Minutes feel like hours in the silent shaft and all the while I watch for the moment his body stops reaching for its next breath.
I damn near leap out of my pants when the doors burst open in a riot of sound and movement. Men in luminescent jackets, carrying bags and equipment barge straight to my side. In a flurry of colour and questions, they rip my hands from Tom and push me further and further back until I have nowhere to go. I press my back into the wall and sink to the ground.
The Calvary arrives along with the medics. Men in crisp suits line the hallway, each with a black earpiece and a handgun cocked and trained to the ceiling. Two men aim their guns up the staircase as a third climbs and searches for God-only-knows-what. After all, if anyone was still here, they would have attacked while I was alone with Tom, but it isn’t my place to tell the suits their job.
The paramedics call out instructions and speak into radios. I hear words I recognise and many more that I don’t, but I can tell from the speed they work, the sharp tones they use, and the desperation in their eyes that the prognosis isn’t good. When they hoist Tom onto a trolley and run him through the heavy stair door, I leap up and try to go with him—I’m not supposed to let him go without me—but an arm reaches out and anchors me to the spot via my shoulder. I watch Tom’s unmoving body disappear as they hurry him out to a waiting ambulance.
Only then do I allow my tears to fall.
I don’t even know why I’m crying. The ordeal? The trauma of finding him like that? The fear of what happens next or that it happened at all, in the place where I live, where my family lives? Or perhaps because I believe I’ve messed up, and I’ve risked a man’s life with my actions? What happened wasn’t my fault. I did my best, given the situation, but knowing that doesn’t stop the fear.
When the man holding my shoulder releases me, I take a step backward and slump to the floor, leaning back against the wall once again. The hallway empties almost as quickly as it filled. All except three people; the older, grey-haired man with a gun who stoppedme from leaving with Tom, a young female paramedic who looks harassed at having to stay, and the most intense man I’ve ever laid eyes upon. Even through my tears, I know he is important. He exudes it from the clothes he wears to the way he carries himself.
He is most of the way through his twenties with stubble that darkens his jawline making his frown-pinched lips seem even more severe. Dark and scowling brows shadow a pair of sharp hazel eyes, shaped similarly to Tom’s. The resemblance is no coincidence. The man staring down at me is Tom’s brother. He opens his mouth to speak and if there were any doubts about who he was, the sound of his voice blows them away like smoke in a breeze.
“Thank you for not leaving his side.”
Does he really mean that? Mr Serious turns away from me and addresses the paramedic scuffing her feet off the concrete floor as though wiping something dirty from her shoe. “How bad is it?”
She lifts my jacket and shakes it out, only to fold it blood-side in and roll it up again before offering it to me. I’d let her keep it, but it’s the only jacket I own. Something she intrinsically seems to realise.
“Gunshot wound to the chest, another through the shoulder. We’re lucky. It looks like it missed his brachial artery,” she replies clinically. She pulls off her latex gloves, snapping them as they release her fingers. Rolling them inside out, she tucks them into a side pocket in her utility pants. “Until we get him scanned, we won’t know the real extent of the damage, but we know he lost a lot of blood.” She shakes her head and shoots a glance at my blood-covered hands.
“Will he make it?” the grey-haired man asks. His voice is impersonal and his expression steeled.
Staring into his eyes, she assesses him, then answers flatly, “I honestly can’t say.”
I want to ask questions. I want to find out if I’ve done the right things, but I can’t bring myself to open my mouth in front of Mr Serious. What if he blames me? It’d be safer to keep a low profileand get out as soon as possible.
The bodyguard moves from foot to foot, scanning the quiet stairwell between bursts of throwing me the evil eye. “We should get to the hospital.” He glares in my direction. The muscle in his jaw pulses where he grinds his teeth together. He distrusts me and despite being the least threatening person in the stairwell, I feel like a criminal.
“I know. Thank you, Frank. Can you tell Jack to get the car ready? I’ll be right out.” The bodyguard hesitates for a minute, clearly unsure whether he should leave his boss unattended with a distraught girl and a frustrated paramedic, but Mr Serious issues a stern ‘what are you waiting for?’glare and he vanishes through the door. The paramedic leaves with him.
“What’s your name?” he asks, turning to fix me with a similarly glacial stare.
“Juli—Jules. You can call me Jules.” Juliet was traceable. Jules could have any number of origins.
“Jules.” My name from his lips sounds luxurious. As though he speaks of the sparkling kind of jewels and not a beleaguered girl slumped on the floor in front of him. “I need you to come with me to the hospital. Do you think you can do that?” He carefully enunciates each syllable so that I understand and despite his stern countenance—despite his fixed stare—his careful tone makes me feel seen.
I stare into his eyes. They swallow everything around me and what I thought were hazel irises become strands of green with surprisingly warm flecks of shimmering gold. They would be dazzling if he wasn’t angry—or is it fear that pulls his brows low and stamps the sharp edge of urgency on his expression?
Can I trust him? Is he safe or a threat?
He clears his throat. I blink and come back to his question. “What? Um...I need to get to work, I’m late.” I scramble to my feet, consider grabbing all my books from the floor and then think better of it. Getting away is more important. The books will probably stillbe in the stairwell later—torn and pissed on, most likely, but still salvageable. Everything else is just trash.
“I’m sorry,” I whisper as I run, jerking away from his outstretched hand, through the clanging fire door and across the dark lobby.
Without any real plan, I run into the night and head for the one place I should probably avoid:Carlito’sbar and an irate boss.
“You’re late!” Carlo yells the instant I fall through the cracked, black wooden door. The heat of the bar is a welcome reprieve to the unseasonably chilly late August air.
I run my eyes across the floor. It’s busy. All but four tables are taken and our handful of regulars already prop up the bar. Gresh, my personal bar troll, lifts his glass to me and grins through black and broken teeth.
“Ran into trouble. Sorry, Cue-ball.” I dash to the back of the bar and shove myself through the swing doors leading to the two crappy patron’s bathrooms and Carlo’s office. He allows staff to dump their belongings in the lockers during our shift, insisting it is safer than the bar or the storeroom. Not that he keeps anything locked. Carlo doesn’t need to. The clientele wouldn’t dare steal from him. At six-foot-four and with dubious rumours about his time in the army, no one even dares upset him.
Nobody except me.
His stomping footsteps following me down the hallwaysuggest he is seriously pissed, and he has good reason. Five minutes’ tardiness is forgivable, but an hour? I’m lucky he let me through the door at all.
