“Okay. We’ve got a single gunshot wound to the upper right chest. Let’s roll him and see if we’ve got an exit wound,” she said, locking eyes with Slater. The damage was on the right side of Jayden’s chest, which meant Slater would have to be the one to look for an exit wound by default of where he stood. They didn’t have time to switch places, and anyway, a shuffle would probably make their guard apoplectic. “You ready?”
“Yeah. Yes.” Slater’s face was a shade paler than usual, but set in determination.
Good enough for Quinn. “On my count. One. Two. Three.”
Jayden screamed as they rolled him, his wound pumping out a steady stream of fresh blood from both the motion and the yell. Shit. “Hang in there, Jayden,” she said, swinging her gaze to Slater’s. “Anything?”
“Negative,” he said. “No exit wound.”
Of course not. It’d been wishful freaking thinking to start with. “Okay. Let’s get him back. Here we go, Jayden. Nice and easy.”
“Unnnh.” Another low moan loosened from his throat at the repositioning, his eyes glassy as he turned them on her. Christ, he couldn’t be more than eighteen. “Hurts…it hurts so much…”
“I know, and I’m sorry.” Quinn’s heart folded in half. She firmed her hands back over the dressing even though it was nearly soaked through. “But I have to put pressure on the wound to get this bleeding under control, okay?”
“Don’t you got any of the good shit in that bag?” their guard interrupted from his spot on the far side of the room, but she shook her head.
“His blood pressure is too low for pain medication. What he needs is a hospital.”
“No hospitals.”
Quinn bit back the urge to loosen her frustration in a yell. “Look, I can try to control the bleeding and give him fluids and monitor his vitals, but those are all short-term solutions. Without trauma doctors and a surgeon to remove that bullet, there isn’t going to be any way to help him.”
The guy lifted a shoulder, then let it drop as he settled back into his chair. “You’re just gonna have to figure out a way around that. ’Specially if you want to live.”
She wanted to argue. Hell, she wanted to scream her fool head off. But she and Slater were being held at fucking gunpoint, and in truth, she didn’t have either the time or breath to waste.
“Okay.” She looked at Slater. Willed her hands not to shake. Failed spectacularly. “Let’s start a large bore IV and run saline wide open. Keep an eye on those vitals, and we’ll have to pack the wound with more dressing to manage this bleeding.”
“What do you want to do after that?” Slater asked, his voice low enough that their guard likely mistook it for more medical exchange.
Dread and fear settled into Quinn’s bones as she looked at Jayden, whose eyes had drifted shut, his breath coming in fast, shallow pants.
Please, Daddy, she prayed, her eyes pricking with hot, unbidden tears. Please watch over me.
“Damage control,” she whispered. “Unless they let us take him to the hospital, he’ll be dead in the next ten minutes.”
Isaiah “Ice” Howard walked down the hallway in his safe house, his breathing carefully metered despite the anger writhing through him like a living, twisting thing. Not that either the composure or the stone-cold nastiness it covered were out of the ordinary. He’d built his livelihood around living up to the nickname he’d earned before his sixteenth birthday. Thirteen years later, he wasn’t about to blow his business or his reputation on Damien fucking Washington.
No matter how badly he wanted to bury a bullet in the son of a bitch’s face right now.
“Damien.” Ice brought his black limited edition Timberland boots to an abrupt stop/about-face combo on the dirty kitchen linoleum. Goddamn flophouses. Disgusting as they were, they served so many purposes, not the least of which was that one didn’t tend to care how much blood got on the floors. “Walk me through what you just did. All of it.”
Damien had never been the brightest bulb on the Christmas tree, but at least he was smart enough to follow orders. Well, most of the time, anyway. Ice listened to the moron’s story, and for fuck’s sake. As if he didn’t have enough on his plate with the impending weapons shipment from Sorenson and the very public drive-by those asshole Scarlet Reapers had just pulled to try and take that very deal right out from under him.
Ice inhaled, stockpiling the patience he was going to need to address this situation without getting brain matter on the walls. This gun deal was his. He’d earned it, just as he’d earned his reputation for being the most ruthless gang leader in Remington. He wasn’t just on top of his game; he was the fucking game, and every last one of the rules besides. Nothing was going to stand in his goddamn way.
“So let me see if I’ve got this clearly,” he said, crossing his arms over the front of his black T-shirt. “You lured these two paramedics to an abandoned warehouse where we’ve done business in the past, kidnapped them at gunpoint, and brought them here, to one of my flophouses, to treat your brother.”
“You said no hospitals,” Damien insisted. “Not no paramedics.”
“And why do you think I said no hospitals?”
Damien, the little shit, actually had the balls to get indignant. “Because they’d report a gunshot wound to the cops. Everybody knows that. But this is different.”
“A paper trail is a paper trail,” Ice bit out. “They all lead somewhere, and now, because you called nine-one-one to get those paramedics to go out to that warehouse, I have one leading to me.”
Damien shook his head. “I called from a throwaway, and I took their radios as soon as they got there. Come on, man. I ain’t stupid.”
Ice raised a brow. The display was as much emotion as he’d allow himself to outwardly show, but he wielded it like a machete, nailing Damien with a stare across the dingy kitchen. “You just kidnapped two paramedics who can ID you, me, Adam, and Jayden in a photo array, Damien. You sure as shit aren’t smart.”
Only a handful of people had ever seen Ice face-to-face and known who he was. Bumping that list up by two? Definitely not putting him in his happy place right now.
“Who gives a fuck about those paramedics?” Damien snapped, and oh, the cocksucker was lucky he could lean on the excuse of being distraught over his little brother having been caught in the crossfire of this morning’s drive-by, because Ice had double-tapped people for far, far less. “When they’re done fixin’ Jay up, we can take ’em down to the pier and solve that problem with a couple of thirty-seven cent solutions. No big deal.”
Under normal circumstances, Ice would actually have no problem popping two paramedics and dumping their bodies in the drink if it would suit his purpose. Hell, he’d done much nastier in the last couple of days. But circumstances weren’t normal. Not that a hole-digger like Damien would understand that.
Ice shifted his weight on the blood-smudged linoleum, making a mental note to get someone in here to clean that shit up before it became evidence. Goddamn forensics. “What do you think is going to happen when two of RFD’s paramedics go missing and eventually turn up murdered?” he asked Damien, waiting for the 40-watt to go off in the idiot’s lizard brain.
Ding. “Nobody saw me kidnap them.”
“You did it in broad fucking daylight. Am I wrong?”
“Well, no,” Damien said, but it was the hesitation that preceded the words that made Ice slither in for the kill.
“Then somebody could have seen you. In fact, the Remington Police Department could be combing every inch of that ambulance right this very minute. Tell me, Damien. Would they find your fingerprints on the door handle? Or maybe the side panel? Or a little DNA from that blood-soaked shirt you’re wearing?”
“I…don’t know.” The guy actually had the wherewithal to look sheepish. “Maybe, I guess.”
“And how long do you think it would take RPD’s gang unit to run that shit through the DB and figure out that it belongs to you or Jayden, hmm? Or for them to link you to the
Vipers, then come after all of us with a vengeance?”
Ice knew he’d be safe from most of that fallout on a personal level. He rarely showed his face during business transactions, and thanks to a soulless sonofabitch hacker-slash-security expert, he had an ironclad alias on the few occasions that he did. Unfortunate that Conrad Vaughn had been taken down a couple months ago by Remington’s elite intelligence unit. But the guy was one of the few bastards who matched Ice in the ruthless department. Ice knew his identity was safe with Vaughn. He’d certainly paid the guy enough to make it that way, in both money and respect.
And weren’t they both just equal currency.
Ice shook off the thought, refocusing on the issue at hand. “If we kill those two paramedics, the cops are going to be so far up our asses we won’t be able to sneeze without them saying ‘God bless you’ and passing over a box of tissues along with our arrest warrants. We’ve got two weeks before this job goes down with Sorenson. Do you honestly think Sergeant Sinclair over at the Thirty-Third won’t turn over every fucking rock in North Point to find out who killed two of the city’s first responders in cold blood?”
“Screw that asshole cop,” Damien spat, but Ice didn’t hesitate before lunging into the moron’s personal space.
“You really are as dumb as you look. Brady Sorenson supplies weapons to more than half the gangs on the east coast.” The guy was elite, the best of the baddest. It had taken Ice the better part of two goddamn years to get on Sorenson’s radar. Not to mention all sorts of favors and payoffs. But he’d busted his ass, he had the juice for the job, and he was going to get his due. “This weapons deal he’s got on the table will go to whichever crew in Remington proves themselves worthy. That job belongs to me. I’m not letting anything fuck that up.”
Damien’s bloodshot eyes flew wide. “So, what? You’re gonna just let those paramedics walk?”
“I’ll take care of those paramedics,” Ice said, low and dangerous. “But you disobey my orders again, and I can guarantee I’ll take care of you, too.”
“What was I supposed to do? The Scarlet Reapers shot Jayden, man.” Damien’s tone tightened with agitation. “They shot my little brother.”
“This deal with Sorenson goes the way it should, and they’ll be the first ones to pay. Nobody fucks with the Vipers, Damien, and nobody betrays me. At least nobody who lives to tell about it.”
7
The monitor at the foot of the bed shrieked out a sound that, in all likelihood, had just signed Luke’s death warrant.
“BP is forty over sixty and falling,” he said briskly, focusing on what was in front of him because he couldn’t focus on the alternative without wanting to puke.
He could not die today.
Quinn’s stare snapped to the monitor. “He’s crashing.” The monitor confirmed it a second later, the shriek becoming a telltale beep that signaled a flatline. “Shit! We lost his pulse. Start compressions while I grab the paddles.”
Luke flattened his hands over Jayden’s chest, forcing himself not to react to the give of the poor kid’s ribs, blanking out the thick-liquid ooze of the blood soaking through the QuikClot pads and the sound of bones popping and cracking even though his gag reflex had a stranglehold on his throat. Don’t think. Don’t think, came the words to the rhythm of the compressions. “Come on, Jayden. Come on!”
“You better save him. You gotta save him,” said Baseball Hat from his station at the foot of the bed, although his voice sounded less forceful than full of fear.
“We’re trying.” Quinn lifted the paddles. “Clear!”
“Clear.”
Luke’s hands shot up just as Quinn’s fell into place, determination locked over her face as the portable AED buzzed, then thumped. Jayden’s body jerked beneath the paddles, his back arching off the bloodstained comforter. But before Luke could throw so much as a glance at the monitor for a vitals check, the door flew in hard enough to bang loudly against the wall.
“What the fuck is going on?” Damien’s stare whipped around the room, jumping wildly from Luke to Jayden to Quinn. His dark eyes were wild with about a thousand emotions, but it was the presence of the man behind him in the doorframe wearing no emotions at all that sent a bolt of icy fear through Luke’s chest.
“Your brother is going into hypovolemic shock,” Quinn said, and Damien released a noise of frustration.
“In English, bitch.”
Luke had to move this guy’s attention away from Quinn. Right now. “Jayden has lost more than a fifth of his blood volume,” he said. The only mercy here was that the kid had also lost consciousness. “His heart is working too hard to get what’s left in his body to his organs. His body can’t keep up with the blood loss.”
“Why ain’t you fixin’ him up like you’re supposed to?” Damien paced a few strides to one side of the room before turning abruptly to complete the circuit. “I told you to fix him! Stitch him up!”
The steady beep of the monitor broke past the haze in Luke’s mind, and thank Christ. Jayden had a sinus rhythm. At least the AED had bought them a few minutes to try and control this situation. He and Quinn would not—would not—die today.
“We’re working on your brother,” Luke said, proceeding with a truckload of care. Jayden wasn’t going to live. Far too many minutes had fallen off of his golden hour for him to survive. Hell, with the wound he’d sustained, even if he’d been shot front and center in the ambulance bay at Remington Mem, his odds would’ve been fifty-fifty at best. But Luke could live—no, he fucking would live, and so would Quinn. All he had to do was get Damien and that huge guy back in the other room, and he could figure out a way to disarm their guard and get to the window on the wall behind him. “Look, we just need some more time—”
“What we need is a hospital.”
Quinn’s words sent Luke’s gut into a free fall. “Quinn,” he started, but she shook her head, adamant.
“Look, Damien. Your brother’s wound is significant. He’s lost a lot of blood, and the bullet may have damaged his lung.”
The guy took a step back on the floorboards, his stare full of hair-triggered menace. “You don’t know?”
“No,” she said, before Luke could come up with any sort of buffer or distraction to soften the news. Her voice was low and steady, steeped in the same tone Luke had heard her use a thousand times on the job. The tone that said she meant exactly what was coming out of her mouth.
“I don’t know,” Quinn continued quietly. “I don’t have the equipment to be able to see what’s going on inside his body. Paramedics are trained to stabilize and transfer, not treat long-term. Your brother needs a blood transfusion and trauma surgeon to remove the bullet from his chest, and he needs them both right now. Otherwise he is going to die.”
Damien’s gun was out of his waistband before anyone could move. Luke’s heart ricocheted around his rib cage, a sharp-edged “no” barging out of his mouth. But then the barrel of the gun was against Quinn’s forehead, and even though his mind and body both screamed for him to make a move, Luke knew he couldn’t take the risk.
“You telling me you killed my brother?” Damien bit out, and Quinn released a shaky breath.
“N-no. Right now, he’s alive. See? Look at the monitor.”
Damien jerked his chin toward the machine at the top of the bed, and Luke sent up a wild prayer of gratitude that the fucking thug couldn’t interpret the vitals scrolling across the backlit screen.
“I want to help him, Damien. I want to save his life.” Quinn’s voice wavered, her raised, blood-soaked hands trembling in a way that made Luke want to dismantle every single gang member in the room just for scaring her. “Please. Let us take him to the hospital. We don’t have to say—”
The cold click of the gun’s safety turned her words into a cry and Luke’s pulse into a warzone. “No. You’re gonna fix him like I told you to. I meant what I said before. He dies, you die.”
Luke burned to find a way to knock Damien’s gun from the spot
where it was trained hard over Quinn’s forehead. But Baseball Hat was still at the foot of the bed, the double mattress and Jayden’s body between Luke and Damien. God damn it, even reaching the guy was a long shot. Disarming him and getting Quinn out of harm’s way? The odds were probably four trillion to one.
Come on, come on. There has to be a solution. Think!
“I’ll do it,” Luke said, loudly enough to—yes—grab Damien’s attention. “I’ll save your brother’s life. But you have to stop pointing that gun at my partner. I need her to help me work on Jayden.”
Damien hesitated, but didn’t budge. “She said he needs a hospital.”
“And you said no hospitals,” Luke countered. “So we’ll do it your way, okay?”
“She said Jayden’s gonna die anyway.” Damien shifted on his thickly-soled boots, growing more agitated by the nanosecond, and no. No, no, no. “If he does—”
“Damien.” The man standing in the doorway commanded attention with just the one simple word. “Put your piece away.”
A heartbeat passed in tension-drenched silence, during which Luke prayed for the first time in a decade.
But then, miraculously, Damien lowered his gun. Quinn sagged in relief, her breath escaping in a near-soundless gasp, and relief coursed through Luke with so much force that he was sure his knees would forfeit his body weight right then and there.
His relief turned to pure shock when the man crossed his arms over his retaining wall of a chest and said, “Go on and take a walk. Score some H and find a girl on Delmar Street. Get yourself right while these two work on your brother.”
Damien’s brows popped up while his mouth popped open, and he turned toward the bed, where his brother’s breaths were growing more and more labored. “But Jayden…”
“I’ll take care of Jayden. You’re too keyed up.” The man stepped all the way into the room, sparing only the briefest glance at Baseball Hat, who had watched the entire exchange, dumbfounded, from the foot of the bed. “You get D here solid, you hear? Now both of you, go.”
In Too Deep: Station Seventeen Book 3 Page 7
