This was bad. Really, really bad.

  My head swam, my thoughts all over the place as I tried not to pass out and also wished I’d pass out.

  “Ella?” I moaned. “Is she—”

  “Dead.”

  The flicker of fear in her eyes flashed through my mind, and I almost want to feel bad for her, but—

  “Fuck!” I arched as the pressure on my leg intensified.

  “Sorry,” Seth gritted out. “Just stay with me. Okay? Keep breathing and keep your eyes open.”

  Easy for him to say.

  Some time later—minutes, an hour, I had no idea—there was movement. More voices. Then Seth wasn’t just pressing at my wound, he was shoving at it. Digging into it. My leg was on fire, and the world kept going black and hazy.

  Seth muttered something else—curses, I thought—but it was the urgency in his voice that raised the hairs on my neck. No… the panic.

  Seth wasn’t one to panic. He had a cool head even for a cop, but when I looked up at him and managed to blink my eyes into focus, the fear in his expression sent cold water surging through me.

  “How bad is it?” I slurred.

  “Don’t move.” He pressed hard against my leg, and the fire that ignited was blinding. I was pretty sure I screamed. Or swore. Something. My throat was suddenly raw, that much I was sure of.

  I knew this feeling all too well. The impossible pain. The way everything seemed to center around that pain, but it also seemed distant. Like I couldn’t process that much pain, so it must’ve been someone else’s leg. Just like it was someone else’s blood.

  “Brandon.” Seth gripped my chin, his fingers slick, and he looked me dead in the eye. “Stay here with me. Got it?”

  I tried to speak, but everything felt thick. My breath. My tongue. Words.

  “Come on,” he pleaded, smacking my face. “Stay here.”

  I wasn’t going anywhere. Except… I was.

  Distantly, I knew I’d brushed up against the darkness before. That peaceful, pain-free darkness that promised warmth and oblivion. It was familiar. Inviting.

  “Brandon?” Seth’s voice was a thousand miles away. “Brandon, open your eyes.”

  I wanted to open my eyes. I really did.

  But I wanted the darkness even more.

  Chapter 25

  Seth

  There was only one thing scarier than the amount of blood on and around Brandon’s leg, and that was Brandon going still and silent.

  I tried to tell myself the pain had made him pass out. That happened sometimes, though not as often as people thought, and I was too familiar with this kind of thing to believe my own bullshit.

  No, he’d passed out because he was bleeding out, and he was running out of time. The QuikClots and the pressure bandage the guardsman was helping me wrap around Brandon’s thigh were only going to buy so much time. He needed to get to a hospital yesterday.

  “Please tell me you guys didn’t walk here,” I said through chattering teeth.

  The guardsman shook his head. “No, we didn’t walk.” Then he was radioing the others, demanding help to extract Brandon and ordering someone to get in contact with the helo.

  That last part sent a welcome rush of relief through me. Even with the helo, it was going to take time to get Brandon to a hospital, but it gave him way better odds than doing this via land.

  The next thing I knew, the hallway was crowded with other men in camouflage, and they scooped Brandon up onto a foldout stretcher. Then they were hurrying out of the house, and despite my shaking legs threatening to collapse under me, I followed.

  The scene outside gave me pause for about two seconds. Enough to absorb that the marshals and guardsmen had about twenty men lying in the mud, their hands zip-tied behind their backs. All kinds of guns—some legal, some definitely not—were scattered on the dirt along with knives, another drone, and some cannisters that could’ve been tear gas, flashbangs, or a combination of the two. Several bodies had been covered with green tarps.

  I jogged past them, staying on the heels of the men carrying Brandon. They’d insisted they hadn’t come in on foot, but I didn’t see any vehicles around apart from some ATVs. How in the fuck were they going to get him to—

  But then the rumble of a diesel engine broke through like angels singing from the heavens, and I almost cried when a drab green military transport vehicle appeared in the cabin’s driveway.

  In seconds, they’d loaded Brandon inside, and I didn’t even have a chance to ask if I could come with before I was practically ordered onboard by one of the guardsmen.

  Sir, yes, sir.

  I’d barely dropped my sore, shaky carcass onto one of the seats before the vehicle was in motion again. It crunched and bumped on some vegetation as it turned around in the narrow drive, and I was pretty sure it scraped a few trees in the process. Then it was accelerating, and when I looked out the back, the cabin was fading quickly.

  Some of the adrenaline started to crash—enough to make me shaky and queasy—but not all of it. I was out of immediate danger, yes.

  Brandon, however…

  The woman who I assumed was the combat medic had ripped open Brandon’s sleeve and was putting an IV into his arm. Another guardsman held up a bag of clear fluid, the line descending into Brandon’s other arm. Blood had soaked through the bandage they’d put around the wounded leg, and Brandon’s face—including his lips—was ghostly pale.

  A guardsman on the radio spoke fast, his voice mostly swallowed up by the engine and the road noise, but I still caught a few key phrases.

  Trauma center.

  Transfusing.

  Femoral artery.

  Fuck. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

  The woman who’d just put in the second IV gestured at one of the other men, and I realized that man had taken off his camouflage jacket. They exchanged nods. Then someone called up to the driver, “Pull over.”

  Pull over? Pull over? What in the fuck? Brandon didn’t have time for—

  But the instant the vehicle had stopped, the woman put a needle into the other man’s arm. She connected a tube to it, and the other end of the that was attached to the IV in Brandon’s arm. Blood started moving from the guardsman to Brandon, and there was a shout of, “Go! Go!”

  The truck’s tires spun on the dirt road, and we were moving again, hauling ass through the forest as the guardsman’s blood slowly made its way into Brandon’s veins.

  A field transfusion. Holy shit. I’d heard about soldiers doing that in combat. And, well, that was what these were—soldiers. And apparently this was combat. This was war.

  “I wasn’t in the wars I told you I was in,” Brandon had told me. “But I’d be lying if I said I’d never been to a warzone.”

  Nausea swept over me, both from relief that we’d made it out of this warzone and the sickening realization of how easily things could’ve played out differently.

  How easily they still could play out differently for Brandon.

  I swallowed bile and watched him, silently pleading for color to reappear in his lips. The medic kept checking his vitals and reporting to the guardsman who kept radioing to someone else. Hopefully this meant there was a trauma team assembling somewhere, ready and waiting to save Brandon.

  After a while, the medic disconnected the transfusion line from the guardsman. Someone shoved a bottle of water in his hand, and he leaned back against the side of the truck, looking utterly wiped out.

  I hoped she was going to grab another volunteer. That there was another universal donor on this vehicle.

  She didn’t. If I’d been O-negative, I’d have offered up my arm in a second, but I was—somewhat ironically—one of those rare people who was AB-positive. A universal recipient, but not a universal donor. I didn’t even know what Brandon’s blood type was, and the odds of him also being AB-positive were practically nil.

  There was nothing I could do for him except keep begging any higher power who was listening to keep him here with me.

  I can’t lose him again. Please, please, don’t let me lose him again.

  The truck suddenly started slowing down, and then it lurched to a stop. We’d blown a number of Stop signs, but if we were getting into a populated area, then the driver couldn’t take the risk of—

  Was that a helicopter I heard?

  Grass and trees were whipping outside as they were being battered by a strong wind, and my heart went wild. Then a guardsman opened the back of the truck, and we were all pouring out, and… yes. Holy shit, yes, it was a helicopter.

  The medic and three of the guardsmen hauled Brandon into the helicopter. Before I could even ask if I could join them, the helo was lifting off, and I watched helplessly as it sped away, carrying the man I loved.

  I slumped against the truck, trying to catch my breath. There was nothing I could do for him. If I were on the helicopter, I’d only be in the way. Also, every second counted, so they didn’t need to waste precious time waiting for me to get my stupid ass onboard. This was how it needed to play out, and I could only hope they got him to a trauma facility in time.

  I just hated staying behind. I hated not knowing.

  Please be okay, Brandon.

  Someone touched my arm, startling me out of my skin. I turned to see one of the guardsmen.

  “Come on.” He nodded into the truck. “One of the marshals wants to talk to you.”

  Brandon’s handler, if I had to guess. And someone would probably want a statement from me at some point. Did it have to be now, though? I didn’t even know which way was up.

  But I was too shellshocked to argue.

  So I just numbly got back into the truck.

  Will Dempsey was in his fifties, if I had to guess. He was like something out of a hard-boiled detective novel or a 1980s cop show—bald and stout with a thick mustache and a default expression that constantly asked the world if it was really going to test his patience.

  He was a nice guy, though. He seemed genuinely worried about Brandon and relieved to see that one of us had made it out unscathed. As expected, after he’d sat me down in a small office he’d commandeered at a local police station, he took a statement from me. By some miracle, I managed to give it without throwing up once.

  After I’d signed my statement, I asked, “Any updates on Brandon?”

  Will pressed his lips together and shook his head. “Nothing yet. The local hospital stabilized him as best they could, and the Guard took airlifted him from there to Harborview.”

  I shuddered. Harborview Medical Center was the trauma center in Washington State. It was also in Seattle, a good hundred miles or so from where the helicopter had picked up Brandon. “That must’ve stirred people up,” I said flatly. “A military helicopter landing in downtown Seattle.”

  He nodded, giving a quiet huff that might’ve been the beginning of a chuckle. “It probably turned some heads, yeah.”

  If it was a slow enough news day, it might even make the headlines. Not that I really cared or would bother checking, but it was something to think about besides what might be happening to Brandon right now. It didn’t help for long. I tried to remind myself he was in the best possible hands. One of my dad’s friends had been seriously hurt by a chainsaw at his own cabin, which was near Dad’s place. He’d also been airlifted to Harborview and not only survived, he’d kept his arm, which had shocked everyone.

  Brandon was in the best place he could be right now.

  But not everyone who went to a Level 1 trauma center survived. Not because of incompetence or malpractice, but because if someone needed that level of care to begin with, they were probably flirting pretty aggressively with death.

  “Officer Byrne?”

  I shook myself and met Will’s gaze across the desk. “Hmm? Sorry.”

  “Nothing to be sorry about.” He watched me for a moment. “He’s in good hands, you know.”

  “Yeah. Yeah, I know. I…” I ran my fingers through my hair, realizing at the last second they’d been covered in blood earlier. But I’d had a chance to wash them. I was still covered in blood—Brandon’s blood—but I’d managed to wash it off my hands enough that I didn’t smear it through my damn hair. I didn’t know if that was comforting, nauseating, or both. I didn’t know what to feel about anything.

  Meeting the marshal’s gaze again, I asked, “Is it true that Lisa—Ella—whoever the fuck she is—got into my housemate’s pants to get to me?”

  Will gave a slow nod. “To get to Brandon through you, yes.”

  I squeezed my eyes shut. God, Marcus had been so happy to finally have someone to help him move on from his ex. I’d thought she was really into him, too. But she’d just wanted…

  Fucking hell.

  Some part of me thought I should resent Brandon for that. None of this would’ve happened if he hadn’t come back to Coeur d’Alene.

  But he’d had no idea someone had taken out a hit on him. That they’d send someone to literally seduce my housemate just to get close to him, or that there was a whole other militia frothing at the mouth to kill him—to kill both of us—in exchange for a hell of a payday. Of course, he’d probably known there was some risk, but he couldn’t have envisioned this.

  And it was impossible to resent him when I was too busy worrying that he was dying. Or already dead. On some level, I was sure that if I had so much as a negative thought about him, he’d be gone. Rational? No. But rational had left the goddamned building around the time my housemate’s girlfriend had killed him and helped a militia find us.

  The image of her lying on the floor beside a rapidly expanding pool of blood was satisfying in ways that bothered me. I didn’t like being happy that anyone was dead. I didn’t like feeling vindicated or safe or gleeful or anything positive about someone’s death. I was a cop, for fuck’s sake. I’d always dreaded having to possibly kill someone, and today I’d… God, I didn’t even know how many men I’d dropped without feeling anything except relief that they weren’t shooting back at me anymore. Maybe because I hadn’t had to see their faces up close. Maybe because I hadn’t known them.

  Hadn’t shot the shit with them in my kitchen along with the man they’d eventually murder in cold blood.

  Fuck. I wanted to be sick. I wasn’t sure I’d ever stop puking once I started, though, so I forced it back and tried to focus on things besides Marcus’s girlfriend silently dying a few feet away from Brandon. Or on how grateful I was that she’d been fading out when I’d come into the room. I hadn’t had to worry about giving her aid. Hadn’t had to kill her myself to neutralize her as a threat. She’d been too far gone, the wound to her throat too catastrophic, and she’d died before I’d even kicked away her gun.

  I could barely find my breath, but I managed, “So what happens next?”

  Will inclined his head. “With…?”

  “I don’t know.” I shrugged. “Everything? The lawyer who set this all up? The militia?” I swallowed. “Is Brandon going back into witsec after this?”

  That last question seemed to make Will age a decade right before my eyes. “If Brandon had a brain in his head, yes, he’d go back into witsec. But…” He sighed. “I don’t think there’s enough money in the world.”

  “Because it was so hard for him to adjust the first time,” I murmured.

  “That, yes. But mostly, I don’t think he’s willing to leave you behind again.”

  I blinked.

  Will studied me, then chuckled, shaking his head. “Son, you wouldn’t believe how many conversations he and I had about witsec versus you. He was beside himself when we didn’t let him say goodbye to you, and we almost had to put him in protective custody just to keep him from taking off back to Idaho in the middle of the trial.”

  I swallowed, which took work. “He… Really?”

  “Yep.” He managed a soft laugh. “He’s a smart man. Sharp as anything. But when it comes to you?” Will rolled his eyes. “Complete dumbass, honestly.”

  I just stared at him.

  “As for what happens next with everyone else,” Will went on, unaware of me stumbling over his casual comments. “Arrests have been made. There will probably be plea bargains drawn up before too much longer.”

  “Fucking plea bargains. Of course.” I gritted my teeth. “For fuck’s sake.” I knew how the system worked. Most criminals—even killers—didn’t go to trial at all because they agreed to plea deals. This was especially true if they had valuable information that could help prosecutors convict bigger fish. “You think they’ll turn on that lawyer? The one who sent his daughter in after us?”

  “Can’t imagine why they wouldn’t. But we’ll see. Given his long list of transgressions—which keeps getting uglier the more investigators dig—I suspect locking him up forever will be worth giving some of them lighter sentences.”

  I understood that. I really did. Sometimes you had to make a deal with a lesser demon in order to defeat the Devil. But that wasn’t much comfort to people who’d been victimized by the lesser demon.

  Will’s phone, which was on the desk beside my statement, suddenly lit up with an incoming call. He took it, and though I could hear the voice on the other end, I couldn’t really make out the words. Will’s face and monosyllabic responses didn’t give away much either.

  When he ended the call, though, he met my gaze. “Brandon’s out of surgery. He’s heading into the ICU, and he’s not out of the woods yet. But he made it through surgery.”

  I closed my eyes and almost melted off my chair.

  Brandon was alive. On his way to intensive care, yes, and he could easily take a turn for the worse. But for now… he was alive.

  And maybe, just maybe, I could breathe again.

  Chapter 26

  Brandon

  Beneath the haze of drugs and pain, a few lucid thoughts still swirled around and occasionally came forward. Every now and then, I’d remember where I was. Abstractly, anyway; the green and white gown, the tubes, the wires, the monitors, the nurses whose faces hovered over mine sometimes—they reminded me I was in a hospital.