They exited the highway, driving until they hit Pelham Parkway West. As they neared the exchange location, Elijah could see Camden walking away from his vacated vehicle and moving toward the open clearing where another car was parked.
As Elijah caught sight of Camden’s intended path, he could see his mother walking from the opposite direction, toward Camden with an armed man pointing a gun in their general direction.
Before Captain Searlington could bring the car to a complete stop, Elijah was jumping out of the vehicle with his weapon drawn as he took cover behind his opened door.
Captain Searlington grabbed her gun and speaker mic before yelling, “NYPD, everybody down on the ground now!”
Elijah’s mother turned toward him, but couldn’t seem to move. Just beyond her, the gunman turned his aim to Elijah. Camden must have seen her predicament too, because he jumped, pulling Elijah’s mother to the ground just as the gunman lined up his shot. As the man opened fire, Elijah and Captain Searlington pulled their triggers too.
He didn’t care about policy. This fucker fired a weapon near his mother. There was no coming back from that. He aimed for the kill shot. Captain Searlington must have too, because the end result was two bullets in the head, two in center mass, and several more piercing the car behind the gunman.
While the assailant’s lifeless body slumped to the ground, Elijah took aim at the driver in the car.
The driver tried to speed off but was surrounded by several police cars converging from several directions. As other officers came to their aid, securing the scene, Elijah ran directly for the spot next to a large lamppost where Camden and his mother lay in a ball of bodies and limbs.
“Mama, Cam!” Elijah pulled their bodies apart with the help of Captain Searlington. His mother’s face was covered with ashen, dried tear stains. Her eyes blinked open as she heard Elijah’s voice. “Mama, it’s okay. Everything’s all right. We got you.”
Elijah glanced down at Camden, waiting to see the crystal blue of his eyes shining back at him. Instead, he found Camden’s eyes still closed. His jaw was hanging open, and his limbs were limp. “Camden, come on, wake up.”
Elijah ran his fingers through Camden’s hair, trying to coax him to awaken. He stopped when sticky dampness began to cover his fingers. Cold fear spread through him as frank red blood covered his digits.
“Oh God, no.” His words pulled Captain Searlington’s attention to Elijah. When understanding registered on her face, she reached over, placing two fingers against Camden’s neck, feeling for a pulse.
“Was he hit with a stray, or did he just hit his head on the ground?”
“There’s too much blood.” Cold fear spread through him as he tried to assess Camden’s injury. Bullets pierced different areas of the body in different ways. Depending on caliber, trajectory, and the position of the target, they could look as meaningless as a scratch or as menacing as a gaping hole. All Elijah saw was lots of blood. That alone wasn’t a good sign. “I can’t tell.”
After a few seconds, she pulled her radio from her hip and spoke into it quickly. “This is Captain Heart Searlington of the seven-four. I need a bus for a possible GSW to the head. Victim is a white male, thirty-four, currently unconscious on the scene. Breathing is shallow, heartbeat is thready. Get me that damn bus here now!”
ELIJAHsat in the cold, sterile room, the stench of industrial-strength germicide burning his nasal passage and the back of his throat. He’d like to blame his irritated red eyes on the chemical too, but he knew the swollen rims of his eyes were due to one thing, tears of worry falling faster than he could wipe them away.
Camden hadn’t been shot.
Those three words coming from the emergency room attending had loosened the vise around Elijah’s heart. For a brief moment relief spread through Elijah as he sent up a grateful prayer of thanks for that extraordinary news. But by the next breath, the doctor had explained the bleeding wound had come from blunt force trauma. Camden had hit his head against a sharp rock on the ground. The force he’d used to drag Elijah’s mother down to safety during the shooting turned a simple fall into a significant injury.
Camden hadn’t opened his eyes in the five hours since they’d arrived at the hospital. He’d been through the emergency room, to imaging studies, and now he rested quietly inside the small room in the surgical intensive care unit. But after being transported to so many places, Camden remained infuriatingly still.
Thank God for Elijah’s badge. He’d never been happier to have the access that his shiny new lieutenant’s badge afforded him. The medical staff didn’t think twice about violating HIPPA laws whenever they glimpsed that metal emblem of authority hanging around Elijah’s neck. His badge also allowed him to follow Camden wherever they moved him with no one looking twice at Elijah.
Once again the job had saved his life. If Elijah had to sit in a waiting room begging for information about a man he had no legal connection to, he would’ve been in chains for trying to choke someone out by now.
“You can’t do this to me, Cam,” Elijah leaned down to whisper into Camden’s sleeping ear. “You gotta wake up and say something slick that makes me want to curse you out.” Elijah wrapped a careful hand around Camden’s and squeezed. “I can’t take watching you like this. You gotta come back to me, baby. I just found you again. I can’t lose you now.”
Elijah waited a beat to see if there was any response under Camden’s closed eyes, but there was none. His lack of mobility cut through Elijah like a sharp wind, leaving him cold and hollow inside.
Elijah could feel a fresh batch of tears welling up behind his eyes. He wouldn’t have bothered trying to keep them in check if he hadn’t heard the familiar voices of his boss and her right-hand lieutenant, Bryan Smyth, coming toward the door.
Captain Searlington stepped inside the hospital room first, with Smyth stepping behind her. “Stephenson?”
Elijah wiped his eyes on his T-shirt before he lifted his head to answer her.
“’Sup, Captain?”
“How’s Warren doing?”
The uncomfortable fullness of his chest made it difficult for Elijah to breathe. “He banged his head hard when he pushed my mother out of the way.” Thinking about the uncertainty of Camden’s prognosis ate at Elijah’s soul. Elijah was supposed to protect Camden. Instead, Camden sacrificed himself to protect Elijah’s mother. It was a debt Elijah could never repay. “The docs say his head CT looks good. No permanent damage. They don’t know why Camden is still unconscious. They think it may have something to do with his head taking a hit when his car exploded.”
The more he thought about what led to Camden being almost lifeless in that bed, the more his chest hurt. He needed to focus on something else for the time being. “We get anything on the driver?”
