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They didn’t get more than a dozen steps when an explosion nearly knocked them off their feet. Charlie and West stumbled forward, regaining their balance. The shooting stopped completely. Charlie glanced back to see the rear half of the house engulfed in black smoke and flames while a huge smile spread across Ed’s face.
“C-4? I thought I told you not to bring it!” Charlie bellowed, though he was laughing on the inside.
“When have you ever known me to not have a little C-4?” Edison returned. He caught up with him and West, allowing Charlie to see that the man had taken a bullet to his left shoulder. He was sweating heavily and his teeth were clenched against the pain, but he was still smiling.
“You know that shit’s not Silly Putty, right?” West teased.
Ed took West’s arm and slung it across his broad shoulders, taking Charlie’s place despite the additional pressure placed on his injury. “That’s why I call my stuff Danger Putty.” He then looked over at Charlie. “You can clear the way and make sure Kairo’s ass is waiting for us. We’ll be right behind you.”
Charlie grunted and darted ahead of his companions. The few guards that had been left fighting them at the rear of the house had either run off or were now making sure Little Shit had escaped the house that was now on fire.
As he reached the guard shack at the rear of the property, he found two guards already dead on the pavement, dark blood spreading across the pale gray and wrapping around the spent shell casings. The van was backed into the driveway with the rear doors open. Kairo stood near the doors with a gun in his right hand, his left resting on the knife hilt at his waist.
But Charlie’s eyes were immediately drawn to Will’s pale face illuminated by the dome light. His lover was crouched at the rear of the van, but he jumped down the second he spotted Charlie. He started to run forward, but Kairo immediately caught him, pulling him to the van. Panic flashed through Will’s blue eyes, and he looked as if he were about to fight Kairo.
“In the van,” Charlie called out. “West and Ed are hurt.”
Will’s expression hardened, but he leaped into the van as ordered and grabbed his medical kit. Kairo headed for the driver’s seat. He would be ready to haul them out of there the moment they were all loaded up.
Charlie turned to see West and Ed closing in on him, appearing drained, sweaty, and bloody. West’s limp was growing more pronounced, and Ed was slowing. Charlie moved to the other side of West, and he got his companions safely to the van without sustaining further injuries.
As he slammed the door shut behind them and Kairo peeled out of the neighborhood, Charlie was only more determined to crush Little Shit into the dirt.
But first, he had to convince Will not to leave him.
18
WILL MONROE
Taking care of bullet wounds while being tossed about in a speeding van was not the easiest of tasks, but Will knew better than to ask Kairo to stop or even slow down. They needed to get away from the compound before the cops arrived—or, more importantly, before Benicio got his men organized enough to come after them.
Will’s heart had stopped with the explosion and only seemed to start again when he saw Charlie running toward them out of the darkness. He wanted to go directly to the man and check him over for injuries, but despite the blood smeared across his clothes, his lover was moving with ease while West and Ed were clearly hurt. They were his priority.
A cursory examination of West showed that he had a large gash across his thigh, thanks to getting strafed by a bullet. While messy and bloody, he needed little more than some stitches and painkillers.
He barked instructions to Charlie on how to bandage West up until they could get to a location where Will would be able to properly treat his wounds.
Ed, unfortunately, was another matter. The light inside the van was terrible, but it was enough to see that a bullet had torn through the meat of his shoulder and exited out the back without clipping bone.
“Give it to me straight, Doc Will,” Ed said with a pained gasp as Will did what he could to clean the wound and staunch the bleeding. “Am I gonna lose my arm?”
“No, idiot, you’re not gonna lose the arm,” Will muttered under his breath as he dug through his bag for more padding. “But I can’t properly stitch you or West up as long as we’re moving. I’m just as likely to sew my fingers to you as I am to close the wound.”
“Sorry, Doc!” Kairo called from the driver’s seat with a frustrated growl.
