Chapter 14
FOURTEEN
Cooper
BLEEDING OUT
Blood soaks through my shirt, warm and sticky against my ribs. The shoulder wound throbs with each heartbeat—a clean through-and-through that missed major arteries, but it’s leaking steadily. The graze along my ribs burns like fire, shallow but long. The head wound’s already clotting.
Two hours. Maybe three before blood loss becomes a real problem.
Plenty of time.
Eliza stumbles beside me as we move down the alley behind the safe house. Her breathing comes quick and shallow, pupils dilated with shock. The tactical vest I strapped on her bounces with each step, too big for her frame but it’ll stop bullets.
That’s what matters.
“Cooper, you’re bleeding everywhere. We need to stop, we need to—”
“Keep moving.”
Phoenix teams regroup fast. Professional response protocols. They’ll call for backup, establish a perimeter, and sweep outward in expanding circles. Standard military doctrine adapted for an urban manhunt. We’ve got fifteen minutes, maybe twenty, before they lock down a six-block radius.
After that, we’re fucked.
The alley opens onto a side street—residential, quiet, with morning commuters already at work. Perfect. We blend into the urban landscape, just another couple walking purposefully through D.C. neighborhoods.
Except for the blood.
My tactical vest hides most of the shoulder damage, but red stains seep through the fabric. The head wound probably looks worse than it is—scalp lacerations always bleed like you’re dying even when you’re not.
Eliza keeps glancing at me, worry creasing her forehead behind those glasses. Her mouth opens and closes as if she wants to say something but doesn’t know what. The silence won’t last. She processes verbally, always has. The quiet’s just shock, delaying the inevitable flood of questions.
“Where are we going?” she asks, voice tight with controlled panic.
“Away.”
“That’s not an answer.”
It’s the only answer she’s getting until I figure out our tactical situation. No vehicle—the rental’s three miles away in that parking garage, and it might as well be on the moon. No comms—Phoenix traces everything electronic. No backup—Cerberus extraction isn’t for forty-eight hours.
We’re on our own.
The Anacostia River cuts through southeast D.C.
like a concrete artery, with industrial areas on both sides that gentrification hasn’t touched yet.
Abandoned warehouses, homeless camps, places where surveillance cameras are sparse and Phoenix operatives won’t blend in easily.
It’s three miles on foot, maybe four if we take evasive routes.
Doable. If I don’t bleed out first.
“Cooper, please. Talk to me. Are you okay? How bad are the injuries? Do we need a hospital?”
“Hospital means records. Records mean Phoenix finds us in twenty minutes. Might as well paint a target on our backs.”
“But—”
“No hospital.”
“But you’re bleeding—”
“I’m fine.”
Lie. The shoulder wound burns like someone’s twisting a red-hot poker through muscle and bone. Each step jars the damaged tissue, sends fresh waves of pain down my arm. The ribs ache with every breath, sharp stabbing that suggests possible cracked bone under the graze.
But I’ve had worse. Afghanistan, 2019—I took shrapnel in three places and walked eight miles through Taliban territory. Syria, 2020—a bullet through the thigh, and I still completed the mission.
This is manageable.
Has to be.
We reach Connecticut Avenue, a main thoroughfare with good foot traffic. I guide Eliza into the flow of pedestrians—office workers heading to late meetings, tourists with cameras, the normal rhythm of urban life. We’re just two more faces in the crowd.
Except Phoenix has facial recognition software tied into every traffic cam, every security system, every goddamn smartphone with a decent camera. The AI processes thousands of faces per second, cross-references with target profiles, identifies potential matches within minutes.
Staying on main streets is suicide.
“This way.” I steer her left, down a residential side street lined with row houses and parked cars.
“Cooper, where are we going? I need to understand the plan. Are we meeting someone? Do you have another safe house? Because whatever we’re doing, you need medical attention first.”
The questions pour out now, shock wearing off, her natural verbal processing kicking into overdrive. Part of me appreciates it—means she’s thinking clearly, not shutting down under stress. But the constant chatter broadcasts our position to anyone listening.
“Quiet.”
“Don’t tell me to be quiet. You’re bleeding, we’re being hunted by artificial intelligence, and you won’t explain anything. I have a right to know—”
Pain flares through my shoulder as I grab her arm, stopping her mid-sentence. Blood loss makes my grip tighter than intended, and she winces.
“Sound carries,” I say, voice low and sharp. “Every word you speak gives away our position.”
Her green eyes widen behind the glasses. Understanding flashes across her features—we’re not safe yet. Won’t be safe for a long time.
She nods, lips pressed together.
Good. Maybe the academic can learn tactical thinking after all.
We move through residential streets, staying away from main arteries where surveillance concentrates. My mental map overlays the terrain—safest routes, choke points, escape options. Southeast toward the river, avoiding major intersections, using alleys and side streets that cameras don’t cover.
The shoulder wound leaks steadily now. Warm blood runs down my arm, soaks into the tactical vest’s padding. Not arterial bleeding—that would be spurting, bright red, game over in minutes. This is muscle damage, capillary bleeding, manageable if I can get pressure on it soon.
But soon might not be soon enough.
My vision wavers slightly as we cross another street. Blood loss. Early stages, but noticeable. The body prioritizes blood flow to vital organs, starts shutting down peripheral circulation. Fingers and toes go numb first, then dizziness, then cognitive impairment.
I’ve got maybe an hour before it becomes a real problem.
Eliza stays quiet, but she watches me constantly. Those sharp green eyes catalog every stumble, every time I favor the wounded shoulder, every drop of blood that hits the pavement behind us. Her academic brain processes data, reaching conclusions I don’t want her to reach.
That I’m hurt worse than I’m admitting.
That this isn’t as controlled as I’m pretending.
That we might not make it.
Smart woman. Too fucking smart.
The industrial area opens up ahead—chain-link fences, loading docks, the kind of urban decay that developers ignore and homeless populations claim. It’s perfect territory for disappearing. Surveillance cameras focus on valuable assets, not abandoned real estate.
But it’s still two miles away, and each step sends fresh pain through my shoulder, my ribs, down into my core where muscle strain meets blood loss meets the simple fucking physics of a human body trying to function with holes in it.
“Cooper.” Eliza’s voice carries new urgency. “You’re getting pale.”
“I’m fine.”
“You’re not fine. You’re losing blood, and you’re going to pass out if we don’t—”
“I said I’m fine.”
But my voice comes out strained with pain I can’t completely hide. She hears it. Processes it. Files it away with all the other data points that add up to the truth I don’t want to admit.
I’m running on borrowed time.
Phoenix isn’t the only thing hunting us—blood loss is hunting me, and it’s patient, relentless, inevitable.
We reach a small park, where trees provide cover from overhead surveillance. I lean against a bench, just for a second, just to assess our position and plan the next move. Not because my legs feel unsteady or my vision keeps blurring at the edges.
Tactical assessment. That’s all.
Eliza positions herself between me and the street, blocking sight lines like she’s learning operational security through observation. Her eyes stay on my face, watching for signs I’m trying not to show.
“How much farther?” she asks.
Good question. The industrial area sits another mile and a half to the southeast. It’s a manageable distance under normal circumstances. But circumstances stopped being normal the moment nine Phoenix operatives decided to turn our safe house into a shooting gallery.
“Close.”
“Cooper.” Her voice drops, becomes gentle in a way that cuts through my tactical focus like a blade. “I can see you’re hurt. Really hurt. We need to deal with that before we go anywhere else.”
“Later.”
“Not later. Now.”
“Eliza—”
“No.” She steps closer, close enough that her scent cuts through the copper smell of blood, vanilla, and something distinctly feminine that makes my brain short-circuit despite everything else happening.
“You’re bleeding through your shirt, you can barely stand straight, and you keep touching that shoulder like it’s on fire. We’re stopping. Right here.”
“Phoenix—”
“Will find us a lot faster if you collapse from blood loss in the middle of the street.”
She’s right. I hate that she’s right, but tactical reality doesn’t care about pride or masculine bullshit about admitting weakness. I’m compromised. Getting worse by the minute. And a compromised operator is a liability to the mission and the principal.
Eliza is the principal. The woman carrying Phoenix’s financial records in her bra, the brilliant linguist who cracked their entire funding network. Keeping her alive trumps everything else.
Including my ego.
“There.” I point toward a maintenance building at the edge of the park. “Utility shed. Out of sight.”
She nods, slides her arm around my uninjured side. The contact sends electricity through my system, warmth and strength that has nothing to do with tactical support and everything to do with the way she feels against me.
We cross the open ground quickly, staying low, using trees and playground equipment for concealment. The maintenance building is exactly what I hoped—concrete block construction, heavy door, no windows. Built for keeping equipment secure, which means it’ll keep us secure too.
The lock takes thirty seconds to bypass. Inside, the space is cramped but defensible—electrical panels, pipe fittings, the kind of industrial storage that nobody checks regularly. A single bare bulb provides dim light.
It’s perfect.
I lean against the concrete wall, finally allowing myself to assess the damage properly. The shoulder wound is worse than I thought—entry and exit holes about two inches apart, muscle torn, bleeding steady. The ribs are manageable, just a graze that looks dramatic but isn’t life-threatening.
But the blood loss is real. My shirt is soaked, dark stains spreading across the tactical vest’s fabric. When I pull my hand away from the shoulder, my palm comes back slick and red.