He’s a rabid dog, foam drooling from his mouth. “No one sleeps with my wife.”
“She’s not your fucking wife.” I struggle for the weapon, making it point high as his finger tightens around the trigger.
“Sienna. Lay flat.”
When the weapon fires again, I hope to hell the bullet comes down on the abandoned warehouse, not someone’s head.
The way we’re twisting and rolling on the pavement, I don’t figure Jack can get off a shot for fear of killing me. It’s me or Olafson. One of us needs to die and well, he’s already dead. I grab his hand, point the pistol toward his belly, and press down on his finger.
Gunshot explodes, he stops moving, and his full weight drops onto my chest. My right ear goes deaf but I’m sure the other works because Sienna is screaming in it.
For some odd reason, my hands aren’t doing what my brain commands and Jack gives a valid explanation. “You’ve been hit.”
“Baby, you okay?” Sienna drops to her knees beside me but I can’t see her.
“Oh God, open your eyes, Andy, please.”
For her, I try but it’s damn hard. There’s a kind of buzzing in my ears and I’m weak as a baby.
Her cries are desperate and sad which probably makes sense because I think I may be dying. If I want to see her one last time I need to lift one of my lids. So, with a Herculean effort I do. My reward is the loveliest woman on the face of the planet.
When I notice the tears, I need to tell her not to cry and to believe in God before she dies so I get to see her again. I try to give her a brave grin, but cough and taste blood.
That can’t be good.
She looks to Jack, the one holding my insides in place and he lowers his mouth until I taste the coffee on his breath.
He gives me this real, dark look and says, “You die, that fucking Aussie will make his move.”
Really? That’s his don’t-die speech. He really needs to work on his bedside manner. The fucked-up thing is, it works. Now I’m damn well not shutting my eyes until I hear some doctor say I’m out of the woods.
I glare at him and he raises a brow with a snarky grin.
Asshole.
Sirens, paramedics, and some blessed relief comes in the form of an IV. As promised, I keep my eyes glued on Sienna as she holds my hand all the way to the hospital. I can’t quite understand what she says but her tone is sweet.
“Sing to me baby.” I must be as high as she was the first time we met.
Grinning and feeling stronger, I remove the oxygen mask. “Do you want to fuck me because I sure do you.”
“You jerk.” She blushes and places the mask back in place.
Jack’s disembodied voice comes from somewhere, “Way to go, lover boy.”
What? I thought I was pretty clever.
After we stop, things get pretty wild. The back door of my ambulance opens, a bunch of concerned faces start barking orders, and I’m wheeled into an emergency bay for triage. There, I learn a bullet went right through me and nicked some important organs.
“Kidney? No problem. I got two, right?” I joke around as I approve the surgery and they agree I’m not going to die, otherwise I’m not closing my eyes.
Sienna gives me a kiss, Jack punches me on the shoulder, and the last thing I remember is an anesthesiologist telling me to count backwards so I start, “One, two, three…”
I hope Saint Peter has a sense of humor.
You can guess I’m pretty relieved when I wake up in a hospital bed, not with fire and brimstone. Also, there’s no old guy with a white beard, no tally sheet, and no escalators. However, there are a lot of monitors and a nurse who smiles and asks me what year it is.
I say nineteen fifteen, she looks horrified until I laugh.
Guess that means I’m going to live.
