CHAPTER 34 WHAT COMES NEXT
Clint crashed to his knees beside Cochise, frantically removing the Egyptian’s heavy jacket.
Cole helped him, pulling the coat out of the way as soon as it slipped off the big man’s muscular arms. He wore a black, long-sleeve shirt beneath the jacket.
Clint hurriedly checked the entrance wound, then his pulse, finally sinking back on his heels as he rubbed his mouth.
“He… He isn’t bleeding,” Cole stammered. “Is… Is that good or bad?”
The cowboy released a long, stiff breath.
“It’s good.” He tugged up the rear hem of the Egyptian’s shirt to reveal the black ballistic vest underneath.
Pulling it higher up his back, Cole’s eyes widened at the sight of the bullet embedded in the vest, stopped cold before it could puncture Cochise’s body.
“Fuck…” Cole fell back on his butt and covered his face with both hands, shaking badly.
“I thought…” Tears thickened his voice as his entire body strained with emotion.
“I-I heard the gunshot… and he went down… I thought…” His fingers slid into his hair and squeezed as his chest tightened with sobs.
“He saved my life. I’d be dead if he hadn’t…
” Cole slowly lowered his hands, tears running down his face. “Is he going to be okay?”
Clint nodded, clearing his throat. He blinked back tears of his own. “It just knocked him out cold.”
Cole looked at the cowboy’s shoulder. “You’re bleeding. Aren’t you wearing…?”
“Yeah, I am,” Clint rasped. “I got hit under the strap.” He sniffed, cleared his throat again, and folded Cochise’s jacket, placing it under the Egyptian’s head. The lingering terror in his jade eyes spoke volumes of his love for the man.
“What’re we going to do with them?” Cole looked at the two killers.
Clint turned deadly eyes on the two men. “Your call,” he spoke low, chilling. “Turn them over to the authorities, or…” He looked at Cole with a gritty stare.
“I want them gone,” Cole said thickly, vengeance grating his voice. “I want them fucking dead— so dead they can never come back and fuck with my family again.”
Clint nodded, approval glinting in his eyes.
He glanced at his downed brother, then turned toward the deputy, hellfire igniting behind his bloodshot eyes.
The killer lay sprawled in an expanding lake of crimson, arterial blood pulsing from his thigh in diminishing spurts, a slower trickle oozing from the ragged tear at his neck.
“We need to stop his bleeding. I want him fucking alive for what comes next.”
Clint stalked over, boots leaving bloody heel-prints across the concrete.
He seized the deputy's shirt—a cheap polyester blend that separated with a sound like tearing flesh—and shredded it into strips with hands that trembled with barely contained rage.
His fingers worked with mechanical precision as he cinched a makeshift tourniquet above the thigh wound, tightening it until the deputy's leg twitched involuntarily.
The man stared up through eyes like stagnant ponds, devoid of fear or remorse.
Clint's jaw clenched so hard that a muscle jumped beneath his stubbled cheek; one direct look, and his control would snap like an overtightened wire.
He wadded another strip against the neck wound, where it immediately bloomed scarlet, and secured it with a knot that made the deputy's head jerk back.
Cole crouched beside the Mangler with effort; his arm curled around his cracked ribs. The Mangler’s chest heaved with wet, uneven breaths. Blood bubbled at the corners of his mouth with each exhale, and a spiderweb of burst vessels had turned one eye completely red.
“I’m going to need some help,” Clint said, wiping his bloody palms down his jeans, leaving dark streaks like war paint.
He dug out his phone and checked for a signal.
“We brought radios because we didn’t know if phones would work in here.
” His brow cinched as he got a signal and made a call.
“It’s me,” he said. “I need some help.” He explained the situation and relayed the location.
“Cochise is out, but his pulse is strong,” reassuring the person on the other end of the call. “He’ll be all right.”
“Who was that?” Cole asked when the call ended.
“Cruz.” Clint put his phone away and returned to the Egyptian, double-checking his pulse. “When he and Sanchez get here, and we move these fuckers out of the factory, I’ll call Detective Jordan.”
“Detective Jordan?”
Clint nodded. “There are some kids in the basement.”
“You found more kids?” Cole asked when the call ended, bile scorching the back of his throat like battery acid. His stomach clenched into a fist of revulsion. “In the basement?”
Clint nodded, the motion slow and mechanical, as if his neck had rusted at the joints. “Three boys. Three live boys.” He exhaled a ragged breath that seemed to deflate his entire frame. “One dead.”
“Jesus,” Cole whispered.
“And…” Clint started to add more, then shook his head. “They’ll need medical attention. And so will you.”
Cole didn’t argue as each breath felt like a knife stabbing into his chest.
When Clint walked over to the Mangler to move him, Cole rose to his feet, wincing in pain.
“I can do it myself,” Clint said, despite his bleeding shoulder.
“No,” Cole exhaled and shook his head. “I can manage. I’ll help.”
Clint hesitated for a moment, then nodded. He seized the Mangler's ankles while Cole gripped beneath his armpits, both men grunting as they half-dragged, half-carried the killer's deadweight across the blood-slicked concrete. Cole’s ribs screamed, but he bit back the pain, pushing through.
The Mangler's head lolled at an unnatural angle, vertebrae grinding audibly with each step.
They propped him against the wall, and Clint wrenched his shattered arm behind his back.
Bone fragments shifted beneath the skin like broken glass in a sack, and the Mangler's scream echoed off the walls.
His face had become a topographical map of trauma: left cheekbone caved inward, right eye swollen shut beneath a purple-black hematoma, teeth visible through a split in his cheek where his face had connected with the brick wall under tremendous force.
A thin ribbon of bloody drool hung from his chin, swinging in pendulous arcs as he struggled to hold his head upright.
Clint seized the Mangler's jaw between thumb and forefinger, fingernails digging into the bruised, bloody flesh.
His face hovered inches away, close enough for the killer to smell the metallic tang of vengeance on his breath.
“You'd best be fucking glad you didn’t kill my brother,” he whispered, each syllable dripping with venom.
“You don't want him waiting for you on the other side of that veil.” He leaned closer still, a muscle in his left cheek twitching arrhythmically.
“I can only kill you once... but he would have flayed your soul layer by fucking layer for eternity .”
Cole approached Byrne with an unsteady gate, partially hunched.
The deputy lay sprawled in a congealing puddle of his own fluids, his skin the color of dirty chalk against the crimson-streaked concrete.
His chest rose and fell in shallow, uneven bursts, each breath whistling through teeth stained pink with blood.
He stared at Cole through half-lidded eyes—defiant despite the glassy sheen of shock—tears of pain cutting clean tracks down his dirt-and-blood-spattered cheeks.
Cole reached down, gasping as his ribs ground together, and yanked the braided leather bracelet off Byrne's wrist with enough force to scrape skin.
Byrne's lips peeled back in a grotesque approximation of a smile.
His chuckle emerged as a wet, rattling sound like loose gravel, phlegmy and wet.
“ If you kill me...” Each word emerged between labored gasps, bubbles of pink froth forming at the corners of his mouth. “… you're never gonna find... Ezra.”
Cole straightened slowly, the blood-soaked bracelet dangling from his fingers like some primitive talisman.
The leather was worn smooth in places, darkened by years of skin oils before being baptized in Byrne's blood.
“Ezra's dead,” he whispered, voice cracking along with his heart. “You're a liar.”
“Too bad... for Ezra, then...” Byrne's eyes gleamed with malicious triumph despite the gray pallor creeping across his features.
“That you don't... believe me.” His chuckle transformed into a violent coughing fit that convulsed his entire body, spraying a fine mist of bloody spittle that caught the pale light of dawn like macabre glitter.
Clint joined Cole as they hauled Byrne's limp form over to the wall.
The deputy's head bounced against the threshold with a hollow thunk that neither man acknowledged as they propped him against the wall beside Daniel, whose labored breathing filled the cramped space, where he was gagged and his hands and feet bound up tight.
Leaning against the cold brick wall, Cole hugged his ribcage, his breathing irregular as beads of cold sweat sprouted across his brow.
“You okay?” Clint asked.
Cole nodded, took a deep, painful breath, and straightened away from the wall. “I’ll make it.”
“Cruz?” Gabe emerged from a dark alcove outside the factory, his shirt stiff with dried blood that cracked like paint with each labored movement. The sudden appearance startled the two gangsters, who instinctively reached for their waistbands.
“Gabe?” Cruz's face shifted from alert caution to shocked recognition. His eyes widened as he examined the array of bruises and cuts on Gabe's face. “What the fuck happened to you?”
“It's a long story,” Gabe mumbled, wincing as he pressed his palm against the wound in his side. Blood seeped between his fingers, warm and sticky. “What're you doing here?”
“Clint called, said he needed our help.”
Fear gripped Gabe's chest like an icy fist; the echoes of multiple gunshots still rang in his ears. “Did he take down the killers?”
“Yeah,” Cruz said.
“Why does he need your help? I would’ve thought him and Cochise could handle it.”
Cruz and Sanchez exchanged a look that unnerved Gabe. “Cochise was shot.”
“ What?”
“He was knocked out,” Cruz added quickly. “But he’ll be all right. He and Clint were wearing protective vests.”
“Fuck.” Gabe rubbed his forehead. “Thank God.”
Cruz took out his phone and called Clint. “We’re here. How the hell do we find you in that place?” He listened as the cowboy provided directions through the maze of corroded metal. “We’re on our way.” He tucked the phone away.
The two kids crept from the shadowed alcove, holding each other for warmth.
“Shit,” Cruz breathed.
“I need to get them to the hospital,” Gabe said.
Cruz dug out his car keys and handed them to Gabe. “Take them. Go. We’ll catch a ride with Clint.” He nodded at the kids with deep concern. “Get them out of here.”
“It's dark as a tomb in there,” Gabe said when the two men started for the factory entrance. “You'll need flashlights.”
Sanchez sprinted to their car, returning with a heavy tactical flashlight whose beam cut through the pre-dawn gloom like a laser. Without another word, the two men disappeared into the depths of the factory, their footsteps echoing on the concrete before being swallowed by darkness.