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“He got me.” Smiling, Archer flies on the high of adrenaline and shock. “That fucking asshole got me.”
“You stepped in his way!” I slap a tourniquet around Archer’s arm so fast, I make myself dizzy as I work to tie a knot. “Archer! You stepped in his way.”
“I’m the romantic.” Chuckling under his breath, he misses the way Felix and Tim work together to bring Coran to his feet. Blood coats Tim’s face and knuckles, but none of it appears to belong to him.
“What do you need?” Fletch skids down beside me. “Mayet, what do you need?”
“Bandages.” Tears streak down my cheeks and into my mouth. “We need bandages. And a hospital.”
“No hospital.” Archer floats on delirium, but his eyes flutter open to meet mine. “Can’t take this stuff to the hospital.”
“You need a hospital!” I shove the remains of my jacket at Fletch. “Tear this into long strips. Make bandages for me.”
“Got it.” He sets his gun down and goes to work, while twenty feet away, the Malone brothers work together to tie a guard to a ten-inch-thick pole.
“Pay attention here, Dimples.” Fletch grabs my chin and forces my gaze down to Archer. “Focus here.”
“They gonna kill him?”
“Prob’ly,” Archer mumbles. “Motherfucker was gonna shoot you.”
“Yeah, well, hedidshoot you.” Scrambling across the dirt, I snag the bag I left earlier and tear it open in search of something. Anything. “I’m so mad at you.” Crawling back to Archer’s side, I take out a saw and wish for a moment I carried a regular medbag with tools to keep a man alive. Not the type of bag that comes with skull breakers.
Helpless, I look into his eyes and hate how I cry. “So mad.”
“You’re a doctor.” Fletch grabs my hand and slaps a scalpel into my palm. “Cut in, extract the bullet. Close him up. Easy-peasy.”
“Easy-peasy.” Fresh sobs wrack my chest and leave me gasping for air. “Easy-peasy?”
“You’ve got this, Minka.” Fletch stares and waits. “You can’t shout at him till he’s better, and he won’t get better till you fix him. So cut, extract, close.” He takes my hand and lowers it to Archer’s chest. Then he tears the holey shirt open and reveals the bullet wound that seared straight through the higher part of his deltoid.
“Oh god.” I cry. “It missed the artery. Jesus.” I swipe my nose with my arm and set the scalpel down. “You’re so friggin’ lucky, Archer.”
“Still hurts,” he mumbles. Closing his eyes, he smiles and drifts, and across the warehouse, Tim holds a gun, point-blank in Coran’s face.
In some sick twist, the brothers stand united. Then Tim pulls the trigger—
BANG!
And ends another life.
Gone.
While I cut into a live body for the first time in years.
“Hold on, Archer. Let me fix it.”
EPILOGUE
ARCHER
“Oh, it’s nothing. Just a gym injury that needed a fast repair.” I lie through my teeth and smile for the mayor who demands to be entirely too involved in Minka’s life.
He sees me in a sling, he wants to know what’s happening in his city. But for him to know the truth would be to shatter everything he thinks he knows about us.
Minka is the vigilante killer that Mayor Justin Lawrence wants caught.
And my family is responsible for the other high-profile cases constantly on the news.
