*
He put his hand to the door knob and took a breath. How should he broach this? Should he open the door slowly, hope the movement didn’t catch their attention, or should he burst through it, ready to shoot whoever threatened them?
‘I love you, Nathan,’ Autumn’s trembling voice stated.
He closed his eyes, felt her fingers firm on his hips. The despair in her tone burned into his chest. He needed to get this right.
‘Don’t go getting sentimental on me. This isn’t the time or the place,’ he said, his voice cracking with emotion.
Autumn blinked up at him. ‘Promise me, when we get out of this, we’ll go to the Seychelles. You can teach me to fish, and I can teach you which wine goes best with it.’
‘I thought we were eating chips in Hull.’
‘There’ll be time for both, won’t there?’
The idea of spending time with her out of this crazy situation stopped his heart from beating in fear, and made the adrenaline rushing through his body less painful, but more passionate.
‘Keep hold of me,’ he ordered her.
*
She knew she shouldn’t, but when he pushed the door open with force, she closed her eyes. She looped her fingers around the edge of his pants and molded her body to his.
The door banged open against the wall, then all hell broke loose. She heard gunfire, Nathan’s body jerked with every round he fired from the machine gun, and someone screamed.
It was a heart-stopping, gut-wrenching scream from the depths of someone’s soul. It took her a second to realize that the scream was coming from her.
Her eyes were open now, and Nathan had dropped to the floor, taking her with him. She was lying on her back, next to him, her thumb still caught in the loop of his waistband. There was no more gunfire, no one standing, just light flooding in from an open door on the far wall, and what seemed like millions of dust particles floating through the air. She removed her thumb and tried to move.
What had happened? There was one person lying on the floor a little way from them. Was that the leader? He wasn’t moving. Why was the door open?
‘Nathan? Nathan, they’re dead or gone. There’s no one here. We can leave! We can go and find that helicopter. I can hear it!’ Autumn said, shifting on her side and touching his arm.
He didn’t answer her. She shook his arm and hauled herself up into a sitting position.
‘Nathan… we can go. They’re coming to help us,’ Autumn repeated.
Her eyes were drawn to the floor and the dark red puddle of blood coming from underneath Nathan.
‘No! No, not now, not now… Nathan.’
She pushed at his shoulder and turned him over onto his back. The blood seeping through his torn shirt at an alarming rate took the air from her lungs.
‘No! Oh God, please! No! Nathan! Nathan, wake up!’
His eyes were closed, and blood was pumping from a wound in his stomach. She didn’t know what to do! What should she do?
‘Nathan, please! Open your eyes! Please, open your eyes! Oh God, I don’t know what to do!’
She was rambling now and behaving exactly how someone shouldn’t behave in a crisis. She had no clue what to do. This wasn’t good. She needed to stop the bleeding, but how should she do that? She had nothing to use to stop it. Her dress. She had her dress.
She pulled it over her head, folded it in half, and pressed it down against the gushing injury. Was that the right thing to do? She seemed to remember that keeping pressure on something was the right course of action, but what if she’d got that wrong? What if she made it worse?
‘Please, Nathan, open your eyes.’
Tears snaked down her cheeks as she held her dress against his stomach and looked at him for any response. Was he even breathing? How could she tell? She looked at his chest. There was no obvious movement. God, what did she need to do?
‘This is attention-seeking of the highest order, you know, and that’s really my field of expertise, not yours, so just stop messing around,’ she ordered.
Nothing. No response. She’d tried being emotional. She tried being angry. What was left?
‘Nathan Regan, if you don’t open your eyes, I’m going to have to sing. “Broken Pieces”, all the verses and four renditions of the chorus. I’m sitting here in my underwear!’ she told him.
The blood flow didn’t seem to be lessening, despite her hand becoming numb from holding her dress in place. And then it happened.
His eyes flickered open.
Forty
He felt as if his guts had been ripped open, and he was losing sensation down the left side of his body. He felt ice cold, like someone had immersed him in snow.
As his eyes opened up, a stabbing pain started to build in his chest, but it wasn’t enough to distract him from looking at Autumn.
Her bruised face was wet with tears, and her lips trembled, her teeth chattering together as she gazed at him.
‘Oh, thank God!’ she exclaimed. ‘Thank God! Nathan!’ An expression of joy lit up her face.
He reached his hand up to cup her cheek. She leaned her head into his palm and closed her eyes to his touch.
‘I thought I’d lost you. I thought after everything we’d been through…’ she started in a rush.
‘I want you to get yourself to those music awards. And I want you to win… those awards,’ he croaked.
Every movement he made, no matter how slight, sent pain shooting through every part of him.
She swept his hair off his forehead. ‘I will, and you’ll be there with me—not as my bodyguard—as my partner, as the man I want to spend my life with,’ she insisted.
‘I want you to thank Tawanda… not just for this mission… for every other time she bailed me out of trouble,’ he continued.
He saw the look of happiness leave her face as
