Page 65 of Patch

So I got two fingers under her jaw and found her pulse and counted. It was fast and thin and I didn’t tell her what it was.

“Breathing’s fourteen,” I said. “Shallow and adequate. You’ve lost maybe fifteen percent and you’re not decompensating, and if you ask me again in five minutes, I’ll count it again.”

“Fifteen percent is a guess.”

“It’s my guess. Take it.”

Her hands shook under mine. I held them steady. Not by gripping. By being still. The stillness of a man whose hands had been waiting for this longer than he had.

“Keep talking,” I said.

She did. The numbers ran. They always ran.

For the first time in all these years, I was counting something that mattered.

* * *

Brazil had the truck idling in the driveway. Engine running. Headlights on. He stood beside the driver’s door with the keys in his hand. Didn’t ask questions. Didn’t need to. The Road Captain’s job was routes. His gaze moved from Maren’s packed wounds to my face and back.

“Gate’s ready.” He had already made the calls. “Leo till six. Carlos on days. Rotation adjusted.”

I nodded.

“Popov,” I said.

“Back hallway. He went for the rear door about two seconds after Bo put him into the end table.” Brazil’s face didn’t move. “Gunner was already standing in it.”

“And?”

“And Gunner was already standing in it.”

“He say anything?”

“He tried to talk his way out. Something about how none of this needed to happen. Still saying it when Gunner shot him.”

Nobody in this club had said that family’s name out loud in nineteen years.

Vasha would want to know. Not the details, she wouldn’t ask for those. Just that he was dead and who did it.

“The two in the kitchen?”

“Handled.”

“The house?”

“Cotton’s on it. It’ll be a burst pipe and a bad landlord by lunchtime.” Brazil finally let something into his voice. “Nobody on that road has looked up in two years. They’re not going to start today.”

“Tarasenko.”

That one stopped him.

“Sitting on the front step,” Brazil said. “Hands where we could see them. Hasn’t moved.”

“He put himself between Kirill and her,” I said.

“I know what he did. I was six feet behind it.”

I stood in that driveway and made the fastest decision of my life, and I’d been running headcounts for twenty years so that was saying something.