Jack swore under his breath, but before he could answer the question, pain exploded in his gut and he looked down, shocked to see dark red start spreading over his white shirt. He crumpled to the floor and the man came to stand over him.
"I'm sorry," the man muttered, raising his gun over Jack's head.
There was a blunt pain in the agent's head, and then darkness.
Angie had barely driven twenty feet down the road before Peggy screamed. "What?" Angie cried, slamming on the breaks.
"A light flashed in Jack's office!"
"He probably flipped his desk light on, English," Angie objected.
"I know a gunshot when I see it!" Peggy insisted. "Now turn this vehicle around!"
Paling, Angie immediately did as ordered and Peggy was out of the car and racing towards the office before Angie had even stopped completely. Her soulmates weren't far behind her as she fell to her knees at Jack's side on the floor of his office.
Angie gasped, and Daniel tried to shield her from the sight as he swore.
"Call an ambulance!" Peggy demanded, gripping her husband's hand as he faded in and out of consciousness.
"We can't, not in here," Daniel reminded, sounding nearly as frantic as Peggy did before he forced himself to calm down.
"Then call Howard!" Peggy howled.
"We can take him to the hospital ourselves," Daniel decided before pointing out apologetically, "But, Angie, sweetheart, you and Peggy have to move him; with my crutch-"
"Of course," Angie drew a shuddering breath to steel herself as she brushed past her husband and crouched to grab Jack's feet. "Ready, English. Into the elevator on three. One, two, three."
Jack groaned in agony when the women lifted him, but Daniel ordered grimly, "You've got to get him to the car; he'd do better if he passed out anyway."
With that in mind, they managed to make miraculously quick work of getting him down to the car and then to the hospital. Once there, Daniel volunteered to be the one to call their house and tell their other soulmates the news.
Quietly he murmured in Angie's ear, "You were there with Peg last New Year's; this is too much, you can tell by looking at her. I don't know how to help, but maybe you…"
"I'll see what I can do," Angie nodded, both of them eyeing Peggy as she sobbed in a waiting room chair.
Then Daniel sighed and limped towards the phone and Angie went over and folded herself into the chair beside Peggy.
"Hey, English, he'll be alright," Angie cooed, forcing her own tears down as she took Peggy's hand in her own and pulled the woman to her. Peggy just curled into Angie's touch and Angie buried her face in her soulmate's neck, finally letting her own sobs loose. "We won't lose him," she promised through her tears. "We can't."
A half hour later, Anna and Eddie had joined them in the waiting room, and then Howard came in, asking urgently as he crossed the room's threshold, "How is he?"
"Stable, the doctors think," Eddie grit out hollowly. "He's in surgery now."
"What happened?" Howard asked, sinking onto the bench that Daniel already occupied.
Daniel shook his head, admitting, "We don't know; Peggy, Angie, and I were just starting on our way home from the office when Peggy saw the gun flash and made Angie turn around. He was alone, practically unconscious, and bleeding out onto the floor when we got back to him."
"Oh, man," Howard breathed before asking, "What do you think happened?"
"I just told you."
Howard leaned closer to Daniel a little as he explained, "No, you told me the facts; you're an agent, I want your professional opinion on what happened in there."
Daniel's hollow gaze sparked with something as he sighed, looking away from where his four other soulmates were clustered together on the other side of the small room as he muttered, "Jack's the face of the SSR now; he's important, and what happened was too quick and clean to be anything but…"
When he couldn't even bring himself to finish his sentence, Howard did it for him, "A professional hit? You think it was a hired gun?"
"Probably," Daniel seethed under his breath.
"Then we'll find him," Howard declared simply, looking over at the other four – Angie and Peggy still clinging to one another and Eddie and Anna murmuring softly to one another where they sat on a bench seat. "I promise… I'm very good at the whole 'never stop looking' thing and this guy'll be in the top three."
"Who are the other two?" Daniel asked absently, looking like he wanted some sort of a distraction.
Howard answered like it was obvious: "Cap and Barnes."
Hours passed. The ball dropped, the hoards celebrating throughout the city got even louder, and what little control Peggy had managed to garner fell instantly away as she burst into racking sobs. She had been leaning her head on Eddie's shoulder with Angie sitting on her other side as she stared through Anna and Daniel who were propping one another up while they managed to catch a few minutes' sleep. Her hands fisted together, nails digging into palms as she whispered, terror lacing her words, "I can't do this again. Not yet; I'm not ready for him to leave."
"He won't," Eddie promised soothingly, carefully uncurling her hand. "He's far too stubborn to leave us before he wants to."
That coaxed the smallest of smiles from her and he suddenly wished for all the world that he could kiss her fears away right there, but he couldn't. Here, in public, they had to keep up their ruse of being three separate couples, nothing but concerned neighbors… and he'd never hated it quite so much as he did right that minute.
Jack's surgeon had perfect timing though, because he chose the exact moment that Peggy was finally smiling to come in and declare, "Agent Thompson is going to pull through; he's waking up, if you want to go see him."