“But he can live through this, right?” she asked. “He’s a werewolf. This won’t kill him, right?”
But Alex refused to answer, flipping Xander back over and shoving his fingers into his chest, moving them around as he tried to find the bullets.
Khaki gently brushed Xander’s hair back from his forehead. “Hang on, Xander. Please hang on.” Tears spilled down her cheeks. “I love you, Xander. Do you hear me? I love you, dammit. Don’t you dare give up!”
Alex looked at her sharply before focusing his attention on Xander again. Khaki knew she shouldn’t have slipped up like that, but right then she was too terrified to care what Alex or anyone else heard her say.
Alex worked out one of the bullets, then went back in to look for the other. But after a few seconds, he slid his fingers out. Khaki thought it was so he could go at it from another angle, but he only kneeled beside her with a grim look on his face.
“What are you doing?” she said, trying to keep her voice calm—and failing. “You have to get the other bullet out!”
“I can’t,” he said. “The round hit some ribs and shattered them. There are bullet and bone fragments all over the place, and I’m worried some of them may be lodged in his heart. I could kill him if I go rooting around in there and do something wrong. He needs a doctor.”
Khaki’s heart was pounding in her chest like a drum. It felt like she couldn’t breathe. But she squeezed Xander’s hand and forced herself to get a grip, for his sake.
“What if a doctor figures out what he is?” she asked through her tears.
“We can’t worry about that,” Alex said. “If those fragments are lodged in the wall of his heart, and one of them tears through… Even a werewolf can bleed out from a wound like that.”
“That’s not going to happen,” she said fiercely, as if she could make it true by a force of will.
“Not if we can stop it,” Alex agreed.
Khaki sat there with Xander’s head in her lap, smoothing his hair and telling him to keep fighting, that he was going to make it. She knew he could hear her. As long as she kept talking, he wouldn’t give up.
It seemed like an eternity before the ambulance arrived and the two paramedics rolled in the stretcher. When they reached for Xander, she shooed them back with a growl and a glare. Khaki refused to watch the two paramedics struggle with Xander’s two-hundred-and-forty pounds of muscle, not if jostling him could kill him. The medics didn’t say a word as she and Alex carefully lifted him up and gently put him on the stretcher, nor did they complain when she climbed in the back of the ambulance with him, then knelt down out of the way and begged him to keep fighting.
Khaki looked up as the paramedic closed the back door of the ambulance to see Alex standing there with Xander’s blood soaking his arms up to the elbows. Cooper, Becker, Max, Hale, and Trevor stood beside him, their faces etched with the same fear and concern.
Khaki looked down at Xander. She could hear his heart beating over the sounds of the monitors and sirens. His heartbeat was weak and irregular, but it was still there.
She squeezed his hand. Xander wasn’t going to die. She wouldn’t let him.
* * *
Khaki was still standing in the waiting area outside the trauma center when the rest of the squad arrived. She couldn’t say how long she’d been rooted in that spot, staring at the doors that led to the operating room, but it felt like a lifetime. She vaguely remembered a doctor asking if she’d been shot. She’d looked down at the blood on her thigh and told him it wasn’t hers. He’d left her alone after that.
Sergeant Dixon strode in right behind Cooper and the other guys, looking half-pissed, half-worried.
“What the hell happened?” he demanded.
“Cooper, Hale, Max, Becker, and I found the two getaway vehicles and took them down,” Trevor said. “At the same time, Xander, Alex, and Khaki caught four of the bank robbers as they were fleeing the rear of the bank.”
“We had all four suspects cuffed when a sniper hit Xander with three rounds in the chest,” Alex said, picking it up from there. “Whatever the sniper was shooting, it went right through Xander’s Kevlar vest like it was nothing. One of the bullets fragmented too close to his heart for me to dig it out. I made the call to get him to the hospital.”
Dixon nodded. “You did the right thing. What has me confused is why the sniper waited until after his guys had been arrested to start shooting.”
Nobody had an answer to that. Until that moment, Khaki hadn’t given a single thought to the sniper and why he’d done what he did.
“We had a helicopter conduct a sweep of the area where the sniper had been positioned moments after he shot Xander, but he was already gone,” Trevor said. “We questioned the other bank robbers before the FBI took them into custody, and according to them, they didn’t have a sniper with them. Whoever the guy is, it’s going to take a lot for those assholes to give him up.”
Dixon’s mouth tightened. “We’ll worry about that later. The only thing that matters right now is Xander.” He looked at Alex. “How bad was he when you rode in with him? Was he conscious?”
Alex hesitated, giving her a quick look. “I didn’t ride in with Xander. Khaki did.”
The entire squad held their breath as Dixon turned his attention to her. “You rode in with Xander?”
She nodded.
