Total pages in book: 78
Estimated words: 75337 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 75337 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 377(@200wpm)___ 301(@250wpm)___ 251(@300wpm)
I’d just gotten my guy against the wall and pulled the trigger when we heard them.
Shots fired.
From somewhere behind us.
Damnit.
I knew it.
I’d felt it.
I should have waited.
“The fuck…” Cesare said, slamming his guy’s head down onto the ground to make him quit his writhing for a second.
“It’s the enforcer. Get it fucking done. I’ll cover you,” I said, turning and blocking Cesare as he turned his back to the shooting, and wrestled his man up beside his dead friend against the wall.
My eyes scanned in the direction I’d heard the bullets coming from, looking for the hidden enforcer.
I saw nothing for a long time.
Until his arm raised from behind a car.
Taking aim, I went for the windows, trying to keep him low until Cesare was done, then we could close in on him from two different sides and take him out too.
It was as Cesare was getting to his feet to take over for a minute while I reloaded that I saw her.
She had on a pretty hideous blue waitress outfit that was masking her curves instead of putting them on display.
She was about five-six in her flats with a great ass and hips and chest with her brown hair pulled back in a bun with a few strands falling around her pretty, somewhat round face.
I couldn’t make out her eyes in the dark, but something told me they were likely a shade of brown.
Pretty.
Far too pretty to be walking alone in this neighborhood in the middle of the night.
With nothing but an eye-gouger and an umbrella as protection.
I needed to yell, to warn her.
But it was too late.
To stop shit in time.
To let her get away.
Because the bastard ducked down low behind the car raised his arm and let out several rounds, completely oblivious or indifferent to who he might hit.
And hit her he did.
The first bullet sank into her thigh, and she stood there for a second, frozen, like she couldn’t quite process what had happened.
Then her head lifted.
And she looked right fucking at us.
It wasn’t until she heard the second round get squeezed off that she seemed to snap out of it, her body jerking around, turning away from us.
And away toward the bullets coming her way.
I saw as the second bullet hit, her body jerking back hard, then falling to the ground.
It was right about then that we heard them.
Sirens.
“Fuck. We gotta go,” Cesare said, giving my shoulder a shove because I was frozen in the spot, looking at the woman who was writhing around on the ground, her pretty face twisted up in pain. “We gotta go!” Cesare barked even as the enforcer turned and booked it down a side street.
“She saw us,” I said.
“What?”
“The woman. She looked right at us.”
“Fuck. What the fuck do we do then?” he asked.
The answer was simple, really.
“We take her with us,” I said. “Get the car,” I added, rushing across the street toward the woman’s prone body.
“Ow ow ow ow,” she whimpered, one hand clutching her shoulder, the other pressing against her thigh.
Both hands were getting covered in blood.
She was losing a lot and fast.
She needed help.
“Don’t kill me!” she shrieked when my hand moved out, trying to press her hand harder into the wound on her shoulder.
“I’m not going to kill you. I’m trying to help you,” I told her as I heard Cesare’s car pull up a few feet away.
“We have to fucking go, man,” he called as he rushed out of the driver’s seat to open the back door. “Pick her up and let’s go.”
There was no other choice.
That was exactly what I had to do.
“No!” she shrieked as my hands went under her back and legs, gathering her, and holding her against my chest as I ran toward the car, awkwardly ducking down to fall into the backseat.
Cesare wasted not a second, throwing the car into drive, and pulling off.
“Let me go. I won’t say anything. Let me go. I can’t die like this,” the woman pleaded, her eyes still pinned shut. Like if she didn’t look again, maybe she would be set free.
“Where are we going, man?” Cesare asked, looking at me in the rearview after taking a turn off the road we were on, wanting to put some distance between us and the cops that were closing in on the shootout scene.
“The only place we can go to deal with this,” I told him.
To that, he gave me a nod.
Because since I got back, there was only one place to go when you were hurt, when you were in need of medical attention.
And that was the old doctor’s office the Family had bought to let me use as an office when shit needed some serious mending.
It was just an old, defunct family doctor, but we’d done some work to turn one of the rooms into a makeshift surgery room for when the situation called for it.