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“He walks.”

Brazil’s eyebrows went up about a millimeter. “Say that to Fox, not me,” he said.

“I’ll say it to Fox. I’m saying it to you first because you’re the one standing here with a gun.” I met his eyes. “He put his own body between that man and mine. He walks. Somebody drive him to a bus station and let him be a problem for a different state.”

Brazil thought about it for exactly as long as Brazil thinks about anything. “Vasha’s going to have an opinion,” he said.

“Vasha’s going to be the one who agrees with me.”

He nodded once and that was the end of it.

Lifting her was the hard part. Not the weight. The geometry. GSW to the flank. Packed anterior and posterior. I couldn’t carry her against my chest without compressing the exit. Couldn’t cradle her without disrupting the pressure. I went under her knees and behind her shoulders. The fireman’s carry modified for a wound track. Her arm went around my neck. Her breath came short against my collarbone.

“Brace,” I said.

She braced. Her good hand gripped my cut. I lifted. Her weight settled against me. Brazil had the tailgate down. I set her in the truck bed as gently as the situation allowed, which wasn’t gentle at all.

The truck bed was lined with moving blankets. Old. Stained. The kind the club kept in every vehicle because blankets were what you reached for when blood was involved. I arranged her on her right side. Left flank elevated. Exit wound clear of compression. Her scrubs were cut open from hip to rib. The gauze packs sat where I’d placed them. Blood had soaked through both. Not pulsing. Seeping. I could work with seeping.

“Drive,” I said.

He drove.

I settled against the cab wall. Boots braced against the wheel well. One hand found Maren’s sternum. Palm flat. Fingers spread. The rise and fall of each breath moved my hand. Fourteen per minute. Shallow but adequate. I counted silently. The numbers lived in the space between her ribs and my palm.

The truck pulled onto the county road. Gravel under tires. The vibration traveled through the metal bed into my spine. Maren’s body absorbed it differently. Each bump translated through the wound track. I watched her face. Every flinch. Every catch in her breathing. The clinical focus holding but thinning at the edges.

“Gate rotation’s adjusted,” I said. “Leo on till six. Carlos takes days. Freak’s going to have opinions about this. Count on it.”

She looked at me. Really looked. Her brown eyes found mine in the dark of the truck bed.

“That’s the worst bedside manner I’ve ever heard.” Her voice was thin but the edge was there. The humor that arrives when the worst has already happened and dignity was the only thing left to protect.

“I know.” Two words. The closest thing to self-deprecation my functional vocabulary produced.

Her mouth curved. Didn’t quite make it to a laugh. The warmth of a woman who found things funny when she shouldn’t and wasn’t going to stop because a bullet said otherwise.

The truck hit gravel.

A long stretch. County maintenance had skipped this section. Brazil didn’t slow down. Couldn’t slow down. Minutes mattered. The truck bed bounced. Metal complained. Maren’s body lifted half an inch off the blankets. Came down hard. Her breath caught. White around the lips.

I braced. Left hand on the cab wall. Right hand stayed flat on her sternum. Didn’t lift. Didn’t waver. The count continued through the impact. Fourteen. Shallow but adequate. The numbers ran. They didn’t stop for gravel.

“Sorry,” Brazil called from the front. The acknowledgment of a man driving too fast on a road that deserved better.

Brazil glanced in the rearview. The look of a brother who had ridden with me for years and was seeing something he hadn’t seen before. His eyes found mine in the glass. Held for a beat. Then back to the road. No comment. No nod. Just the look, and the road ahead, and the truck moving too fast on gravel that hadn’t been graded since spring.

Maren’s breathing steadied. The gravel stretch ended. Pavement underneath. The vibration smoothed.

I kept counting. Breathing rate. Minutes to Dread. Arithmetic from a lifetime of counting everything except the one thing that mattered, and was now counting nothing else.

The truck moved. The road unwound.

* * *

The emergency bay doors swung shut behind Dread’s shoulders.

I stepped back. Once. Twice. My spine found the hallway wall. Pressed against it. The drywall was cool through my shirt. Fluorescents hummed overhead. Light that made everyone look worse than they were. Dawn hadn’t broken yet. The windows at the far end of the hall were still dark. Somewhere a coffee machine gurgled. The soundtrack of a place that existed between night and morning and didn’t care which one won.