Loverboy (The Company #2) - Sarina Bowen Page 0,102
the glass, and it will have to do. Hopping onto the chair, I tear my palms to shreds at the first touch of the tattered window frame. But I need clean air, and I need it right now.
The gas chokes me anyway, my chest compressing with pain, and I cough and then gag.
Pain tears at my hands, but I ignore it. I’ve pushed my head through the opening, where I take a gulp of the fresh air.
“GUNNAR!” a voice shouts from somewhere.
“STAY OUT OF THE BASEMENT!” I rasp, my voice shot. I don’t know if anyone can hear me.
But then I feel hands clawing at my legs, and an anguished, muffled shout. The gas mask guy.
I kick violently, needing another few seconds alone to clear the rest of my body out of this window.
Instead, I hear the loudest gunshot I have ever heard in my life at the same moment that red-hot pain tears through my leg. I gasp, my bloodied hands slipping on the window frame.
There’s a tug of war on my body, and so much pain that it ceases to make any sense at all.
Then everything goes black.
Motion. Shouting. Pain.
Posy is speaking to me, but I can’t hear her voice. Her eyes are wide and frightened.
Her father puts an arm around her. “Come here, darling, sit down. I’ll wait with you.” His eyes have an appraising squint that has always annoyed me.
Squinty eyes? That seems important. If only I could remember why.
My father tells me to keep my eye on the catcher. He’s calling for a fastball.
My mother smiles.
“I’m waiting right outside,” Posy says.
Everything is cold.
32
Scout
It’s been twelve hours since Gunnar was shot in the basement on Prince Street. I can’t think too much about it. There’s no time for emotion. I have a mission to run.
This morning we’re sending Geoff into the nightclub for his bookkeeping gig. With Gunnar fighting for his life in the hospital, and Max crazed with worry, and the team short-staffed, the mission falls to me to direct.
Usually, I don’t run missions. I’m not a hacker or a techie. My specialty is human nature. If Max needs access to an office or a hotel room, I’m the one he sends inside. No matter how secure the location, a disarming smile from me does the trick. Bending the rules is my superpower.
In the wee hours of the night, though, I broke my own rule.
Max was out of his mind with worry, and raging at the hospital staff. He’s never lost a Company operative. And it’s breaking him that we might lose Gunnar—his college roommate and dear friend.
We’re all upset. But we don’t all show it the same way. Max shows his fear by snarling at everyone in his path, including his staff, his friends, and anyone wearing an NYU lab coat.
At the urging of Pieter and Duff, I drove his Triumph over to NYU Medical Center to pick him up from the hospital. Since he doesn’t like other people riding his bike, he came outside to give me a piece of his mind.
“What were you thinking?” he’d asked me, standing on the sidewalk looking shredded. “I didn’t ask for a lift. And I certainly didn’t ask you to ride my bike.”
“I was thinking that you’re going to be arrested for disturbing the peace in that waiting room if you don’t walk away for a few hours. Did you actually kick a soda machine? What good is that going to do?”
“They weren’t giving me the information,” he’d barked.
“Max, get on the fucking bike and go home,” I’d begged. “It’s two a.m. Get a few hours of sleep and give Gunnar a few hours to recover before you get thrown out of this place.”
Gunnar was still in surgery then. The asshole who shot him managed to nick his femoral artery. In spite of Pieter’s tourniquet, and Duff’s NASCAR driving, Gunnar almost bled to death in the back of the sedan.
He’s still unconscious. And the doctors aren’t sure yet if they’ve managed to save his leg.
I’d forced Max’s helmet into his hands. “Go home.”
“How are you getting back?”
“We both fit on that bike. Or I’ll take a cab.”
“Get on,” he’d snapped.
I rode all the way back to West 18th Street with my arms around Max’s angry, sturdy body.
There aren’t many people that I trust. But Max is one of them. If I’d been the unlucky person who got shot, I know he’d be kicking vending machines in my hospital waiting room, too.