Page 66 of Undercover Hearts

Professional satisfaction warmed Michelle's fading consciousness. Operation complete.

"Tactical approaching with a stretcher," someone announced beside them.

The night fragmented further, dissolving into disconnected impressions. The jarring motion of being lifted onto a stretcher. Shouted medical assessments. The rhythmic thump of helicopter blades displacing air as the medical evacuation team arrived.

Throughout it all, Jenna's hand remained clasped around hers, an anchor in the increasingly disjointed reality of shock and blood loss.

"BP dropping," a medic reported. "Forty over thirty and falling. We need to move now."

"I'm coming with her," Jenna stated, the authority in her voice brooking no argument.

"Detective, we need your statement," Lieutenant Hodges' voice cut through the chaos. "Protocol requires?—"

"To hell with protocol," Jenna interrupted, not looking away from Michelle's face. "I'm staying with her."

Michelle felt herself being lifted again, the stretcher secured for transport. The helicopter's downdraft created a man-made windstorm around them, whipping Jenna's hair across her face as she continued applying pressure to the wound alongside the medics.

"You're going to be fine," Jenna said, her voice fighting to carry over the helicopter's noise. "Just stay with me."

Michelle wanted to respond, to tell Jenna so many things that had remained unspoken between them. About how the cover hadn't been pretense, not entirely. About how something real had developed amid the fabricated identities. About how she'd never meant to care this much.

But darkness was encroaching around the edges of her vision, her body's systems prioritizing critical functions as blood loss continued despite the medics' best efforts.

"Heart rate dropping," someone announced. "Push another unit."

The medical jargon washed over Michelle like distant waves. She struggled to maintain focus on Jenna's face as they lifted her into the helicopter, emergency lights casting disjointed patterns across her features.

"Michelle." Jenna's voice seemed to come from increasingly far away. "Michelle, stay with me."

She felt Jenna's tears falling on her face as consciousness began to slip away, warm drops that meant more than any words could have conveyed. In that moment of clarity that sometimes comes when systems are failing, Michelle understood with perfect certainty what she'd been fighting against since the operation began.

It hadn't been just attraction. It hadn't been just professional admiration. It had been the recognition of something fundamental—a connection that transcended their roles, their covers, their careful professional boundaries.

The realization came with a strange peace, even as alarms sounded from medical equipment being attached to her failing body.

"BP critical," a medic announced. "Losing pulse."

"Michelle!" Jenna's voice cut through the encroaching darkness, fierce with primal determination. "Don't you dare leave me now. We have a conversation waiting, remember?"

The reminder—an echo of their last private moment before the operation began—flickered through Michelle's fading consciousness. The promised conversation.

She tried to respond, to reassure Jenna that she remembered, but her body had reached its limits. Darkness swept in like an inexorable tide, carrying her away from the helicopter, the operation, and Jenna's tear-streaked face.

Her last coherent thought wasn't of the operation's success, wasn't of professional accomplishment or justice secured.

It was of Jenna. Of promises unfulfilled. Of a conversation they might never have.

Of all that remained unsaid between them as consciousness finally slipped away.

14

JENNA

The fluorescent lights of Phoenix Ridge General Hospital's waiting room cast a harsh glow that made everything appear slightly unreal. Jenna stared at the institutional clock mounted above the reception desk, watching the second hand tick forward with agonizing slowness. 3:47 a.m. Four hours since the helicopter had landed outside the emergency entrance. Four hours since Michelle had been whisked away on a gurney, doctors already shouting orders as they rushed through swinging doors.

Four hours since Jenna had last seen her.

Jenna looked down at her hands. She'd scrubbed them raw in the bathroom, but traces of Michelle's blood remained stubbornly embedded around her cuticles and beneath her fingernails. Her clothes told the same story: the front of her blouse stiffening as dark stains dried, her pants spattered with evidence of how desperately she'd tried to stem the bleeding.