Captured (Devil's Blaze MC #1)(85)

I made my way into trauma three to see Mary and Derrick rushing around working on the patient. I ran straight to the phone on the wall and paged Dr. Drake Thomas to the ER. I called up to the OR and had them start prepping a room the way Drake required for GSWs. As I turned back around, my whole world stopped and the bottom dropped out.

No way. This couldn’t be happening. I rushed to the side of the stretcher and gasped in horror. “Drew, oh my God, Drew. Talk to me Drew, can you hear me?”

Mary looked up at me. “Leila, what the hell? Do you know this officer?”

Tears were streaking down my face. “This is my brother. Drew.” Turning my attention back to him, I grabbed his hand. “Drew, can you hear me? Please open your eyes.”

Derrick came around the stretcher, grabbed me and tried to pull me back, but I fought out of his grasp.

“Leila, you can’t stay in here, you know this. He’s your brother. You’ve gotta step aside. Let us help him. We’ve got this. You know we’ll do everything we can to save him, but you gotta go.”

Turning around, Derrick got the attention of one of the SWAT officers that came in with Drew. “Hey man, can ya please get her out of here, she doesn’t need to see this.”

Jasper Smith, sergeant of the narcotics unit, stepped forward and scooped me up in a hug, and guided me to the glass front door that was swung wide-open. “Leila, I tried to reach you in route before we got here. I didn’t want you finding out like this.”

Jasper was a fifteen-year veteran of the North Charleston Police Department and had kept an eye out for Drew over the last ten years. Jasper had been Drew’s sergeant when he started with NCPD, at the ripe old age of twenty-one. Drew eventually moved out of Narcotics to the K-9 unit and now onto the SWAT team, but they stayed close. Jasper and his wife, Donna, had Drew and I over for many Sunday dinners. They didn’t have any children of their own. So after Mom died, they sort of became our surrogate parents.

I took a deep breath to try to regain my composure, but failed miserably and ended up rattling off questions like an interrogator. “Jasper, what the hell happened? How did this happen? I talked to Drew before my shift and he said it was gonna be a quiet night. Y’all only had one warrant to serve and it would be a piece of cake.” Fisting Jasper’s shirt, I cried, “How’d he get shot?”

Standing back, Jasper scrubbed his hand down his face. “We got shitty intel and…I don’t know. It’s like they knew we were comin’ or somethin’. We always hit these houses at crazy hours, when most people are sleeping, so we’ve got the element of surprise. But these f*ckers were waitin’ in the house for us.”

Shaking my head, I couldn’t process what he was saying. “I have to find out what’s going on with Drew.” I turned and stalked back toward trauma three and was met just outside of the door by Barb.

“Oh no, don’t tell me I missed all of the fun. The patient didn’t come in DOA did he?” Barb joked, and then stopped. “Wait. Leila, what the hell is going on? Why are you out here?”

“Barb, you have to get in there. You have to help him,” I demanded.

“Leila, you aren’t makin’ any sense. What’re you talkin’ about? Help who? Why aren’t you in there?” Barb started to rush down the hall, getting closer to the room.

“It’s Drew. Drew is the GSW. Oh God, Barb, it’s bad. It’s so bad. Please. You’ve gotta get in there,” I pleaded with her.

Barb stopped short of the doors, turned back to me to say, “I promise, I’ll do everything I can,” then sprinted into the room.

“Barb, wait. I want an…update.” But it was too late, the door was closed and the curtain drawn. Now I had to wait, something I didn’t do well under ordinary circumstances. Being on this side of the door was a horror I had never contemplated.

Pacing the corridor, I thought of the times I came out here myself telling patients’ families to have a seat and someone would be out shortly with an update. Heaven help the person that tried to say that to me right now. Chances were good I’d punch them in the throat if they did. I really didn’t know the extent of Drew’s injuries, but I knew enough to surmise they were bad. Really bad.

Standing across the hall from Drew’s room, I shed my gear, then leaned back against the wall and slid down until I clutched my knees to my chest. Dear God. This wasnot happening.

Our father walked out on us when I was nine years old, then my mom was killed in a drunk driving accident two weeks before my eighteenth birthday. There was no way God would be cruel enough to take Drew from me too. Silently, I prayed to the heavens above not to take the only family I had left. Drew wasn’t just my brother, he’s my rock. He has always been there for me, even when I didn’t want him to be.

Pulled from my thoughts as a strong, hand landed on my shoulder, I looked up from my not so comfy spot on the floor to see Bobby Gray, Drew’s best friend and partner. He held out a calloused hand to help me up from the floor.

Wrapping his strong tatted arms around me, he pulled me into a tight hug and whispered, “I am so sorry Lei. What can I do?”

Tears threatened yet again, but I pushed them down. “There’s nothin’ we can do. They won’t let me in there with him. They haven’t even come out to tell me anythin’. I don’t know what to do right now…damn it. Please tell me y’all got the * who did this.”