Full Throttle (Black Knights Inc. #7)(17)

The bomb…er…more like incendiary device—because, after an initial blast of shrapnel, it’d obviously burned hot and fast before instantly putting itself out—had been in Agent Ledbetter’s room? It didn’t make sense. But Steady didn’t have time to dwell on it. “Dan!” he shouted, jolting his teammate out of his temporary shock. “Get my med kit and a belt!” When Dan hesitated, he screamed, “Now!”

Dan jumped to his feet and dashed toward Steady’s room.

“You’re killing me, Steady!” Ozzie shrieked. “You have to stop!”

“No can do, hermano.” He gritted his jaw because he knew the horrendous pain Ozzie was suffering. “If I stop, you’ll die.”

Teardrops leaked from the corners of Ozzie’s eyes, streaking the soot on his temples and darkening his blond hair as he thrashed his head from side to side. Steady experienced the prick of sympathetic waterworks behind his eyes. But he couldn’t give in to tears. Not only would it do no one any good, but it would also interfere with his ability to do his job. And right now, his job was—

Abby…

Her name whispered through his mind and caused his racing heart to trip over itself.

Abby…

“Agent DePaul!” he bellowed over his shoulder, remembering the code name the Secret Service had assigned to Abby after she graduated from college and took the job at the DC Botanic Garden. “Check on Beekeeper!” But the agent just stood there, staring at Julia’s mutilated body. He raised his voice to a booming roar. “DePaul! Secure the Beekeeper!”

She jumped, blinking owlishly before she got a hold of herself. He saw her throat work over a hard swallow. Then she nodded and dug her bare toes into the carpet, sprinting in his direction. He ducked his head, displaced air fluttering his hair as she made like an Olympian and vaulted over him.

He didn’t watch her race down the hall, although there was a part of him that wanted to, a part of him that desperately needed to see that Abby was safe and sound. For right now though, he had to concentrate everything he had on the task at hand, because his best friend’s life could quite easily—and literally—slip through his fingers if he didn’t.

“What do I do?” Dan asked breathlessly, dropping Steady’s camouflage medical bag to the floor and kneeling beside him in the doorway.

“The belt.” Steady fought a cough. The thin smoke made his chest feel full of hot coals. “Wrap it around his leg.” He pushed up the bottom edge of Ozzie’s blood-soaked boxers so he could point at the lump beneath Ozzie’s flesh, high on his thigh, where his fingers were clamping the artery. “And cinch it tight above here.”

Dan jerked his chin in a nod, then carefully threaded the end of the belt under Ozzie’s wrecked leg, snaking it close to his groin. “Tight,” Steady emphasized again. “Tight as you can.” Dan gritted his teeth and yanked the belt as Ozzie let loose with a shriek guaran-frackin’-teed to haunt Steady for the rest of his life. “Hold him, Dan!” he yelled when Ozzie thrashed. “You have to keep him still!”

Dan threw himself over Ozzie’s chest, using his weight to hold Ozzie down. With his free hand, Steady unzipped his medical bag. Almost there. Almost there. Madre de Dios, almost there. He just needed to find a clamp to put on the end of that artery and then he could start Ozzie on Hemopure, an oxygen-carrying blood substitute produced in South Africa. Even though it had yet to be approved by the FDA, he’d taken to acquiring the stuff from his Recces friend—Recces was the nickname for South Africa’s Special Forces Brigade—and packing it in his med kit. It stayed good for up to thirty-six months at room temperature, was compatible with all blood types, and was a wonderful Johnny-on-the-Spot when a transfusion wasn’t possible. Like right now…

Unfortunately, before he could find the small plastic case he kept his clamps in, the overhead lights flickered and dimmed…then went out altogether. Instantly the space was plunged into darkness. Deep, dark, impenetrable darkness. Blinding darkness…

Shit! Fuck! Sonofabitch!

“Ozzie!” he shouted his friend’s name, reaching unseeingly for Ozzie’s shoulder. When he found it, he gave it a squeeze. “Ozzie!” he yelled again because the guy continued to struggle against Dan’s restraining weight. “You have to be still, hermano! I know it hurts! I know it does! But you have to be still so Dan can let go of you. I need him to get a flashlight!”

“Sonofabitch!” Ozzie howled. “I need morphine!”

“Can’t give you morphine.” He infused his voice with calm, hoping it would help Ozzie do the same. “With the amount of blood you’ve lost, it could kill you.”

“Sonofabitch! Sonofabiiiiiiitch!” Ozzie bellowed again.

“It’s mind over matter!” he yelled right back. Okay, so f*ck calm. How about candor? “Just open up that big brain tank of yours”—besides being the Black Knights’ resident lady-killer, Ozzie was also a whiz-kid computer hacker with an IQ big enough to make Einstein envious—“and fill it with some high-octane grin-and-bear it! You hear me? You find a way to be still! Your life depends on it!” And then, just in case candor didn’t work, he figured he’d appeal to Ozzie’s machismo. “Besides, you keep up this prissy shit, and I’m going to have to revoke your membership to Club Dude.”