Page 35 of Her Keeper
Everyone’s little sister.
I cringed at that… and then opened my eyes to see Michael’s car swerving into the driveway. It came to a stop parked halfway across the grass, and when I looked up, I saw that Joseph was the one driving.
And Michael was in the passenger seat, his head back and his eyes closed.
All the thoughts I’d just been having about not labeling what this was flew out the window and I was up and running before I could think about it. Because that was the man who held my heart out there, and he was hurt.
Nothing else mattered.
* * *
By the time I got to the car, Joseph had him out and I could see that he was at least alive. Bleeding badly from the leg, though, and unable to walk on his own. The wound was on the outside of his left thigh.
Oh God, I thought. There were big arteries in the thigh, weren’t there? Like arteries that could kill you if you were wounded there?
His eyes fluttered open though, so he clearly wasn’t dead.
Yet.
I ducked under his other shoulder and helped Joseph with walking him to the house. “What happened?” I grunted.
“Short version: We went after Monica and she had guards on her,” Joseph said. “Michael got a shot off but got shot in the process.”
“Idiot,” I muttered.
“I can hear you,” Michael himself said. “I’m not dead.”
“And lucky for you you’re not,” I replied. I was hotly furious, raging with it. Angrier than I’d ever been in my life. “What the fuck were you thinking?”
“I was thinking,” he grunted, “that she blackmailed you and put you in the worst position possible, and was going to publish an article about my family.” He groaned as we got him onto the couch. “And I was further thinking that she knows exactly who she’s working for, and that she owes us some information.”
“So you went out and got yourself shot,” I said, ducking down and stripping off his pants.
“Hey, what you two do on your own time is your business. I don’t want to see this,” Joseph joked weakly.
I shot him a scathing look. “And you let him go in there and get shot! Don’t think you’re off the hook, Joseph.”
He looked at me like I’d morphed into some sort of demon, and exchanged a glance with Michael. “Working for you has changed her,” he noted.
Michael grunted out a laugh. “Either that or we never knew her as well as we thought we did.”
“Ha ha,” I said, unamused. I was staring at the wound now and though it didn’t look like it had hit a major artery—surely he’d be bleeding more if it had—it still looked like more than I could handle on my own. “We need a doctor. I don’t know how to do this.”
I didn’t wait for Michael or Joseph to answer. As far as I was concerned, they’d already shown that their decision-making skills were faulty right now. Instead, I grabbed my phone and hit the third number on my emergency list.
“Alf, we’ve got a problem,” I said when he answered. “Michael’s been shot. Nothing vital, I don’t think. Outside of the thigh on his left leg. But it’s bleeding a lot and I don’t know what to do.”
“Shit. I’ll call our doctor. Where are you?”
“No!” Michael, who had been listening, snapped. “Brawn works for my dad. We can’t trust him. He might tell Dad where we are.”
I glared at him. “Michael, you’re bleeding from the leg and I don’t know how to stop it. Do you have any other genius ideas, other than the doctor? Because I don’t think we can take you to the hospital. They might wonder what you’re doing with a bullet in your leg.”
Michael closed his eyes, going paler than I’d ever seen him. “Yes, the hospital would be bad. Call Brooks.”
“Brooks? She’s not a doctor.”
He opened one eye and gave me a very jaded look. “Penny, you know how I just said there were aspects of you that Joseph and I didn’t know about? There’s a whole world of Brooks that you’ve never seen before. Call her.”
