Burn Down the Night (Everything I Left Unsaid #3)- Molly O'Keefe Page 0,10

run cons?”

“I do what I have to to survive.”

He grunted but was otherwise silent, and my desire for conversation was gone.

—

Hours later, outside of Atlanta, there was a truck stop, a neon planet in the dark space of the freeway. I pulled off at the junction of I-285 and I-75 into a raft of lights and concrete, and I drove to the farthest edge of it, where the light battled it out with the dark.

Perfect spot for a little backseat surgery.

I popped the trunk and rifled through my black plastic bag until I found the first aid kit Aunt Fern gave me years ago. The stuff she’d filled it with was long since gone. And I’d replaced what I could by hoarding materials during my brief stint as a nursing student. The rest I picked up here and there because one of the few lessons Aunt Fern taught me that stuck was always keep the first aid kit stocked—and ready.

It never hurt to be prepared.

And the truth was, I liked having this stuff. It made me feel in control of something when there was a lot of my life that was totally out of control.

I got the scalpel. The bandages. The QuikClot. The Rocephin injection. Towels. Lots of towels.

I thought about changing my shirt, but if I had to take out this bullet it was only going to get bloodier. Which was a shame, it was kind of my favorite. Everything about this particular black T-shirt with the sparkly unicorn (half the sparkles worn off, the other half now drenched in blood) made me feel stronger. Tougher.

Looking down at it, It seemed like a lesson in not getting attached to anything. Even sparkly unicorn T-shirts.

I tied back my hair, doused my hands in Purell, and got to work.

“Hey Max.” I opened the door to a total crime scene. A bloodbath. And a huge biker, in bloody leather and denim, passed out hard in the middle of it all.

“Feel free to stay passed out, okay buddy? You just sleep right through this.”

I pulled off his boot. The top part of the white sock he wore was red with blood. The sock gave me pause.

It was one of those athletic socks. He probably had a drawer full of them in whatever cave he came from. He bought them at Walmart or something. Just like a regular human.

And he put it on this morning, sitting on the side of some bed, and he didn’t once consider that I would be taking it off of him, thick and wet with blood, in a rest stop parking lot.

You’ve got no time for this, Joan, I told myself and peeled off the sock, dropping it onto the asphalt beside me. It landed with a wet slap.

His jeans were torn to shreds, so I sliced the denim open up to the knee, hoping I could get a good look at that bullet hole. It was red and inflamed and the entrance wound was filthy from the smoke and the dirt I had dragged him through. There was a good chance the bullet had taken part of the jeans into Max’s leg with it.

Which made infection a likely problem.

Hello, antibiotic.

I jabbed him in the thigh with the Rocephin and he opened his eyes. Brilliant blue in a face dark with gore.

“The fuck?” he breathed.

“Antibiotic,” I told him. He lifted an eyebrow just barely.

“I’m a full service kidnapper,” I said.

His lip twitched, and I counted it as a smile.

“You gonna take…out…” He was struggling to stay awake. “Bullet?”

I chewed on my lip until I tasted blood. If I opened him up, there’d be a ton of blood and as good as my field kit was, I didn’t have the tools to sterilize the car and I didn’t have the time to go digging through his leg for bits of cloth I wasn’t sure were in there.

What I’d hoped would be an easy bullet removal, was now a longer procedure and I just didn’t have the equipment or the time.

“No,” I decided. Just like that. Total gut instinct, no idea if I was right or not. I tore open the package of QuikClot and wrapped it tightly around the oozing wound. He winced and swore and I ignored him.

The bandages were treated with shit that would stop the bleeding. They might give him cancer, who knew? But for now, he’d stop bleeding.

“Don’t die,” I told him. “Please…just don’t die.”

“Where are you taking me?” he whispered through dry cracked lips. He