Chapter 148 Get down
Greyson
One moment, I was watching hope fragile and terrifying bloom on Cassie's face. The next, the window behind her disintegrated into a thousand glittering shards, and the air was torn apart by the sound of gunfire.
Crack. Crack. Crack-crack-crack.
It was so loud it was a physical force, hammering against my eardrums. My brain, fogged seconds before by guilt and desperate pleas, snapped into a crystalline, horrifying clarity.
Get down. Cover. Return fire.
I saw Cassie, standing frozen in the spray of glass, a statue of perfect shock. My heart stopped.
"GET DOWN!" I screamed, the raw terror in my voice alien to my own ears. Matt was already shouting the same thing from the kitchen.
She didn't move. Why wasn't she moving?
Then I saw it. A brutal, invisible punch to her side. A small, dark hole appeared in her pristine white sweater, and for a split second, it was just a blemish. Then the red began to spread, a vicious, blooming rose of crimson that darkened the fabric and seeped outward with terrifying speed.
"CASSIE!"
Her name was a prayer, a curse, a scream ripped from my soul. My body moved before my mind could fully process the image of her wound. My hand, as if belonging to someone else, yanked the Glock 19 from the small of my back—a habit from a life I'd tried to leave behind, a lawyer's paranoia that had just become a lifeline.
I didn't aim. I pointed in the general direction of the broken window and squeezed the trigger. Once, twice, three times. The recoil was a familiar, hated sensation. Matt was beside me, his own weapon adding to the deafening chorus, providing cover.
My entire world had shrunk to two points: the threat outside the window and the woman falling to the floor.
I lunged for her, my shots becoming sporadic, meant only to keep heads down. I caught her just before she hit the hardwood, her body limp and frighteningly light. The scent of her perfume—something clean and citrusy—mixed with the coppery tang of blood and the acrid smell of gunpowder.
"No, no, no, no," I chanted, the word a meaningless mantra against the onslaught of reality. I lowered her gently, my hands immediately going to her side.
The businessman in me vanished. The part of me I'd buried years ago the pre- med student who'd spent two years in pre-me before switching tracks, who'd volunteered as an EMT through college—surged forward with brutal clarity.
Entry wound. Right lateral abdomen. Small caliber, possibly nine millimeter.
My hands moved with automatic precision, pressing hard against the warm, wet fabric. The blood welled up between my fingers, slick and hot. I ripped the sweater up, exposing the wound—a neat, dark hole just below her ribcage. No exit wound visible from this angle.
Internal bleeding. Liver? Spleen? Kidney?
"Matt! MATT! Call 911!" I barked, my voice shifting into something harder, more controlled. The terror was still there, a howling beast in my chest, but I shoved it down, locked it away. I couldn't save her if I fell apart.
"Already called!" he shouted back, ejecting a magazine and slamming in a fresh one with practiced efficiency. "Ambulance is on the way! Five minutes out!"
Five minutes. I ran the math automatically. Average blood volume for a woman her size approximately four and a half liters. She could lose thirty percent before going into hemorrhagic shock. But internal bleeding was insidious, invisible. I had no way to know how much she was losing into her abdominal cavity.
I grabbed a throw pillow from the couch, ripped off the cover, and wadded it against the entry wound, using my body weight to maintain pressure. My other hand went to her neck, fingers finding her carotid pulse.
Thready. Rapid. Not good.
"Cassie, stay with me," I said, forcing my voice to stay calm, authoritative. The voice I'd used in the ER during my brief stint as a volunteer, the one that cut through panic. "Look at me. Focus on my voice. Stay awake. You have to stay awake."
Her eyes were fluttering, pupils dilating and contracting unevenly. Possible shock setting in. I needed to keep her conscious, keep her talking, keep blood flowing to her brain.
"Tell me what day it is," I commanded. "Cassie, what day is it?"
"T-Tuesday," she whispered, her voice thin and confused.
"Good. That's good. Stay with me. What's my name?"
"Greyson..." Her hand moved weakly, reaching for me.
I caught it, squeezing hard enough to hurt, using the pain to anchor her. "That's right. And you're going to be fine. You hear me? You're going to be absolutely fine."
It was a lie. I could feel her pulse weakening, her skin growing cold and clammy. Classic signs of shock. Her body was shutting down, pulling blood from her extremities to protect her vital organs.
The gunfire from outside had stopped. The sudden silence was heavier, more menacing than the noise. Matt moved to the window, peering through a shattered pane, weapon still raised. "They're gone. Pulled out."
He was at my side in an instant, his cop's eyes taking in the scene. He'd seen enough shootings to know how bad this was.
"Pressure," I said tersely. "I need you to maintain pressure here while I check for an exit wound. Don't let up, not even for a second."
Matt's hands replaced mine, and I carefully rolled Cassie onto her side, just enough to check her back. There—a larger, more ragged hole just below her shoulder blade. Exit wound. The bullet had traveled upward at an angle, which meant it had likely torn through her diaphragm, possibly nicked her lung.
Pneumothorax. Hemothorax. She could be bleeding into her chest cavity.
I laid her back down, my mind racing through treatment protocols I hadn't thought about in over a decade. If her lung was collapsing, she'd need a chest tube. If the bleeding didn't stop, she'd need surgery. But we were minutes from help, and all I could do was keep pressure on the wounds and pray.
"I'm sorry," she whispered suddenly, her voice a thin, thready thing that cut through my clinical detachment like a knife.
The words shattered the last of my composure. My hands, steady until that moment, began to shake.
"Don't," I said, my voice cracking. "Don't apologize. Don't you dare apologize. This is my fault. All of it." The guilt crashed over me in a wave so powerful it was physical. "I drew them here. I brought this to your door. I'm so fucking sorry. I love you too, Cassie. God, I love you so much."
Her eyes were losing focus, her breathing becoming shallow and irregular. She was slipping away, and I was losing her.
"Cassie? CASSIE!" I cupped her face, feeling the unnatural coolness of her skin. "No. No, you don't get to leave. Not like this. Not now. We just found each other again. You can't—"
Her eyes fluttered closed.
"Pulse is dropping!" Matt said sharply.
I grabbed her wrist, feeling for the radial pulse. Barely there. Her respirations were shallow, maybe six per minute. Her lips were tinged with blue.
Hypoxia. Hypovolemic shock. She was dying.
"WHERE IS THAT AMBULANCE?" I roared, all pretense of calm obliterated.
As if summoned by my desperation, sirens screamed into the driveway. Red and blue lights strobed through the broken windows. The cavalry had arrived.
I looked down at Cassie's still, pale face, at the blood that had soaked through every layer of fabric and pooled beneath her, at the faint, barely-there rise and fall of her chest, I felt the cold certainty that we were out of time.
The door burst open. Paramedics rushed in, their radios crackling, bringing equipment and competence and the harsh light of professional assessment.
"Female GSW to the—" I started, then stopped, the clinical language dying on my tongue. "Her name is Cassie. Cassie Hunter. She's been shot. Please save her. Please."
They moved me aside with practiced efficiency, and all I could do was watch as they worked, as they called out vitals and started IVs and loaded her onto a gurney with the controlled urgency that meant everything and nothing.
As they wheeled her out, one paramedic glanced back at me. "You coming?"
I didn't remember moving. I didn't remember climbing into the ambulance. I only knew that where she went, I went.
The doors slammed shut and the siren wailed into the night, I held her hand and prayed to every god whose name I'd ever learned that this wouldn't be the last time I felt her skin against mine.