Chapter Sixteen – Lucy

 

“Carter!” I screamed again into the night as I looked down at his silent, unmoving form.

The car alarm of the car he’d landed on blared, its horn honking over and over as its lights flashed on and off, on and off. Carter began to change, morph, from the giant bear back into his human shape.

“Oh fuck! Fuck! Fuck!”

Behind me, another wet cough from the female who’d just held a gun to my head.

“What do I do?” I whispered to myself, the panic finally really setting in as I kept peering down into the night, at the broken and busted SUV. Carter might be dying down there, might be dead already. “Who do I do, what do I do?”

A groan from the woman behind me, even as Carter’s naked form seemed to shift on the car below, his leg kicking ineffectually against nothing.

My God, how had he survived that fall? “Carter!” I screamed, gripping the broken window frame tightly.

No reply, but he tried to roll over.

“Shit,” I whispered. I needed to get out of there, needed to get him somewhere safe. Maybe Shamrock PD really had been coming before, but I didn’t know. I pushed back from the window, even as the woman with the blonde highlights again tried to stand.

Her legs wobbled and shook, her knees like jello as she coughed again, spilling more blood on the hotel carpet.

I brushed past her. I needed to get out of here. I needed to go. Before more of them showed up, before the cops showed up. Because I had no idea how I was going to explain this one.

In a blind rush, I swept up the files from the table, put them in a stack. I ran over to Carter’s black duffel bag and began to stuff everything inside. I picked up my phone and stuffed it in a back pocket, picking up Carter’s pistol and cramming it in after the files.

As I did, the woman began to gurgle. “Help me,” she whimpered.

I swallowed hard as my firefighter’s instinct kicked in, my heart freezing in my chest with empathy. Still at the nightstand, I looked over at her.

All I could see was one blood-stained hand, reaching up onto the bedspread. Her ragged wheezing filling the air.

I grabbed the pillow from off the bed, stripping the case from it as I rushed over to her. She was a person, after all, even if she had just put a gun to my head. And, even if she was a giant rat like her partner.

She lay there in a pool of blood, her face drawn and waxy. It seemed like more blood was on the outside than on the inside, but still she was able to look up at me with a pleading glint in her glassy eyes.

“Please,” she burbled, her voice like it was coming from under the sea.

I knelt down next to her, pressing the wadded-up pillowcase against the chest wounds Carter had given her. “I’m going to call an ambulance,” I said, an edge to my voice. “Okay? Take this case, press it to your chest. Can you do that?”

Her blood-coated hands, weak and ineffectual, came up and wrapped themselves around mine, took the swatch of soaked cloth from my hands and began to apply pressure.

“Keep it there,” I growled. “Okay?”

She nodded her head weakly. “Hurts so much,” she gurgled.

“Yeah,” I said. “You’ve been shot. It does that.”

“With silver,” she said, chuckling weakly. “Need to get it out.”

“Well, guess you knew the risks,” I replied as I went to rise from my knees. I needed to call an ambulance, give them the hotel number. Just as importantly, though, I needed to get out of here, and down to Carter. While I was up here helping the woman who tried to use me as a hostage, and maybe to murder me, he was downstairs on the hood of a car, its horn blaring.

I went back over to the bed, scooped up the packed duffel bag, and slung it as best I could over my back. I ran to the door, already pulling my phone back out and dialing 911.

I was halfway out the door when the woman coughed again. “Lucy,” she rasped.

“Yeah?” I asked, turning back to her. “What?”

She’d moved a little bit, keeping the bloodied pillowcase bundled against her sucking chest wounds. “Thank you.”

“Don’t mention it,” I replied, my voice harsh. “Really. Never again. I see you, I’ll make sure Carter finishes the job.”

Then I was out in the hallway, running for the fire exit doors on the stairway.

“9-1-1, what’s your emergency?”

“There’s been a shooting at the Super 8,” I said, breathless as I began to descend the stairs at nearly a run. “Room 314, send an ambulance.”

“Ma’am, is there an active shooter?”

“Ambulance,” I said again. “Super 8, 314. I have to go.”

“But, ma’am—!”

Too late. I’d already hung up and stuffed my phone away, continuing to take the stairs two at a time as I descended to the lobby, Carter’s gear slapping painfully against my back with every jarring step, the heavy weight on my shoulders taking me back to my time on the job with Shamrock FD.

But, despite all that was going on, all I could think was one thing: “Please be all right, Carter! Please be all right!”