Protective Behavior

by L A Witt

  Still slow and careful, my eyes still locked on Russel, I leaned down and set my pistol on the ground. As I stood up again, I kicked it toward Russel.

  “Pick it up,” Russel said to Ryan. “Now!”

  Ryan gulped. Then he reached for the weapon, which had stopped a couple of feet from his knee. His balance wavered. Fear? The concussion? Hard to say. His eyes flicked toward me as he curled his fingers around the gun, and I had never had to fight so hard to keep my expression blank.

  Ryan’s wasn’t blank. There was fear. Pain. Confusion. And… determination? This was a man who reassembled people on a daily basis after catastrophic injuries that should have killed them. He had no qualms about diving in, knowing the clock was ticking and the slightest mistake could flatline the patient, because he knew he could do it right and save them. Doctors did have god complexes sometimes, didn’t they? They kind of had to in order to function in that high-stress, high stakes environment. Did he have a god complex? In his mind, was he conjuring up a plan to do something and neutralize or even distract Russel? Hit him with the pistol? Something?

  Don’t try anything, Ryan. You’ll just get yourself killed.

  As he sat back up, he adjusted his fingers around the pistol’s barrel, and that determination began to eclipse the fear in his eyes. Oh, yeah, he had gears turning.

  As subtly as I could, I shook my head. His eyebrows flicked up.

  Don’t. Do it.

  Ryan, for God’s sake, don’t—

  “Give me that fucking gun already.” Russel snatched the pistol out of Ryan’s hand, nearly knocking him off balance again. Russel tossed my gun away, and then his own weapon was against Ryan’s temple again.

  Ryan closed his eyes. His jaw worked as he slowly raised his hands again. He swallowed hard, quite possibly trying to keep from throwing up. I could relate.

  “Let him go,” I said evenly. “Whatever beef you have, it’s with me. Not him.”

  Russel laughed. “No shit. And as long as I’ve got him…” He stroked Ryan’s bruised cheek with the muzzle of the gun, the gesture as menacing as it was obscene. “Then you’re going to tread a hell of a lot more carefully, aren’t you?”

  Ryan’s eyes opened. All fear now. All pure, bone-deep fear. Especially as the gun slid back up his cheek and into his hair.

  I swallowed, and I had to call on every second of training I’d ever had to keep the fear out of my own voice. “This really how you want it to go down, Russel? Let your partner take the fall while you take the coward’s way out?”

  “Coward?” His lips peeled back across his teeth. “Who the fuck are you calling a coward, you self-righteous desk jockey?” He jabbed the gun against Ryan’s head, making us both wince. “You sit in your office and judge all of us out on the street putting our necks on the line. And you call me a coward?”

  “Then prove me wrong. Face the charges against you. Defend yourself. If you’re in the right, then what do you have to—”

  “It doesn’t work like that anymore!” His voice was edging toward shrill as panic took over. “Not when people like you have taken over and convinced all the brass to be politically correct pussies who’d rather see cops get killed than defend ourselves!”

  “Is this defending yourself?” I demanded. “You’ve got an innocent man on his knees.” I nodded toward Ryan. “You’ve got an innocent hostage, Officer Russel. How is that—”

  “He’s not innocent!” The words exploded out of Russel, and he violently pistol-whipped Ryan, sending him sprawling onto the concrete. “He’s not—ungh!”

  Gunfire cracked twice. Russel dropped to one knee beside Ryan, and in a heartbeat, everyone was in motion. Officer Glass came up over the rockery, her gun still out, and Kelly shouted into his radio “Backup, move in! Shots fired!”

  Ryan lunged for Russel, and though he was still off balance, he managed to grab the weapon out of Russel’s hand. Russel tried to snatch it back, but instead staggered to his feet and stumbled into the garage and out of sight.

  Ryan scrambled to one side and dropped against the closed door of the garage’s second bay. He was breathing hard, trembling, and he held the gun tight in both hands.

  With my backup weapon ready and my gaze fixed on the garage, I asked, “You all right, Ryan?”

  “Y-yeah.” He sounded like his teeth were chattering. “I’m… I’m good.”

  I acknowledged him with a nod, and Kelly, Glass, and I inched toward the garage. “Come on out, Russel. You’re surrounded, and we’ve got backup coming in. Just come out.”

  I expected a shout to go fuck myself. A cocky suggestion to call in SWAT because no one else was getting him out of there. Or maybe the ominous sound of a gunshot, ending this whole thing in a spray of blood and brain matter.

  What I didn’t anticipate was a meek, “All right. All right.” He sounded like he was in a hell of a lot of pain, which made sense even if his vest had prevented most of the damage. “I’m coming out.”

  “All right,” I called back. “Step out where we can see you.”

  No answer. No movement.

  The other officers and I exchanged glances. They both nodded. Slowly, we inched closer to the garage.

  “Officer Russel?” I said. “There’s an ambulance on its way. We’ll have the paramedics check you out, and—”

  Glass straightened, freezing Kelly and me in place. She was a little closer and had a better view of the entire garage than we did, and the undercurrent of oh shit in her voice raised the hair on my neck. “He’s not in there.”

  Then Kelly muttered. “Side door. It’s open.”

  Oh, that wasn’t—

  “Mark!” Ryan’s shout was my only warning.

  I felt the first impact before I heard the gunshot. The second tore into my side, and I barely registered my knee hitting the pavement. Gunfire broke out from all directions. Someone screamed in pain. Where the hell was my gun?

  Then the guns were quiet. My ears rang, and I could hear voices. Distantly, there were sirens too. But mostly I was aware of holy shit, pain.

  “Mark.” Ryan’s voice again. Closer this time. “Come on. Lie down.”

  “Russel,” I murmured. “Where’s…” But I couldn’t stay upright and talk at the same time, so I let Ryan guide me down. I started to speak again, but tremendous pressure against my side drove a cry of pain out of my throat and completely blanked my brain.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “This is gonna hurt.”

  Gonna hurt? He said that like it didn’t already.

  Through the haze of pain and the ringing in my ears, more sounds resolved themselves into activity. Cars pulling up. Doors slamming. Feet on pavement. Voices. Someone in a hell of a lot of pain. Someone besides me, anyway. Or was that me? What was going on?

  Someone knelt beside me. “How bad is it?” Officer Glass.

  “I don’t know.” Ryan’s voice shook. “The vest stopped the first one, but the second—oh hey! Bring that trauma kit over here.”

  More footsteps. More noise.

  “Mark, stay with me,” Ryan said through what sounded like chattering teeth. “Let’s get this shirt and vest off.” He was rattling off other orders. Things I couldn’t quite understand. On a normal day, maybe I would’ve, but people were tugging at my shirt, then my vest, and the pain was too blinding for me to focus on anything else. I was aware of Ryan’s sharp voice. Of someone digging around in the fire on my left side.

  Of everything getting darker.

  Quieter.

  Colder.

  “Mark?” A damp, sticky hand patted my face. “I mean it. Stay with me.”

  I tried.

  But I couldn’t.

  Chapter 22

  Ryan

  Four hours.

  It wasn’t all that long, as operating times went. Longer than a joint replacement, about average for open heart surgery. Not that Mark needed open heart surgery—I was pretty sure the bullet had done most of its damage to his small intestine, maybe his left kidn
ey, which was bad enough. Still, it was fixable. We were lucky it was.

  So why did it feel like I was undergoing open heart surgery sitting in the waiting room outside the operating theater? I knew the odds intimately, and they were pretty good—I should have been calmer than the average family member or friend. Instead I felt like I was one shallow inhale away from hyperventilating. Over four hours since Mark had been shot, and I still couldn’t catch my breath.

  It was honestly a relief when Erin and Zach showed up because it gave me someone else to focus on calming down, and when it came to that I was a pro.

  “Ryan!” She almost ran into the room first, her hands stretched out in front of her like she was going to grab me by the front of my shirt. She didn’t—she pulled me into a gentle hug instead. “Oh my God! Are you okay?”

  That… was not the question I was expecting to get. I clasped my arms around her and cleared my throat. “Yeah. I’m fine, I have barely any more bruises than before.”

  “That’s not what I’m talking about.” She pulled back far enough to look me in the eyes. “I know how awful it feels to be attacked like that, to have someone point a gun at you and know they’re crazy enough to pull the trigger. Hell, the guy who kidnapped us was a cop too.” She shook her head. “For a while I didn’t think I’d ever feel safe again, even though my dad and Darren took care of things in the end.”

  Oh man, I’d totally forgotten that Erin, one of her brothers, and her little sister had been kidnapped, and it hadn’t been all that long ago. They’d been used as leverage by a dirty cop to try and force the release of his father, a former officer who’d worked on both sides of the law, from prison. Jesus, how was she able to work for the police after that? Even with Andreas and Darren as examples of what a police officer should be, how could she trust any of the rest of them?

  “Mark helped me get past it,” she said, apparently reading my mind the same way Samantha did sometimes. “He was great, really supportive. He even offered to have the force pay for visits to a counselor, and it helped a lot.” Her eyes welled up with tears. “And now he’s been shot by that motherfucker.”

  “If it’s any consolation, I shot the guy back,” I said, trying to be light and failing miserably, if the way her face fell even further was any indication. “He’ll live,” I added.

  “God, that sucks so much. Not that he’ll live,” she said, which was a bit of a relief because I hadn’t figured Erin for quite that bloodthirsty. “It sucks that he put you in a situation where you had to shoot a person to save yourself and protect Mark.”

  “Yeah.” I was trying not to think too much about it, the way the gun had felt so heavy in my hands, the echo of the sharp retort in my ears that I couldn’t seem to stop hearing. I had never shot a gun before. Never. Learning to handle a weapon like that, owning a weapon like that, had never appealed to me, and once I got into emergency medicine I’d begun to genuinely loathe the things. They could do so much damage, so fast. I knew that firsthand.

  Now I’d caused some of that damage firsthand, too.

  I stepped back and cleared my throat again, glancing at Zach, who had a hand on Erin’s shoulder and a look of sympathy on his face. “Mark was hit by a fairly small caliber round,” I said, resolutely not thinking about the size of the bullet I’d fired. “Two, actually, but the vest stopped the first one completely. The second one penetrated his lower left abdomen. There was no exit wound, and a lot of bleeding, but I think it’s pretty treatable. We won’t know much more even after the surgery until his next of kin gets here, though.”

  “Ryan.” Erin rolled her eyes at me. They were only slightly wet. “I’m Mark’s medical power of attorney. He wanted someone local in case something… You know…”

  “Oh.” I hadn’t seen that coming. Maybe I should have, from the little he told me about his father, but I was surprised that he didn’t have… someone. A sibling, an aunt, a favorite cousin, but no. He’d made his own family, and it might be small but at least it had Erin in it. “Great, that’s perfect.”

  “I suppose you can sit in on it when we get the good news,” she said with a smile, which turned quickly to a worried frown. “It’ll be good news, right? You said it was treatable—you saw it happen.”

  “It’ll be good news, I’m sure of it.” I had to think that, at least. “Mark’s a fighter, he’ll be fine.”

  “Still…”

  “If I could possibly have talked my way in there to observe, I would have,” I offered. “But I’m still completely useless here, thanks to my concussion.”

  “How’s your recovery coming?” Zach asked. It was probably professional as well as personal curiosity—as an orthopedist, he treated a lot of athletes, and head trauma was commonplace with sports injuries and something he had to allow for in his practice.

  “On schedule, I guess. My head doesn’t hurt as much, at least.” My ribs were still giving me shit and my kneecaps ached from where Officer Russel had shoved me onto my knees in the driveway, but my head was fine.

  “That’s good.” Erin nodded, her face a little blank. “That’s good, awesome. Yeah. Yeah.” I exchanged glances with Zach over her head.

  “Why don’t we grab something to eat?” Zach offered, leaning in and kissing Erin’s cheek. She turned toward him instantly, wrapping an arm around his waist. “And we can have some coffee waiting for when your dads show up.”

  “Ugh, what’s taking them so long?” she groaned. “How long does it take to interrogate one dirty cop?”

  “It’s at least two, and it takes extra-long because one of them was shot in the leg.” Zach glanced at me. “Can we bring something back for you?”

  “Coffee would be fine, thanks.”

  “You got it.” They walked out, and I sat down and stared at my own legs. I was wearing scrubs now—everything I’d been wearing when things went down at my house was only fit for the dumpster. The knees of my pants had been completely soaked through with Mark’s blood. I would have given anything to have put it back inside of him, to have somehow turned back the clock and figured out a way to make things go better, to figure it out faster that Russel was creeping around the side of the garage, coming for his pound of flesh.

  I hadn’t even realized where I’d shot him until Mark was taken away in the first ambulance and I finally made out Russel’s cursing. I’d turned to see him handcuffed on the ground, bleeding from his thigh and screaming about his rights and how he needed to go to a hospital. “Can’t you fuckers see I need help? Get me to a fuckin’ doctor!”

  He’d looked right at me then, and all of a sudden he’d shut up real fast about wanting medical help. I should have helped him anyway, but a second later another set of paramedics arrived and I was rendered extraneous. Then they had to check me out, then I had to give a statement, and by the time I was cleared to come here I’d had to take a shower first because I was literally crusted with drying blood.

  I smoothed my hand over my thigh, then my abdomen. I knew what it looked like, to be shot in these places, but I didn’t know what it felt like. I couldn’t understand the pain, the helplessness of being so extremely injured. Even after I was beaten, I’d been able to move myself around. What would this kind of injury mean for a cop? Mark was Internal Affairs—would that make a return to work easier for him once he was recovered? How recovered would he even get? Visions of complications rose in my brain—sepsis, uncontrollable hemorrhaging, organ loss—

  “Ryan?”

  I jerked back so hard my head hit the wall. Erin looked down at me in concern, her hands tight around two cups of coffee. “You okay?”

  “Yes! I am, yeah, I’m fine.” I nodded toward the cups before she could call me on my bullshit. “One of those for me?”

  “Yes.” She handed over a Starbucks—nice, they’d skipped the cafeteria and gone straight to the good stuff. “And a bowl of chicken posole soup. You probably haven’t eaten in a while. And look!” She gestured behind her with a bright smile. “We found Dad and Darre
n!”

  “Oh.” Great. More people. I started to get up, but Andreas waved me back down.

  “Sit and eat. That’s what I’m going to do.” And in fact he sat down across from me, opened up a sandwich and started to eat without another word. I could respect that.

  “Always so charming,” Darren said, sitting down next to Andreas but looking over at me. “He’s just pissy because IA is running rampant right now. Lieutenant Bridges is taking no prisoners, which actually means that she’s taking several prisoners and needs people to watch them who can be trusted.”

  Andreas looked mildly disgusted. “What is so wrong with my life that Internal Affairs bureaucrats want me to babysit their paperwork-generators?”

  Darren grinned at him. “It must be your impeccable reputation for honesty and integrity.”

  “I say this with love, babe—fuck you.” He glanced my way. “Speaking of those cops, you should know that they won’t be posting bail. There won’t be any way out of this for them, I promise.”

  “Thank you.” I appreciated hearing that, even if I wasn’t entirely sure I could believe it.

  “If Bridges isn’t enough to scare them into talking, Mark definitely will be,” Darren said casually, and hearing that helped too. They were acting like it was a given that he would recover, that he would get back to his job. I knew it was just a way to set me—and more likely, Erin—at ease, but hell if it wasn’t working.

  Watching the four of them banter—mostly Andreas, Darren, and Erin, but Zach chimed in every now and then—was actually the most relaxed I’d been all day. I managed to eat a few bites of soup and drink all of my coffee, and by the time the surgeon came out ten minutes later I was actually laughing at a story of the last perp Darren had run down. “—do not get paid enough to do parkour,” he was saying, but cut himself off as soon as the door opened.