Donovan shoved Noah and GJ out of the way. He'd been useless until now, but this was his forte.
He’d slipped into the trunks Eleri had brought along for him and run toward them, his thoughts ping-ponging. He’d met her in Westerfield’s office, having no clue who this “Eleri Eames” might be. He only knew that she’d be his new senior partner. He’d been fresh enough out of Quantico to still have the bruises.
Now she’d saved his life more times than he could count and she’d saved his secret even more often. For a moment, he flashed through what would happen if she died here on this beach.
He shut it down.
“I know CPR.” Noah was elbowing his way into the space over Eleri’s limp form.
“I'm an MD,” Donovan countered, never more glad to have those letters at the end of his name than right this moment. It might mean he could do something.
Turning her head to the side, he only barely registered that Noah had stepped back and run off as Donovan swept Eleri’s mouth, looking for anything that might have gotten lodged in her throat.
He worked to forget that this “patient” was plausibly the best friend he'd ever had, or ever would have. Tilting her head back, he checked her airway as best he could with no tools or instruments. Then, as GJ scrambled to assist in a situation where she couldn’t, he searched for Eleri’s pulse and found none.
It terrified him.
Managing to overlay his hands and lace his fingers together in the correct form out of rote memory, he found her sternum. He placed his hands and began compressions.
One. Two. Three. He refused to sing along, even just in his head.
He'd been taught, in a recent update course, to sing the BeeGees’ Staying Alive, or even Queen’s Another One Bites the Dust. Neither hit the right note for the severe gravity of his situation, so he merely counted off the rhythm.
Beside him, GJ muttered, “Come on Eleri, come on,” as she knelt by Eleri’s head and held it straight when it tried to loll to the side.
“Tip it back,” Donovan commanded. “Open her airway.”
As GJ did, they both stopped for a moment and waited to see if she might breathe on her own. He checked her vitals again.
Jesus, he was the one who couldn't swim. This should have been him. What did Neriah do to her?
Eleri had been shot. Fuck, he’d forgotten, only concerned that she needed CPR. Now he realized that, if her lung was punctured, then all his chest compressions were for naught.
Noah, already back from his run to the dunes, was returning with his possessions. Even as he ran, he pulled his tablet from the towel.
Looking up, Donovan thanked a God he’d long ago released from any responsibility for his life. Noah’s abandoned tech was still where he’d left it. Everything else had gotten wet.
But Noah was talking into the mic already. “I need an ambulance.” He looked around frantically, seeming to search for an address, but GJ and Donovan didn’t have it. Donovan was wondering if he had anything this situation called for. Maybe this was going to be his biggest failure.
“I need it fast. I have one female patient—” Noah was practically yelling into the device. “She’s not breathing. Thirty-three years old, drowning.” He demanded speed with all the assurance of a federal agent on home soil.
Focusing again on Eleri, Donovan rolled her up on one side to check her back. He barked out instructions to GJ. “She was shot. Help me out.”
“What?” GJ asked, incredulous.
“When we left. We all got in the water. Eleri stayed and held them back. But eventually she couldn’t do it. She turned to dive in and they shot her.”
His hands were flying over Eleri’s skin, lifting her shirt. . . a shirt with no holes in it. Had all the bullets missed her? Was she okay?
His brain raced. Maybe she’d merely sucked in too much water from Neriah dragging her through the ocean? Was Neriah able to hold her breath underwater long enough that she had drowned Eleri in the process?
His fingers worked frantically, checking every bit of her back, her legs, her arms. Then he found what he’d been afraid of.
Three separate, blooming bruises. Small, round, and precise. Even as he cataloged them, he saw that GJ was staring back at him. She didn't need words to ask if this was what she thought it was.
Holy shit. It was. Eleri had been hit.
Donovan didn't have time to contemplate her miraculous survival from gunshots, because it didn't matter if she didn't start fucking breathing again.
Laying her on her back again, he counted down her ribs by feel and placed his hands in the correct spot, and then started counting again. One. Two. Three. Four. Five—
He felt it. The heave of her chest as her body tried to suck in air. Her ribs opened under his hands. “Yes!” he yelled, rapidly turning her on her side to let her vomit up ocean water.
Yes! he thought, watching as Eleri slowly rolled onto her stomach before gingerly crawling to her elbows and knees. Then up to her hands, coughing up water again and again. It was a hard position to be in. Her throat would burn from everything she'd swallowed. Her eyes would blur. But she was alive.
Noah was running toward them, his feet pushing through the sand again, as graceful as a Miami resident who surfed and dived regularly. He looked like he fit in with the scenery, though his face was panicked. “The ambulance is on its way.”
Donovan was nodding. But it was Eleri who looked up and ground out the words, “Cancel it.”
Over her back, Donovan and GJ locked eyes again as if to silently ask “Why?”
With heavy breaths, her muscles obviously working too hard, Eleri flopped over onto her back. Sand covered her skin from where she’d rolled in it as they’d tried to save her, but she didn't seem to care.
“Cancel it,” she croaked. “If we go to the hospital, they'll find us. If they find us, they’ll kill us.”