Hot copper smell.

Pounding in his head, like waves. Surf swishing through his brain, erasing thought, memory, self.

Sobbing.

Loud, wretched sobbing, like someone had run over a puppy. Something bad had happened.

Sorrow suffused him.

Jake wished he could make the crying stop. Life hurt a lot, and no one told you that when you were a kid.

His head was pillowed on something soft—a lap.

A firm thigh under his cheek, arms around his shoulders. There were even breasts nearby, brushing him occasionally.

“Heaven.” He rubbed his face back and forth in the softness touching him. He dragged the logy weights of his arms up to encircle the thighs, buttocks and waist of the angel greeting him on the other side.

The crying stopped.

“Jake?” His angel was Sophie. She was wiping at his face with her shirt, crying again but in a happy way, and kissing him, little pecks that felt like raindrops. “I thought you were dead. I thought she shot you.”

“Not heaven?” Vague disappointment. However, waking up with his face nuzzled into the crotch of the woman he loved suited Jake’s idea of paradise just fine.

“Not yet. Not for a long time.” Sophie’s voice shook with fervor.

The sound of sirens. Voices. Hands. Moving. Jake groaned. His eyes were shut with something sticky—blood. He couldn’t get them open, couldn’t see.

“You’re gonna be fine, Mr. Dunn. Bullet grazed your skull. Head wounds bleed a lot. Just relax.”

“Sophie?” He needed his angel. She had to stay with him. “Sophie!”

“I’m here, Jake. I’ll ride with you.” She squeezed his fingers, hard.

Memories flashed as they lifted him onto something soft and rolled him forward.

He’d been agonizing over Sophie’s text, deciding what it meant, what he would do, how to talk to her. The dogs, suddenly scratching and yelping outside his apartment.

Opening the door. Something was wrong—where was Sophie?

Looking straight across the street at Sophie. She was talking to someone in the alley that he couldn’t see. She raised her hands slowly. Someone had her at gunpoint.

Jake didn’t have to fetch his weapon because it was always on him. He must have run and jumped down three flights of stairs and crossed the road, but he didn’t remember that.

The next memory was Sophie, ahead of him on the sidewalk. She’d dropped to her knees. Her hands were on her head, and she was cursing in Thai.

He flew through the air, slamming into her body, flattening her beneath him, already firing into the alley.

Firing blind at whoever was there.

More lifting. The rattle of wheels, the clang of metal, voices overhead. But Sophie was still holding his hand. That was important.

Something else was important. Something… “The baby?”

“The baby’s fine. I’m fine. You saved us.”

“Good.” Jake relaxed. Darkness swallowed him up.