Page 114 of Lone Star

He catalogued the man, a quick reflex. Early twenties, black shirt, long black hair tied back, features that anyone would have labeled as “handsome,” though that sort of thing had always left Reese befuddled. Flash of expensive metal on his wrist, at his throat, diamond in his ear.

He turned to look at Reese – who lifted his own gun – then winked, and stepped backward through the door he’d come out of.

Reese had two options. Rush up the stairs, burst through the door, and take him into custody – or kill him, a persistent voice in the back of his head urged.

Or he could go to Ten.

He jumped over the table, crossed the room, and knelt at Tenny’s side.

He was alive. He had both hands over the wound in his throat, blood gushing between his fingers, pooling on the white marble floor beneath it. It freckled his face, and was soaking into his clothes. The round hadn’t pierced his windpipe, but he breathed in jagged gasps anyway, already pale from blood loss. His eyes were huge, and feral, his pupils shrunk down to pinpricks. He was bleeding out – he was alive for now, but he wouldn’t stay that way.

Reese set his gun on the floor, dug another bit of rag out of his pocket, and batted Tenny’s hands away from the wound.

Tenny gasped. “Don’t–”

“Stop. I have to control the bleeding.” He flicked the gloved fingers away – already weakening – and plugged the rag neatly into the hole in the skin. Wrapped both his hands tight around it and the side of Tenny’s throat and squeezed.

Tenny closed his eyes and hissed through blood-flecked teeth.

Reese could feel his pulse against his palms, irregular, wet beats, even through the gloves.

Don’t die, don’t die, don’t die.

He heard footsteps – two sets – running up behind him. Reaching for the gun he’d set aside would have meant letting go, would have meant Tenny bleeding out.

Don’t die, don’t die, don’t die.

Though they were both about to die, probably, once–

A hand landed on his shoulder, and Fox popped in right next to him.

“Shit,” he murmured, without any real feeling. “Carotid?”

“Nicked it, maybe,” Reese said, muscles in his torso unclenching though he’d been unaware of tensing up. “It’s a graze. He’s lost a pint-and-a-half, maybe.” On the next stutter of Ten’s pulse, he saw a faint seepage of crimson between his gloved fingers. “Still bleeding, but slowing.”

“Christ,” Eden murmured on the other side. “You got the shooter?”

“No. He’s upstairs. Second door on the right.”

“I’ll check,” Fox said. “Help him.”

“Right,” she said. To Reese: “Here, I’ve got tape and some cloths. Let’s get him bandaged up.” She swore. “I’ll have to call an ambulance, but there’s nothing for it.”

Tenny cracked his eyes open, just blue slits, his gaze unfocused.

“Don’t die,” Reese told him.

“Copy that,” Ten said, weakly, and passed out.

Thirty-Five

Fox wasn’t sure how he felt about watching his newest brother being loaded up in the back of an ambulance, unconscious, nearly dead, his throat swaddled with cloths and duct tape, but it wasn’t a positive emotion, he knew. Eden sent him one last look from inside the back, as the EMT with her bent over Tenny. She offered him a tight smile, anI’m okaysmile, before the driver slammed the doors and went around to the front.

Beside him, Reese fairly buzzed with tension, a live-wire crackle that probably no one else could feel, but which Fox felt in the raised hairs on the back of his neck.

Fox sent him a quelling, authoritative look – cool it – and then turned back to Cantrell. “If you’re hoping for some sort of denial or cover-up, you’re shit out of luck, mate. We infiltrated.” Candy might have handled it differently, but Candy wasn’t here, was presumably stumbling out of bed, cursing, and tugging on jeans. So. Fox would handle it all how he saw fit.

“Fuck,” Cantrell muttered, checking over both soldiers. He looked harried, overwrought, and very typical, Fox thought, of an overworked fed. “What am I supposed to do with that?”

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