AllFreeNovel
Share Us
Blackness.
A stiff bed beneath me. White roof overhead. The wail of a siren.
Nothing.
ChapterFifty
LIAM
Please,God, if you exist, save this woman. She means everything to me. I’ll do anything. Quit swearing. Donate every penny of my savings to charity. Go to church every Sunday for the rest of my life. Just please don’t let her die. - A silent prayer from Liam to the universe
Shot.
The word rattled around my brain.
The love of my life had been shot.
I’d seen it happen as if in slow motion through the video camera attached to Nate’s vest. She’d broken away from Tyler and made a run for it. For an elated second, I’d thought she was free and that everyone would go home in one piece, but then she’d dropped like a puppet with the strings cut. I had to watch through the live video feed as the armed rescue team took Tyler down and rushed to Kennedy’s side. At that point, I hadn’t been able to wait any longer. I’d left the car and sprinted to them.
Now, I stared at her pale face as Asher tried to stem the bleeding. We were in the back of an ambulance, hurtling toward the Destiny Falls Medical Center at high speed.
“I can’t lose her,” I said. “Not again.”
“You won’t.” Asher spoke as he worked, not stopping for a second. “It’s a shoulder wound. She’s bleeding a lot but should be all right as long as we get her to hospital soon.”
The nearest full-service hospital was hours away. I may not know much about bullet wounds, but I doubted she had hours.
“Hold tight,” the driver called.
Asher stabilized Kennedy, and I held onto a handle on the side of the vehicle as we swung around a corner. Although I couldn’t see where we were going, I assumed that was the turn from the ski road onto the main highway to Destiny Falls. We weren’t far now.
“She’s so white.” I reached for Kennedy’s hand. “Is there anything I can do?”
“Just let me do my job.” Asher’s words had no temper behind them. They were brusque. Businesslike. If I didn’t know him better, I might think this was no different from any other callout, but I could read the tension in his body. The intensity of his focus.
A few minutes later, we slowed and came to a stop. The rear doors opened, and Max leaped inside. He had a bag of medical supplies and placed it on the floor as he asked Asher to run him through Kennedy’s condition.
“There’s a chopper on the way,” Max said. “I’ve cleared the landing pad behind the clinic. ETA is ten minutes.”
Asher nodded. Max stepped up beside Kennedy, and I shuffled aside as he and Asher worked seamlessly. They had years of experience together, and it showed as they did what they could for Kennedy with few words spoken between them. The paramedic who’d been driving joined them, ushering me out of the ambulance.
A few minutes later, they carried her on a stretcher around the end of the building. I followed, listening to the roar of an approaching chopper. It was easy to spot in the darkening sky. Slowly, it descended. A door opened and Max and Asher loaded Kennedy inside. Asher jumped in, and Max glanced over his shoulder at me.
“It’s going to be a tight fit,” he yelled. “You want to ride with us or meet us there?”
In answer, I pulled myself into the chopper and claimed the only free seat. We rose into the air. I couldn’t see Kennedy from my position, so I distracted myself from the agonizing worry by messaging the group chat to say we had her, were on route to the hospital, and that the searchers could go home. A moment later, I received a private message from Mum, asking which hospital we were going to so they’d be able to meet us there. Emotion swelled in my chest, and I blinked rapidly, rubbing at the spot over my heart. I tapped out a response and checked the time. What if we were too slow? I couldn’t handle the thought.
The journey seemed to last forever.
As soon as we arrived in Christchurch, Kennedy was whisked away to surgery. I slumped onto a chair in a waiting room, and a few minutes later, Asher joined me. They’d wanted Max in the operating room. Time passed in a weird vacuum. We drank terrible coffee, bought a bag of peanuts from the vending machine, and Asher ate them while I stared into space. Sometime in the late hours of the night—or early hours of the morning—Max emerged and told us Kennedy was out of surgery and seemed to be stable but was still unconscious.
“Can I visit her?” I asked, desperate to see with my own eyes that she was okay.
“Not yet,” Max said apologetically. “She’s still under observation. They’ll let us know as soon as you can.”
Damn.
More coffee.
