Hard as You Can (21 page)

“No. I don’t know. I’m just a little rattled.”

Man, but the unusual fragility in her voice just slayed him. “Look, if it’ll make you feel better, I can leave someone . . .” He surveyed the group.

“I’ll stay,” Easy said. “If that’s okay with Jenna.” She stared at the guy for a long moment, then gave a small shrug. “Don’t worry, you won’t even know I’m there.”

Shane gave Easy a thumbs-up. “I’ll leave a good friend named Edward. He’ll keep an eye out ’til you get home.”

“But that won’t be until after two,” she said.

Shane turned away and paced a few steps along the cracked sidewalk. “I told you I’d help you and Jenna. That offer didn’t come with an expiration date or office hours. Understand?”

She blew out a long breath. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome. Now get your head screwed back on straight and keep your wits about you. Everything’s fine here, okay?”

“Okay. And Shane? I . . . uh . . . just, thank you.” The connection went dead.

Handing the phone back to Jenna, Shane asked, “You with me?” Jenna nodded, more cooperative now. But Shane couldn’t fault her for fighting back. Hell, he had half a mind to lecture her for walking out the door with a group of strangers in the first place. But that would be all kinds of unfair, wouldn’t it? “Okay, then. Would you be comfortable riding with us, and Easy will follow in your car, or would you rather I ride with you to your place, and they’ll follow?”

She glanced at the group of men surrounding her. “Uh, I guess—”

“We’ve got some activity out front of the club,” Beckett said in a low voice.

“Pick, Jenna. Or I’ll choose for you. Because either way, I’m not leaving your side until I know you’re locked inside that apartment.”

Jenna rolled her eyes. “I’ll ride in your car,
I guess,
” she said, then gave the make, model, and location of her vehicle. Fishing in her purse, she located her key ring and handed it off to Easy.

Shane nodded at Easy. “Remember that location is under some type of surveillance, E.”

He nodded. “Roger that. I’ll make like Casper.”

Jenna watched Easy walk away and turned a glare on Shane. “You’re kinda bossy. You know that?” she said.

Shane barked out a laugh as they set off for Beckett’s SUV, parked just down the street. He threw Jenna a smile and winked. “I can totally live with that.”

B
ack at Hard Ink, Shane hopped out of Beckett’s SUV, with Charlie’s surgery filling his mind. For the next few hours, nothing else mattered. Not Church or Merritt or the team or himself. Not even Crystal.

Because tonight was do-or-die.

Gravel crunching beneath his boots, Shane crossed the parking lot to the back door of Hard Ink, Beckett and Marz right behind him. Easy had stayed back to keep watch over the women’s apartment until Crystal got home from work, giving Shane a little peace of mind that everything was squared away there. At least for now.

The three of them humped it up the steps, and Shane broke left for the Rixeys’ apartment.

A hand landed on Shane’s shoulder, and he paused at the door.

“You saved me. You can save him. Don’t doubt it,” Marz said, an uncharacteristic seriousness in his expression.

Eyes narrowed and brows slashed downward, Beckett’s discomfort with any talk of Marz’s injuries was clear. But that didn’t keep him from offering his hand and saying, “Same goes for me. You got this.”

Shane shook both men’s hands and nodded. “No prize for second place this time,” he said.

“You won’t need it. Now go take a few minutes to clear your head before Murphy gets here,” Marz said.

Before Murphy gets here . . . and shit gets real.
“Roger that.” Shane turned and pushed through the door. Difference between the medic work he’d done in the field and what they were doing tonight? He’d never had time to prepare for a crisis in the field. No such thing as time to psych yourself up—or psych yourself out. One minute it would be situation normal, the next everything would go to shit, and you dealt because there was no other choice. Men’s lives were on the line, the bullets were flying, and the clock was ticking.

The living room and kitchen were quiet and dim, but light spilled out from Charlie’s room down the hall. Tossing his hat on the couch, Shane headed straight there and found Becca, Nick, and Jeremy all standing vigil at Charlie’s bedside. Not to mention Eileen, who’d made a black furball of herself at the foot of the mattress.

They exchanged hushed greetings as he entered. Shane crouched next to Becca, sitting by the bed. With his fever red cheeks and sweat-dampened hair, Charlie appeared much the same as before. “How’s he doing?” he asked in a quiet voice.

“No change,” she said, already wearing a set of scrubs and her game face. There wasn’t going to be any room for
Becca the sister
during the procedure. But for
Becca the nurse
? Damn straight. They needed her there, and they needed her to be rock solid. From the look of resolve on her face and in her eyes, Shane needn’t have worried.

“We’re going to take care of him, you hear?” Shane refused to entertain any other outcome. Wasn’t in his nature. Besides, you couldn’t look at your own hands and believe them capable of salvation without a healthy dose of confidence, and not a little arrogance, too. He didn’t look at it as playing God, but he didn’t question for one minute that there was something divine, something miraculous in the ability to restart a beating heart, restore a man to consciousness, or bring someone back from the edge of eternity.

Becca nodded and gave a small smile. “Murphy should be here soon.”

“Okay,” Shane said, rising. Nick tilted his head toward the hall, and Shane followed him out.

“How’d it go?” Nick asked in a low voice.

“We’ve got eyes and ears on the inside now,” Shane said. “Marz planted bugs in the ductwork which he thinks will pick up sound from at least several offices away and cracked the wireless frequency on some of the security cameras, too. He’ll fill you in on all the details.”

“Good. That’s good.” Nick tugged his hands through his hair. “Wish I could be in there with you and Becca. Hate sitting on the sidelines.”

Shane would’ve felt the same way. “I get it, man. Best thing you can do is just chill out. Becca’s gonna need you—bad—when we’re done. No matter how this shakes out, the woman’s staring down a major release of stress and emotion when it’s over.”

Not that Shane really had to explain this to Nick. They’d both been in enough snafus to be well acquainted with the adrenaline letdown that almost always followed. Experience it enough, you learned how to manage the flow. But hell if it didn’t mow your ass down those first few times, no matter how much you thought you’d prepared for it.

“Yeah,” Nick said.

Worried as the guy was—for Charlie, for Becca, for the whole team given their situation—Shane knew there was something he could do to take a little of the load off Nick’s mind. The apology Shane hadn’t quite been able to pull together the previous night. “Look, man, I wanted to—”

A rattle sounded at the front door, and Marz walked in with Murphy—and another man. Both in full EMT uniform. What the hell? Had Nick and Becca changed their mind about her friend’s partner taking part in this?

“Goddamnit,” Nick bit out, his scowl answering Shane’s question. Nick leaned in Charlie’s room. “Becca? Murphy’s here. Brought company, too.”

“Oh,” she said, rising. She led them up the hallway, and Nick flipped on lights as they went.

Murphy raised his hands in a gesture of
mea culpa.
“I know what you said. But we’re a package deal. No way to make this happen without Eric,” he said.

Becca turned to Nick and laid a hand on his chest. “It’s okay. I can vouch for him, for both of them. You know I wouldn’t do anything to put Charlie at risk, or any of us.”

Nick’s intense gaze cut from Becca to Eric to Murphy.

Murphy shrugged. “Some lies I’m willing to tell, some I’m not.”

Tense as Shane was over the unexpected newcomer, he totally got the sentiment. No doubt, falling off the grid midshift was going to require some creative storytelling on their part. But lies were the last thing you wanted standing between you and a partner you had to count on day in and day out. Which brought Shane back to the words he owed Nick Rixey. Soon.

For a long moment, Shane looked over the new player in their little drama. Last name Rodriguez, according to the name tag on his shirt. Dark hair and eyes, stocky build, loose stance, made easy eye contact. Despite Murphy’s immediate defensiveness, the guy appeared relatively relaxed, like he had nothing to hide, and like he understood enough about the situation to accept the tension saturating the air around them. Shane’s gut came down on the side of trustworthy.

“Fair enough,” Nick finally said, apparently coming to the same conclusion. Besides, guy was here now. No choice other than to accept it and move forward.

“Jones filled me in,” Eric said. “I have his back in this, and I’m happy to help.” The guy looked from Nick to Becca. “I’m sorry to hear about your brother and what you’re going through.”

“Thank you, Eric. Thanks for being here. No doubt we’ll need you,” she said.

Nick squeezed Becca’s shoulders, and she leaned back against him. “How do you want to start?” he asked.

For the next forty-five minutes, Murphy walked them through the procedure, using a PowerPoint presentation he’d prepared on his laptop, and the four with medical training talked through approaches and responsibilities. They weren’t going to have a lot of time or a lot of space, so going in as prepared as possible was critical to the outcome they all wanted.

Charlie. Back among the living.

But even though their discussion left him feeling like they had a better than average chance of this working, talking could only take them so far.

After changing into scrubs, they loaded Charlie onto a stretcher. Guy was so out of it he didn’t stir a bit as they transferred him, nor as they carried him through the apartment and down the steps to the ambulance parked just outside the back door of Hard Ink.

Together, they got Charlie hooked up to a variety of monitors inside the rig, started him on another course of IV antibiotics, and strapped him down at the chest and thighs to keep him from thrashing about should he unexpectedly wake up mid-procedure. At each step in the process, Shane kept an eye on Becca. But she had her head squarely in the game, and her determination served to reinforce his own.

They all gowned up, scrubbed in, and gloved up, then Murph administered a nerve block intended to preempt pain from the elbow down to the fingertips.

Shane nodded to Nick, standing outside the rig’s back door. Behind him stood Jeremy, Marz, and Beckett, all of their expressions as grim and serious as Shane felt. “All right. Close us in and let’s do this,” Shane said.

The doors
clunked
shut, enclosing them in the makeshift OR with a patient whose life they’d just saved from the clutches of the Church Gang. No way they were losing Charlie now that they had him back.

It would kill Becca. And it would go a long way toward destroying the team, too. Because something special had happened these past few days. They were becoming a family born of choice rather than blood.

Murphy slid his mask over his mouth and nose. “Okay, lady and gents, we’ve got a guaranteed window of two hours where no one will miss us or the vehicle.”

Shane met the guy’s gaze and nodded. “Lead the way, Doc.”

As Shane and Eric assisted and Becca monitored Charlie’s vitals, Murphy made quick work of prepping the wound. Removing the exposed bone was a slow process accomplished in small millimeter chips using a pair of plierlike bone cutters. Then Shane and Murphy worked together on the delicate skin-grafting procedure. Since they had so little elbow room and wanted to keep the need for anesthetic localized, they’d transplanted the skin they needed for the flap from Charlie’s forearm.

When the whole procedure was done, Shane stared at the repair with more than a little wonder. What they’d done had been clearly illegal, likely unethical, and absolutely necessary—and it had worked.

Now they just had to hope Charlie was strong enough to bounce back from the infection.

They opened up the back of the rig and shared the good news with Nick and Beckett, who didn’t appear to have moved since they’d closed themselves in a good ninety minutes before.

Nick reached up and pulled Becca into his arms. “You did it,” he said against her hair, and she clutched her arms around his neck.

“We all did,” she rasped.

Shane patted her back and smiled, and she turned and hugged him next. “Thank you,” she said.

The gratitude washing off her made Shane feel ten feet tall. “No thanks necessary, Becca.”

While Nick, Beckett, and Becca carefully got Charlie to his room upstairs, Shane hung back and helped Murphy and Eric do a thorough cleanup job on the ambulance. Then they all headed up to the apartment to make sure Charlie was still okay.

As they shared a quiet round of congratulations—Becca’s eyes never leaving her sleeping brother’s face—a call came through on both of the EMTs’ radios. “Perfect timing,” Murphy said with a smile.

Stepping out of Charlie’s room, Nick held out a hand. “We won’t forget what you did for us. Thank you,” he said, shaking both men’s hands. Thanks and good-byes went around, then Murph and Eric left. Not only had the pair proven themselves good friends, but they could be damn important allies as this situation unfolded. And with the authorities and the hospitals off the table, they needed all the help they could get.

“Where are Marz and Jeremy?” Shane asked.

“Next door doing research,” Nick said. “We should share the news.”

“You guys go, I’ll stay with Charlie,” Becca said.

Nick grasped her hand. “You should be at the celebration,” he said. “We’ll only stay a few minutes and come right back.”

She smiled and nodded. “Okay, just a few minutes.”

As a group, they poured into the gym, and Shane for one couldn’t keep the grin off his face.

From his chair at the computer, Marz nearly jumped to his feet. “It’s over? How’d it go?”