As soon as the door opened, Hanna watched Roarke kick the trash can and send it flying across the room in a shout. He then moved to flip a table and knocked the chairs sitting with it right over.
“You’re going to have to clean that up,” Amber said from behind the bar.
“Shut up,” he snarled at her and she looked taken aback.
He turned back to Hanna. His eyes were intense but they were softening as he moved his gaze down to her shoulder where a bunched up t-shirt, that had once been white, was covered in the browning red of her own blood.
“We need to get the bullet out,” he said.
“Jesus,” Amber said, realizing what was happening.
She rummaged somewhere behind them as Roarke moved her to sit at a table. She had to admit, now that the adrenaline was gone she was in quite a bit of pain. She’d been nicked by bullets before and bruised pretty well from hand-to-hand combat. But this was the first time she had a bullet truly lodged inside her, ripping the flesh apart to make its burrow in her body.
Amber appeared next to them with a fairly heavy duty first aid kit and elastic gloves on her hands. She shoved Roarke out of the way and got on her knees in front of Hanna, gently removing the dressing and pulling at her shirt.
“This needs to come off,” she said, nodding to the shirt.
“Cut it off,” Hanna grunted. “There’s no way I can lift my arms.”
Amber pulled out scissors and didn’t need telling twice. She cut open the shirt and pushed it off Hanna’s shoulders and out of her way. It clung to her arms still, but they’d deal with getting her fully stripped later. Her skin was sticky with blood and sweaty and the first thing Amber did was bring disinfectant gauze to the hole and Hanna hissed.
“Yeah, it’s going to sting,” Amber said.
She then went back into the kit and pulled out a syringe. She checked the date on it, flicked it as she pushed the plunger, sending some liquid out.
“The fuck is that?” Roarke asked.
“Localized anesthetic,” she said. “Unless you want Hanna going into cardiac arrest from the pain. Then we’d have a few more problems.”
She stuck the needle in near the wound without warning or preamble. She injected the contents of the syringe and Hanna sucked in, feeling the familiar burning sensation from the last time she needed stitches. The effect was almost immediate as she felt a buzz in the area and then nothing at all as the pain ceased and the throbbing there was a distant echo.
“Alright, let’s get this fucker out,” Amber said, coming back up from the kit with pliers.
Hanna turned to meet Roarke’s eyes, not wanting to watch Amber digging into a bullet hole in her shoulder, no matter what she could or couldn’t feel from it. Roarke met her eyes as well, though his kept bouncing down to look at where she knew the wound was. He was cringing, frowning, he swallowed thickly. His eyes always returned to hers, however.
“Alright, foreign invader removed,” Amber said, coming back with a small pellet covered in blood balanced in her pliers.
She pressed down hard on the wound, trying to stymie the bleeding that arose from the irritation she caused. She came back to it again with more disinfectant gauze and scrubbed away at the skin all around it, red and irritated. She set to work at sewing the small hole closed while Roarke stared at the small bullet sitting on the table like it was the Caracal president himself.
“Alright, all better,” Amber said. “Do you want Batman or Superman?”
She held up the two options of band-aids and Hanna rolled her eyes, pointing to whichever one was closer and Amber pressed it firmly over the closed wound.
“I don’t need to tell you not to do anything with this arm for a long time,” she said. “It’s going to be at least a week before we can remove the stitches anyway. Don’t pop them.”
Hanna nodded and Amber helped her removed what was left of her tattered and blood soaked shirt. She gave her a dish rag which she ran under warm water and Hanna set to getting the rest of the blood and the sweat off her body. Roarke appeared beside her, offering her a t-shirt. She slipped it on with his help. It was large and baggy but it smelled like him and she was more comforted than she’d been in a while.
“Here’s some ibuprofen,” Amber said, sliding two pills toward her with a glass of water. “No alcohol for a while. You don’t need to thin your blood any more.”
Hanna nodded, popping the pills knowing she was going to be needing them later when the buzz of the anesthetic wore off.
“You, however,” Amber said, looking at Roarke. “Look like you need several drinks.”
She dropped a shot glass and a full bottle of Jack in front of him before moving to go fix the chairs and trash can he’d tossed across the room. He immediately set on pouring himself two shots in quick succession and throwing them back.
“You okay?” Hanna asked.
“You’re the one that got shot,” he laughed and then immediately his face turned to anger and his slammed his fist down on the table.
“I’m okay, though,” she whispered soothingly, remembering Amber was only a few feet away. “Thanks to you.”
“Isabelle is working with the Caracals,” he said bitterly. “Which I should have seen coming. We lost two good guys out there today, and you got shot.”
“But we got those girls and put a noticeable dent in the Caracals’ forces.”
He shrugged. He was like a pouting child again. It never seemed to be enough for him and Hanna knew why. He wanted the prize. He wanted Isabelle. But his motives had changed. He no longer wanted to know why, he no longer wanted to try and bring her back to her family. She could see the same look in his eyes she’d seen in plenty of the men in the hold up or in court. He wanted absolute vengeance. There was murder in his eyes and she didn’t think she’d be able to control it.
He got quiet after that, but she slipped her hand into his, discretely under the table. They sat together like that for a long while before Hanna was too tired to hold herself up anymore and she slipped off to sleep while someone carried her to the bed downstairs.
***
Roarke took one last drag of his cigarette as he stared at the Caracals’ bar. He’d gotten the location thanks to several hours of listening to radio chatter from some mouthy cops. Now he was staring at the gates of hell, a house of demons, a place of absolute disgust. He could hear the music inside. They didn’t have the decency to mourn for the men who went down today or admit their defeat by shutting the help up. Several of them stumbled out, drunk and laughing, carrying on. He just watched, the orange glow of the cigarette as the only signal in the dark.
He’d waited until everyone was asleep or too drunk to notice. He was being reckless, he understood that. He also understood that Hanna might never forgive him but he wasn’t going to be able to sleep until he felt a Caracal jaw breaking beneath his fist, saw their black, disgusting blood coating the floor. And he would never rest until he could feel Isabelle’s soft neck breaking under his hands. Hanna was hurt. His child was in danger. They were to blame.
He moved towards the bar, putting out his cigarette on one of the motorcycles parked nearby. He stepped in and considered, for three seconds, getting a drink and waiting to see how long it took anyone to recognize him.
But there she was. She was talking and laughing with half a beer in her hand. Some guy was far too close to her, an arm around her shoulders. He wanted to break that arm and smash the beer bottle hanging loosely from his fingers right over his head. He wanted to throttle Isabelle until he couldn’t see his mother’s face in hers and then bury the body far away where no one would see. They were dark thoughts, and once she had been his sister. But now she was a stranger and he didn’t care.
He was still seeing red like the color of Hanna’s blood, her shoulder, her pain. The baby inside her might feel it too. They were both hurt and Isabelle as to blame. She hadn’t been there, she hadn’t pulled any triggers, but it was all her fault. Everything that happened was because of her. He was going to end it.
He lunged.
Someone had been watching him because hands were on him before he even got close to her.
“You’re a long way from home, my man,” said the man who grabbed him and yanked him back. “You lost, brother?”
“Get your fucking hands off me,” he growled, rolling his shoulders away but the hands were firm on him.
“You’re a guest, show a little respect,” he said, sharply.
“That’s my sister,” he said nodding to Isabelle.
“She’s more our sister than yours,” the man with his arm around her said. “We know how to treat her and don’t threaten her. Some big brother.”
He moved to lunge again but was held back. He tried to shrug the hands off of himself and walk out. Hanna’s voice was in his head telling him it wasn’t worth it. He should go home and cool off. But the Caracals seemed to have other plans as suddenly several of them were around him, cocooning him in. He felt the air heat up from the closeness. He felt his heartbeat pick up. This might have been a huge mistake. He might not get out to see that baby that he and Hanna made together but he was going to take as many of them with him as he could.
“Now, now, fellas,” said a familiar voice.
They all turned. Robert was standing there, quite calm, hands raised.
“We’ve got a few more of us on the way. We’ve both lost some good men and women today on either side. There’s no need to continue this,” he said.
“Your boy here walked into our bar,” someone said. “We didn’t start it.”
“That’s fine. I’ll deal with him. Be man enough to finish it.”
“Don’t worry,” he said, stepping up to Robert. “We are.”
And then in a flash a knife was in Robert’s stomach and he was bent over. Roarke screamed. At least he thought it was his own scream. He couldn’t be entirely sure. He launched forward and punched at whoever he could, whatever he could. He felt the hits returned but he kept swinging wildly, hitting whatever he could, continue to yell.