“Where’s Messina?” he retorted. I ignored him and went back to putting full pressure on the wound.
“AreyouDylan?” I demanded, as he leaned over my shoulder.
“What the fuck? No, and will you shut up about Dylan?” Fontana gave one look at Angelo, who was pale as ash and breathing in short, shallow gasps, and said, “Shit.”
“Should I have gone to the hospital?” I choked out.
“No. Uh. Shit. Shit shitshit. Okay, listen, you did good calling me but we don’t have much time. You stay in the back with him, I’ll drive. Keep the pressure on—yeah, like that.”
Fontana sprinted around to the driver’s seat after shutting the back door on me, then turned to toss his phone into my lap, unlocked. “Call the Boss, tell him what’s happened. Tell him we’re heading to the tailor.”
I fumbled with the phone, wiping one sweaty, bloody hand down my thigh, and keeping my other hand firmly on Angelo’s wound. “Wait, call theBoss?”
“He’s under Georgie in my contacts, and for fuck’s sake don’t tell him that’s what I put him in as, or there’ll be three of us in the morgue tonight instead of potentially one.”
With shaking fingers still sticky with Angelo’s blood, I put the phone in my lap and scrolled through the contact list. It was filled with similar innocuous names to Angelo’s phone.Georgie, there it was. “I’m not going to let Angelo die,” I told Fontana as he took off. “He is not fucking dying tonight.”
He looked at me in the rearview mirror and winked. “That’s the spirit.”
* * *
The restof the night was a blur. I couldn’t tell where Fontana drove us, but it was a private home not far away, although time seemed eternal that night. The whole drive I stared at Angelo’s face, watching every flicker of his eyelids, listening to every short, gasping breath.
When we got where we were going, a man opened the door, glaring at Nick who had been bashing on it non-stop until it opened. But as soon as he saw Angelo, slumped and unconscious and held up between the two of us, his face changed. “Bring him through.”
We carry-dragged Angelo into a back room, where there was a makeshift surgery, including a steel gurney, onto which the doctor—if that’s even what he was—indicated we should put the patient. A woman, about the same age as the doctor, came through after us and set about gathering equipment together.
Surgery equipment.
“Out,” the doctor said when we’d placed Angelo on the gurney.
“No fucking way,” I said. The doctor gave Fontana a pointed look, and he took my arm.
“Let the Doc work,” he said. “He can’t concentrate with you weeping all over the place, and he’s got his wife to help.”
I still hesitated, but Fontana pulled me through the door, out into the hallway outside. “Come on,” he said. “They’re good at this shit. And you look like you could do with a drink.” He led me back to a living room with the familiarity of someone who’d been in this house many times before, sat me in a sofa chair, and then poured me out a stiff measure of liquor. I couldn’t even tell what it was as it burned its way down into my gut, but it did seem to help.
I don’t know how long we waited. Fontana dozed on the love seat, his feet up on one arm and head on the other, but I couldn’t rest. I paced back and forth, I sat, I got up, I paced some more.
At long last I heard footsteps approaching, and I slapped Fontana’s chest to wake him. He sat up, startled.
The doctor came in, his hands covered in blood, wiping them down on a towel. “He’s awake.” Fontana stood, stretching, but the doctor looked at me. “You’re Flynn? He’s asking for you.”
“How do you like that,” Fontana grumbled.
I ignored him, rushing past the doctor and back down the hall. “Third door,” he called, and I had to backtrack to find the room he meant.
I burst in to find Angelo lying on an old camp bed, propped up against the wall on pillows. His left arm was in a sling and his chest was half bandaged up, but I could still see some of the silver chest hairs among the black were dyed pink from his blood.
He gave a tired, pain-tinged smile when he saw me in the doorway. “Hey, kid.”
Chapter Thirty-Five
Angelo
Bax stumbled toward me and sat on the footstool placed next to the bed as a low seat. “Angelo.” It seemed to be all he could get out, and he ducked his head, swallowing.
I reached out slowly with my hand. I had to go slow. Everything felt like a huge effort. The Doc had drugged me up with something to dull the pain, but it had also dulled my senses. Baxter leaned in to grab my hand with both of his.
