Told you... I'd always... come back...

Then Mantovani groaned, and lifting the lips that had been cracked, fluttered his eyelids, and gazed at me through green eyes, opaque with pain and morphine that met my eyes across the room. "Candice..." Something in me was struck by the sound of my name, weak, raspy, but alive, out of him, and I came forward and passed the doctor and kneeling by the bed, pressed his cold hand between both of mine, and touched his cheek. I am here, love; here, I said, crying over his knuckles, you are not leaving me. Not after everything." his fingers were twitching in mine, the faintest squeeze, his lips drew up in the semblance of a smile, his voice having scarcely been audible, "Told you... I'd always... come back..." It cost him, as he was hitching his breath, his monitors spiking once more, and the doctor swearing in his heart, He is tachycardic--ready another shock should he crash.

I pressed my forehead more against his, my breath in his, saying the things we had promised each other in stolen times: Remember the beach house? Sunsets, no guns, just us. You assured me of mornings when the only alarm that would wake me is coffee being brewed. You're keeping that promise." his eyes fluttered to shut, his hand remained in mine, the tie loosened, yet not loosened, the passion which had marked us, wild, forbidden, unbreakable, still clinging in spite of failures in his body. He has to go, I said, and Sanna said, We are taking him. Put the stretcher in the armored van- Conti, put the clinic on the line, tell them we are coming in with critical gunshot, no questions." the doctor protested, you will kill him--" but Sanna lifted up his eyes, and said, He dies here, he dies alone. He goes with us, he has a chance. Move."

We handled like property and had Mantovani laid on the stretcher with pain, each jostle causing him to groan, the blood streaming through new bandages at a rate which we could scarcely cover. Conti was driving, Sanna, his passenger and organizer of roadblocks, Mom and Dad in the middle row, IV bags tied in, and I was in the back seat next Mantovani, holding his hand as the engine clanked and the sirens screamed right behind us. Stay with me, I pleaded, kissing his knuckles, tasting salt and iron, so much more we have, leisurely Sundays, quarrels over breakfast, making love till we can't move. You don't get to miss that."

The van swung round the curves, tires screaming, federal lights flashing in the rear view mirrors, like red eyes, and Conti shouted back, They are gaining, we can have three minutes to get out of their way! The surgeon was frantically working in the narrow room, manipulating drips, vital signs, his face dark, "He is again fainting--pressure is smashing. The hand of Mantovani had gone loose in my hands, and monitors screaming again, and the world seemed to move, grief and terror colliding in a wave which threatened to submerge me. "No--no, you promised!" I screamed, shaking his shoulder, the doctor took the paddles and cried on his face, "Clear!

The electric shock quivered him, and he lifted up on his back and the monitor winked--once, feebly, and then uniformly, hardly. The doctor gasped,--"But we have no time to lose, he is back already. Beyond, the scream of sirens, tires shrieking and federal cars set up in the road ahead and spotlights and megaphones blinding the van with their glare and shouts, "Get out of the car, hands up! You are under arrest!"

Conti smashed the brakes, and the van went sliding to a halt only inches off the blockade, and the agents poured out, with guns at the ready, giving commands. We are not giving up, Sanna turned in his seat with the face set in grim determination. Not before he is breathing his last. The surgeon was examining me, his eye thence to the pale pallor of Mantovani, who said, should he not be taken to surgery within the next ten minutes, he would not survive.

I gazed up at Mantovani, who stood still without a word, grappling with each shallow breath--then I saw the agents outside, who stood with their badge glittering and their rifles firmly in rest. The war had led us here--to this point where love and law were in collision, where capitulation would save him, but everything besides. The sick twitch of his hand in mine, the weak curling of his fingers, the cracking open of his eyes sufficiently to look full at me, the broken whisper of a voice, said, "Don't... let them... take you...

I bent over, kissing him, and tasting blood and tears and whispering in his mouth, I am not leaving without you. I then held myself erect and turned to the door, and was going to grasp the handle when, as it were, a wakening shock shook my heart, to take a step out into the lights, to go wherever it might lead--arrest, prison, parting, had it possibly been to afford him the means of life.

But when I put hands to the latch the monitors of Mantovani died once more, the noise pierced through all, and the doctor cried, He is crashing now!

The exterior agents drew up arms.

And there, in that interim of life and giving in, a new fire broke out, and the night was shaken by the firing--not of the feds but of the darkness beyond the blockade, and our own loyal men in a last, desperate fusilade, the bullets bouncing off the armored cars, and a free-for-all ensued, the confrontation being transformed into a blaze of fire.

Under the paddles Mantovani jerked his chest again.

And the monitor stayed flat.