Chapter 11 #2
Dane lifted his hands in surrender. “No, don't shoot, please. I'll tell you everything you need to know.”
“You told us plenty,” Peyton said. He tightened his grip, sliding his finger down to the trigger.
“Peyton, wait.” Sebastian's voice was far away and garbled, like he was underwater.
Peyton shook his head. No. He couldn't let Sebastian take a life. And he couldn't let them get away. This man had targeted Sebastian on multiple occasions. Had come here with the intention of putting him six feet under. And they had tried to take Will from him.
There would be no surrender. Not today.
Peyton fired two rounds into his chest. Dane's eyes widened, and he jerked backwards. Peyton fired again, hitting him square in the forehead as he went down.
Moving targets were always easier.
“Put it down,” Peyton said quietly, turning away from the bodies. He emptied the magazine one-handed and dropped both on the ground.
“What?”
“The gun. Carefully. Point it away from yourself.” He waited until Sebastian did what he asked, his eyes a little wide, before he said, “I need you to help me put my shoulder back in.”
Sebastian's mouth dropped open, what little colour was left in his face draining. “I'm sorry, did you just say—”
“It's fine,” Peyton interrupted. “Just do as I say, and you'll do fine.” The ache was dull, but it was the tingling up and down his arm that bothered Peyton more. The certainty that it would shift all the way out if he tried to do anything with it was worse.
“I need you to hold my forearm, okay?”
Sebastian nodded. His hands were trembling when he cupped Peyton’s elbow in one hand and the underside of his forearm in the other, but his grip was firm.
Peyton forced himself to exhale slowly. “Okay,” he said. “So now you're going to turn my arm out, away from my body. Keep the elbow in tight. Go slow, and if I tell you to stop, just give me a minute?”
“I would have flunked medical school,” Sebastian said, his nose wrinkling slightly, but his hands were a bit steadier as he started rotating Peyton’s arm outwards. “My sister's a nurse, and I have no fucking idea how she does this kind of stuff every day.”
“The real heroes,” Peyton agreed shakily. He steadied himself for the next breath. “When it gets to thirty or forty degrees, it should slide back into place.”
“That's going to hurt, right?” Sebastian's thumb brushed against the inside of Peyton’s wrist; the sensation was mostly numb but the sentiment was clear.
“It'll feel better pretty much as soon as it's back in,” Peyton said.
That's what Felix had told him during their field-medic training anyway.
And what Peyton had told Aidan that time Felix had popped his shoulder back in, though he hadn't been sure he wasn't lying out of his ass. Aidan had deserved it.
He willed the tension in his body away as the angle hit twenty degrees. Sebastian's thumb brushed across the inside of his wrist again as he kept turning Peyton’s arm out.
“Almost there,” Peyton said.
Sebastian bit his bottom lip as he neared the thirty-degree angle. “Are you–”
“Keep going, please.” Peyton breathed out slowly. “Just a bit more.”
The relief when it popped back into place was instant, like a flood of cool water down Peyton’s entire right side. He exhaled and smiled at Sebastian, who was still holding onto his arm, pale and wide-eyed.
“Thank you,” he murmured. “We need to call Quinn. Tell him what happened.”
Sebastian visibly swallowed. “And what do we tell him?”
“The truth.”
“Peyton—”
“The truth,” Peyton repeated firmly.
“Oh, that won't be necessary,” a voice behind them drawled.
Sebastian blinked at the man in the doorway. “Hunter?” What the hell was he doing here?
Peyton moved, bending to pick up the gun that Sebastian had put down. Sebastian grabbed his good arm, squeezing gently.
“It's fine, I know him.”
“We're friendlies,” Hunter said. “And we're unarmed.”
“I wouldn't go that far,” Sebastian muttered.
“Bullshit,” Peyton said. “If you're unarmed, I'm a goddamn alien.”
Hunter smiled, a predatory, dangerous thing. “Maybe you are.”
Peyton's upper lip curled into a sneer. “Maybe I'm not.”
“A man needs some form of protection.”
“Try anything and I'll fucking kill you,” Peyton said, his voice wavering.
It wasn't a waver of weariness but one that set Sebastian's teeth on edge and the hairs on the back of his neck on end.
Peyton was practically vibrating, something underneath that matched Hunter in a way Sebastian couldn't quite put his finger on.
“Of that, I have no doubt. But we want the same thing.”
“And what is that?”
Sebastian put a reassuring hand on Peyton's good shoulder, hoping that the pain wasn't a two-for-one deal; he had no idea how dislocated shoulders worked, even partial ones. But he knew that Hunter wouldn't hurt him. There was no gain in him hurting Sebastian. He was of far more value on his side.
Hunter raised an eyebrow. “Sebastian, breathing, of course.”
“How do you know him?”
“We work together.”
“You're not a lawyer. Try again,” Peyton said.
“No,” Hunter agreed. “But that doesn't change the fact that we work together.”
“Wait,” Sebastian said. “We? Who's we?”
Three men and a woman came in behind Hunter, bracketing him on both sides.
One of them Sebastian recognised as Warren, the man he'd kept out of jail and the one who seemed to have been the catalyst for all of this bullshit. Dane and Errol had thought that Warren had told him something. What they thought he’d known he had no idea.
He would likely never know; it wasn’t like he could ask them now.
“This is Moira, Six, Jericho, and Greer.” Hunter gestured to each one.
“Jericho,” Sebastian said flatly. “Fucking knew Warren wasn't your real name. Can't say your real one is any better.”
“Well, that hurts,” Jericho said.
“He was working a case undercover for me,” Hunter said. “I should have known that you would find a way to put a target on your back.”
“This is not my doing,” Sebastian said. “You put the target there, not me.”
“An unfortunate mess that we would have cleaned up if your saviour here hadn't done it for us.”
“An 'unfortunate mess,’” Peyton said. “That's what you call it?”
“In my line of work? I call it a Tuesday,” Hunter said.
Jericho walked past Hunter, the backs of their hands brushing. He knelt beside Dane's body and whistled. “Damn, that's beautiful.”
“Try not to blow your load,” Greer muttered. He unrolled the black bag he'd been holding and dumped it next to Dane's body.
“No promises,” Jericho said.
“Jesus Christ,” Sebastian said. What the hell was wrong with these people? “I cannot believe there's more than one of you.”
“No man is an island,” Hunter said. “Not even you, Sebastian.”
“On three,” Jericho said, his hands slipping under Dane's shoulders.
“Use your knees,” Hunter said.
“Hey, Mr OH you fought back. They got away.”
“You're a fucking idiot if you think they'll accept that.”