Hank couldn’t help but fill in the blanks. Talking would buy time, and damn it, if the guy managed to squeeze off a shot…“The money financed your rise in government.”
“Enough talk.” He waved his weapon, obviously relying on firepower to overcome what he lacked in strength due to age. “There’s no reason why we all can’t end this day happy. If I kill you, I’m a marked man for life. I just want out now. I can hide. Come quietly until I can get to my connections.”
Fat chance.
Hank decided that age didn’t have a thing to do with any of it. He’d never felt more honed than at the moment as years of experience blended with training and a deep-rooted need to protect the woman he loved.
As if sensing his intent, Ginger gripped his clothes tighter; with those snipers out of commission, he couldn’t afford to hesitate.
The second he saw that Mashchenko’s weapon wavered and was only pointed at him, Hank leapt, not far at all. The weapon discharged. Ginger screamed. Hank couldn’t afford to hesitate. He forced himself to focus on the mission.
Take down Mashchenko.
Save Ginger.
Muscles bunched, Hank landed on the older male—a man who obviously worked out. Still, Hank gripped the bastard’s gun hand in a relentless grip, banging it against the rocky remains of the floor again and again. Praying the villainous thief wouldn’t get another shot off.
The thought of losing Ginger was inconceivable.
Even the notion caused a fresh pulse of adrenaline to surge through him, managing to mask most of the pain in his hand as he battered the villain’s arm against the ground. He slammed Mashchenko’s wrist against a sharp stone one last time.
The weapon skittered away along the cobblestones.
Hank’s fist followed as quickly across the man’s jaw, knocking him out a second before the secret service descended, Ginger’s sons leading the pack to rush them. A swarm of activity buzzed all around them, but his focus was only on one woman.
Where it belonged.
He pivoted to find Ginger already launching toward him—his feisty Carolina angel—blessedly safe and unharmed. He opened his arms to have her fall against his chest where he now knew she belonged.
For a lifetime.
Three hours later—which felt like a lifetime, so much had happened—Ginger stood with Hank under one of the tents erected for the dedication ceremony. After the shooting, it had been changed into a questioning center for the police to collect data, but most of the crowd and media had cleared away now.
A paramedic was just finishing splinting Hank’s two broken fingers from when he’d grappled with Mashchenko to pound the gun from the villain’s hand. Her pugnacious general insisted he would go to the hospital in the morning. Tonight, give him some tape and a Tylenol. He just wanted to be with his family—the Renshaws and the Landises.
She couldn’t stop the warm spread of joy over his words, even if they had been spoken with a grumpy-bear growl.
She hoped the secret service would let their children come over sometime soon. At least no one had been seriously injured. The sharpshooter had been hit in the shoulder and was reported to be doing well in surgery.
The stray bullet from Mashchenko’s gun, as he and Hank struggled, had struck one of the aircrew—who’d been with them from the start of this trip—in the arm. A superficial wound, thank God.
The injured sergeant was already being lauded by the press as the hero of the day as he’d helped carry an elderly woman to safety during the fracas.
Ginger sank back in the chilly metal chair and stared up at the moonlit sky, stars shining through clearly as midnight approached for Christmas Eve to pass away into Christmas morning.
While she was so relieved everyone would be all right, still she couldn’t help but be sad that she’d missed the chance to donate her crèche as planned. Such a silly thing to regret when she considered the larger implication of what could have happened, but as she sat here next to Hank, she couldn’t deny the truth any longer.
Giving away that family nativity, something that had been an integral part of her life with Benjamin from their first Christmas together, had been her way of saying goodbye. Because, finally, she was ready.
Ready to let go. Ready to love again.
Ready to love Hank.
Once his hand had been bandaged, Hank waved away the offer of a hypodermic needle that apparently held something with a little more kick than Tylenol. Her heart pounded faster as she thought of the two of them getting swallowed up by the media again, then their families, then their jobs. It seemed as if there might never be another chance for them to talk.
If nothing else, tonight she’d learned to grasp every moment.
She turned her chair to face his as the medical technician reluctantly stashed her needle back in a supply case and stalked away. Ginger took in the powerful set to Hank’s shoulders in his uniform, the slight dampness from snow and his injured hand the only signs he’d almost lost his life trying to save hers.