Chapter 16 — The Line #2
She thumbed the fob. The locks clunked. I walked her around to the rear on her bare feet through sleet-slick asphalt, my right arm around her back without touching either wrist, and popped the trunk on the trauma kit Felix kept strapped beside the spare.
Gauze rolls. Pressure bandage. Tape. A cheap flashlight.
I bit the flashlight between my teeth, aimed it down at my own shoulder, and looked at what the round had done.
A furrow 3 inches long across the outside of the deltoid, wool and henley shredded around it, blood running steady but not pulsing.
Graze. Deep graze, but a graze. No bone.
No artery. It would need stitches and it would need them soon, but it would carry her weight a while longer.
“Pack it,” I told her, tearing the gauze open one-handed and pressing the roll into her right palm. “Press hard. Do not be gentle. I need the bleeding slowed before uniforms arrive.”
Her hands moved before her face finished understanding, hunter's hands, steady even shaking.
She wadded the gauze and pressed it into the furrow with the heel of her palm, her whole body leaning into the pressure, and the pain went white down to my fingertips.
I braced my right hand on the trunk lip and breathed through my nose until the white narrowed.
“More,” I said. “Again.”
She layered a 2nd wad over the 1st. Blood wicked through both and slowed.
I taped the packing down one-handed, teeth holding the strip, then shrugged out of the ruined coat long enough to tear a 6-inch strip from her already-ruined hem with her nod, folding it into a pressure wrap over the gauze and knotting it tight with my right hand and my teeth.
Her torn slit rose higher, to mid-thigh and past, the sheath and stiletto now fully visible against her skin. Neither of us looked at it.
“Done,” she whispered. Her split lip had clotted. Sleet stood in beads on her eyelashes. “You are done. Get in.”
Sirens lifted 3 blocks north, 2 units at least, closing through the rain-slicked grid. I slammed the trunk, walked her to the passenger side, and lifted her in, her bare feet finding the floor mat. I reached across her and turned the heater to full, angling the vents down.
“Feet on the vent,” I said. “Concrete took your heat. Get it back.”
She obeyed, tucking her torn skirt around her knees, soles angled to the blowing warmth.
Blood from her split knee smeared the mat.
The cuff still dangled from her swollen left wrist, steel ticking faintly against the door handle every time she breathed.
I closed her door, circled the hood through the sleet, and climbed in behind the wheel with the wounded shoulder screaming as I reached across to the ignition.
Keys in. The engine caught. Mirrors checked.
Alley mouth clear except for a bus hissing past on Division.
Before I pulled out I took the DVR drive from my left coat pocket and set it on the console between us where she could see it.
Two inches of black plastic, still warm from the booth tech's rack, its activity light dead.
I had paid him in the booth doorway 20 minutes earlier with a threat spoken once and a roll of bills pressed into his palm hard enough to leave an imprint, and he had yanked the drive mid-record and handed it over with shaking hands.
Whether the feed had left the building before seizure I did not know.
The light was dead. That was the only fact I owned.
“That is the club's recording,” I said. “It stays where you can see it. Off-site backup status unknown. We assume the worst until we know otherwise.”
Her eyes moved from the drive to my face. “You shot a detective.”
“Yes.”
“For me.”
“Yes.” I put the truck in gear and pulled out into the sleet, wipers beating once, twice, clearing the windshield to black shine. “Hold the packing on the next left. It will bleed when I turn the wheel.”
She leaned across the console and pressed her right palm over the wrap without being asked twice, her cuffed left hand braced on the dash, and I drove south through emptying streets with her heat against my wounded side and the sirens fading behind us into the rain.
Twenty-two minutes from the alley to the garage.
I counted every one of them against the blood loss.
Ashland south through the sleet, the wipers losing ground, her bare feet pinkening on the vent, the gauze under her palm going from white to rust to dark red without soaking through.
She coughed twice, harsh smoke coughs, and I handed her my water bottle from the door pocket with the cap already loosened.
She drank. At the 9-minute mark a patrol unit crossed ahead of us running lights but no siren, and she went still with her hand on my shoulder, and I turned east 1 block early and came back to the route from the south, losing 3 minutes to keep distance.
At the 17-minute mark the bleeding slowed to a seep.
At the 20-minute mark the gate came in sight through the rain, chain-link and sodium light, the loft windows dark above the shop.
I keyed the gate code one-handed in the rain while the shoulder bled through the packing, thumb on the pad, 6 digits I had punched ten thousand times, and the gate rolled.
I drove through and parked tight to the stairs, killed the engine, and sat for 3 seconds listening to the rain on the roof and her breathing beside me.
“Upstairs,” I said. “Last flight I carry you. Shoulder or pride, the shoulder wins.”
She did not argue. I circled the hood, lifted her out into the rain, her arms around my neck, her weight settled high against my good side, and climbed the 2 flights to the loft door with the sleet turning to wet snow on the landing.
Inside smelled of motor oil and cedar and rain on concrete, honest smells, the only clean air left in the city.
I set her on the loft bed, her torn gown spreading around her, her bare feet leaving damp prints on the blanket.
I locked nothing yet. The door stood shut but unbolted. The windows stood dark.
I laid the seized drive on the desk where it sat in the lamplight like a 2nd watch, black and silent, ticking nothing, witnessing everything.
Then I sat on the edge of the bed beside her bare feet, shoulder burning through the wrap, blood seeping slow and steady into the gauze, and looked at her cuffed wrist in the lamplight.
“We get that off,” I said. “Then we deal with the rest. Tonight you are breathing. That is the only variable I am logging.”