, gold and warm after the inky blackness. For one second, everything felt simple. The gold behind them, the future ahead. Now they just needed to get to a rally point and get a lift out of the backcountry.
As they neared the exit, he scanned the tree line, his instinct refusing to let its guard down even after a day like today.
Then his gaze caught something that only belonged in a war zone.
A small red dot fixed on Sinead’s chest.
He stopped breathing.
He didn’t even have time to think, only react. He shoved her hard, throwing her out of the line of fire half a second before the shot cracked through the air. The sound bounced off several planes of rock, making it impossible to pin the shooter’s location by sound alone.
Fire ripped through his side.
He hit the dirt, breath punched out of him. The world narrowed to a white-hot pain through his side. Not his ass this time, at least.
He clamped his hand over it and felt wet heat already soaking through his shirt.
No time to feel it yet. Feeling it came later.
If there was a later.
He forced his mind to focus past the pain. He’d trained for this a hundred times over—watched his brothers-in-arms take hits and keep fighting until their bodies caught up to their minds.
From his position on the ground, he glanced at Sinead. “Stay down,” he growled.
Another scan of the trees revealed two shooters in black clothing and masks. The way they moved, with military precision, told him they were mercs.
“Hawk!” she hissed in response, but he was already rolling, drawing his weapon.
His side screamed as he shifted onto one knee and returned fire. Pain was information, not an order. Right now it was telling him the bullet had gone clean through, and it hadn’t hit anything that would stop him from moving.
Another shot exploded rock a good ten feet away from the entrance. Not only did these guys find the worst cover, they were bad shots.
Hawk, however, was not.
He put both of them down in seconds. He barely registered the act until the silence afterward rang out loud, broken only by wind and his own ragged breathing.
Then the adrenaline receded enough to let the pain seep back in. He sagged, one hand pressed hard to his side. Blood trickled warm and slow between his fingers.
“Hawk!” Sinead started to scramble toward him, but he waved her back down.
“There could be more,” he grated out.
Her eyes were wide with horror, and her hands hovered in the air as if she could reach out and help him from several feet away.
Minutes passed. He continued to scour the trees, throwing out his hearing. While the forest was silent after gunfire, there was no rustle of footsteps or the crunch of twigs.
Sinead made a quiet noise in her throat, and he held her stare for a heavy beat. Finally, after long minutes of waiting for another wave of attacks, none came.
He gave a nod that the coast was clear.
Sinead crawled over to him. Panic cracked in her voice. “Oh my god. Oh my god. You’re bleeding! You’re really bleeding—”
“Hey.” He caught her wrist with his free hand, steadying her more than himself. “Hey, look at me. I know it’s a lot of blood. Wounds like this always look worse than they are. Trust me, I’ve seen plenty of guys walk away from more blood loss than this.”
Her deep brown eyes were filling with tears as fast as the blood was pumping out of his side.
“I’ve seen blood before too, Hawk. I’m not—” Her voice broke again and she steeled it.
“I’m not fragile. I’m just—” Her hands shook as she tried to press against the wound, her fingers fumbling against fabric already soaked through.
His throat burned with the need to say anything that could comfort her. He wanted to pull her against his chest and tell her it was okay, but he could see that she was undone at the sight of his blood and nothing he said could stop her from breaking.
“The mine floor’s a mess too,” he tried for a lighter tone, resorting to the teasing that brought her back from the edge before. “I’ll figure out a way to clean it up before we—”
Anger twisted her lips. “I don’t give a fuck about the mine!
” Tears streamed down her face, leaving tracks in the dust clinging to her cheeks.
“I could have it bulldozed and walk away tomorrow, Hawk. I only care about you bleeding out on a mountain because you threw yourself in front of a bullet meant for me.”
She was shaking so bad. His capable, competent Sinead. The woman who negotiated boardrooms, hiked mountains without complaining of blisters and decoded a dead man’s handwriting by firelight without blinking…was unraveling in front of him.
Watching her fall apart hurt worse than the bullet wound currently on fire in his side.
He gathered her against his good side, ignoring the wrench of pain when her weight pressed into him.
“I’m okay. I’m right here. If a snake didn’t take me out, this won’t either.
And you’re strong. You shot a lion and refused to let your guide die.
I need you to hold it together for me the way you did for him. ”
She nodded hard but still clung to him, fingers fisted in his shirt. Her breath came in ragged, uneven pulls, and he held her through it and let her fall apart because she’d earned the right to.
He reached for his phone with his free hand, keeping his voice level even as blood pulsed through his fingers with each throb of his heart. He managed to connect to a satellite link and put the phone on speaker.
“Black Heart, this is Hawk. We’ve got two hostiles down. One friendly injured—through-and-through. I’m stable but need extraction. Sending the coordinates now.”
Gray’s voice crackled back. “Jesus Christ. Copy that, Hawk. Chopper is fueled. Crew is on standby. We’re coming to get you both. Hang tight.”
“Copy.” He ended the call and pressed his lips to the top of Sinead’s head, unsure who was holding up who at this point.
“They’re coming,” he murmured against her soft hair. “Hang on, darlin’. We just need to hang on a little longer.”
She nodded against his chest, still shaking and still gripping his shirt like she couldn’t survive letting go.
He held her tighter, aware that his fingers and toes were already growing cold from blood loss.
Whatever this was between them, it was fucking real.
The words she’d said back in that mine, he hadn’t found a way to answer yet.
But he knew one thing with absolute certainty.
He intended to live long enough to say it back.
* * * * *
Sinead watched the men load Hawk into the helicopter, quietly losing it.
Actually losing it.
Part of her brain was screaming this was happening too fast and not fast enough all at once.
Hawk was so pale. Paper-white, lips nearly bloodless, nothing like the sun-warmed man who’d trekked the mountain and discovered gold with her an hour ago.
Two men—Gray Malone and a pilot named Crew—got him on a stretcher between them and moved quickly to the waiting helicopter.
“Wait.” Hawk’s voice came out as a rough rasp. “Sinead…”
“I’m here!” She rushed up to him and grabbed his hand before they could load him inside. Her heart sank to her boots at the icy feel of his fingers in hers. Cold in a way that made her stomach bottom out too.
Gray closed his hand around her arm, his touch steady and his gray eyes solemn. “Come on. You sit beside him.”
She bobbed her head in a nod and let him guide her up into the chopper, barely registering the noise or the wind whipping her hair across her face. Because all she could focus on was getting her hand back around Hawk’s.
In moments, they were lifting off. The motion jostled him, and his brows pinched in a deeper frown at the pain that must be rocketing through him. His eyes were closed, and she saw the tendons in his jaw bulging with the effort to keep from making a sound.
Sinead touched his hand, his forearm, his sleeve, as a primal part of her brain insisted that as long as she stayed connected to him, he couldn’t slip away.
Please don’t let him slip away. I just found him.
Gray sat opposite her, his expression calm even as he spoke into his headset in clipped tones, rattling off instructions to whoever was on the other end.
“Prep the clinic. Pull Hawk’s blood type from his file. Get Hitchcock on standby.” Gray’s stare landed on Sinead. “Bella too. Tell Denver to clear the drive.”
“This is going to be all hands on deck,” she heard herself say, though she wasn’t sure who she was saying it to.
The flight blurred past in fragments—Hawk’s hand in hers, his eyes fluttering. Gray’s voice steady in the background. And then they were landing, and the world exploded into motion.
The guys swarmed around them the second the skids touched down. A wall of competent men were there to lift Hawk with practiced care, as if they did this for their brothers on the Black Heart Security team all the time.
As soon as she climbed out on shaky legs, the women engulfed her. Willow and Ayla and Rhae all reached for her, pulling her into a knot of arms before her boots had even fully found the stability of the ground.
She let them draw her away from the chopper. When they hugged her, she didn’t have the strength to resist, to tell them that Hawk was the one who was hurt and they needed to see to him.
Her gaze never left her lover as the men rushed him into the veteran’s lodge. She tracked him like he might vanish the second she looked away.
“Come on.” Willow hooked her arm around Sinead. “Let’s get you inside too.”
“Why are we here instead of a hospital?” Panic nipped at her words.
On her other side, Ayla clutched her arm, supporting her. “We’ve got a combat surgeon on staff. Doctor Hitchcock’s tended to Hawk before. He’s the best.”