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Saint doesn't answer him. He slides one arm behind her knees and the other under her shoulders, and he's up with her before the word's finished.
The look the two of them trade over her head lasts half a second and is far from civil.
Fionn holds Keira’s hand over the wound and presses down. “Keira. Stay awake.”
Saint draws Keira higher against his chest. My heart sinks when his gaze drops to her face, then lifts to Fionn, his mouth barely moving around the question. “You got enough fuel in the chopper to get us there?”
“Yes.”
Saint takes three strides before his next step falters. His head turns toward Ma’s body, and he stops.
Pressure climbs from beneath my ribs into my throat. I swallow, but it refuses to move. Rain falls harder, thinning Ma’s blood into red streams that run toward the drains.
"She's dead." Dane hasn't moved from beside her. "Ma’s dead, Saint."
My big brother stands there with his Harrington woman in his arms while his ma lies dead, and it costs him one second before he’s moving again.
"Who?" he asks, not slowing.
I jog to keep up with him. "Ma shot Keira."
"And Ma?"
"Lorcan Harrington."
He hears it without breaking stride. "Rafe?"
"Went after the butcher and hasn't come back." Dane's up off his knees, Ma’s blood on his hands. "The Crowes are gone. Every fucking one of them.”
"Find Lorcan," he orders. “And put the fire out before it spreads.”
Dane backs away and calls out for Rafe, then Shay.
Beyond the broken gate, the rotors are still whipping up smoke.
I stop in the middle of the yard and angle back for Fionn. He’s on his feet with a gunshot wound leaking blood. The rain has thinned the blood on his shirt, and he's breathing in a way I don't like at all.
When I hurry over to him, he understands exactly what I'm going to do before I do it. His eyes go past me to Saint, along the wall to the men still standing there, then back.
"Sera.” He offers me his hand, and I take it in front of every Tallon and Harrington standing in my yard and kiss his knuckles.
His fingers close hard around mine.
"Come on," he says, heading for the gate. “I won’t let Keira die too.”
We hurry across the yard together with his blood slick between our palms, and my mother lying behind us in the rain, and neither of us lets go.
Chapter 41
Sera
The final stitch pulls Fionn’s skin tight beneath the doctor’s gloved fingers.
I watch the needle disappear into the torn edge of his side and come out again, dragging black thread behind it. The wound has stopped bleeding, but his skin is stained orange from whatever they used to clean it, and bruising has already begun to darken above his hip.
“You were lucky,” the doctor says, tying off the stitch. “The bullet tracked across your side rather than entering the abdominal cavity. It’s taken a reasonable amount of skin with it, but there’s no damage beneath the muscle. With rest, you’ll be fine.”
I repeat the diagnosis silently until it sticks. No abdominal damage. Rest.
