Startled, Charley looked down.
The skin along her upper arm was split in a long, angry gash, the blood darker now, still slowly running.
“What’s wrong?” she asked, looking between Seth and the medic.
Seth’s eyes met hers. “You said you did that when you hit the ground?”
She nodded weakly. “That’s when I felt it.”
The paramedic made a low sound in the back of his throat and looked at Seth, then shook his head.
Seth stepped closer. “Charley, this isn’t from falling.” He glanced at the wound, then back at her. “This is a bullet graze.”
For a second, she just stared at him. The words didn’t register right away. They just hovered there until a cold rush of shock swept through her, and her gaze dropped back to the burning gash on her arm.
“Are you saying I got shot?”
Both men nodded.
The medic spoke gently, but there was no softening the reality of it. “Looks like the second shot clipped you.”
Charley’s breath left her in a shaky rush.
“You need to go to the hospital,” the medic said. “That’ll probably need stitches, and possibly a tetanus shot.”
She felt her chest start to tighten, and she tried to draw in a breath, but it felt like there wasn’t enough air. Her vision narrowed, and a wave of dizziness slammed into her so hard it felt like the ground shifted beneath her.
“Charley?”
Seth’s voice sounded farther away now.
She tried to look at him to tell him that something was wrong, but everything went black.
???
Pierce stood at the edge of the grinder with the hose in his hand. The afternoon sun was turning the concrete into a damn skillet beneath the BUD/s recruits. Sweat, seawater, and misery hung thick in the air, mixing with the sharp bark of instructors and the strained grunts of men pushing their bodies past their limits.
“Keep those legs up,” Pierce called, spraying a hard stream of water over the line of recruits lying on their backs doing flutter kicks.
A few groaned. One muttered something under his breath that sounded a whole lot like a prayer.
Pierce ignored it.
“Welcome to the show, gentlemen,” he said dryly, sweeping the hose back across them. “You want to be SEALs? Then stop looking like you’re auditioning for a funeral.”
A couple of the stronger ones managed a half-assed burst of effort, legs coming up higher as water hit their faces and soaked through their shirts. The rest looked one breath away from dying where they lay.
Good. Not that he wanted them dead, but pain had a way of teaching faster than speeches ever did.
He turned, about to hand the hose off and send them into the next round of punishment, when movement at the far edge of the grinder caught his eye.
He did a double-take and saw it was Ray. When he met his gaze, Ray waved him over. That alone was enough to make something in Pierce’s gut tighten.
Ray would never pull someone away from the grinder unless someone were bleeding, dying, or a war were about to break out.
He handed the hose off to another instructor without taking his eyes off Ray. “Keep’em moving,” he muttered, already striding away.
The moment he got close enough, Pierce could see the tension radiating off his friend.
