“I’m hit.” Shane pulled a handful of blood away from his right shoulder. “Flesh wound, I’m pretty sure. Sonsabitches.”
“You need a hand?” Nick asked.
“No, goddamnit,” Shane said, cussing up a blue streak under his breath. Yeah, he was good.
Nick scanned out the back window. Course that would’ve been too easy. Two SUVs had gone offroading onto the sidewalk around the cars blocking the road. “We have company.”
“Yup,” Easy said.
“A-Team, vehicles are in pursuit. Do you have everyone?” came Jeremy’s voice.
An occasional round was still hitting home on their rear end.
Grabbing his gun, Rixey lowered the passenger window and leaned his upper body out enough to line up a shot. He pulled the trigger, and the first tail swerved and lost control, crashing into a parked car.
“Get us gone, E,” he hollered.
They ran a red light, which Rixey only realized after the fact when cars went screeching sideways in their wake. He approved. But the damn tail still wasn’t giving up. The road opened into two lanes lined with clubs and bars and restaurants, and traffic picked up. Couldn’t damn well shoot now. Nick sat heavily in his seat just as Easy cut across two lanes of traffic and made a right turn at the last possible minute.
Rixey careened into Charlie and Shane, whose injured shoulder slammed into the door, sending off more colorful curses.
The turn-and-slide didn’t stop there. Easy took the first left. Right again. And then another right, taking them back in the direction from which they’d come. No sign of the tail. Had they lost him? Nick kept a vigilant gaze out the back. Easy took the next left to cut across the city from east to west, continuing to zigzag to make sure they were tail-free. But he kept his speed down and drove carefully. Last thing they wanted was to get stopped by a cop for speeding or running a red light. Not when they were in the free and motherfucking clear.
Rixey blew out a breath and sagged against the seat. It might’ve been the first time he’d fully breathed in fifteen minutes. “Everybody okay?” He got two affirmatives, and hit his com button. “Eileen? This is A1. We have the package. I say again, we have the package.”
“They have him,” Jeremy said.
Some sort of static filled Nick’s earpiece for a moment, then Becca cried out, “You have him? You really have him?”
Man, the joy in her voice made him feel ten feet tall.
“Yeah, sunshine. I’m bringing him home.”
Chapter 23
Becca had been sitting by Charlie’s makeshift bedside for eight hours, willing him with everything inside her to wake up long enough to let her know he was really okay.
Before they’d even returned to Hard Ink, Nick had given her a rundown of the injuries already identified: dehydration, probable broken ribs, multiple cuts and contusions, burn marks, infection in the amputation sites. They’d cut off two of his fingers. The macabre list went on and on, forcing her to detach from the idea of him as her brother long enough to treat him as a patient. Her attempted abduction proved they couldn’t trust hospitals to be safe right now.
Somewhere along the way, B-Team had met up with A and escorted them back. Marz had been shot three times in his lower right leg—the one with the prosthesis. His jeans were literally Swiss cheese, but otherwise B-Team had escaped the firefight at the storage center intact.
By the time both teams returned home, Becca and Jeremy had set up a trauma station using a table from the tattoo parlor and the supplies from her and Shane’s packs, which thankfully included IV fluids and antibiotics. Shane had helped her treat Charlie, and then she’d patched up Shane’s GSW. Thank God he’d only been grazed.
Once she’d done everything she could for Charlie, and thanked everyone, and welcomed them home safe and sound, she’d broken down in Nick’s arms.
After Charlie’d had two bags of saline and a bag of IV antibiotics, the guys had brought a mattress into the gym from the apartment so he could be moved off the firm table without jostling him too much.
She’d been sitting in this chair almost the entire time since then, alternating between sleeping against Nick, who sat beside her, staring at Charlie and willing him awake, and playing with her bracelet until she drove herself crazy with the jingle. She finally took it off and laid it at the foot of the mattress.
She wasn’t alone. Every member of the team had sat or slept around her and Charlie.
If she hadn’t already known before then, she knew exactly why Nick Rixey loved every one of these people. Becca didn’t know how she’d ever repay them.
Actually, yes she did. She and Charlie had to help them clear their names.
Another hour passed, and Becca fell asleep on Rixey’s shoulder again.
“Becca? Hey, wake up, sunshine.”