by L. A. Witt
Adrenaline was a weird thing. I’d been in exactly two truly life-threatening situations before I made detective, and my reaction to the adrenaline had been different each time. When I crashed my car into a lamppost at sixteen, everything had seemed to slow down, and afterward it had still felt like I was looking at the world through a thick, muffling fog for a while. When I’d had a gun pulled on me my first year as a beat cop, my hands had been shaking so hard I could barely put them up.
Tonight, everything became sharp. If things were slow, it was the world around me: I could hear Paula hissing over my earpiece, Stop, pull them back, we have a situation! I could feel every bit of loose gravel under the soles of my shoes as Andreas and I were marched out onto the tarmac, heading straight for the plane where the pilots cowered while Trent yelled at them. I could smell the acrid tinge of my own sweat, and a hint of blood on the cool night breeze. The mayor was a spattered mess. My heart beat was frantically fast, but my mind seemed curiously patient.
Wait. We had to wait. For SWAT, for the right moment, for anything that might give us an advantage. We had to be smart, and that meant trusting each other to do the right thing. You have to trust your partner, Darren. Vic’s advice had never been more pertinent. No matter how bad I wanted to grab Andreas and run, I couldn’t do it. Not yet.
The gun dug into the back of my head, pressing me forward. I kept my hands up, hoping that if I left them high, the guy might not remember to . . .
“I’ll take that,” he grunted, stepping up close and jerking my gun out of its holster. I could hear the other guy doing the same to Andreas, and I ground my teeth together. Okay. Options were changing. Just because they’d remembered to grab our guns—the obvious ones, anyway—didn’t mean we were completely defenseless.
Just mostly defenseless.
“And there they are.” Trent was facing us now, shaking his head like he was disappointed. “Darren, wow, you’re just everyone’s tool, aren’t you? A few friendly words and you cut your own feet out from under yourself so you can fall faster in line. What did Andreas say to you to get you back under his thumb, huh? Or,” Trent smirked, “did he not have to say anything at all? It seems like he’s got a handle on what you like.
“And, Andreas, way to make a desperation play! Walking up to the mayor in broad daylight? Accosting him in front of witnesses, getting hauled away by your own captain?” His smirk turned into a grin. “You couldn’t have made this setup easier for me if you’d tried.”
Oh. He didn’t know. He didn’t know about SWAT or our backup or any of it. I tried not to visibly relax. Our odds had just gotten a little better.
“You don’t want to set us up,” Andreas said. Shit, how did he sound so calm? “How would that benefit you? With the mayor already dead and a plane full of drugs and two witnesses to the whole thing?”
“What, the pilots?” Trent shrugged as he glanced their way. “They’ve already served their purpose.” He raised his gun.
“Don’t shoot them!” I blurted out. Trent turned toward me, his expression mocking.
“What, you feeling a little sick to your stomach? Can’t handle the business side of things? How did you ever expect to make it as a detective, Darren? It’s a good thing you won’t have to worry about that after tonight.”
“You don’t want to shoot them because they’re the only ones who know where to get the shipments now,” I said, talking fast. “You just killed the guy running this whole thing. I doubt he shared information about his sources with you.”
Trent frowned. “I can find a new source on my own.”
“But if you just talk to them first—interrogate them—you could save yourself the trouble.” My voice hardly shook at all. I was oddly proud of that.
Andreas picked up the thread. “Nobody who heard me knows you’re involved. We can make this into something good for your career, for all our careers.” Paula was saying something over my earpiece, but her voice was so soft I couldn’t make it out. Something about sight? The line of sight? Were they going to try a sniper? I could barely make out the barn from here. I had no clue whether I was obscuring the view or not.
“Or,” Trent said, “I could pin this whole thing on a junkie ex-cop shooting up a dirty mayor, and incidentally killing his poor, misguided partner in the process. That would leave things nice and clean, because the only people here who know too much about me that I don’t trust? Are you two.”
“We should do it if we’re going to,” Huan muttered. He seemed nervous. “Cut and run before anyone else shows up.”
Trent nodded. “Take the pilots to the car. Actually, no.” He lifted his gun and, before I could speak out, shot one of the cringing men through the head. The body fell to the pavement with a wet thwack, and I could practically feel Andreas tense from two feet away. Trent grinned. “No sense in carrying along two when we only need one. We’ll be there in a minute.”
Huan nodded and got the other man to his feet with some difficulty—he had almost fainted. They left, and Trent looked back at us.
“There’s no sense in complicating the ballistics,” he said. “Looks like I get to do the honors. Darren, I always liked you.” He gave me a wink. “So I’ll shoot you first.” The guy behind me backed off to the side as Trent stepped toward me. My breaths were shallow, my hands tingling with unspent energy, desperate to move. I had to move, there was no more time, but there was nowhere for me to go. I couldn’t get out of this.
“Bye, babe,” he said cheerfully as he raised his weapon. “It was fu—huh!” He toppled to the ground as Andreas launched himself across five feet of pavement and collided with Trent’s lower legs.
There was no time to go for my little pistol, not while Trent’s lackey still had a weapon on Andreas. He was taking aim by the time I got to him, but the shot went wide as I wrapped my arms around his waist and spun him to the ground. We hit hard, and the gun flew out of his hand. I got on top of him, but my own gunman was entering the game now. The first shot hit me in the back, and holy shit, that was going to sting tomorrow morning. The Kevlar did its job, though, and the bullet didn’t penetrate. It did knock me forward, but I grabbed on to my opponent and rolled him on top of me just as the next shot came.
I was wearing a bulletproof vest. My assailant wasn’t. I felt the vibration of it entering his body, watched his mouth open in a silent scream as the bullet shattered his spine. The second shot wasn’t even necessary, probably a reflex on the shooter’s part. The guy was already dead. And now I was caught beneath a corpse. I shoved him off and felt for my gun even as the shooter loomed over me, fury on his face.
He fell back just as fast as he’d arrived, a bullet striking his shoulder from out of nowhere and dropping him hard. Was that the sniper? I’d lost my earpiece in the takedown so I couldn’t hear Paula anymore, but it seemed likely. I looked around in a daze for Andreas, and found him—
Flat on the ground, locked in a death grip with Trent over control of the gun. I wanted to call out, but didn’t want to risk distracting Andreas; I wanted to shoot Trent in the fucking back, but we needed him alive or nothing would get resolved. I could help—somehow—but I had to get to my feet first, and that was tougher than it should have been.
Andreas was shaking, hard, so hard I thought he had to be hurt. Had he been shot? Had I missed it? Was it another side effect of his new meds? And, goddamn, his wrist was still injured. Fuck waiting, he was losing his grip on the gun, Trent would shoot him in another second, I had to—
I staggered over just in time to kick Trent hard in the face. He lost his grip on the gun and fell away to the side, and I leaned down to make sure Andreas was all right. All I needed was a second, just a look―I just had to be sure he was okay. We made eye contact, and I read the relief in his face and felt mine mimic it. He was fine. We were both going to be—
All the air in my body seemed to freeze as a sliver of ice sank into my back, punching through my vest like it was cardboard and into skin and muscle like they weren’
t even there. It slid between two ribs, lodging hard, and suddenly I was on my hands and knees.
Fuck, how had that happened?
I tried to take a breath, tried to lift my head and make eye contact again, but my lungs weren’t working anymore. I exhaled with a cough, and it hurt so bad I almost collapsed right there.
Someone tugged hard on whatever was impaling me, swearing when they couldn’t get it out. A hand fumbled in my pocket for—oh shit, my pistol, the little Kahr. If Trent got it, we were dead, and everything was fuzzy and I couldn’t tell what the hell was going on anymore.
Two shots fired. The hand tugging at me vanished, and the knife—it had to be a knife—went with it. I wished that made me feel better.
“Andreas . . .?” My voice sounded thick, like I’d been drinking syrup.
“I’m here.” Warm hands eased me down onto the ground, and I went with it because it was way easier than staying up at the moment. The movement jarred my wound, and for a second all I could see were starry constellations of pain.
“Trent?”
“He’s down.”
“You shot him?”
“Not fatally,” Andreas ground out. “But he’s not gonna be using his right hand for anything for a while.” Now that he mentioned it, I thought I heard someone’s choked-off whimpers. Or maybe that was just me.
“Sorry.” I tried to chuckle, but it sounded too wet for that. “I lost my sit-situational awareness. But hey, at least . . .” Why was it so hard to speak? “At least . . . you’re not the one who got knifed this time.” All those guns going off, and I got put down by a knife. Vic would never let me live it down. “’Cause ’m awesome,” I added. “Awesome partner.”
“You’d be way more awesome if you hadn’t been knifed in the first place.” Andreas sounded mad, but I was onto him now—that was his worried voice. Which . . . shit. That wasn’t good. “The paramedics are on their way. They’re almost here, so keep your eyes open, Darren.”
“Am.” It wasn’t my fault it was so dark; it was almost midnight, after all. I coughed again, and it hurt so bad I wanted to scream but I didn’t have the air for it. I couldn’t inhale. I couldn’t breathe at all.
“Darren.”
His hand was the only warm thing in the whole world, like a brand against my shoulder. Everything else was cold, lancing pain, but it was getting fuzzier now, kind of distant. Distant was good.
Unconscious was even better.
“Officer down!” I shouted over my shoulder. “Officer down!”
Footsteps were coming my way. Or maybe it was just my heart pounding as Darren faded in and out in front of me.
“Come on.” I tapped his cheek, smearing blood on his skin. “Darren. Open your eyes. Open your fucking eyes.”
His eyelids fluttered, but didn’t open. He was on his side, and I struggled to hold him steady and keep my wadded-up jacket against his wound.
“I’m not kidding.” I pressed harder on the wound, my stomach sinking as blood saturated the fabric all the way to my hand. “You think I’m an asshole now, you’re not gonna like me if—”
He coughed, his whole body jerking, and winced. Sinking back to the pavement, he moaned. Then he coughed again and tried to pull away from me.
“Darren?”
Before he could respond—and God knew if he could—a SWAT member dropped to his knees beside him with a small oxygen tank.
“You the medic?” I asked, thanking several deities that SWAT always had one.
He nodded. “Tell me what you’ve got.”
Struggling to hold Darren still, I said, “He took a knife to the back.”
The medic leaned over and shoved my hand out of the way. He lifted the jacket, and I thought he cursed under his breath as he pushed the jacket back into place. “Keep pressure on that.”
I nodded and concentrated on holding it there, as if I could keep all this blood from spilling out of Darren and onto the pavement. Darren coughed and fought, and I held him as still as I could as the medic cut open his shirt and loosened the Kevlar vest enough to get a stethoscope under it, and I tried not to think about what might be happening on the inside. Or why the medic’s features tightened when he listened to Darren’s chest. Or whether it was a trick of the light, or if Darren’s lips really were starting to turn blue.
All around us, there was activity. Voices. Movement. Handcuffs clicking. Shouting. Radios crackling. Sirens in the distance. Way too far in the distance.
But all of that barely registered over Darren’s increasingly labored breathing or the painful-sounding cough that occasionally broke it up.
I didn’t care about Trent. He was neutralized, so he didn’t matter anymore.
Only Darren mattered, and there was nothing I could do to help him. There was nothing I could do except sit here, holding him as still as I could—fuck, he was strong—while he fought and coughed and choked and bled.
“His lung is collapsing.” The medic turned and called out to one of the others, “Stretcher! We gotta get this guy outta here. Now.”
My own lungs turned to lead as another SWAT member sprinted to Darren’s side, waved me out of the way, and knelt on the pavement. He hadn’t been there thirty seconds before he spun around and called out, “Get that stretcher over here!”
The urgency in his voice turned my blood to ice.
“The ED is twenty minutes from here,” the other said as he pushed an oxygen mask over Darren’s face, ignoring Darren’s attempts to shove it away. “Do we have that much time?”
The second SWAT member scowled, surveying the empty airfield. Those sirens were still too damn far away. “Put him on the helo. He doesn’t have time to wait for a bus or a medevac.” He switched on his radio. “This is unit 4-Alpha. I’ve got a stabbing victim with a possible tension pneumo. Bringing him to All Saints via SWAT helo. Repeat, SWAT helo. Confirm clearance. Over.” To his partner, he quickly said, “The stretcher won’t fit in that helo. Guaranteed. Get the backboard and we can use that instead.”
The first medic got up and sprinted toward the ambulance while the second continued focusing on Darren. The radio crackled to life with a response, but my heartbeat drowned it out.
The medic was working fast, frantically getting Darren’s shirt and vest all the way off. The blood-soaked Kevlar made my stomach lurch. Too much blood. Way too much blood. The fact that Darren wasn’t fighting so hard now was not a good sign.
Come on, Darren. Come on . . .
The thump-thump-thump of helicopter blades had never sounded so sweet. As the helo touched down on the tarmac, everyone exploded into action. SWAT loaded Darren onto a fold-out stretcher, which they carried to the helicopter.
Blades spun. Voices shouted.
Everything was a blur of noise and activity except for me and for Darren.
I was completely paralyzed. Totally helpless. Absolutely useless.
And Darren . . .
Darren was getting weaker. His pale lips moved, mumbling something, but he wasn’t clawing at the O2 tubing or trying to pull off the mask anymore. His hands feebly tried to push someone away, but even that didn’t last long.
SWAT ran the stretcher to the helo’s open door and lifted Darren inside. The medic followed.
He turned to me. “You coming?”
And finally, I could move. “Yeah, I’m coming.” I hurried into the helo and stayed as far out of the way as I could while the medics frantically worked. I couldn’t see his face. The oxygen mask covered most of it, and in what little light we had, I could see that the mask wasn’t fogging up nearly as much as it should have been.
And he wasn’t fighting anymore.
At all.
Shaking with the worst bone-deep fear and helplessness I’d known in a long, long time, I put a hand on Darren’s shin. It was the closest thing to me, and there was still some body heat radiating through his pant leg.
All the way to the hospital, as the medics went from concerned to downright agitated, shouting into rad
ios and at each other as Darren remained completely motionless, I held on to his leg and prayed like hell we’d make it in time.
It seemed like hours, but minutes after we’d taken off, the helo landed on the pad on top of All Saints Hospital. A stretcher and a trauma team were waiting. They pulled Darren and the backboard out, and before I’d even put my foot down on the helo pad, the stretcher, the trauma team, and my partner were gone.
“He’ll be all right.” One of the SWAT guys squeezed my shoulder. “These guys know what they’re doing.”
God, I hope so . . .
Everything had ground to a halt.
Bodies were cleaned up. Survivors were arrested. I’d lost track of everyone except for Darren, though Paula had updated me on the key players. Mayor Crawford was dead. Trent was in surgery, so no one could interrogate him anyway. Huan wasn’t in much better shape, thanks to a bullet he’d taken amidst all the chaos. A couple of officers had been assigned to guard their rooms when they came out of the OR, and strangely enough, no one had nominated me for that role.
Paula had also told me arrests had been made, but none of that registered. Had the surviving pilot talked? I didn’t know. Not that it mattered—I was in no condition to interrogate anyone anyway. I did manage a call to Captain Hamilton to let him know Darren had made it to the hospital, and vaguely registered that he was going to contact Darren’s family and come down as soon as possible.
Beyond that, I was useless for anything except pacing in the waiting room and hoping for some kind of news. Not that there’d been any. Technically, they couldn’t tell me anything due to HIPAA, but nurses and cops looked out for each other. The ER nurses sent me up to the ICU, and the ICU nurses told me they’d let me know the moment he was out of surgery.
Two hours later . . . nothing.
I shuddered at the thought that, right this second, Darren could be dead. God knew he hadn’t looked far from it when they’d wheeled him away. Even now, I could still feel the near-panic of the EMTs as they’d frantically worked to keep him alive. He’d been in bad enough shape that using a backboard for a makeshift stretcher and putting him on a SWAT helo had been a reasonable way to get him to the hospital because they couldn’t wait for the medevac.
