“Get the fuck out of here, Sarah!” Dante said furiously.
She didn’t. She couldn’t. Instead, she froze in place, watching in horror as John escaped Dante’s hold and rose. He ran for the bathroom, minus his gun and blade, which had been knocked to the floor.
Dante was slow to rise, and Sarah reacted on instinct as John staggered toward the bathroom, obviously to escape.
Here’s my chance.
Sarah blocked his path and lifted her knee hard into his balls. John stopped and cursed, his voice a furious, angry snarl. She’d stopped him, but she wasn’t sure for how long.
“Move,” Dante demanded angrily.
Sarah moved instinctively to Dante’s command, stepping sideways and dropping to the floor. She looked at Dante, blood pouring down his face, as he lifted his gun without hesitation and shot the Windy City Carver straight through the heart before he fell backward and collapsed.
The police burst through the door, swarming the room, but Sarah’s mind was on nothing but getting to Dante. Not even sparing a glance for the dead man on the floor, she crawled across the room until she reached her savior, and cradled his bleeding head in her lap.
“Dante,” she cried frantically. “Open your eyes.” She sought and found the laceration on his head, feeling a hematoma also starting to form on his scalp.
“Pull your dress up.” Dante’s voice was weak and muddled.
His eyes were barely open, but Sarah was relieved to see him responding. Of course, Dante’s first concern was her pulling up her dress to cover her breasts. EMTs came up beside her to help. “Do you have some sterile gauze?” she asked the female technician closest to her anxiously, yanking her dress up and over her breasts.
“We can take over from here,” the EMT said in a soothing voice as she handed Sarah some gauze.
“I’m a doctor,” Sarah informed her, gently placing the gauze over Dante’s laceration and putting pressure on the wound. It was bleeding profusely, as most head wounds did, but she didn’t like his sluggishness or the forming hematoma. “Dante?”
“Am I going to die?” he asked incoherently. “If I am, the last thing I want to see is your face. Don’t leave.”
“You’re not dying,” Sarah told him sharply. “And I’m not going anywhere. Stay awake with me.”
“What kind of injury is it, Doc?” the EMT questioned.
Since Sarah didn’t go into the hospital, she wasn’t familiar with most of the hospital staff. “Head injury. Blunt trauma from a fall. He has a hematoma forming, and a laceration. I’m worried about his mentation.” She held the gauze in place and stroked his cheek. He’d risked his life for her, obviously without permission from the local police. Had Joe been planning a rescue attempt at that moment, it would have been the local police who entered the building, and there would have been a lot of them.
“We need to do spinal precautions, Doc,” the EMT reminded Sarah.
“Yes,” she agreed with a nod of her head.
Moving back, she made room for the EMTs to get Dante on a backboard and apply a neck brace, strapping him to the board to prevent him from moving until he was X-rayed. She knew she was in no frame of mind to take care of him medically right now, and she let the EMTs handle it.
“Dante?” she called from her place near his head. This time he didn’t respond. Dante was out cold.
“Sarah?” a male voice called gently from behind her.
She turned to see Jared behind her, and he put an arm around her waist and pulled her to her feet.
“Are you hurt? What happened to Dante?” Jared asked, his expression troubled.
“He saved my life. He jumped between John and me, and they both went down. He hit his head pretty hard. He’s unconscious.” She was babbling and she knew it, but she was trying to relay information to Jared as quickly as possible.
“He must have killed the bastard first. I promised him the first thing I’d do was rescue you, but he obviously took care of that himself before he passed out. You okay? The bastard didn’t . . .” Jared’s voice trailed off, and he actually looked disconcerted.
“He didn’t rape me. And I’m okay, Jared. I’m just worried about Dante,” Sarah said tearfully, her body trembling with reaction now that her adrenaline level was down.
“His vitals are stable,” the EMT informed Sarah. “We’re going to load him up now. Do you want to ride with him to the hospital?”
“Yes,” Sarah said anxiously, looking at Dante’s face. She saw his lids flicker open and then closed again. “He’s starting to wake up.”
Jared put an arm around Sarah’s shoulders and told her supportively, “He’ll be okay. He’s got a hard head.” He hugged her tightly and used the hem of his shirt to dry the tears from her eyes. “You sure you’re okay? You’re covered in blood.”
“It’s Dante’s,” she told him as she hugged him back, knowing Jared was worried. She could see it on his face. “Head wounds bleed a lot.”
The EMTs put Dante on a gurney. “We’re ready to go, Doc.”
“It’s Sarah,” she told the EMT with a weak smile. “Let’s go.” She was anxious to get Dante to the hospital as soon as possible.
“We’ll follow you,” Jared told her huskily.
Sarah walked with the gurney to the main door, watching Dante’s face. He opened his eyes occasionally, so she knew he was semiconscious.
“Sarah, we have questions,” Joe Landon told her as he caught her arm by the main door.