“Not like this,” he said softly, and Lewis’s open eye shed a tear. They both knew what Morgan meant. He was glad to see her alive.
“I couldn’t stop them,” she said, the single tear followed by several others. “I’m sorry, Morgan. I couldn’t stop them.”
“Don’t think about it, Lewis. Don’t even think about it.”
But of course it was all she could think about. The image of Cook on her knees with the barrel pointed at her head. The soft psst sound of the silenced pistol firing. The sight of Cook’s body slumping to the floor.
“You need to rest, Lewis.”
“I don’t want to close my eyes,” she whimpered. “It’s all I see.”
From long experience of violent memories, Morgan knew of one way to escape the emotional pain.
“Watch her, Peter.”
Morgan slipped out the rear of the ambulance and returned a moment later with the paramedic. Without a word, the first responder took a syringe and fed morphine into the cannula in Lewis’s wrist.
“He’s given you something for it. You’ll sleep, Lewis, and you won’t feel the pain. You won’t see the pain.”
Lewis tried to blink tears away, but gravity held them on her eye. Morgan took a tissue from one of the ambulance’s shelves and delicately dabbed them.
“You’re one of the bravest people I’ve ever seen. I’m going to come with you to the hospital.”
“No,” she said, fighting against the drug that now began to overtake her. “No hospital, Morgan.”
He had to hunch over to catch the rest of her words, which were lost to Knight. Finally, Lewis’s lips stopped moving, the slow rise and fall of her chest showing the signs of a woman in a deep, drug-fueled delirium.
“What did she say?” Knight asked Morgan.
When the American turned to face him, his eyes reminded Knight of an impending storm. There was calm now, but soon all would be destruction and violence.
“That we finish this.”
Chapter 61
JACK MORGAN AND Peter Knight stepped from the ambulance, the paramedic pulling the doors closed behind them. The vehicle’s lights and siren started up and police officers hurriedly cleared a lane for it to pull away. Given the severity and nature of the attack, a police car followed in the ambulance’s wake to ride shotgun. Morgan noticed the precaution, and gave his thanks to the police sergeant.
“She’s one of ours,” the woman said.
“She saved my life,” Morgan told her. “Please look after her.”
“We will,” the sergeant promised. “I’m sorry that we can’t let you inside. If it was up to me…”
“You’ve done enough,” he assured her. In truth, it killed him that he could not run to Cook’s side, even in death, but if he was to be denied that proximity to the woman he loved, then he would take himself where he was needed. He would take himself to where her killer was hiding, and there, he would deliver justice.
“We need to go,” he told Knight.
“Our car will be here any second,” said Knight, and sure enough, a black Range Rover appeared in that moment at the end of the street. “But that’s not ours,” Knight wondered, ready at any moment to shove Morgan into cover should the occupants prove hostile.
At the behest of a waving officer, the vehicle slowed to a stop ten meters short of the cordon. There the passenger door opened, and Knight felt his body relax as a familiar figure stepped into the street and beckoned toward them.
“Over here!” Colonel Marcus De Villiers waved, and after a final thank you to the police sergeant, Morgan and Knight slipped under the cordon to join him.
“Have you seen Lewis?” asked the Guards officer.
Morgan nodded. “We have. She’s badly beaten, but alive.”
“Thank God,” De Villiers sighed. As head of royal security, Lewis fell under his command, and there was no doubt in the Private agents’ minds that De Villiers truly cared for Lewis’s well-being.