Chapter 10
DANGEROUS TO MY HEART…OR JUST MY LADY BITS?
brYS
Jakob is in motion instantly, bounding to the pile of his clothes and dressing so fast it defies belief. I'm not far behind, and by the time I'm shoving my feet into my boots, Jakob has the machine gun slung across his chest, handing me a bag laden with clothes and rattling cans of soda.
My heart is in my throat as I follow Jakob out of the room less than ninety seconds after the first sound of squealing brakes and skidding tires. We beeline for the stairs, but Jakob pauses just inside the stairwell, listening—male voices.
"De ja vu," I whisper. "This feels all too familiar."
Jakob doesn't answer—he's hesitating. The elevator worked last time, sort of. But will it work a second time?
"Come. I have an idea. I don't like it, but I don't see an alternative.
" He exits the stairwell and jogs to the tiny alcove containing the ubiquitous ice machine.
He presses me into the corner and gives me his back, crouching just out of sight, the gun held awkwardly across his middle at a diagonal angle.
We wait.
"What's the plan?" I ask, hissing.
“Wait till they come out of the stairwell and shoot them, then run like hell."
"Oh."
The sound of a crashbar echoes through the hallway. Jakob peeks out, sinks back. Waits. Leans forward to peek again. "Four of them. Cover your ears."
I huddle back as deep into the corner as I can get, shrink into as small a ball as possible, and clap my hands over my ears.
And even then, the noise of the firearm in the small space is beyond deafening.
CRACKCRACKCRACK!—CRACKCRACKCRACK] Time slows.
The rifle slams against Jakob's shoulder in slow motion, and I can see his finger squeeze and retract with each burst. Something craters the wall and rips a chunk out of the doorframe above Jakob's head, and then he's throwing himself backward inside the tiny alcove as a hail of bullets pepper the air where he'd been an instant before.
He recovers, catches his breath—I don't think I was supposed to notice the way he releases his death grip on the barrel and shakes his hand, or that his hand is trembling.
He exhales forcefully, re-grips the barrel, and then leans out and fires off a burst, ducks in, and pauses as rounds thud into the floor and doorframe.
The next time he leans out and fires off a burst, he lets out a triumphant grunt.
"Last one. Come on, you ugly fuck." It's muttered, more to himself than to me.
He leans against the inside of the splintered frame, breathing deeply and slowly.
Licks his lips. Shakes out his trigger hand, wiggles a finger in his ear, wincing.
He twists out and fires a burst, only for his rifle to buck up abruptly, his last round going wild as he scrabbles back in with a yelp, one hand clapped to the side of his neck.
"Jakob!" I cry, leaving my corner and scrambling over to him.
"I'm fine," he snarls, glancing at his hand, which comes away painted red.
My medical expertise is limited to what one can learn from watching 9-1-1, Chicago Med, and The Pitt, but it looks to me like the round merely creased the outside of his neck.
The abrupt cessation of gunfire leaves a deafening silence in its wake.
Jakob frowns thoughtfully into the unexpected quiet, peeks out cautiously, one hand still pressed to his neck. "Huh. I guess I got him." He sounds surprised. "Come on. We need to get out of here fast before the cops or more of Pugli's thugs find us."
He rolls smoothly to his feet, glances at his hand—his neck is still bleeding, but a trickle rather than a flood. I follow hard on his heels, trying not to look at the four dead bodies.
Turns out I can't not look. And they're not all dead.
One, at least, is still alive, with red holes in his chest pumping blood everywhere.
His breath whistles—my idiot brain helpfully supplies a memory of an episode of Chicago Med where the heroes deal with a similar wound.
Too bad I don't want to help this man stay alive, even if I had the time or supplies, and I’m also quite well aware that watching medical shows on TV does not make me a doctor any more than an actor playing a doctor is one.
His eyes are frightened as he glances up at me, gasping past the whistle.
I step over him.
The next body my eyes land on is dead, his throat a red ruin. My stomach revolts; again, seeing gore on TV doesn't prepare you for the grisly reality of it right there in front of you, seeing a real human with his eyes open and vacant, blood everywhere.
The third body is alive as well, but barely.
He's writhing in agony, clutching his belly with one hand and his thigh with the other.
A sickening, nauseating stench of fecal matter fills the air around him—pierced intestines, I would guess.
But it's his thigh wound that's his death—the pool of blood under him is massive and spreading quickly.
And even as I watch, his thrashing slows, and his hands fall away; his leg twitches one last time, and then he goes still, and his eyes stare sightlessly at nothing.
The last one is the worst. He's slumped against the door frame, the door partly closed on him, stuck against his legs. His head lolls to one side. His brain paints the wall, the floor, the carpet…
I lurch over him into the stairwell and promptly vomit onto the landing.
Strong hands guide me down the stairs, but I barely see anything.
White spots dance in my vision, occlude the edges.
My chest is caught in a visegrip, and I can't pull in a breath.
I stumble, trip on a stair. Gravity vanishes for a moment, and then I find my feet and manage to half-walk, half-stumble down the stairs.
Jakob hip-checks the crashbar of the exit and hustles me through, an arm around my shoulders.
Instead of the Mercedes, however, he lifts me bodily into the front passenger seat of the idling black Ford Explorer the attackers drove, parked at an angle near the side exit, all four doors hanging open.
Tossing the rifle into the back seat, he takes the bag of supplies from me, and it joins the gun on the back seat.
I expect him to take off like a bat out of hell, but he does the opposite, exiting the parking lot at a sedate, unremarkable pace. A line of squad cars with howling sirens and flashing lights streams past us on the main road, and then we're back on the freeway.
For a minute or two, silence hangs between us. I cast a look at Jakob; his neck is still seeping. "You're still bleeding."
He juts his chin in the direction of the glove box. "Is there a first aid kit in there?"
“WIth the stuff from Target in the back seat. One sec while I grab it.”
I twist in the seat and crawl—supremely awkwardly, and hyperaware of the enormous target that is my giant ass—between the seats to the back row, and then peek into the trunk. "Got it!" I snag the red plastic case with the white cross on it and crawl back to the front seat.
Opening the case, I rummage through it, find what I need to clean the area, rinse the wound, apply some Neosporin for good measure, and then tape a bandage over it.
"Thank you," Jakob murmurs. A glance at me, then. "Are you alright?"
I shrug. "I'm not the one who got shot."
Jakob waves a hand. "It's scratch. Barely counts."
"It counts."
"Fine, it counts," he says, "but I'm not talking about that. I'm talking about your anxiety attack back there. Are you alright?"
I let out a shaky breath. "Yeah. I mean, no, but yeah."
He snorts. "That clarifies things."
"I thought you weren't sarcastic?"
"You're rubbing off on me."
I cackle. "I think it's the other way around. You rubbed off in me."
His glare is so intense that I realize he doesn't appreciate my joke at all. "Brys."
"Yes, Jakob?" I keep my voice quiet, soft.
He shifts in his seat uncomfortably. "Don't."
I hold up both hands, palms facing away. "Okay."
“You haven't answered my question."
I sigh. "Yes, I am alright. Shaken up, scared, and I'll definitely have bad dreams about all that at some point, but I'm okay.
I'm a New Yorker—I've seen dead bodies before.
Just…not like that. Not that close. And…
I…I've never watched anyone's last breath like that.
" I shudder. "The brains on the wall. Ugh. " I shudder.
This silence possesses a razor-sharp tension, a fraught intensity radiating from Jakob. "It isn't a pretty sight, is it?"
I peer at him as he navigates around a slow-moving semi.
His face is carved from granite, the sharp angle of his jaw shadowed with thick dark stubble.
His glittering dark eyes are fixed on the road ahead, but seem to see more than the blacktop and white and yellow lines.
His brow is furrowed, jaw pulsing and ticking.
"Hey." I touch his shoulder. "What's wrong, Jakob?"
He shakes his head. "Nothing. I'm fine."
I snort. "I'm a woman, Jakob. You think I don't recognize a fake 'I'm fine' when I hear one?"
His expression softens a hint—a subtle expression of amusement, or perhaps merely recognition of my attempt at humor. "It's…" Another shake of head, a sigh. "Nothing."
"Jakob."
"Brys." He glares straight ahead, anger clouding his features. Anger? Pain, more likely, because as my therapist tells me, anger is merely a byproduct of pain. It's a secondary emotion, growing out of unexpressed pain.
"That isn't the first time you've seen brains splattered on a wall, is it?" I'm tossing out a guess.
"No." His growled response is a deep rumble, quiet and heavy with old pain.
"Tell me about it?"
The lines of decades-old agony carved into his face deepen. He's silent for several miles, but I see his mind working, considering.
"My father." His voice is sepulchral and gritty, gravel rattling at the bottom of a deep well. "I was sixteen."