Drawing Axel's trembling body closer to him, he kissed his head, then sent the video to Detective Wil Jordan with an accompanying message:This car just hit a kid. Run the license plate. I want to know who owns this car. Get back to me ASAP!
Clint put his phone away and wrapped both arms around Axel. The young man clung to him, his hands—sticky with blood and melted ice cream—gripping fistfuls of his shirt as he shoved his face into Clint‘s throat, shaking and crying.
“He… He’s not gonna make it,” Axel whispered between broken breaths. “He’s not…” His fingers gouged into Clint’s back, sobs bursting from him. “That… That could’ve been Luke,” he choked. “Or-Or one of the twins… Maddy…”
Pressing his lips firmly to Axel’s head, Clint murmured, “It wasn’t.” His words meant nothing, because anyone could be snatched away in the blink of an eye, so fucking fast there wasn’t a goddamn thing you could do to stop it. And then suddenly—your whole fucking world wasgone. Though the ambulance was long gone, the mother’s scream still echoed in Clint’s ears, a scream of such consuming pain and anguish that it imprinted itself on his mind. He would never forget the sound… and prayed he never heard it again.
Clint kept his distance while Axel and some of the other bystanders gave statements to the police. Axel said nothing about the video Clint had taken of the car; he’d already sent it to Detective Jordan. Axel overheard the officers talking among themselves about a drive-by shooting that had occurred less than twenty minutes earlier, not far from there, two injured, and they were speculating that the shooters were the same ones who hit the kid.
When Axel rejoined Clint, he’d already received a reply from Jordan. “I got it,” he told Axel.
“The name of the car’s owner?” Axel asked, a slight tremor in his voice. He didn’t want the driver arrested—he wanted Clint to deal with him and make him suffer as profoundly as the mother.
Clint nodded. “And address.”
“Do you think they would use a car registered to them in a drive-by shooting?”
“Let’s pay them a visit and find out.” Clint’s jaw was set, his facial muscles taut. He was focusing on the driver rather than the horror scene that had just unfolded right in front of them.
Axel wished he could erase the horrifying incident from his mind, wipe it clean, reset it to the moments before the car came screaming down the street… and forget that a mother’s worst nightmare had become reality in the dying light of a deceptively normal afternoon.
CHAPTER 2
The apartment stairwell was a claustrophobic tunnel, suffocating with the heat of two bodies and the fear that hung in the air like thick fog. Graffiti curled up the walls like veins, chipped paint revealing old violence beneath the institutional gray. Somewhere above, cigarette smoke drifted downward, a burnt-paper punctuation to the layered grime of old concrete.
Clint's movements were fluid yet deadly as he checked his weapon with as much care as a lover would caress their partner's body. Axel's hands shook slightly as he followed suit, the weight of the loaded mags feeling heavy in his palms. In the eerie light of the flickering bulb, they stood like brothers in arms, preparing for the unknown.
When they were just three steps from the landing, where a flickering fluorescent light cast sickly shadows across their faces, Clint turned to Axel. “Wait here.”
“Why?”
“So I can…evaluatethe situation.”
Axel understood the cowboy’s instinct to protect him and keep him out of harm’s way, but it was just as dangerous for Clint to go in alone. “You should have someone watching your back, just in case.”
“I do,” Clint said. “You. From here. It works to our advantage if you stay back, out of sight. I’m not going to barge in. I want to make sure we have the right person before we… proceed.”
Axel would have preferred to be by Clint’s side, but he understood the cowboy’s reasoning. “Okay. But if things go sideways—even in theslightest—I’m coming in.”
Clint looked at him a moment, then nodded, knowing he couldn’t talk Axel out of it. “All right.” He kissed Axel. “Everything will be fine if we play it cool.”
Smiling small, Axel murmured, “And who’s cooler than you?”
The cowboy grunted and climbed the remaining steps. Axel leaned up, watching him as he walked to the apartment number from the address Jordan sent. Tension knotted Axel’s chest and caused a throbbing ache in his temples. His stomach had yet to unclench from the nightmare events of earlier, and his mind kept jumping to the boy… and if he’d even made it to the hospital alive. Maybe he wasalreadydead when they put him in the ambulance.
Axel tried to push thoughts of the boy from his mind. Clint needed himhere. He couldn’t afford to be distracted. He leaned his back against the stairwell wall, the chill of the concrete pressing through his jacket and into his back. Axel shivered as his gaze fell to the steps, grimy from the steady traffic of feet moving up and down the stairs night and day. Discarded cigarette butts littered the stairwell, and a lingering odor of stale smoke had seeped into the stone walls.
When the apartment door on the landing opened, Axel sank out of sight, then rose again when he heard awoman’svoice—deeply distressed.
The door jerked open after a single rap, startling Clint and the woman on the other side, who gasped and took an unsteady step back, eyes wide and bloodshot from crying. She lookedabout Clint's age, maybe older, with light brown hair, graying at the temples, that appeared to have been pinned up haphazardly with a tortoiseshell clip, which hung precariously off a loose strand. Her knuckles whitened as she clutched her worn leather purse against her chest like a shield, her face ashen beneath blotchy red patches, mascara smudged in raccoon rings beneath her swollen eyelids.
“Excuse me—” Clint started, when the woman cut him off with a trembling hand raised between them.
“I-I can’t talk.” Her voice broke on a sob, and tears spilled over. “I-I have to go… I have… my son…” Her chin trembled violently as her breath came in shallow gasps, her pupils dilated with the particular wild-animal panic of a mother whose child is in danger.
Clint shifted his weight, boots scraping against the worn hallway carpet as confusion furrowed his brow. “Ma’am…”
“My… My son called…” Her voice fractured, each syllable threatening to plunge into hysteria. “His little brother… wasshot.”Tears spilled down her blotchy cheeks, dripping onto the worn leather purse she clutched like the last life preserver on a sinking ship. “Somebody shotmy baby.I-I have to go… I have to…”The last words dissolved into a keening whimper. She shoved past Clint, her shoulder catching his arm with surprising force, leaving the apartment door swinging on its hinges. Her footsteps echoed in the stairwell, a frantic staccato punctuated by ragged breathing.
