Chapter 22 #2
Drifter and I looked up from where we’d been triaging him and I gave him a weak smile. “Right.”
“Ungrateful bastard. You want to do the work yourself?” Drifter asked. “I could just hand you my bag, I have better shit to do.”
“Just get it done,” Relay conceded.
The others were standing back, letting us do our jobs, and watching our backs. I had no idea if Carrick’s men were still out there, but if they were OD, Merc, Hype, and Code weren’t going to let them surprise us.
“You seem to know a lot about this,” I said to Relay as I handed over a pair of trauma shears so that Drifter could cut away Relay’s jeans. I knew Drifter had been a field medic, so I wasn’t at all surprised about his knowledge.
“I was a PJ.”
Looking up from where Drifter was cutting away the blood soaked material, I frowned. “A…”
“A Pararescueman Jumper,” Hype told me.
As if that made any more sense to me than PJ. I needed to start looking up these military terms.
“Their primary mission is to rescue and provide medical treatment to personnel in combat or isolated areas,” OD told me, squatting down next to me and staring at the wound Drifter was uncovering.
“Fuckers enter some of the most dangerous situations to save the lives of other military operatives,” Merc said, his voice was low and he was facing away from us, eyes trained on the darkness beyond the meager lights in the warehouse.
Wow. I looked at Relay with appreciation. “So you pretty much could fix this yourself.”
“He could,” Drifter said, “but patching people up is my job now.”
“You’re doing a shit job,” Relay muttered. He had his head tilted back and his eyes were closed, as though he was going to take a little nap in the middle of this.
“Everyone’s a fucking critic,” Drifter grumbled. “This doesn’t look too bad. Apparently you’re just a bleeder.”
“Fuck off.”
“Let’s use the strips,” I suggested, handing over a sterile cloth so he could wipe away some of the blood.
“Yeah. I’ll sew him up once we get him back to the compound.”
My eyebrows rose. “Shouldn’t we take him to the hospital?”
“No hospitals,” Relay snapped.
“No,” both OD and Drifter said in unison.
I looked between the three of them. “Why not?”
“Too many questions,” OD replied. “If we came in for every scrape and bruise we couldn’t utilize the hospitals for the really urgent stuff.”
I considered a bullet going through a thigh pretty urgent, but no one here seemed to agree, so I closed my mouth and helped Drifter patch Relay up enough to get him out of here.
We’d agreed before leaving the clubhouse that we’d bring my bag of supplies, and that I would carry it, leaving Drifter free to ‘engage the threat’, his words, not mine.
“Let me know when he’s ready to transport,” OD told Drifter.
“We didn’t need to fucking stop to begin with,” Relay snapped. “I told you both that.”
“We’re not dragging you out of here bleeding everywhere,” OD told him, patient as ever with the grumpy man on the ground.
I realized then that I had no idea what OD had done in the military. I needed to ask him later. Now wasn’t the time.
Drifter snapped off a glove. “We can go. He’s stable and can move.”
“Merc can carry him,” Overdrive said with a malicious grin in Relay’s direction.
“Try it and see what happens,” Relay warned, baring his teeth at his brothers.
“Is The Collective still out there?” I asked.
“The guys back here with us are dead,” Relay answered.
“We’re not sure what’s waiting out front for us,” OD explained. “We need to take this slow and easy.”
Slow seemed to be their motto. Only they didn’t really move slow. They just moved fluidly. They flowed out the doors and around obstacles as though they were water cutting a path to the sea.
“Fuckers locked us in here,” Code said from ahead of us.
I had one of Relay’s arms around my shoulders. He wasn’t complaining that a woman was helping him walk. Probably because his brothers were busy making sure no one got the drop on us.
He was right. The lights were all off except the emergency lights that needed to remain on and the front doors weren’t opening. “This is a franchise,” I said in disgust. “They don’t even close for another three hours.”
“Can’t exactly have people shooting up your warehouse while customers shop,” OD said with an amused grin. “They must’ve shut it down right after we came through the doors.”
“Stupid fucking plan,” Hype said with a roll of his eyes.
“Why’s that?” Code asked.
Merc looked over at OD, who nodded, then lifted his gun and aimed at the glass doors. Three rounds had the doors shattering and raining shards all over the ground.
We stepped over them as a group, ignoring the wailing alarms, and walked away from the wreckage.
“Hey, grab some tape measures!” Drifter yelled.
“Seriously?” OD asked.
“They tried to kill us,” Merc said with a shrug. “They owe us.”
“And then grab some more, I need a few,” Relay barked between groans in each step.
“Oh for fuck sake.” OD grabbed the basket with the tape measures and took the whole thing with him as we moved. “Fucking priorities here.”
“What about cameras?” I asked.
“Don’t worry, we have friends who will take care of those,” OD told me.
“The bodies?” I pointed out.
“Ruck and the others are already on the way and will take care of those,” he answered.
He wrapped an arm around me as Code and Hype took over helping Relay hobble toward our vehicles. OD tucked me in close to his body. “You handled that well.”
I wasn’t really sure I had. He was probably right.
Despite being able to help with medical care, and they had more than enough of that thanks to Drifter and Relay, I was more of a liability than anything.
I hated to admit it, even to myself, but the minute bullets started flying I realized I couldn’t live with myself if something bad happened to these men because of me.
I already cared about them too much. I owed it to them to change that. To make myself not a liability.
We got into the SUVs and Code looked around. “Guess that answers that question.”
“What question?” I asked.
“Whether Carrick knows someone’s coming for him,” Code replied. “Wouldn’t have set a trap if he didn’t realize that something shady had happened to Rhino and Boscoe.”
“So what does this mean?” I asked, meeting OD’s gaze in the rear view mirror as he drove.
“It means that this has officially begun,” OD told me.
“No going back now,” Drifter added.
“Why the fuck would we want to?” Relay asked with a dark grin. “This is going to be fun.”
“You were shot,” I reminded him.
“Fucking memento of the occasion,” he told me. “Gotta mark it somehow.”
Shaking my head, I couldn’t help but smile. Relay was a little crazy, but I could see how he could grow on a person. They all were. These men were becoming my family and I really liked the idea of that.