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Aisha.
Grass explodes beside me as someone shoots my way. I shriek and scramble toward a rusted BBQ pit for cover. It pangs as bullets pierce the corroded metal, sending shards into my hair. I don’t stay there for long and run while crouched toward a row of bushes.
“Officer down!” Aisha croaks out from somewhere nearby. “Thurman, where the fuck are you?”
I race past the psycho whose bullet-riddled body lies sprawled out in the grass and take cover behind a motorcycle.
“I’m here, Patel, where are you?”
Swiping my hair out of my eyes so I can see better, I survey the property, looking for threats and my partner. I don’t see the shooter anywhere. Maybe Aisha got him.
A familiar, pained moan carries over to me. She’s close and clearly injured. Fuck. There’s a small garden wall separating the biker property from their neighbors. It’s made of cinderblocks, which would be a great place to take cover.
Please, God, let her be there and alive.
Sirens wail in the distance and it’s a sweet, beautiful sound. If I can just get the two of us to safety until backup arrives, we’ll take down these assholes.
“I’m coming,” I mutter, knowing Aisha can’t hear me but needing to coax myself into running the distance from my hiding spot to the garden wall.
With a deep breath, I ignore the throbbing pain on my face and in my skull from Bozo’s punch and take off toward the waist-high wall. I’m nearly there when I hear the shooter again.
Bang!
Fire explodes in my back and I stumble, landing face first in the grass. The pain radiating through me is overwhelming. It’d be easy to curl into a ball and pray for it all to go away.
That would mean sure death.
I can’t die when I’ve finally found happiness in life.
Pushing through, I crawl the rest of the way with what little strength I have left. When I launch myself to the other side of the wall, I’m met with a gun to my face.
Here’s where I die.
“Thurman,” Aisha hisses. “I nearly shot your eye out!”
Groaning, I fall to the ground beside her. “You’re injured. We have to get the hell out of here.”
Aisha twists around and fires her weapon a couple of times over the wall before dropping back down beside me. “Easier said than done.” She groans in pain again. “Fuck. Is that my blood or your blood? Oh shit. You’re bleeding a lot, Thurman. Fuck! Sloane, fuck!”
Her voice grows smaller and smaller and smaller.
All the light vanishes in a blink.
Dempsey
“Dempsey! Open up!”
I walk out of the laundry room and make my way to the front door, where my sister keeps pounding. Should have known I couldn’t ignore my family forever, especially not her.
“What?” I grumble as I open the door. “It’s called space. Give it to me.” Her tearstained face has me tensing up and panic slamming into me. “What’s wrong? Gemma, are you okay? Mom? Dad?”
She swipes at her tears, throwing herself at me for a hug. “You haven’t heard? It’s been all over the news. I tried calling you like a million times.”
Gripping her shoulders, I pull her back so I can look at her. “Heard what? You’re fucking scaring me right now.”
A sob escapes her. “T-Two officers were involved in a shootout.”
My blood turns to ice in my veins.
