Page 143 of Fearless

He gave her one of his widest, most disarming smiles, all sharp teeth and sharp eyes. She could see the undercurrent of pain, though, that little line of tension in his lean jaw. “Hey,” he said, voice soothing. “Hey, hey. It’s just a little blood, yeah? You’ve seen way worse than this.” His head tilted, his eyes softening. “I’m alright,fillette. You come here and help your mom.”

She nodded and took a deep breath, blinked the fat tears from between her lashes. It was too much: the revelations of the day, having him inside her again, seeing him wounded like this. She wanted to sit down on the floor and bawl her eyes out.

Instead, she handed her mom the first aid kit, pulled the elastic off her wrist and tied her hair back. She took off her robe, folded it up and set it on the counter. “What happened?” she asked, pulling on every scrap of professionalism she could muster as she stepped over the blood spatters and leaned in to inspect the damage.

“GSW,” Rottie said. “It’s a through-and-through. We would have gone to the ER, but…”

“They’d call the cops,” she said.

“We can’t afford that right now,” Ghost said behind her.

“Here.” Maggie passed her the betadine scrub. “Go wash your hands.”

She did, scrubbing under the nails like she was prepping for surgery. When she shut off the tap with her elbow, Rottie handed her two clean paper towels so she wouldn’t have to touch anything on her way back to Mercy.

Ghost, she noted, with a lump forming in her throat, was staring at her murderously, but he folded his arms and kept silent as Maggie urged her closer.

Michael looked as removed and spooky as ever.

God knew what any of them were thinking. She tried to shove all of it out of her mind, focusing solely on the task at hand as she leaned in close enough to Mercy’s gunshot wound to smell his shampoo.

The shot had gone through his trapezius, and it had been a large caliber round; the hole was wide, the edges angry and gory. “Were you wearing your vest?” Ava asked.

One corner of Maggie’s mouth twitched: amusement or disapproval of the question.

“Yeah. This was just inside the strap,” Mercy said.

She wanted to ask where he’d been, and who the shooter was, but she knew he’d never answer those questions, not even if they were alone.

Maggie did the flushing, Ava the mopping and dabbing. A syringe of rubbing alcohol went deep into the wound, the liquid running pink out the other side as Ava caught it with clean cotton batting. Mercy didn’t make a sound, but she saw the involuntary twitching of the tendons in his neck. It burned like a son of a bitch.

They packed the bullet hole, and taped it up, Maggie giving stern warnings that the dressing would need changing twice a day, and that he was to come here for that if he couldn’t or wouldn’t do it himself.

Then, to Ava’s horror, she grabbed Mercy’s wrist and lifted, passing a finger down one of the red gouges along his forearm. They were unmistakable in the lamplight. “How’d you get these?” Sharp, dark look at Ava, then at him.

Mercy didn’t miss a beat. “I got a cat.”

Maggie held his gaze a long moment before she finally turned away, going to the sink to wash the blood and ointment off her hands.

Ava reached to start packing up the first aid kit, and barely managed to catch the hot, damp clean towel Ghost threw at her. She looked up at him, startled.

His face was awful. He tipped his head toward Mercy, muscle leaping in his throat. “Clean him up.”

“Dad–”

“If you’re old enough to claw him up” – his voice was a harsh, contained roar – “then you’re by God old enough to clean him up when he gets shot.”

“Dad, I didn’t–”

Soft click of the back door closing; Michael and Rottie had slipped outside. And now it was just the four of them, the family tableau that was history repeating itself.

“How fucking stupid do you think I am, Ava? Huh? You think you can both be gone in the middle of a tornado warning, and I’ll think you’re playing kickball in the parking lot? Jesus Christ,” he fumed. “Neither of you has been back in town a week, and you can’t even keep your legs closed for that long,” he said, gesturing at Ava. “I didn’t raise you to be a slut.”

She felt like she’d been slapped. She choked on her next breath.

And then Mercy said, “No, you didn’t raise her at all.”

Maggie clapped a hand to her throat, her eyes huge.

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