“Are you okay?”
A whistle behind him almost had him turning around, but when he tried, he clenched his eyes shut and groaned.
“That’s some hole you’ve got there, Captain,” Dave noted. “Bleeding good and proper, too. Just to let you know that you’re in the first ambulance when it comes, but we’ve called a second one for the dude bleeding out of his calf in the woods. Once he’s loaded up, Carter’s accompanying him for treatment—or amputation, either or—and Dad’s taking Clyde back to his for a steak dinner to reward him.”
Not taking my eyes off Garrett’s, I managed to get out, “Don’t give him a sauce, just steak and potatoes, or he’ll shit everywhere.” Then, slowly, I moved around his body and looked at his back.
This time it was my turn to heave. I hadn’t thought that black would show up blood as clearly as that, but on his left shoulder was a hole in his black hoodie, with blood soaking the fabric visibly.
“You’ve been shot.”
Logan cleared his throat, chuckling, “Are we sure she should be working with kids? It doesn’t seem like she’s—” he stopped, then coughed. “I’ll be quiet.”
Fear like I hadn’t felt in two years since that day near the water hit me hard. This was worse than that. The fear I felt for my own life was nothing in comparison to how I felt about the prospect of losing Garrett.
I’d been scared for two years—scared for myself, scared for my parents, but I felt like I was suffocating with it right now.
Moving back in front of him, I felt a tear trail down my cheek as he watched me watching him. “How are you still standing?”
“Because he’s not gone right now, and I don’t trust him not to shoot again. At least this way, if anyone tries, they have to go through me first.”
Moving closer to our sides with his back facing the woods, Raoul added, “And me. He already got you, so he’s got to take me on this time.”
“Uh,” Dave drawled, moving in on the other side. “Didn’t want to feel left out, so I’ll take this side, but just to say he’s in cuffs over there and not getting out. Your dog’s seen to that. Also, just to say,” he snickered, “once notice was put out by some people, Gjorka’s friends scattered, so he’s working solo now. Apparently, people don’t see much use in being your friend when you’ve got no money to pay them because everything’s been seized. They also don’t much like it when the CIA gets involved and helps out the FBI.”
Very slowly and wincing the whole way, Garrett turned his head to look at Dave. “Are you serious?”
“Sure am. Found out at the same time Hurst said he saw Gjorka. Old fool wanted to hunt him down, but we said we’d come and help you out.”
Then, from the trees, we heard Carter yell, “Oh, for fuck’s sake. Okay, out you come.”
Looking up at the sky, Raoul sighed. “Guess he didn’t listen.”
It was as we were driving to the hospital that I leaned over Garrett. “I never got to give you an answer.”
Groaning as we hit a bump, he clenched his eyes shut. “To what?”
“Ma’am, I need you to sit back so I can—” the paramedic tried to nudge me out of the way, and all of the stress caught up with me.
“I know what you’re trying to do, but I’m trying to tell the man I love that I’m saying yes to his fucking proposal!” I screeched. “He took a bullet for me before I could say it, so don’t think I’m saying yes out of pity because he’s injured. Could you give me a fucking second to say yes?”
I felt like shit as soon as I did it, but judging by the laughter coming from him and the guy driving like a dickhead, they didn’t take any offense.
“Go ahead!”
Taking a calming breath, I smiled softly and looked back down at him, only to see Garrett laughing so hard he was crying. “Is it the laughter or the fact I’m saying yes making you cry? Swear to God, Evans, if you’re crying because you’re sad I’m accepting your proposal, I’m going to kill you.”
“It’s you screeching in a paramedic's face that you’re saying yes to a proposal and assuring him it’s not because I got shot that’s making me laugh,” he wheezed, groaning. “And it’s the pain that’s making me cry, I swear.”
Leaning back to sit my ass down, I shook my head and nodded at the paramedic to do his thing.
Holy shit, how was this my life? Seriously, I’d gone from being a dull little student and daughter of an NYPD detective who was overprotective to the max, to a woman on the lam from a psycho, then engaged to a crazy former USAF captain, with a dog who took down a psycho and chewed on him, to… to… to…
“My life is whacked,” I announced unnecessarily to Garrett and the paramedic.
Not looking up from what he was doing, the paramedic replied, “At least it’ll never be boring. There’s a lot worse that could happen than having a whacked life.”
Looking at me out of the corner of his eye, Garrett rasped, “Happiest day of my life meeting you, pretty girl. I wish I’d caught that box jellyfish when it stung me so I could give it a steak dinner, too.”
The paramedic frowned down at him. “You got stung by a box jellyfish? Dude, so did I!”
Even though he was weak and it was clearly costing him, my fiancé exchanged box jellyfish war stories with the guy, even going as far as to tell him about the meme that’d brought us together.
Totally whacked.
Chapter Fifteen
Garrett
Waking up was never easy, and if everyone was honest, we all took that extra five minutes in the super comfy spot we’d somehow found the second the alarm went off. Thanks to my military career and being a police officer, I’d been woken up for immediate action on many occasions, so I appreciated those five minutes more than most.
So, when I felt sleep lifting, I stubbornly kept my eyes shut and willed my brain to shut the fuck up. I also willed the pain in my right shoulder to do the same—annoying bastard. The last time I’d felt something like this, I’d ended up rolling onto Tamsin’s phone during the night, where she’d left it on the bed because she’d fallen asleep watching something on it. The time before that, it’d been the burns I’d gotten in Raqqa. They’d been mean bitches, and I still felt ghost pains in the area two years later.
The instinct to shift my ass slightly to try and get the phone out from under me took over, but the shooting pain that took over the area in question was enough to have me going from saying ‘fuck no’ to waking up, to ‘that isn’t a phone’.
It felt like someone was stabbing me with a hot poker, and it was bad enough that my eyes shot open as I rolled all the way onto my back, groaning and reaching across with my right hand to touch the area carefully. What followed was an unpleasant medley of pains and sharp stabs.
The shoulder that was already trying to kill me protested even more, and the hand that was covering it now made it feel worse. It felt like it’d been dislocated, and just to add to it, something sharp was tugging in my right hand.