“Do it, Steady.” Ozzie’s voice was reedy, thin. “Just do it.”
One. Tough. Motherfucker.
“Here goes,” he said. Dan threw himself over Ozzie at the same time he shined the light into that awful wound. Steady pushed Ozzie’s torn flesh and muscle up with one hand while pulling the artery down with the other. It was a slippery little bastard, but he managed to block out the thought of what would happen if he didn’t manage to hang on to it. But there was no way he could block out Ozzie’s bloodcurdling wail of sheer, unimaginable agony. It was enough to burst his eardrums, enough to scar his soul.
Finally, finally, he had the artery where he needed it to apply the clamp. Then it was back into his duffel bag for the Hemopure and QuikClot. And, miracle of miracles, the lights chose that moment to come back on.
“Go help Agent DePaul,” he told Dan, blinking against the sudden glare. “I’ve got this now.”
Dan nodded and pushed to his feet. Steady watched him sprint down the hall, then immediately turned back to his patient.
Patient…
Jesús Cristo, Ozzie was so much more than that. A trusted teammate. A best friend. A brother really, in every way that mattered. And if he allowed himself to dwell on what he was doing and who he was doing it to, he’d probably lose his shit. So, sí, his patient…
“Almost finished,” he assured Ozzie. “We’ll get you to the nearest hospital, and after a little blood transfusion, it’ll be all the morphine you can stand. How does that sound, eh, bro?”
“Julia?” Ozzie managed to rasp as he tried to lift his head to peer into the smoky room.
“She’s dead.” Steady wasn’t Willy Wonka. Sugarcoating things wasn’t his style.
“Fuuuuuck.” Ozzie allowed his head to drop back to the floor, a sob shuddering through him. Steady gave his friend two seconds to mourn before he went back to work on that thigh.
Seven years of higher education and numerous bouts of battlefield triage helped him determine exactly where to shake the QuikClot—a powdery clotting agent—to combat the worst of the remaining bleeding. Ozzie moaned and clenched his bloody fists, but compared to what he’d just been through, the burn of the QuikClot was child’s play. Steady was in the process of hooking up an IV of Hemopure when a loud bang! thundered around the space. Instinct had him throwing himself over Ozzie until a double bang! bang! made him glance up.
Penni DePaul, weapon in hand, was firing into the locking mechanisms on the doors of her fellow Secret Service agents’ rooms. Dan followed behind her, kicking them open. And each time he did, smoke billowed out in a thin but corrosive cloud that wasn’t quite enough to trigger the hotel’s fire suppressant system. That is, if the hotel even had a fire suppressant system. In this part of the world, you could never be sure if those sprinkler nozzles attached to the ceiling were functional or just for show.
Regardless, Steady didn’t need to look into those rooms to know what was there. The growing smell of charred flesh said it all. It wasn’t one explosion that’d rocked him in his bed. It was several small, simultaneous ones. Abby Thompson’s security detail was dead or dying. And something inside Steady, something deep and profound, something he wasn’t aware existed, shattered with the realization. Was this the abduction scheme they’d been hearing about? Or something far more sinister?
Abby!
He didn’t realize he screamed her name aloud until he saw Dan turn in his direction, the man’s face a sooty mask of dread. Oh, Abby, no!
“I’m firing at your lock, Abby!” Agent DePaul yelled. “If you’re in there, move away from the door!”
Steady’s skin tried to crawl off his body. He couldn’t draw a full breath. And his heart thundered so loudly he could hear it echoing down the hall. Then he realized it wasn’t his heart. It was footsteps. A lot of them…
The door to the emergency stairwell burst open, spewing forth a glut of hotel staff and security at the same time that Penni pulled her trigger. Bang! The crowd of new arrivals—hard to believe, but he’d hazard a guess barely two minutes had passed since the explosions rocked the building—dropped to the floor, proned out like a group of sardines, lying side by side as they covered their heads with their hands.
Steady only gave them a cursory glance before turning to watch Dan kick in Abby’s door. Dan rushed into the room and Steady’s heart proceeded to climb into his throat. Which was strange, because if his heart was in his throat, then what the hell was hurting in his chest, making it feel like he’d had his sternum cracked open by a surgical retractor?