Chapter 30
There wasn’t anyone guarding the front door so I took a step inside the living room of Chris’ house. What I saw was worse than any television show or crime drama. I instantly saw why there was no need for anyone to be guarding the front door.
There were two men lying on the ground who had been shot. One of them had his face looking upward and the other had his face down to the carpet. Blood was pooling up around the men and I felt like I was going to pass out after seeing it. No one was in the living room and instead seemed to be going back to another room, the second bedroom in the house. It was the room I thought Chris had been keeping those ten large duffle bags in.
Another SUV pulled up in front of the house and two men dressed in khakis came walking up to the front door.
“Where is he?”
I pointed to the back room. I wasn’t sure who the person was that he was talking about but I was pretty confident he was in the back room where all these other guys kept going.
I hadn’t seen Chris in all the men coming and going from the back room and I was starting to get very worried. I needed to make my way back to that room to see what was going on, but by this point there were men standing in the hall so I certainly wasn’t going to be able to get past them.
For the time being I stayed in the living room and tried to look at the walls instead of down at the two dead men on the ground. It was hard not to look at those men and I was sure that I would have the memory of their faces burned into my brain for a very long time.
“Get him to the truck now!” I heard a man yell as the other men moved out of the hallway. I was now trapped in the living room and tried to move into the kitchen so I could be out of the way. My heart fluttered with anxiety and fear as I waited for someone to be brought out of the back room.
In my head I thought that Chris could certainly be one of the med helping out in the situation. Just because he involved in a shootout didn’t mean that Chris wouldn’t be perfectly fine. In fact, I was probably being way too over dramatic and Chris was going to walk out of the back room any minute. Then I saw him. The most horrible sight I could have imagined.
Chris was being carried by two of the men dressed in black. Chris was wearing a blue t-shirt and cargo shorts and he looked so out of place when next to the other men. He was covered in blood and looked like he couldn’t even hold his head up and was about to pass out.
“Chris, are you ok?” I said as I tried to talk to him.
He didn’t respond.
Chapter 31
“Chris! Chris!” I screamed.
The men continued to carry him out to the SUV and laid him in the back seat.
“I’m coming with you,” I said as I started to climb into the vehicle.
It was the first time any of the men addressed me.
“No, you can’t. We are taking him to the hospital. Someone will let you know an update as soon as we know something.”
They closed the door and took off, leaving me standing there in the middle of the street. I could see the two other men working inside, but I didn’t want to go back in there and see the dead bodies on the ground. I looked around the neighborhood and it dawned on me how isolated I truly was living in Bain. There wasn’t anyone home during the daytime and many people didn’t even come home until the weekends. All the commotion that had just gone on and no one was even around to call the police and report gunshots being fired.
My legs started to feel weak and I made my way over to the stairs in front of my house. The adrenaline made my body shake and I started to feel like throwing up. My hands vibrated with fear and I could feel a cold sweat coming over my body.
I leaned over and put my head in my hands as I tried desperately not to throw up. I hated the feeling of vomiting and would do everything in my power not to give in to the nausea.
“Are you alright?” One of the men came over from Chris’ house and stood in front of me.
“I’m not sure.”
“If you’ll let me, I’d like to help you inside.”
He seemed like a nice guy and I had seen him with Chris at the airport before. I didn’t exactly respond, but I did try to stand up and he reached his arm out and helped to stabilize me.
“I’m Katelyn,” I said as we walked into my house.
“I know. I’m Gunner.”
I smiled at him as he helped me over to the couch. He put a couple pillows on one side of the couch and I moved over to lie down. He disappeared into the kitchen and was back very quickly with some water and a few saltine crackers.
“Thanks.”
My hands were shaking as I tried to drink the water, so Gunner took the cup from me and held it while I drank. It was a very kind thing to do. He was a very handsome man, not quite as handsome as Chris, but still very close. Gunner had more of a baby face and looked to be close to my age. He didn’t seem old enough to be doing whatever it was that Chris was doing.
“You don’t look too well. Is there anything else I can get for you?”
“I’ll be alright. I’d really like to know how Chris is as soon as you know something though. He did not look very good.”
“Oh it looked like the bullet went straight through the shoulder; he should be fine as long as they get the bleeding stopped.”
Gunner seemed like a pretty laid back guy to be in whatever this business was. Although, Chris also was pretty laid back and was shot in a hospital right now. Perhaps being laid back in their business wasn’t the best personality trait.
His light brown hair was shaved tight on the side of his head with some wavy length on the top. I found it difficult to take him serious with the two large dimples on either side of his perfect smile. Gunner seemed like a pretty intense guy, his eyes looked at me with a powerful desire. But he stayed away from showing any of that desire. It dawned on me that Gunner had said he knew who I was. I wondered how much Chris had told the guys about me.
“You seem like you’ve seen plenty of shootings,” I said with a little bit of a laugh.
Gunner didn’t look like he was going to respond at first. Then, perhaps because he knew I was friends with Chris, Gunner told me a little more than I could have imagined.
“Yes, I have seen some pretty horrible stuff. Saw a friend get his neck cut once. Many of us have had other injuries like gunshots or being stabbed or something like that.” Gunner said.
“Why do you do it? I mean it’s obviously a dangerous job. Why keep putting yourself in the middle of things?” I wanted to know. Did it pay really well? Did this job help with the ladies? Why would any man choose a job where he could see his friends murdered?
“We are saving people. You can’t beat knowing that you are taking these bad guys off the street and they won’t have anyone to lead their cause.”
Their cause? I wondered who these people are that they are taking them off the streets. It sounded like Chris and his friends worked as bounty hunters or something like that. Maybe that was why they could afford to travel on a private jet instead of like normal people. Or maybe they had some big person who financed their operation and paid for things. I wasn’t going to keep trying to get information out of Gunner though; he needed to get back to cleaning up the crime scene over at Chris’ house.