Nate
Tony and I found Sgt. MacDonald lying underneath his Humvee with a bullet wound in his thigh, and another bullet wound in his upper arm. Two other soldiers lay dead not far from him.
Sgt. MacDonald had been our in and out of this city for the past few months. If he died, we would no longer have easy access to and from the city. The kid couldn’t be any older than twenty-two or three, with blond hair and a youthful baby face. Shit. The kid didn’t deserve to die.
I was The Healer. I could help him. I glanced at Tony, tossing him the key fob to my Escalade. “Will you get my medical bag out of the car?”
Tony slipped away without a sound.
I turned back to Sgt. MacDonald, my gaze locking on his as I crawled under the vehicle with him. He was in a lot of pain, but seemed to be holding it together well.
“What happened?” I shouted over the noise of gunfire.
“The gangs ambushed us.” He gasped in a breath. “I told my commanding officer we needed more troops, but he said he couldn’t get government approval yet, that we were to just hang tight and try to keep things under control.” He let out a bitter laugh, then winced, pressing a palm over the bullet wound in his thigh. “Why won’t the government take this situation seriously?”
“I don’t know,” I murmured. “Hang in there. I’ll help you as much as I can.” I couldn’t ignore a wounded soldier. I would help this young man, then try to get him to safety.
Tony returned with my medical bag, tossing it to me. He crouched next to the vehicle’s back tire, keeping the enemy at bay, firing several shots at them while I attended to the sergeant’s injuries. The other dregs were somewhere close by, helping to keep the danger back. Finally, I zipped my bag up. Both bullets had gone right through, so I’d only had to clean the wounds, then seal them closed. I’d also numbed them so he wouldn’t feel pain.
By the time I finished treating him, the gunfire had ceased.
“Let’s get you out of here.” I slipped my arm around him and dragged him over to where Tony crouched.
“What about the other wounded?” Sgt. MacDonald asked.
Several soldiers were helping the injured, gently moving them over to the other side of the Humvee. They spied us and came forward, taking the sergeant from us and helping him get settled back on the ground by his comrades.
“Help is on the way,” one of the soldiers announced. “Forty minutes out.”
Some of these soldiers wouldn’t last forty minutes. I was here now. I had to help them. I was The Healer. I couldn’t ignore these injured men. They were the good guys, only doing their jobs to try to protect the citizens of Augusta.
Alissa would just have to hang tight in the Escalade for a little longer.
Just stay hidden, Alissa. I’ll be back soon.
For the next half hour, Tony assisted me while I attended to the wounded soldiers, digging out bullets, cauterizing wounds, numbing pain. Tony and I had always worked well together, no matter the situation. He’d always assisted me when treating our wounded dreg brothers.
So why hadn’t he helped Alissa treat my bullet wounds the night the Sureños had tracked her to our hideout? Knowing Tony, he would have wanted to be right there assisting, making sure I survived. But he hadn’t. He’d let Logan help, and instead had stood aside and watched.
“Why didn’t you help Alissa treat me after I was shot that night we rescued her?” I asked him as I was cauterizing a wound on a soldier’s leg.
Tony held my gaze. “Because I didn’t trust her, and if you died, I didn’t want to be held responsible.”
I nodded. That sounded like Tony. He probably wouldn’t be able to forgive himself if he was somehow responsible for something happening to me, just as I would feel the same if something happened to him. That was just part of the dreg bond we shared. We were brothers. Best friends.
And now I’d fallen for Alissa, my bond with her as strong as my bond with Tony. Perhaps stronger. It didn’t seem possible to care for someone so much, especially since I still didn’t know a whole lot about her. But there was just something there. Something I couldn’t ignore. While I didn’t want Alissa to come between me and Tony, I did want her in my life. Would Tony be able to accept her as a permanent presence in my life? Assuming she wanted to stick around awhile? A very long while?
The soldiers each thanked me profusely, some clutching my hand and squeezing, others saying I was a savior, a god. I wasn’t a god. I was just a dreg. But their words made me feel good about myself. I was glad I could help them. If I wasn’t here now, some of them would probably die. In the past, healing the wounded, saving lives, had been mostly to help my fellow soldiers. Saving a large group of strangers like this was new to me. It made me feel good about myself. Important. Needed. In the beginning, I hadn’t wanted to be a healer. But now, healing the wounded, fixing others, was just who I was. I couldn’t turn it off any more than I could change the color of my eyes. Healing so many like this was a new experience for me. But I was growing tired, the effort of healing so many people drawing a lot of energy out of me.
I needed to get to Alissa to make sure she was okay.
A sudden scream filled the night.
Tony’s gaze locked on mine.
My heart leapt into my throat.
Alissa.