by Luna, David
He closed in on the back door and stood to the side of it, listening for anything. Hearing nothing, he expected the worst, and his stomach dropped. He pulled his tools from his pocket and picked the back door lock. He gave the signal to Sawyer that he was on his way in, and heard Sawyer speak into his ear, telling the others. He then heard Jackson’s roughened voice say the same about Cooper.
He opened the door, unable to keep it from squeaking as it opened. He paused, waiting for any reaction in the house, but heard nothing. He was in the kitchen and approached the front of the house. Entering the front room, Cooper signaled that he was going upstairs. Cade nodded, indicating he was headed to the basement.
They split again and Cade approached what he assumed was the basement door. He opened it up and was thankful that it made no noise. There was a door at the bottom of the stairs with light coming from underneath, so his approach wouldn’t be noticed. He placed his foot onto the dingy carpeted step and it was then that he heard several thumps and grunts. He got to the bottom of the stairs quickly and quietly, needing to make sure he had the element of surprise.
He opened the door and again was thankful it was silent, as he was able to enter the basement without being heard. It was a finished basement, but like the rest of the house, it had seen much better days. It was grimy and smelled of mildew, hinting of water leaks. It was sparsely furnished with a 1970’s sofa that was threadbare and a few low slung, circular chairs facing a 25-inch TV that was at least fifteen years old. His quick scan told him that no one was there. The sound of a gunshot made terror freeze the blood in his veins. He ran toward the closed door to his right, dimly aware that Cooper’s pounding feet signaled his approach from upstairs. Gun drawn he pushed the door open.
If he lived to be a hundred, he’d never forget the image he saw next. Braden was lying, half sprawled on the floor, half slouched against the bloody wall, holding his stomach with his hands, blood seeping through his fingers. Eric, still holding the gun, stood several feet away, looking at the gun in his own hand like he was surprised it was there. Cade eased his way toward Braden.
Braden’s eyes, one of which was nearly swollen shut, swung his way, a desperate plea in them. Eric’s gaze soon followed, widening so much that Cade could see more of the whites of his eyes than anything. Gun trained at Eric’s head, he growled out, “Drop it! Raise your fucking hands or I’ll shoot you between the eyes.”
Eric immediately tossed the gun down and raised both of his hands. Cade didn’t react when Cooper threw the door open more fully and ran toward Braden. “You keep him alive, Coop.”
Cooper ripped off his shirt and fell to his knees beside Braden. He placed his shirt over the gunshot wound, applying pressure. He updated their men, just in case they hadn’t called it in yet. “Sawyer, Braden’s been shot. Call 911, and get an ambulance here. And call Detective Miller and get him here as well.”
Cade moved further into the room, advancing toward his target. He realized, with great satisfaction, that Eric looked extremely roughed up. He had a bloody lip, blood coming from his broken nose and his swollen cheek had a large bruise. Eric saw the look in his eyes and scrambled backwards, falling in his panic. He flipped over and pushed himself to his feet, trying to put distance between himself and Cade, but the room was small, with only a stained mattress on the floor and one exit, which was behind Cade.
Cade stalked his prey, tucking his gun in its holster at the small of his back, narrowing the distance between them. Eric backed himself up against the wall and glanced to the right, seeking any means of escape. Cade could see by the look in his eyes that he knew he couldn’t get away. The last vestiges of control left Cade and he growled like an animal as he lunged.
Eric did his best to slither out of the way, but nothing was going to stop Cade at this point. He caught Eric by the throat and slammed his head against the wall. Pressing his neck into the wall and lifting him nearly off of his feet. “You like exerting your power over those who are smaller than you? How does this feel, since you like abuse so much?”
Eric flailed wildly and did his best to kick, punch and scratch Cade’s hand, but the efforts were ineffectual at best. Cade let up enough to allow him to breathe and reveled in the great gulps of air he sucked in, followed by several coughs and wheezes. Eric gathered up his strength again and took a swing at Cade. It glanced off Cade’s cheek, not even causing his head to jerk back. He let go of Eric’s throat, slamming his fist into his gut, doubling him over immediately. Cade brought his knee up into Eric’s face. The man squealed like a pig, and he was on the ground a second later, nearly knocked out.
Cade followed him down, his adrenaline spiking, a fever spreading through his body. He was finally going to be able to punish the man who had terrorized Braden. His vision bled ruby red and all he saw was a man he needed to destroy. He straddled Eric’s hips and began raining blows down on his head, his chest, anywhere he could reach. He’d never lost himself in his anger, he’d always kept himself in check, but this man had reduced him to a killer. His fists were streaked red from Eric’s blood.
He had lost focus with reality and had zeroed in on inflicting pain. He made no noise. All that could be heard in the room was the wet thump of flesh meeting flesh and he’d have told anyone that would listen that nothing could have stopped him from killing Eric, slowly, with his fists.
He was barely aware of strong arms coming around him, trying to hold him back and stop him. But Cooper had miscalculated his rage and he was able to wrench himself free and continue the beating. What he wouldn’t have counted on stopping him was a simple whispered plea, slamming his internal breaks and stopping him mid-punch.
“Z, no.”
Braden’s tortured whisper did what nothing else could have done. It brought him back to the present. He looked down at Eric’s battered and torn body. He was actually surprised it didn’t look worse. He realized with a sick twist of his stomach that he’d held himself back. Somehow in that angry haze, he’d held himself back. He’d kept some modicum of control over the power of his punches, but instead of feeling better with this knowledge, he felt worse.
The reason he’d held back wasn’t so that he wouldn’t kill Eric, oh no, it was so that he could prolong the torture, prolong the fight, and prolong the pain that Eric would feel before death. He’d been the cat, Eric the mouse. He wrenched himself away from the bloodied, unconscious man. He crawled his way over to Braden who was now on his side, reaching his arm out beseechingly to him. Still applying pressure to the wound, Cooper eased Braden onto his back. When he had Braden’s hand in his, he raised it to his lips. “Hang on, baby, help’s on the way. I’m so sorry, Braden. He never should have been able to get to you.”
Cade heard the sirens outside and prayed that they’d be fast enough to save him. Braden was looking very pale, his eyes a bit glassy. His head fell to the side and just as his eyes were about to close, they flared to life as he gasped. Cade threw himself to the floor, his body blocking Braden’s, as he reached for his gun. Three gunshots could be heard just as the cops and paramedics came through the door. A bullet hit Cade in his left side, and two bullets found their mark dead center of Eric’s forehead.
The lead cop yelled, “Drop your weapons! Get your hands in the air!”
Cooper set down his weapon and raised his hands. Cade set his gun down as well, but ignored their demand completely and turned to help Braden. Detective Miller entered. “Lower your weapons, officers. These men aren’t our perp.”
Cade resumed putting pressure on the wound. Braden was now unconscious and as pale as he’d ever seen anyone. Panic was a living, breathing thing inside him as he yelled, “We need a paramedic over here, now!”
Several paramedics approached and began to work on Braden. One of them approached Cade, who had shuffled back on his knees by Braden’s head, bowed over him protectively, gently caressing his forehead. At the pat on his shoulder, he whipped his head up, ready to take the person’s head off. The paramedic said so
mething about his bullet wound and he shook his head. “I’m fine. Just help him. Everyone needs to be helping him. He’s dying. I’m fine.”
One of the paramedic’s working over Braden looked up. “Sir, you have to back up, we need to place him on the stretcher.”
Cade nodded and stood, watching as they put Braden on the stretcher and rolled him toward the door. He got up to follow and the same paramedic as before approached him again, putting his hand on his shoulder to stop him going forward. Cooper approached immediately and pulled the paramedic’s hand off of Cade’s shoulder before Cade could lose his shit.
Cade ran to catch up to the stretcher carrying Braden and Cooper held the paramedic back. “I know you’re only trying to do your job and help him, but he’s had bullet wounds before. This one isn’t going to kill him, and he won’t have anyone working on him when they could be working on Braden.”
The paramedic raised his eyebrows at Cooper, but Cooper only asked which hospital they’d take him to and then turned away from him. Jackson entered the room and walked toward him just as Detective Miller approached him from the other direction, but he held up his hand to them both as he dialed his phone. “Maya, he’s been shot and so has Cade. They’re going back to the same hospital. Head over there now and I’ll find you both when you get there. I don’t know how bad it is, just get there.”
Detective Miller started talking and he held his hand up again to silence him as he dialed another number. “Finn, Braden’s been shot in the stomach and lost a lot of blood. Cade’s been shot in the side, doesn’t look too bad, but he’ll need to be seen. We’re headed back to the same hospital he was in before.”
Cooper rubbed his shaking hands over his mouth as he listened to Finn, the adrenaline fading fast. “No, he won’t let anyone work on him. He’ll be alright until he reaches the hospital, but he’ll need to get sewn up and checked out to be sure of the damage. Not to mention, Eric hit him with his car and he was thrown and hit his head so he’s most likely got a concussion.”
Cooper glanced up when the detective made his impatience known. Cooper continued to ignore him. “He’s gonna want you in that surgical room with Braden. He lost a lot of blood, it didn’t look good. You’re going to have to find a way to be in there keeping an eye on him, but you gotta get Cade to promise you he’ll get medical attention while you’re seeing to Braden. You need to get there…”
“You’re there? Thank god. He lost consciousness and looked extremely pale, gunshot to the abdomen, exit wound in the back. I’ll deal with the cops here and then I’m on my way.”
Cooper turned to Detective Miller and cut him off before he even got started. “Detective, I don’t know if you were here for the gun shots, but you have witnesses. The police and the paramedics that were here saw Eric shoot Cade before we both shot him in the head. You can come to the hospital to get our statements or anything else you need from us.”
Miller followed them as Cooper and Jackson headed toward the stairs. “How did you know he was here?”
“Braden was wearing tracers.”
“Why the fuck didn’t you give us that information?”
“Don’t even try to convince me that there wouldn’t have been some kind of delay for bullshit bureaucracy or waiting for backup.”
“What you did isn’t…”
“What we did was skip all the crap you have to wade through. You couldn’t have gotten here as fast as we did and I can’t even imagine what would have happened if you’d have tried to negotiate hostage terms or some such bullshit. We did what we needed to do, because we weren’t willing to risk Braden’s life on the off chance you could have gotten here in time. We did what we needed to do, end of story. We’ll be at the hospital.”
Cooper strode with Jackson to the car that Sawyer had brought around. They got in and drove to the hospital. Cooper checked with Sawyer. “Did you see them get into the ambulance?”
“Yeah, the paramedics kept trying to help Cade, but he wasn’t having it. They finally gave up and let him ride with them. Do we need to contact his family?”
Cooper shook his head. “No, I already called Finn. He’s at the hospital already, paving the way to be in on the surgery for Braden. He’ll make sure Cade gets treated. He’ll most likely call his family while he’s waiting for them to arrive. If they have questions they can’t get answers to, they’ll call me. All we can do now is wait.”
Cade was hit by an overwhelming sense of déjà vu as he climbed into the ambulance. He sat toward the back, as close to Braden as he could get without being in the way of the paramedics. They checked on Braden’s vitals again, one of the paramedics running an IV and talking to the ER using medical jargon that he ignored for his own piece of mind. As they sped through the city, the siren was on full tilt.
The paramedic speaking with the ER was administering a drug into the IV. The other one was monitoring Braden closely and applying pressure to the wound. He glanced over at Cade and nodded toward Cade’s injury. “You don’t want us to help you, so I’m assuming you’re not a stranger to gunshot wounds?”
Cade shook his head. “Not in my line of work.”
“Which is?”
“Former military, security. You don’t have to distract me from what you’re doing. I’m fine, just help him.”
The paramedic’s brows rose. “Just be aware that infection is a real possibility. You’ve got holes in your shirt and I’d imagine pieces of it inside of the wound. You’ll want to get it seen to as soon as you get to the hospital.”
“I’ll get it seen to as soon as I know Braden is taken care of.”
The paramedic shrugged his shoulders, finally giving up on getting through to Cade. He remembered he needed to signal his family that they were needed and tapped his watch to get to the correct screen, hit several icons and then put his hand on Braden’s head, threaded his fingers into his hair. A second later, Braden’s watch sent out the alarm code he’d just sent to his family and the paramedics all glanced at the watch on Braden’s wrist.
Ignoring anything else but Braden, he leaned farther forward in his seat, elbows on his knees and his other hand pushing into his own hair, ignoring the twinge of pain in his side. He waited like that until they pulled into the emergency bay at the hospital where he was more grateful than he could even comprehend to see Finn in his scrubs, ready to manage Braden’s care.
The paramedics pushed Braden out of the ambulance and were met by Finn and another man, along with several nurses. As they listened to the pass-down on his vitals, Cade leaned down and whispered to Braden, telling him he loved him and he’d be waiting on him to get out of surgery. They began to rush him inside toward an operating theater. Finn walking brusquely to keep up, Cade by his side. “Zavier, this is Dr. Brown, he’ll be performing Braden’s—”
“You’re Braden’s surgeon, Finn. He can assist.”
“Zavier…”
“Finn, Braden is my life. He’s the very fucking air I breathe. No one but you will know how important his life is. No one. And I won’t trust another surgeon with his life but the best.”
Dr. Brown finally spoke, “Dr. McCade, I’ll assist, if you’re willing to perform the surgery.”
Finn nodded at Dr. Brown and the man followed the nurses through the operating room doors. Finn stopped just outside of the OR, knowing they didn’t have time to waste. He reached out and pulled Cade’s shirt up to look at the wound. “I’ll perform the surgery if you agree to have this taken care of, right now. Not to mention the head wound from Eric’s car taking a go at you. Go back to where we came in, tell an ER nurse that I sent you back there to find Dr. Nisha Patel to stitch you up when she’s free. Deal?”
Cade let out a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding and nodded. “Yeah, deal.”
Cade watched his brother hurry into the OR and just stood there, staring at the door for several minutes before he reluctantly went back the way he’d come. He passed an ER nurse on his way through. “Dr. McCade asked me to
head back this way to get a Dr. Patel to stitch me up when she was free. Is she here now?”
The nurse looked up at him startled and just stared. Cade’s brow rose and he prompted again, “Dr. Patel?”
The nurse nodded her head. “Uh, yep. Yes. She’s….” She looked around the ER in search of the doctor and then pointed to a woman across the room. She was dressed in a bright purple surgical cap and black scrubs with bright purple skulls on them, covered with the typical white doctor’s coat. She was a beautiful woman, tiny, and from what he could tell, without a scrap of makeup. She was standing at one of the desks, looking at a patient’s chart. He thanked the nurse and walked her way. “Excuse me, Dr. Patel?”
Dr. Patel looked up and then up some more. “Good god, how many of you are there?”
“Pardon me?”
“McCades. How many McCades are there?”
He gave her a half-hearted smile. “Several.”
She raised an eyebrow and looked him up and down. She must have noticed the hole in his bloody shirt, because she set the chart aside, lifted his shirt, dropped it again and straightened, her eyes popping open wide. “Shot?”
“Yes, Doctor. Finn told me to come see you and get fixed up.”
“He did, did he?”
“Yeah. My partner was brought in, and is in surgery. I need to get stitched up and get back to him. I also got hit by a car earlier and was tossed ass over end, hit my head and then ended up on the pavement.”
She glanced at him, a look of shocked amusement on her face. “So, you were hit by a car, where your head got injured, flew through the air and landed on the street. Then you were in some kind of fight, from the look of those swollen bloody knuckles, and to cap it all off, you were shot. Did I miss anything?”
Cade mentally ran the events of the day through his head and then shook it. “Nope. I think that covers it.”
She raised a brow at him, realizing he was seriously answering the question she had posed half as a joke and then shook her head. “And you’re still standing.”
