Prisoner (Criminals & Captives #1)(60)

“To have them,” he snaps. Then his voice softens. “It’s not going to work, honey. Stalling.”

A tear drips down my cheek. “I can be like that, for Grayson. Something to keep.”

Maybe it’s pathetic to compare myself to a car. When you’re faced with death, dignity doesn’t mean much.

He shakes his head. Sighs. He raises his weapon, and I try to twist away. I should’ve sped off. Should have driven off when I had the chance. “He saved my life! He doesn’t want me dead.”

“Wait,” says a cold voice. Calder appears. He looks like he’s going into battle—a vicious Viking. “You can’t.”

“She’s a hostage,” Stone says. I kick at Stone, but he keeps me off somehow. “We don’t keep hostages.”

Calder’s expression is impassive. “Nate wants her to assist.”

“He’s here?”

“Yeah. And he was asking about…” Calder tips his head toward me.

“I’ll f*cking assist,” Stone says.

“Your fingers are too big. So are mine. He says the bullet was a dummy; it’s all over in there. He needs little fingers. Fine work.”

Stone swears.

“Will he be okay?” I ask.

“Shut up,” Stone barks.

“Let’s go,” Calder says. “He wants her scrubbed up. We’ll kill her after.”

Stone simply reverses course, dragging me back up the stairs.

I try to pull away. “Fuck you. I’ll help, okay? Let go of me.”

He lets me go and points a gun at my head. “If he dies, you die. Slow.”

“Fuck you,” I say. I’ll die anyway. His little demonstration in the parking garage proves that much.

I reach the brightly lit main room, heart pounding. They’ve ripped Grayson’s shirt off; his whole chest is dark with blood, some of it shiny and sticky. A lanky black man is rigging another utility light to a chandelier, and when he flips it on, you can see how pale Grayson is.

“Is he going to be okay?” I ask.

“We’ll see,” the man says, and I recognize the voice—it’s Nate. “You drunk or anything? Squeamish? Too upset?” he asks.

I look down at Grayson. His eyes are half-open like he’s fighting to stay conscious. “I’m okay. I can do this.”

“If he dies, you’re f*cked,” Stone says from behind me.

“Shut up,” Nate barks at Stone. He turns back to me. “Are you good to help? I’m serious. If you’re too emotional, you’re no use to me.”

“I’m good,” I say, wiping my tears. “Just worried.”

Stone snorts like he doesn’t believe me.

“Hey, back off. I need her focused here. You can handle blood, right?”

Stone only crowds me closer. “Don’t f*ck this up.”

I turn to him, pissed and torn up and scared for Grayson, like all the worry of the last hours is folding over on top of me. “You don’t know me. You have no f*cking idea about any of this.”

“No, you have no f*cking idea.”

Asshole.

I leave him standing there. Out at the table under the circle of light, Nate has me snap on gloves and hold a clamp over a vein. I assist him, amazed my hands aren’t shaking; I feel shaky inside, or maybe just inside my head. I breathe and focus, following his orders, grateful for a childhood spent patching up my mother after she got beat by her latest dealer. I’m not spooked by violence or blood or even needles. Calder is stationed across from us with a stack of super-absorbent pads; his job is to soak up blood as needed, which seems too often.

“He gonna live?” Stone asks.

Nate doesn’t answer. His long, slim fingers move with speed and confidence, and he skirts around the issue with facts: “He’s lost a lot of blood. Nothing vital was hit. The next five hours will tell.” I get the feeling that his manner with Stone is the result of experience, as if there might have been a time in the past when he’d given a rosy prognosis only to have things go bad. Stone’s a guard dog on steroids, loyal and vicious, white teeth snapping, ready to lash out.

The operation is terrifying and bloody. Nate has me depress bits of tissue inside Grayson’s wound while he removes fragments of bullet, one after another, using some sort of a magnet, pausing to make tiny stitches—battlefield sutures, he calls them. I can see why he needs my small fingers—not only can I do more pinpointed tasks, but I don’t block his view.

He makes Stone hold a pad to the wound while he takes a stretch break. I rip off a glove and lay my hand over Grayson’s rough, stubbly cheek. He’s completely out. I need him to wake up, to be okay. I want to hear his voice. God, I don’t know how I got to this place, needing Grayson like this. Not just to keep me alive and safe from the guys—though yeah, there is that—but needing to be enclosed by him, needing him with me in the world.

Needing him in my world.

One of the guys appears with a bag of blood. Nate tells him to hang it from the ceiling, and everything starts up again.

The operation goes on for an hour, then two. Grayson is out cold from whatever Nate gave him. Eyes closed, mouth slightly open. At least he can’t feel pain.

Good job, Nate says now and then. Perfect. Right there…over…yeah, good. Suddenly Nate’s closing him up. Grayson’s signs are good, Nate tells me. His shoulder’s messy, that’s all. That’s how he says it—messy.