Brazen Salvation (Brazen Boys #5)

Chapter 1

Clara

No amount of self-defense training prepares you for a gun pointed straight at you. No leg sweep or forearm block is going to do anything against a bullet.

Smith’s furious face halts my mind as he aims, rolls out of a grapple, then aims again. At me.

I freeze.

The one thing I’ve trained myself not to do—and it’s the only thing I can do. My instincts force my body to shut down while my brain goes into overdrive. This time, though, is different. This time, there’s nothing in my brain but earsplitting, silent screams while I wait for the inevitable.

Then, bare feet fall from the sky, followed by a mass of gray, a blond braid slumping across my face as the bang of the gun ricochets off the stone behind me. Jansen, my brave, sunshiny trouble, crumples into my arms, his smile a direct contrast to the wine-dark blood seeping from his chest.

“Jansen,” I mutter, his weight too much for me to hold as I crumble at the top of the stairs.

“Beautiful,” falls from his lips like a prayer. A prayer I’m not capable of answering.

Falk crouches beside me, the chaos in the courtyard barely registering, as I hold Jansen’s gaze, terrified that the moment he closes his eyes will be the last time I see their multifaceted green. There’s already blood. I don’t want his blood anywhere but inside him.

“Keep him awake,” Falk says, his hands jammed against Jansen’s chest, his top half bare, his face grim.

“Leave the boy.” The order comes from behind me, and I don’t need to turn to know that it’s Trips’ father. “Go deal with Smith.”

Falk meets my panicked gaze, his face grim but determined. He gives me a small nod, a meaningless message with the panic flooding my body, but I take his place, holding pressure against Jansen with Falk’s discarded shirt, shouting Jansen’s name as his eyelids flutter.

Weight in my pocket barely registers, and Falk leaves me with my lover’s blood on my hands and the express knowledge that Trips’ dad is going to let him bleed out on his front steps.

I glance at him, and he meets my eyes, his face saying what can’t be heard over the commotion in the drive.

You did this to yourself. This is the price you pay for trying to fight back.

Then a shot rings out near me, Trips’ dad ducking into the safety of the house. I can’t focus on him, though. I’m still chanting Jansen’s name, even as his eyes stay shut longer and longer.

Someone muscles close, and I panic as they go to lift Jansen from the steps, the scream that was locked in my head for what feels like an eternity forced from my lips.

“Clara, it’s me,” Trips growls, and I register first the gun in his hand before I follow its trajectory to a broad chest I recognize.

He scoops up Jansen once he sees I’m not going to fight him, and sprints for the SUV in the drive.

I dash after him, taking the driver’s seat as Trips hauls himself and Jansen into the back.

“Drive. I’ve got the key,” he shouts. Perched on the edge of the seat so I can reach the pedals, I take off down the drive, only moving the seat forward after I make it through the gate, the guard’s shocked face coming too late for him to keep us onsite.

“Take a left at the light!” he yells as I glance in the rearview mirror, only able to see Trips’ furious face as he uses his weight to keep as much of Jansen’s blood in his chest as possible.

“Your father will send him to jail.”

“Better jail than dead. I can’t risk another of you again. I can’t,” he bites back.

Forcing my brain to work, I come up with a terrible idea. One that Trips might hate me for. But one that also might keep Jansen alive and out of jail.

“Does your dad have a place nearby to take injured guards?”

“What the fuck, Clara? He’s been shot!”

“I know that!” I scream. “Answer my goddamn question.”

“There’s a medical supply stash I know about that isn’t too far away, but unless you’re secretly a surgeon, we’re going to the fucking hospital.”

I speed through the light he told me to turn at. “Tell me where to go,” I say, as my brain reminds me of the strange weight Falk dropped in my pocket. Sure enough, it’s a phone. I dial a number I’d forced myself to memorize before all this started, leaving streaks of blood on the screen.

“I swear to God, Clara.”

“Trust me. Please. I’m not going to let anything happen to him.” My voice cracks as I plead with the man in the back, and with a shake of his head, he barks out directions.

I put the phone on speaker. With the third ring, I’m ready to give in to the tears that are trying to take over. But a confused “Hello?” stalls my meltdown, and I could cry for an entirely different reason.

“Emma. I need you,” I say.

There’s an immediate rustling. “Where?”

Trips yells out the address, and I repeat it.

“I’m already on the Westside, close to there. What am I doing?” she asks. And I’ve never been so glad to have a friend like Emma.

“It’s Jansen. He’s, he’s been shot. And we can’t take him to the hospital. I know you’ve only worked on animals…”

“Oh God,” she whispers. “I mean, I’ve worked on old farmers too stubborn to drive to the nearest emergency room too, but only for minor things like burns or lacerations. This, Clara…”

“I know I’m asking too much,” I say. “But I don’t know what else to do. Can you do this?”

“How bad?”

I swallow my panic. “How badly is he bleeding?” I ask Trips.

“He’s lost a good amount of blood, but if I were to guess, the shock of it knocked him out, not the blood loss.”

The ding of a car door and a muttered conversation make it across the line. “Got it. What part of the body?”

“Chest,” Trips says, his eyes burning into mine in the mirror before knocking his chin to one side, indicating another turn.

“His chest? But he isn’t bleeding out?” Emma clarifies.

“He’s bleeding, and if I stop my pressure, I’m not sure how long he’d have. But no. Not currently.”

“Okay. Clara, I love you, but you’ll owe me big time. I’m on my way. What supplies will I have?”

Trips explains what to expect as I drive, forcing back the tears so I can still see the road.

“We’re going as fast as we can, but we’ll be about five minutes behind you. I’ll text this number with what I need and instructions on how to sterilize everything so I can scrub in right away. But this may not work, Clara. He might still need to go to a hospital.”

“I understand,” I choke out.

“Then I’ll see you soon.”

“Love you, lady,” I manage.

“Love you, too.”

The echo of silence fills the car, and I can’t bring myself to glance into the backseat again.

Instead, I focus on the road, hoping that no news is good news as Trips directs me to a block of storage units, the flare of bright paint too much for my overwrought eyes.

The guard at the gate has me roll down the window, and I tuck my hands under myself, debating the benefits of hiding the blood on my hands versus the strangeness of the position. “Name?” she asks.

“Anderson James,” Trips calls from the back, and the woman looks like she’s ready to ask for ID, the darkness in the vehicle, our only saving grace. But as she pulls up the fake name, her eyes get big and she swallows.

“Go on through,” she says.

“There’ll be another car coming in about five minutes,” I say. “A woman with pink hair.”

“I’ll let her in,” she says, purposely not making eye contact with me as she hits the button to open the gate.

“Thanks,” I mumble, waiting for the gate to slide far enough for us to slip through.

The poor girl looks terrified, and a little courtesy can’t hurt.

I’m not sure I could be an asshole right now if I tried, with all my energy focused on the non-updates from the backseat as I wind through the units until we get to one in the back.

The lock is alphanumeric, and my hands are sticky with half-dried blood, making it difficult to get right, but I do.

I throw open the metal garage door as Trips calls me over, and it’s my turn to keep the blood in Jansen as he carries him into a cobbled-together hospital room, laying him on a gurney.

Trips goes back to holding pressure, but his arms shake as he asks me to pull out the space heater.

Glancing at the phone, unable to look at the pale, waxy color taking over Jansen’s skin, I grab the heater, then get scrubbed in.

Reading Emma’s message through bloody prints, I arrange all the tools she requested, lucky that some type-A person labeled every drawer in the place.

Once I’m done, though, I have nothing to do but wait, panic making time painfully slow.

“Clara,” Trips warns, but I just shake my head.

“Don’t. I can’t. Please. Let’s wait. Wait and see.”

His breath is uneven, but he says nothing else.

Headlights flash around the corner, and I rush to the door, relieved when Emma’s car slams to a stop beside the SUV.

Then she’s out, marching past me and into the storage unit, taking in everything in an instant.

I turn to follow, only to be passed by Evie, tears running down her cheeks as she sprints to her brother.

Not able to help her, not in any measure, I slide the door down with a jangle, then wash in again as Emma slips an IV looking thing into Jansen’s arm, the skin there so white my heart clenches, before hooking him up to the saline I’d prepped for her.

Once I’m germ-free, I stand beside Emma, unable to look at Jansen’s face, instead doing as Emma instructs, cutting away his sweatshirt, heavy with the weight of blood soaked into it as Evie weeps softly by his head.

Emma injects something into him, and Evie gets upset, yelling as Emma calmly explains whatever she did, but I focus on my task, working with Trips to keep as much of Jansen inside of him as possible, the sodden sweatshirt tossed into the trash before I wash up again.

Then, Trips and I alternate in helping Emma find and stitch closed the large blood vessel that was hit, then cauterizing the smaller ones, slowing down the speed with which Jansen’s dying.

I don’t want that thought, but it’s there, lodged in my mind, the idea of a world without his smile, one that I’m not sure is worth facing. One I’m not sure is worth saving.

Digging out the bullet is disgusting and terrifying, Emma sweating despite the still chilly air in the storage unit.

But eventually, she finds it, all of us sighing in relief as it plinks onto the metal tray.

She does some more poking and prodding, making sure that nothing else serious was hit.

She says it mostly got his diaphragm, missing his heart by an inch and his liver and lungs by less than that.

Repairing the muscle takes time I wish it didn’t; every moment Jansen’s on the table is a moment too long.

Trips says something about it being a small-caliber bullet, but I can’t say I care. Any bullet in someone I love is too big. Anything that leaves someone I love looking like a wax sculpture of themselves, the life absent while the flesh remains, should be nowhere near me and mine.

Emma stitches him up, asking me to see what’s in the fridge in the back, the saline I’d grabbed earlier almost empty. Evie gives me his blood type, and I find a singular bag, not knowing if it’s enough. Not knowing whether anything we’ve done is enough.

“What now?” I ask as Emma ties off the last stitch and switches the saline for the blood.

She doesn’t answer, just washes herself up again, Trips and I following, the room silent save Evie’s whispered, one-sided conversation with an unconscious Jansen.

Emma rifles through the drawers, her phone in hand, before coming back and adding a shot of something else into Jansen. Then Emma wipes him down and covers him with a blanket before counting out two piles of pills and dumping them into a Ziplock, writing directions in Sharpie.

I can’t help but stare at those words, her round lettering too cheerful for the directions she’s scratched out: White pills, 1-2 every four to six hours for pain as needed. Peach pill, 2 every six hours until gone. Double up on missed doses.

Planning for this to work, even as Jansen lies silent on the table, his breaths shallow, his laughter missing.

Done with everything she can do, she pulls a rolling stool beside her patient, her eyes hazy as she watches her girlfriend barely keeping it together across from her.

She doesn’t comfort her.

“Now, we wait,” she says.