“No, I’ll take care of him.” She went over to the man, knelt down and put her ear next to Jim’s mouth. “He’s still breathing, but it’s not by much.”

Whipping off her fleece, she wadded it up and put it to the bleeding wound on the front of the chest and pushed down while she took his pulse. “So faint…but it’s beating so I can’t do chest compressions. The ambulance is due in five minutes.”

Which was forever in a situation like this.

“Don’t shoot,” came a groggy voice from downstairs. “It’s just me.”

“Eddie?” Vin called out. “Jim’s hit!”

When Eddie appeared at the top of the stairs, he looked like roadkill, and as he limped forward, he glanced down at the intruder. “That’s really dead. How’s Jim?”

“Good,” Marie-Terese whispered as she stroked the man’s face. “Right, Jim? You’re good and you’re going to get fixed. You’re going to make it just fine….”

Vin put his gun down on the bed and knelt on the other side of Jim, mirroring Marie-Terese’s position on the floor as she reached out to the fallen man.

“He saved me,” she said, her fine hand stroking Jim’s thick arm. “You saved me, Jim. I’d be dead without you…. Oh, God, Jim, you saved my life….”

Vin ran his eyes over that big chest and didn’t need a medical degree to know that the wound the man had taken was fatal. Jim was breathing in the same shallow way the intruder had been, and he was soon going to go the route the shooter had: His color was fading at an alarming rate, evidence of internal bleeding.

Shit, there was nothing they could do other than wait for the pros to come with their stretcher. CPR was not an option as long as Jim had a pulse and was breathing on his own, and pressure wasn’t going to do shit for a torn artery.

For the first time in Vin’s life, he started praying for the sound of sirens.

Jim had been shot before. And stabbed. Hanged once, too. He’d been injured in fights by fists and crowbars and jackknives and boots. Even been impaled with a Montblanc pen.

In all of those situations, he’d known he was going to survive. No matter how much it had hurt, or how much he’d bled, or how vicious the weapon, he’d known his injuries weren’t fatal.

And now he knew with the same certainty that the bullet in his chest had left in its wake the kind of tearing trail that was going to carry him to his royal reward.

Angel or no angel, he was dying.