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You needed help from the cops around where I grew up? You could be waiting hours, even half the day, before someone finally fucking showed up.
It was why most of us learned to handle shit without them.
The clinic looked like it always did.
Nestled in a mostly-abandoned strip mall full of broken windows and crumbling sidewalks, it had big glass windows that were mirrored in the daytime, but you could easily see inside at night.
What I saw was an empty waiting room, no security guard, and no fucking Ama.
Stomach twisting, I rushed in through the front door, hearing the insistent bleeping of the metal detector as I rushed through it with my gun out.
“Hey, you can’t be in here!” a voice called, trying to take on the mantle of authority, and mostly failing.
“Where is she?” I barked back, making him shrink away. I don’t know if it was my tone, the gun, or a combination of the two, but he just raised an arm and pointed toward one of the exam rooms.
“Dex, why is the—“ a familiar voice started, then cut off when she looked over and saw me standing there instead of her shitty-ass security guard. “What are you doing here?”
It wasn’t her.
It wasn’t Ama who was down.
The relief that coursed through me damn near brought me to my fucking knees right there in the doorway.
The woman who was down was wearing pink scrubs that screamed “nurse” to me. Blood was pooling through the thin material.
Too much of it.
“Is she shot?” I asked, tucking my gun away and moving forward.
“Yes. Get out.”
“You had a shooter in the building? Where is he?”
“Gone,” Ama said, grabbing a rag and pushing it into the wound on the woman’s stomach. “Like you need to be.”
“Why did he shoot her?”
“I’m assuming the same reason he knocked me out. He wanted access to the drugs,” she said, shrugging it off.
But I could hear the quiver in her voice, could see the tension in her jaw.
Amaranta Stone had been the most gorgeous girl I’d ever seen. Back when I was, I dunno, ten. To this day, she was still that.
Tall, dark-haired, blue-gray-eyed, with a soft face and perfect skin.
Let’s just say I’d spent a lot of time looking at her. So I knew when something was off.
“Let me,” I said, moving forward, gesturing toward the rag.
“No.”
“I can put pressure on a wound, Ama,” I said, watching as her gaze shot up to my face at the old nickname.
“You’re not a doctor. Or a nurse. You need to leave.”
“You need help.”
“Help is on its way.”
