Chapter 3 Aftermath
Chapter three
Aftermath
“Jon!” Glass crunched under Jenna’s sneakers as she spun around and bolted back out the way she’d come.
She didn’t understand what was happening.
But someone needed an ambulance, badly from the sounds of it, and she didn’t think she would be able to stomach ever so much as looking at that parking lot again if Jon died out there.
She didn’t even want to think of him being hurt.
Not for her. Not when he’d barely gotten home.
Hell, she had no idea how long he was planning on being home, let alone what ‘home’ truly was for him anymore. The parking lot of a bakery he’d never known was no place for him to die.
“Jon!”
Drew grabbed her roughly by the arm and yanked her backward before she had cleared the cruisers. “Stop it, Jenna! Just get your ass inside, this is no place for you!”
Jenna twisted, intending to struggle until she was free of his hold, and her gaze snagged on the first body.
Rather, on a portion of it, as most of the form was obscured beneath the car.
But she could see legs from the knees down and black shoes—not the boots Jon had been wearing—and a growing pool of blood.
Her stomach heaved and she ripped her gaze away, searching.
“We’ve got an ambulance about ten minutes out,” Drew’s partner said. He wasn’t speaking to her. He wasn’t speaking to Drew. “Another one will follow.”
Drew tightened his grip as Jenna swiveled to follow the sound of the words. “Fucking stop it, Hodge,” he snarled. “You’re in the way.”
She would have glared at the asshole, but his partner raced into view.
The man paused and cut them a perplexed look, then said, “He said he needs those apron straps.”
“The fuck?” Drew said.
Jenna wrenched herself free. “Be right back!” She yelled it as loudly as she could, lest Drew think she was speaking to him, and darted back inside. “Eric! Where are those extra straps?”
Shuffling preceded Steph poking her head around the display. “Oh my god, Ms. Hodge, that was—”
“Not now, Steph,” Jenna snapped.
“Here,” Eric said, standing and hauling the tub from earlier onto the counter. “I hadn’t put them away yet.” He was far too pale, but was obviously trying to hold it together.
Jenna sifted through the assorted items until she found the fabric she needed.
“Thanks. I’m sorry. Just close up as best you can and go home for today, today’s a shit show.
” She couldn’t offer more than that until she knew more.
Like whether or not she might be on the hook for providing a lifetime of therapy because they’d been on the clock when a bunch of people were gunned down at their place of work. Was that on her somehow?
What even was going on?
She couldn’t let herself question it. She couldn’t let herself linger on, or get emotional over, the sight of the two shot-out windows. She just ran straight back outside and did her best to keep out of Drew’s reach.
He still shouted at her.
But this time, she spotted him. Them. Both Marines, on the ground, and too much blood around them.
Her heart threatened to shatter before her mind accepted that it wasn’t Jon doing the bleeding, at least not the worst of it.
That seemed to be his friend, the one who knew her name and whose name she hadn’t retained.
“I got the straps,” she exclaimed with a gasp, dropping to her knees beside Jon’s friend’s shoulder.
Up close, she could see more clearly. The man had taken a bad blow to his leg.
She couldn’t tell what kind of blow, it looked worse than what she imagined a bullet wound should look like, but it also wasn’t crushed like a pancake the way it might have been if he’d been run over.
She also wasn’t an expert on anything remotely wound-or-weapon oriented.
He was bleeding, his flesh was shredded, his pants were ruined, and if she looked too closely, she might be ill. The latter being fairly irrelevant.
Jon took them from her with bloodied fingers. “Thanks.”
His friend rolled his head to the side. “Fucking pathetic, right?” He sucked in a sharp breath as Jon swiftly tied a tourniquet around his thigh. “Seventeen years on active duty”—he pushed out a hard breath—“one month discharged, and I lose a firefight to a … whatever the fuck that was.”
“Neither of us were prepared for that,” Jon said, his voice tight.
“We thought we were dealing with a pair of small-time crooks, not a pair of assholes connected to something bigger, with fuckers who come shooting up businesses and law enforcement in broad daylight. Let alone that they’d have fucking claws. ”
Jenna paled. “Claws?” Bigger?
“Here,” Drew’s partner said, suddenly leaning over them. “I found gauze. It’s better than letting him bleed.”
Jon accepted the gauze and set to work applying it over his friend’s leg.
His friend grunted low. “That’s fair. I need a different mind-set for that kind o’ shit. Still. Embarrassing. Fuck, man, I forgot how much you suck at this.”
“Shut up,” Jon returned. “Your field dressing skills aren’t any better.”
Jenna averted her gaze, studying Jon’s profile instead. “I’m so sorry. I feel so guilty.”
“This isn’t your fault, Jen,” Jon said.
His friend managed a half-laugh. “He’s right. We’re Marines. This is practically our happy place.”
She opened her mouth to tell him how absurd that was, but all that came out was a startled yelp of pain when someone—Drew—grabbed hold of the back of her collar and yanked, forcing her shirt into her throat and briefly choking her before she managed to scramble to her feet.
“I swear to fuck, Hodge, I told you to stay back.” Drew gave her a hard shove as he stepped forward. “You’re just in the goddamn w—”
Jon had him on his ass, offending arm stretched up and twisted sideways in a firm grip, one boot planted on Drew’s chest, before Jenna could do more than blink.
“I am not in the goddamn mood, Parker. My buddy would be losing that leg if he were anyone else. And for the record, if you hadn’t taken the time to be a piece of shit when you got here, those two dead assholes might still be breathing and actually useful right now.
But I imagine you don’t care about that, just like you didn’t care to do anything other than duck for fucking cover when the shooting started. ”
Drew made a noise like he wanted to argue, or protest.
Jon moved his arm in a way that must have hurt, because Drew’s face lost most of its color.
Jon didn’t blink. “Rethink the way you treat civilians or I will throw my whole and considerable weight into ruining every aspect of your life, Deputy.” He released Drew and took a step back, leaving the deputy on the asphalt, gasping for breath.
“Heh,” Jon’s friend said. “Fucking shit-brick.”
Drew’s partner cleared his throat. “Johnson, was it?”
Jon cut him a hard look. “I can see you thinking something that’ll piss me off. This isn’t the time.” He jerked his chin in the direction of the cruisers, and the shot-up storefront. “Go be a fucking cop.”
Jenna stayed frozen in place until the other deputy took the less-than-subtle hint.
Then, ignoring Drew who hadn’t yet done more than roll to his side, she moved closer to Jon and gingerly reached out for his arm.
“You’re … you’re hurt, too.” She hadn’t noticed right away.
His hands were fairly covered in blood, which she was pretty sure wasn’t his, but the spot on his torso was darker and spreading.
Jon glanced down at himself briefly, then caught her seeking fingers in a loose grip. “It’s a graze. I’m fine. You should find somewhere to sit and catch your breath.” He released her just as quickly and resettled at his friend’s side.
“This is gonna kill my reputation.”
Jon let out a breath. “Focus, dipshit. Did you see what got you, exactly?”
Jenna moved forward and knelt beside them again. It might have been intrusive, but, dammit, if her store was in any way being targeted then she needed to know. “Are you serious about the claw thing? That’s not, like, some military macho-guy version of a fisherman’s tale?”
Jon raised a brow at her.
His friend barked out a laugh that ended in a groan. “Shit, that was good. Jon, she has a better sense of humor than you.”
Jenna felt her face burn. “I wasn’t making a joke!”
“We tell plenty of tales,” Jon said while his friend chuckled again. “But not about this shit. The tall tales come later when we’re trying to one-up each other.”
Jenna rolled her eyes. “That makes so much sense.” But that also meant the claw thing might be real. She looked again at Jon, and another thing he’d said replayed in her mind.
“My buddy would be losing that leg if he were anyone else.”
Was Jon’s friend like him, then? Did he have some kind of random, amazing superpower?
In all her life, she’d never knowingly met anyone else with anything like that.
But she didn’t live under a rock. She had access to the internet, and the internet had blown up in a big way on the subject of what defined a human, and whether or not those in so-called questionable categories had rights or were little more than animals in humanoid form.
All of which she thought was asinine. Surely enough people had known that ‘others’ existed for a long time.
But that was the world they lived in, she supposed.
Jon’s friend groaned as he pushed to his elbows, as if he disliked being on his back, and said, “Bastard didn’t fully shift, so I can’t be too specific. But feline, for fucking sure.”
Feline. Cat. He was saying some kind of cat person—no, shifter—some kind of cat-shifter had delivered the wound to his leg.
Jenna tried not to look directly at it. Jon had covered the worst of it, and the bleeding did seem to have either stopped or notably slowed, it by no means looked good. Someone with the ability to do that had come and attacked her bakery.