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shirt.
    “Tilt your seat back,” she told him. Lucky did as he was told, and soon she was leaning over him, ministering to him, her generous bustline in his face. She removed his shoulder harness and set it to one side, then began picking bits of charred cloth out of the wound.
    “Good news,” she said as he turned his head and tried not to look at either the blood or at her breasts. “The bullet went clean through. Bad news is that I think it may have cracked your collar bone, and if you don’t get to a hospital, it will probably get infected.”
    “How long?”
    She shrugged, her breasts moving in synch with her body. Talk about something to hold onto. Best pain distraction he’d ever been treated to.
    “Day or two.” She kept working, and he shut his eyes. His imagination didn’t stop, though. “Wanna tell me what happened? How you got shot?”
    No, he didn’t. He’d rather not think about Tillburn or his brains leaking out onto the floor beneath his body. But she deserved to know, they were in this together now.
    “Another agent needed backup for a meet and greet. It was supposed to be routine, none of this cowboy and Indian crap.”
    “And,” she prompted. He jerked as she tugged on a deeply imbedded piece of debris. “Sorry.”
    “Tillburn, the other agent, thought these guys were strictly amateur. Anyway, we get there, and these guys want some pretty exotic stuff. They acted like pros. Organized, no chit chat. One guy in a suit working the computer, their leader wearing a silk polo and slacks straight out of GQ . I knew there was something hinky, but Tillburn had his hooks sunk, kept going.” He straightened at the memory.
    “Damn, that’s how they knew—the leader, Whitney had an iPhone. Must’ve taken a picture of Tillburn, sent it to the computer guy who ran it on some kind of facial recognition software.”
    “That doesn’t sound good,” she said. “This is gonna hurt, so hang on.” She reached her hand out for him to grab.
    “It isn’t, it means every agent in the Justice Department could be compromised.” She poured some kind of antiseptic onto his wounds, and he winced. He squeezed her hand harder than he intended as the pain seared through him like liquid fire. Finally she finished, and he let out the breath he was holding.
    “Sorry,” she said, keeping his hand in hers for a long minute. 
    Lucky liked the way her fingers fit just right with his, not too long, not too short, as if they were designed to be together. Her husband probably thought the same thing, he thought with a grimace.
    She reached to the front console and pulled out a few tea bags. “My emergency stash,” she said with a smile.
    “I did promise you tea and crumpets,” he said. He watched her unwrap the tea bags and squirmed away when she moved to place them on his wound. “What the hell?”
    “Relax. The tannin is a natural coagulant. And since I don’t have any gelfoam or Quik-clot handy, it’s the best I can do for now.”
    Lucky had no idea what she was talking about, but she seemed to know what she was doing, so he let her pack his wound and dress it. Then she helped him to sit up, steadying him as his head spun for a minute. He watched with fascination as she fashioned a sling out of his shoulder holster and slid it on over top of his clothes.
    “What happened to Tillburn?” she asked in a low voice.
    He winced as she lifted his arm into the makeshift sling. “He’s dead.”
     

 
     
     
    CHAPTER 5
     
     
    Vinnie was silent for a moment. They could be killed as well—very nearly were back on the road. This wasn’t some action movie on the big screen, this was real life and Vinnie had already lived through too much during her time in the city. She knew what kind of damage men with guns could do, had seen it firsthand.
    Wasn’t that the reason she ran away from the city to start with?
    Cavanaugh seemed to pick up on her thoughts. “Thanks,” he said, adjusting his arm in the sling. “I