“Sorry I missed breakfast,” Liz managed to say.

He looked down.

She did her best to smile.

“Same time tomorrow?” she asked.

“On a hospital tray maybe. No more talking.”

He picked her up, carried her into the lodge out of the rain, and laid her on a wooden bench.

She closed her eyes.

“Don’t go to sleep. You’ve got to stay awake. Fight the shock.” He tore open the right sleeve of her jogging suit, exposing a bullet wound, and found his cell phone. After calling for an ambulance, he searched the house and located a medical kit in a cabinet in the basement. He washed and disinfected her wound as best he could and bound it with a pressure bandage. She shivered, perhaps the first symptom of hypothermia. He pulled off her cold, wet jogging suit and covered her with a throw that he found on a sofa.

Then he held her.

“Rambo,” she murmured again.

“What about him?” he asked, alarmed by her delirium but humoring her, trying to keep her from falling asleep.

“Died in the novel.”

“Don’t talk about dying.”

“Bedsprings. Electrocution.”

Simon couldn’t figure out what she meant.

“Bedsprings,” she repeated.

“Yes, sweetheart. Bedsprings.”

“Rambo.”

“Yes, sweetheart. Rambo.”

“They said you weren’t him.”

He held her tighter, desperate to make her warm.

“But to me, you are.”

He smiled.

Both at her compliment, and at the sirens approaching in the distance.

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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental

Copyright © 2017 by The Gayle H. Lynds 2016 Revocable Trust and Morrell Enterprises, Inc.

Originally published in 2017 in MatchUp by Lee Child

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