Page 27 of Tied Over

“Okay, good. Then I can—”

“The issue is your shoulder.”

“I got hit in the shoulder?”

“Yeah,” he replied softly. “The vest protected your subclavian artery or you would’ve bled out right there.”

“I think that’s what Crouse thought happened. He had me on a death timer.”

“Don’t mention fuckin’ Crouse to me,” he warned, his eyes hard. “You should have been his priority, not Petrov.”

“Petrov needed to be found and stopped.”

His jaw clenched tightly, and I understood we were not coming to any kind of agreement about Spencer Crouse’s actions on Monday evening. “Tell me the rest about my shoulder.”

Taking a deep breath, then exhaling, he nodded. “The bullet abraded the joint between the humeral head and the glenoid fossa, meaning that—”

“English, please.”

“Basically, if it had hit you straight on, it could have destroyed the joint, which means you’d have to have surgery to replace it or repair whatever was left.”

“Shit.”

“Yep,” he agreed. “The bullet grazed the joint on its way out of your body, and thus far, your doctor sees no major structural or vascular damage.”

“Oh, that’s good.”

He grimaced. “It’s the best-case scenario for now. The issue is it’s all still really swollen, and until the swelling goes down, your doctor can’t tell how good or bad it all is.”

“Okay.”

“So that leaves you in a sling for at least a month while it heals and the swelling goes down so she can see what the fuck she’s looking at.”

“A month,” I moaned as three doctors walked into the room.

“Yes,” said the one closest to me, a tall, willowy woman with deep-umber skin and gold undertones. Her long hair was pulled up into a high bun, and she folded her arms as she glared at me. “A month. And I understand from your partner here that you’re a bit of a rebel deputy, but I promise you that if you ever want to have full, or even partial, use of your left shoulder again, you will heed my instructions.”

I glanced at Bodhi, then back to her. “Doctor”—I checked her white coat for her embroidered name—“Nkosi, I promise you I will be a model patient, but see, I have to be able to hold a gun and—”

“Absolutely not,” she said brusquely. “The only kind of field work you’ll be doing is making house calls on children.”

I smiled at her. “Doctor, I don’t think you know what it is that I do.”

“No,” Ian said as he walked into my room, grinning in a way that told me I was really screwed. “She understands your new assignment.”

Children? Oh no. “Please no,” I told him.

Really, the smile was horrible. Fucking Ian.

“You,” he said, “and your partner, will be working with Miro in Custodial WITSEC for the next month until Dr. Nkosi can determine if, or when, you can return to normal duty.”

“That can still get dicey,” I reminded Ian. “The last time I was out with Miro—”

“Was back when he first got the promotion,” Ian replied snidely. “He’s been in charge for a bit now, and you know as well as I do that he can tell you, if not off the top of his head, then with a few strokes of his keyboard, what’s going on with each and every one of those kids.”

And I knew that. Miro had completely revamped Custodial WITSEC, and a department that ran better would be hard to find. He was one of the nicest guys I knew and always fun to be around, but he was drop-dead serious about the children in his care.

“It will be a lot of boring-ass visits where the worst thing that could happen would be a paper cut,” Ian finished with a cackle.