Too much blood loss. Too much, too fast…
“Move your hands, Ozzie,” he instructed firmly, the acrid smoke filling his nose and scratching his lungs. “I need to see.”
As if the Fates, those evil bitches, were playing some sort of sick joke, the overhead lights chose that exact moment to flicker again. Steady gritted his teeth, praying to Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and all the saints he could remember from his catechism classes that they didn’t go out for good. Without light to work by, Ozzie was as good as dead. Hell, depending on how badly his best friend’s femoral artery was damaged, that might be the case regardless.
No, Dios! Por favor!
From the corner of his eye, Steady saw Penni DePaul emerge from Dan’s room clad only in a T-shirt and panties—no real surprise; he’d heard them laughing and giggling and entering Dan’s suite not thirty minutes ago. She didn’t break stride as she ran toward them. But instead of kneeling to help, she vaulted over them and into Julia’s room. He didn’t spare her a second glance as he wrestled Ozzie’s hands away from his shredded thigh.
“Fuck me,” he rasped when he saw what he was dealing with. The front upper half of Ozzie’s leg looked like ground beef, the meat and muscle a mess, his femur visible in spots. “Keep pressure above the wound!” he yelled to Dan as he sank his fingers into the horror of Ozzie’s ruined thigh. He searched through the heated gore of internal flesh, through gristle, touching bone.
Where are you? Where are—
“Fuuuuuck!” Ozzie screamed, the heel of his uninjured foot beating against the floor when Steady was forced to shove his whole hand under Ozzie’s quadriceps muscle toward his groin where the severed femoral artery had retracted. “Steady! Stop!”
“Can’t, bro,” he grunted, his fingers slipping through blood and tissue, searching, searching… “Gotcha!” he crowed when he found the end of the artery and clamped it between his thumb and forefinger. “Dan! I need a tourniquet!”
“H-holy shit,” Dan coughed, staring over Steady’s shoulder. Steady turned to see what’d snagged Dan’s attention. Through the thin fog of smoke, he could make out the bed. Or what was left of it, anyway. It’d been blown to smithereens…and Julia Ledbetter along with it. Her partially charred corpse was laying half-on, half-off the smoldering mattress.
“Julia, no!” Agent DePaul cried, her hands covering her mouth as she was wracked by a spate of coughing.
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.