Purple Hearts (Front Lines 3)

“I’m . . . something is . . . Jesus, Luther, I . . .” She tries to stand but her legs, the legs that carried her through Sicily and Italy, France and Belgium and Germany, don’t have any strength left in them. She is dimly aware of tears running down her cheeks. “I . . . I don’t know . . .”

Jack!

Geer takes her shoulder and pushes her back until she is looking at him. “Richlin . . . Rio . . . You’re not fighting this war alone.”

Suddenly there comes the sound of a grenade, instantly followed by rapid M1 carbine fire. It lasts only a few seconds.

Then, the voice of Jenou Castain cries, “All clear!”

Now Rio’s legs work again, and she bolts from the room, practically tumbles down the steps and bursts out of the door and onto the street. She runs for Jack, who already has a medic hunched over him.

“Jack!”

“Hey there, Rio,” he says, managing what might be a smile, quickly wiped away by a grimace of pain. He’s white, so white he might be made of snow.

“Morphine will hit in a second,” the medic says. “Don’t sweat it, Stafford, you just got a second navel is all.”

“Jack, are you all right? Don’t die on me!”

She is back on the beach in Tunisia, trying to keep the blood inside Kerwin Cassel.

She is in that terrible street in Italy, looking down at the body of Tilo Suarez.

She is watching Camacho suddenly stop running.

She is hearing those terrible words announcing the death of Dain Sticklin: Sergeant Richlin! You’re in charge.

How many? It is her job to keep them alive, and yet . . .

Jack’s smile now is hazy and his eyes are veiled as the morphine courses through his veins. “Hey . . . tears?”

Rio brushes them away. “I got some dust in my eye.”

He winks in slow motion. “Uh-huh.”

Stretcher bearers are coming and Rio makes eye contact with the medic who, out of Jack’s sight, makes a back-and-forth hand gesture meant to convey that it could go either way.

BAM!

A muted explosion from inside the hotel.

Rio lays a hand on Jack’s cheek. “I have to . . .”

“Mmm,” he says, and drifts off to sleep.

Rio swallows hard and starts toward the hotel, following half a dozen of her people, all rushing pell-mell.

Jenou is behind the hotel’s polished wood front desk. An explosion has occurred. Molina is wincing and holding her arm, cursing freely as blood seeps between her fingers.

Jenou is on the floor.

For a time Rio ceases to exist. Her lean, strong, scarred body still breathes, but her thoughts have stopped. She does not know where she is. Does not wonder. Does nothing. But breathe.

She has no control over her body but slumps on cobblestones, arms limp, palms upturned.

Geer wraps a blanket over her shoulders, but her gaze never flickers to awareness. Beebee brings her a canteen cup of hot tea and presses it to her lips. She is a person in a coma. Gone. No longer there.

Only slowly, gradually, does the girl from Gedwell Falls return to her body.