Chapter Six
Madison
I looked around in shock. I closed my eyes and hoped that when I opened them, I would be waking up from a nightmare. But it wasn’t a nightmare. It was reality. Things had happened so fast that I was battling to come to terms with it. The room was going hazy, and I was sure that I was going to faint at any moment. Part of me wanted the darkness to take over me so that I didn’t have to deal with the reality of the situation. But then my eyes zoomed in on Max, and everything came into focus again. Max! My heart was jumping in my chest.
“Max!” I shouted out. “Max!
Blake was by my side almost immediately and helped me to my feet. I wasn’t even sure when I had fallen to the ground. It was then that I noticed the man next to me covered in blood. Max had shot him. I must’ve blacked out while it happened. I remembered standing there, seeing Max’s gun, and then watching as Max fell to the ground. Two shots had gone off. I didn’t see the person who had shot him, and I couldn’t see anyone around now. I had definitely lost some time somewhere, and things were not adding up.
“What happened? What happened?” I asked Blake in a panic.
“Max was shot. Come on,” he said and helped me steady myself. We ran over to Max, who was lying on the floor, his head propped up on Peter’s lap.
I knelt down and took his hand. There was a pool of blood surrounding him, and it was hard to see where he was shot. All I knew was that Max had saved my life. He must’ve known that shooting that guy would’ve resulted in someone shoot him. My heart broke at the thought of that decision that had gone through his mind. He’d put me before himself. I could see that he was still breathing, but his eyes were closed, and he was not waking up no matter how much we called his name. I had never seen anything scarier in my entire life. We’d gone through so many different scenarios over the year. Each time Max went into the den, we tried to figure out which way it could go and come up with a way to deal with it. But in all of those scenarios, Max was alive. I could never bring myself to actually admit that he might be in danger. I looked at Blake.
“What are we going to do? Is he okay? We need to take him to the hospital.”
“I’ve called the ambulance,” Blake said. “Don’t worry. He’s going to be fine.” But I could tell by Blake’s tone that he wasn’t so sure of that himself. I wasn’t sure if Max was ever going to be fine.
“Are they on their way?”
“They’re on their way,” he said.
I have no idea how long it took the ambulance to arrive. It was probably nothing more than ten minutes, but it felt like hours. Each minute, Max seemed to be getting worse, and I could swear his heart rate was decreasing. I squeezed his hand and told him to keep fighting, and when the ambulance finally arrived, I watched as they put him on a stretcher and took him away. It didn’t feel real. I didn’t even feel like it was me standing there and watching it all happen.
“Come on,” Blake said. “Let’s go.”
“Where? I want to be with Max.” There was no way I was going to go home with all this happening.
“I know. We’re going to the hospital. I don’t want you to drive. I’ll take us there,” Blake said.
I nodded and followed him soundlessly to the car. I was grateful to have someone calling the shots, and I was glad that we were following Max. I needed to be by his side when he woke up. We heard the sirens from the ambulance the entire way as we made our way to the hospital. I’d always hated that sound, but it was so much worse knowing that it was because they had Max inside. I knew that I’d always think of Max now when I heard it again.
When I arrived at the hospital, I paced back and forth, waiting for someone to tell me what was going on. Finally, one of the nurses told me that Max was in critical condition and would call me when they knew more. A nurse told me to go home as it might be a while. But there was no chance that I was going anywhere. I’d wait there all night if I had to. I wanted to be there when Max woke up, and nobody could tell me otherwise.
“I’ll wait,” I said firmly and sat down in defiance.
She sighed. She was probably used to people like me and knew that she couldn’t do anything to stop me. She told me to take a seat in the waiting room and that she’d be back as soon as she had some more news.
“He’s in good hands,” she said in kindness, but the words did little to put me at ease. I was sure that they were her go to words for people like me.
I was sat in the waiting room with Blake and Peter. There might have been more people around, but I had no idea. They were the only ones that seemed to register with me. They kept trying to talk to me, but they gave up after I didn’t answer back. I didn’t feel like making small talk. People seemed to come in and out of the room, and I barely took notice of them. I just kept looking at the door the nurse had disappeared through and wondered when she was going to come back. The minutes were dragging, and each time I looked at the clock, I was surprised by how little time had passed. Blake had given me a cup of coffee, but even that had reminded me too much of Max, and I couldn’t bring myself to drink it. It sat next to me getting cold. I got up when I saw the chief walk in.
“Madison! Are you okay?” he asked when he saw me.
“I’m fine. But Max . . .” I gulped. I didn’t know what to say. I couldn’t bring myself to even think about Max, let alone talk about him.
“Come on, let’s get something to drink and you can tell me what happened.”
“I want to stay here,” I insisted.
A nurse walked in at that moment and overheard me. She came up to me and put a hand on my arm.
“You’re talking about the guy who got shot tonight? Max?”
I nodded. “Yes. Have you heard anything?”
“They’re doing what they can. We’re all hoping he will pull through. But we’re not going to know for quite a while. Go and have a drink. It’s good to stretch your legs a bit. Maybe when you get back, someone will have some news for you. But it’s going to be a while. There’s honestly no point waiting. I promise you we’ll call you when we know more.”
I sighed and nodded. “Okay. Thank you,” I said and then looked at the chief. “Okay, let’s get a drink.”
The chief ordered himself a coffee and a muffin, and I ordered a hot chocolate. He insisted on buying me a muffin too, but I wasn’t sure if I was even going to eat it. We sat down.
“Eat,” he ordered.
“I’m not hungry.” Even the smell of the muffin was making me feel sick.
“You’re in for a long night. Just take a few bites at least.”
I did what he said, but the muffin turned to sand in my mouth. I got halfway and pushed it aside, focusing instead on my hot chocolate.
“All right, are you ready to tell me everything that happened? Obviously, I know bits and pieces from everyone, but I want to hear it from you. Tell me from the start.”
I took a deep breath. I wasn’t sure I was ready to recall it, but I knew I had to. I had to put my job first. I told him all about how I’d been listening in on the exchange between himself and Shell and how it became obvious that they were onto us.
“Neither of us had expected something like this. They put him in a car and told him they were going to a warehouse. Shell said the boss knew there was a rat amongst them, but Shell didn’t seem to know that it was Max. At that point, he seemed just as confused as we were. I listened closely for signs that he was setting Max up, but it didn’t seem like it to me. Thankfully the tracker was still working so I was able to get to the next location. But they were two steps ahead of me, and they caught me. They . . .” I shivered as I recalled the feeling of the man’s hands holding me hostage. It didn’t matter how much I had seen it on TV, or from footage at work; there was nothing that could truly prepare me for that feeling. I had never felt more hopeless in my entire life. I had been certain that I was about to die.
“Don’t worry, Madison. You’re safe now. You’re safe,” the chief said.
I nodded and took another sip of my hot chocolate to distract me. The hot cocoa warmed me from the inside out and seemed to calm me down. I continued my story about how when they dragged me in, I saw a dead man, presumably Shell, lying next to the man I assumed to be the boss. I tried to tell the story as if it hadn’t happened to me because I didn’t want to get emotional again.
“He was shouting orders and saying something about Max being the rat. The man next to me had a gun pointed at my head, and the next thing I knew, Max had gotten out his gun and had shot the guy next to me. It all happened so quickly. Max has always been a good shot, and he got the guy on his first try. Next thing I knew, the guy next to me was on the floor, but so was Max. I’m guessing the boss got him. I don’t know.”
“And the boss got away?” the chief asked.
“Looks like it,” I sighed. “What a mess.”
“Who the hell got involved with this whole thing? We had everything planned to perfection. Do you think it was one of our guys? Or do you think they were onto Max the whole time?”
I shook my head. “I don’t think they knew about Max. I really don’t. I think someone snitched. Who, I don’t know. Blake was there for me, and so was Peter. So, I don’t think it’s them. It could be one of the other guys. It sounds so crazy, but that’s all I can think of.”
The chief shook his head. “This is awful. Come on, let’s go back to the waiting area to see if we can find out what’s happening with Max. Why don’t you stay here, and I’ll get the other guys in for a talk? Maybe I can get some information out of them. Maybe I’ll be able to tell who is lying. I’m going to interview them all. We have to treat everyone like a suspect right now. But you stay here. I want you to be here when Max wakes up.”
I was so grateful that he had said when Max wakes up and not if. We were not the hugging sort, but he gave me an awkward hug anyway, and it felt good to know that he cared. We went to the waiting room, and he called everyone out.
“Let us know if you hear anything,” he said to me.
I nodded and continued looking at the door.
About an hour later, the chief had still not returned, and nobody had come to tell me about Max. I got up and went to speak to the receptionist.
“I’ll find out for you,” she said and made a quick call.
After talking to one of the nurses, she said that I could go in and see Max.
“Does that mean he’s okay?”
“He’s stable, but he’s still not conscious at the moment. They said you can go in and see him, but not for long. Ten minutes at the most. He needs his rest.”
She gave me his room number, and I quickly rushed over to find him before she could change her mind. Him needing his rest meant he was still alive, and no words had ever filled me with so much happiness before. I walked in as a nurse was walking out and almost burst into tears the moment I caught sight of him. Max was lying in bed, tubes attached to him everywhere. He looked peaceful though, and I could see that he was breathing normally, so that made me feel a bit better. I took his hand and thought about how mad I had been with him just the day before and how I had argued with him over telling the team. I still stood by the fact that he shouldn’t have told them, but I still wished I hadn’t reacted the way that I did. It all just seemed so pointless now. I should’ve been nicer to him about it. He was only doing what he thought was right. I couldn’t believe that after everything we had been through, Max was fighting for his life after having just saved mine. I took his hand and stroked it gently.
“Come on, Max, don’t die,” I said.
I pictured him opening his eyes and telling me that he never does.