Grave Phantoms (Roaring Twenties #3)(42)

Bo was nearing the corner. He stopped suddenly, hugged the wall, and poked his head around it. Another shot exploded from his gun. Astrid reflexively swerved sideways and ducked as Bo’s angry bellow echoed down the hallway. She lifted her head, throat tight with fear, and saw him stumble away from the corner.

He made a strangled noise as his back hit the wall.

She heard the distant slam of the stairwell door as Max escaped, and behind her, apartment doors flying open as she pushed away from the wall and barreled toward Bo. When she came to a stop in front of him, his chest heaved as he clutched himself on his side, near his ribs.

He pulled out his hand from beneath his jacket.

It was covered in blood.

FIFTEEN

Astrid cried out in horror. “Bo!”

“Fuck,” he swore, clamping his hand down over his jacket. Then louder, “Fuck!”

Shock chilled the blood in her veins. If her hands were trembling before, they were positively convulsing now. Memories of overheard conversations sprung up in her head—of Winter saying the worst two places to get stabbed were the stomach and chest . . . but at least you’d live if it were the stomach.

She reached for Bo and spoke in fragments. “Where? Are you . . . ? How? What do I . . . ?”

“He must have gotten me in the elevator,” Bo muttered in disbelief.

His blood on the knife—not hers. How did she not notice? How did he not notice?

Behind her, the elevator operator was yelling at everyone to shut their doors and stay inside their apartments, but she blocked it out.

Bo grimaced and pulled the right side of his jacket open. Blood blossomed like a poppy flower over his white shirt. A gaping slash in the fabric marked where the knife had gotten him. Astrid’s mind went into a strange, detached place and temporarily muffled her manic emotions. The wound was too high to be the stomach, she thought. That was good.

“Bastard only got my side,” Bo confirmed. His eyes went to her neck. “Are you—?”

She wiped away the blood with her fingers. “He nicked me. I’m fine. You’re bleeding all the way through your coat,” she said, a fresh wave of panic washing through her as she noticed the dark spot on the red-brown wool.

He glanced down and clamped his hand around his side. “It’s not deep. I don’t think.”

What if some vital organ was pierced and leaking into his body? What organs were on that side of one’s body? Spleen? Appendix? She didn’t even know what those were for, much less if they were vital. Not for the last time, she regretted that she’d been such a terrible student.

Education or no, she had sense enough to know they couldn’t just stand around watching him bleed.

“You need to keep pressure on it,” she said, and then turned around to the elevator operator, who was marching toward them, asking if Bo was all right. “Call an ambulance.”

Bo shook his head and holstered his gun over his uninjured side. “No ambulance,” he told the man, and then said to Astrid, “Downstairs. I need to see where he went. I only got him on the first shot. The second missed, but the man looked sick to me. He’ll tire out.”

Astrid didn’t give a damn about Max’s whereabouts. They knew where to find him when they needed him—Mrs. Cushing’s manor. But at this point, the man would be long gone, and she wasn’t eager to chase him down just to jump back into a fight. Especially when Bo was gripping his side and sucking in sharp breaths with every step.

“I’m fine,” he assured her.

He was not.

She had a lot of experience learning from her family how to avoid police involvement, so she talked fast—her best talent—as they were rushed down a secondary out-of-sight service elevator, giving half-truth instructions to the elevator operator.

“I’m sorry, what’s your name?” she asked.

“Mr. Laroche,” the operator answered.

“Well, Mr. Laroche, I’m Miss Magnusson, and this is Mr. Yeung. And here are the facts.” She told him that the police, if they were called—and really, did they need to be?—should look for a man named Max rumored to be living with a Mrs. Cushing in Presidio Heights. Let the police knock on Cushing’s door looking for him. That would keep dear old Max temporarily occupied.

Mr. Laroche was as eager to get rid of them as they were to leave, and by the time they exited onto city streets that were now dark and rainy, Bo was in no mood to pick up Max’s trail.

“Think I need stitches,” he admitted weakly, telling her what she already knew.

“There’s your Buick over there. I’ll drive you to Saint Francis.”

“Aiya,” he bemoaned. “I must be bad off if I’m considering letting you get behind the wheel of the Buick. But you can’t take me there.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Because I’m Chinese.”

Her stomach knotted. She hadn’t been thinking. But she was too worried about him to dwell on it. “Where do we go?” she asked, vaguely remembering hearing Winter speak of a doctor who treated a lot of his bootlegging employees and dockworkers.

“Jackson Street,” he said as she opened the Buick’s passenger door and helped him into the front seat. “Take me to Chinatown.”

—

It had been months since Astrid had driven a car. Aida had taught her how to drive in Mamma’s old silver Packard. She had an operating license, but only because Winter frowned at the man working the desk at the motor vehicle office after she failed the driving test the second time. The problem was that she got carried away with the thrill of driving and forgot how fast she was going. She didn’t think she’d get carried away now, but she was too worried about Bo to be careful.