Damien pov
Barnes held my stare, didn't fight the grip, and said it fast and flat: "She's hit, but she is conscious."
The air went out of me completely as I let go of his collar. I stepped back but my hands were shaking. "Let me through," I said. Barely a whisper. "Barnes, let me through."
He straightened his collar and stepped aside without another word as I ran. The scene inside was chaos made of people and voices and the particular flattened light of an emergency agent moving with controlled urgency, two paramedics crouched near an overturned table in the far corner, and I saw her before I'd registered anything else. On the floor, propped against the wall, her left hand pressed to her right shoulder, her jacket dark and wrong at the sleeve.
"Damien." Her voice was still there.
I crossed the room and hit my knees beside her and didn't care at all what it looked like or who was watching or what the floor was doing to my suit.
