My eyes snapped from the barrel of the gun back up to his face. I’d seen his ugly mug. The fuzzy picture became crystal clear. He was the asshole who Lil testified against last year during a child abuse case, the psychopath who burned his own kid. Chase mentioned Lil going back to Wrangel for his parole hearing a few months back. Son of a bitch.
“Oh god, Asher. He’s gonna kill me … he’s gonna kill us all. Get the baby out of here, you have to get Layla.” Lili’s body stiffened and then slowly sunk to the floor behind me.
“Shhh. We all need to calm down. Okay. Now why don’t you give me the gun? You don’t want to do this. I’m a lawyer. I can help you. You haven’t done anything you can’t take back yet. Just give me the gun.”
The look in this madman’s eyes justified Lil’s hysterics. This wasn’t just a vendetta. There was no reasoning with this freak. All ties with reality were already severed. My calm turned desperate. This was my best friend’s wife. And I was running out of time. But he was gonna have to get through me first, even if it was the last thing I did on this earth.
I just needed an opening, just one more sloppy wave of his gun, just one more freak out. He was going down.
Balance, Cock, Torque, Strike.
“You see what you did to me? Look at me, BITCH. You’re gonna watch!” His growl was cut off by the deafening sound of gunfire. The first shot up in the air, the second straight into his open mouth.
Blood curdling screams followed the thud of his lifeless body.
Ignoring the growing crimson ring on the hardwood, I dropped down and rocked Lili’s face against my chest, my hold suffocating. “I’ve got you, it’s over. It’s done, shh ... I’ve got you.”
Thank you, God.
Layla’s cry snapped me from my internal chant. My pulse was in overdrive, attempting to return flow to my brain. Dodd murmured similar words, trying to sooth his girls. Tack had Tal in his arms. Everyone was good. The asshole was dead.
Breathe.
Inhale. Exhale.
Lil’s quaking slowed enough for me to reach into my pocket to call for help.
“911. What is your emergency?” was overshadowed by Tack’s monotonous reciting of “Mom.”
I pushed away from Lil and flew across the room.
“She’s not moving, Ash, Mom’s not moving.”
My heart locked.
Cracked.
And stopped beating.
Tal.
Tack was kneeling, bent over and brushing the hair from her closed eyes. “Ash, I think she’s been shot.” His panicked words were like a knife to my chest. The pain was indescribable.
I shoved my cell in his hand and cradled Talia’s beautiful face, kissing her, immediately searching for her breath. I needed to feel her breath. I needed it more than my own breath.
It was shallow and shaky, coming in short spurts, but she was breathing. She was alive. Thank God.
I slid my fingertips along her thin neck. “Tack, tell them she’s breathing, but her pulse is slow, I can barely feel it.” I was used to it bounding under me. I was used to it matching my own. A million thoughts swarmed my brain, all landing on how the fuck did this happen, why? I was staring at the only reason I have a future and she was slipping away.
How the fuck did I let this happen? I was helpless. I hated it.
Tack turned and screamed over his shoulder “Where are we, I need the damn address?” Dodd grabbed the phone and took over.
Sierra wailed, “They’re coming, Tal, they’re coming.”
“Hold on, Teeps.” I tried my best to control my emotion. But I was breaking. No, I was broken. “I love you, stay with me, Tal. Stay with me. Help is coming, you’re gonna be fine.”
Talia’s eyes drifted open at the sound of my voice. “Tack?” she choked out. “Lili?” she whispered.
“I’m here, Mom. I’m fine.”
“Here, Tal. I’m right here,” Lili cried as she sunk down next to me.
“Everyone is here, baby. We’re okay. He’s dead.” I began scanning, searching for where that motherfucker’s bullet hit her perfect body.
My fingertips stilled when she said, “Don’t move ... me, Ace.” Her voice was weak and raspy. I barely made out “back.” Her eyes closed and she no longer responded to our pleas. I felt her at my fingertips. I felt her in a way I never wanted to feel her. I gently slid my hand from under her and choked back the vomit burning my throat. Warm, wet and sticky. Her blood soaked my palm.
The next twenty minutes passed like a lifetime in purgatory. Paramedics and police descended in droves, barking orders and moving like practiced robots. Yellow tape secured the scene immediately, while pictures flashed incessantly. Gauze wrappers and needle caps littered the floor, walkie-talkie chatter was nothing but static. Chaos didn’t begin to describe it. But as I watched them cut off her clothes with blunt bandage scissors, brace her neck, poke and prod her, all noise ceased to exist. All I could concentrate on was the gentle rise and fall of her naked chest now covered in sticky monitors. The rhythmic beeps reminded me that my woman was asleep. Alive and asleep, because the alternative was never an option.
This wasn’t a drill.
This was my life.
This was real.
The motionless woman strapped to the stretcher was my life. My everything.
Detectives sequestered Dodd, Sierra, Lil, and Tack on the terrace for statements while paramedics speed-fired off questions I had no answers to. It was all a blur. Never in my life had I felt so ill-prepared.
“Does she have any medical problems, any surgical history?”
“Does she take any medications? Anything at all?”
“Any allergies? This is important, sir.”
I knew I should be focusing, trying to pull some answers out of the depths of my brain, but all I could hear was the growing impatience of the medic working on Tal.
“More pressure, I can’t stop the bleeding. We need to move, people…”
“Sir, stay with me, does she smoke? Drugs? Alcohol?”
“Any family history?”
“Last menstrual period?”
What? Why was he still in my face, why was he asking me this? Didn’t he hear the other guy? They needed to move. Can’t stop the bleeding. Fuck, that sounded bad. The crimson saturated gauze being pressed against her wound by the full weight of the taller medic looked worse. His blue gloves were now dripping in red blood. Tal’s blood. I could only focus on the growing ring soaking the white sheet lining the stretcher.
“No, no … I don’t know. What the hell does it matter? She’s bleeding—he can’t stop it. She needs to get to the hospital. Now. ”
Right now the only thing I was certain of was we were wasting precious time, minutes were ticking by because I knew jack about jack. The answers weren’t going to magically appear. What did it matter if she ever had surgery? That was then and this was now. My woman needed to be in a hospital. Now. Actually forget that, she needed to be there twenty minutes ago. I took a deep breath, praying like hell the extra oxygen would keep me from imploding. I needed to keep it together. Tal needed me to keep it together.
Another paramedic who looked younger than Tack came out of nowhere. “Mr. Craig, we’re getting ready to move.” About fucking time. “We have space for one, two at the most, do you want to ride with us?”
Balance, Cock, Torque, Strike.
“She goes, I go.”
He got the message. “Of course. And so you know, we got in touch with Dr. Colton as you requested. He’s been updated on our ETA. He’ll meet us in the ER.”
Autopilot clicked on. The others needed to know what was happening and I wanted to check on Tack. He was pacing the terrace, arms crossed, shaking his head at the officer. His anger and frustration were palpable. Yet when his familiar grey eyes nailed me, I saw through his stoic presence and composure. He was just a boy. A terrified and lost boy. Tal’s boy.