Mr. Dark 3 (Tamed #3)(16)

I felt a sharp spray as another round ricocheted off the concrete near my head, and the sting as a fleck of the floor cut my face. I sighted and squeezed the trigger on my weapon, cursing as the Russian operative seemed to move with almost psychic abilities, pausing his roll just long enough that my round bounced off the pavement beside him instead of smashing through his head. He had also rolled out of Sophie's immediate ability to adjust, and I knew she would have to pick up the rifle to re-sight and fire.

I didn't have that much time, I could see in his eyes as he brought his rifle to bear. In that instant, I was faced with two choices. If I jerked my trigger, I'd die for certain unless I scared him. There was no way I could hit him, and his shot would probably take me in the belly. On the other hand, if I took the fraction of a second to steady my aim, I could take him out, but at the risk of not getting a shot off at all.

I thought of Sophie.

The rest was easy.

My bullet took him high in the forehead, painting a gigantic Rorsarch blot on the wall behind him in red and grayish tones. His rifle dropped to the concrete, going off, and I felt another sharp bite of pain as the round clipped off my right trapezius muscle before flattening against the far wall of the room. It was over.

The silence was immediate and immense. Sophie came around, her shotgun in her hands to run up to the automatic door, but it closed before she could get there. The whole gunfight had taken less than the five seconds it normally took for the pneumatic hinge on the door to close.

"Sophie," I whispered, my Desert Eagle falling to the floor. I couldn't feel my right arm any longer, and I knew the hydrostatic shock of even the grazing hit on my right trapezius was disrupting the nerves to that arm. I only hoped that the feeling would return. Sometimes, in wounds like this, it didn't.

Sophie came over and looked at me, and at the blood already staining my pants and my shoulder. I could only watch in admiration as she quickly assessed my wounds and ran over to her position, where we'd stashed our medical kit. It was a full battle surgeon's kit, along with extra bandages and other things we thought we might need. Lying me onto my back, she quickly pulled my armored vest off, and cut away my t-shirt to assess the damage, before repeating the process on my jeans. "Repeat after me," she said as she opened the kit. "Gunshot wound, right shoulder."

"G... gunshot wound, right shoulder." I knew what she was doing. By having me repeat, she could keep me conscious, and keep herself calm at the same time.

"Gunshot wound, graze, right outer thigh."

"Graze, right outer thigh."

"Stitches needed on shoulder, thigh can be bandaged."

"Stitches for shoulder, thigh can be bandaged."

Sophie nodded and pulled out the materials needed. "We don't have any anesthesia, so this is going to hurt," she said, taking out an ampoule of topical antiseptic. Cracking it open, she poured the whole thing on my thigh, sluicing the blood away and lighting up the entire area in fiery pain. I groaned from deep in my chest, which she ignored professionally while she applied a sterile gauze pad and taped it down. "Good, now for the fun part."

She repeated the process with my shoulder, then took out her suture kit. "You're lucky the wound isn't deeper into the muscle, I never learned how to do intramuscular sutures," she said in an almost conversational tone. I knew it was just detachment from the shock of what had just happened, and I let her continue. "You're going to have quite a nice little scar up there. It'll look like Dracula took a bite out of you."

I smiled, keeping the expression on my face even as I felt the needle slide into my flesh over and over. It took twenty stitches, forty punctures of my skin. I could feel each and every one, and it felt like forever before the last tug was done and Sophie snipped the thread. "Now lay back, I'll give you a shot of antibiotics," she said, filling a syringe and jabbing me in the uninjured shoulder.

"Thanks," I rasped, feeling the first tendrils of battle-shock drop over me. I groaned and lay back, letting Sophie elevate my left foot. "You need to get those bodies taken care of."

"After you're stabilized," she replied matter-of-factly. "You mentioned one other time that Owen Lynch likes to send cop patrols as cleanup on hits. Think he'll do it this time?"

"No," I said, trying to focus. It was hard, like I was swimming in laughing gas or something. "These two were freelancers. He'd do that for his own boys, but not these two. Also, he probably suspected there'd be some sort of setup. If that was the case, he wouldn't want to send more men to their deaths. He's smart that way, knows when to cut his losses."

Sophie nodded and went over to her little hiding place, retrieving my jacket. She brought it over and covered my body. "Then rest for now. I'll clean up the mess after it gets dark. Now I'm glad we don't have too many neighbors."

"See, I told you." I grinned and laid my head back, letting my eyes close.

I heard Sophie get up, and go over to the bodies of the two men. She spoke so softly I could barely make out what she said. "Two."

"Seventy seven," I whispered in reply, and let sleep overtake me. My last thought was just how high both counts would get before our war was over. Not a problem for me, but I just hoped that Sophie didn't let it overtake her.

Chapter 10

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