Page 28 of Harris

“It was too risky. You’ve attracted some attention from the Group. We can’t risk being found.”

“Truth.”

“Why bother now? I understand thinking Harris was a free agent in trouble, but you agreed to this meeting even after knowing who we are?” Brick asked.

“You need our help,” Conor said before Apollo had a chance.

“We don’t need your help,” Griffin hissed.Shit, this guy has an anger problem.

Apollo laid his hand on Griffin’s shoulder.

“Yes, we do. One of our people has gone missing.”

“Truth,” Conor said.

Brick looked Apollo straight on and asked.” Do you plan on harming any person on my team or associated with me?”

Without missing a beat, Apollo responded, “No.”

“Truth,” Conor confirmed.

“Then I believe we can assist you, but let’s continue this conversation in a more secure location. I’ll forward the address to you later this evening,” Brick said. “We’ll arrange a time.”

Apollo reached out and shook Brick’s and then Conor’s hand. “Thank you.”

“We’ll be in touch,” Brick stated.

***

Woodley

The team loaded back into the two SUVs and headed toward the rental. There was no more undercover work tonight, so the vehicle wasn’t needed. Woodley sat in the middle row directly behind Brick in the first vehicle's front passenger seat. Theywere crossing through Pines Village around three in the morning when a jacked-up and smoked-out Lincoln pulled alongside them, and years of police work had bells ringing for Woodley as the back window rolled down.

“To the right,” Gunner said.

Everything happened so quickly after that, and Woodley lunged forward just before the first flash, placing himself between Brick and the exploding glass of the passenger window. The bullet impacted his back and sent Woodley forward and partially onto Brick before his body slid back between the middle seat and the floor.

Tires squealed, and the SUV veered as more shots rang out, but Woodley was quickly losing consciousness; he couldn’t keep track of the action. The burning pain was familiar; after all, he’d been shot before, but that time, it’d been his arm. Now, it was his chest. His mutation gave him a direct line to the functions in his body, and now he could feel his right lung filling with fluid as it got progressively harder for him to breathe.

His tissues rushed to heal the damage, but he’d never tried to heal this type of extensive damage before. Would it work? Hell, the boss wouldn’t have survived if it’d been him. That would have meant irreparable harm to their fight against the Noah Group, and preventing that from happening was worth his life.

“Fuck, talk to me,” Harris ordered as he pulled him back into the seat and began applying pressure to the hole in Woodley’s back.

“No hospitals,” he groaned. They didn’t need the attention with his healing abilities and the Noah Group in town.

It was all he could think to say before the darkness took over and nothing remained. The last thing he saw was Harris’s concerned face fading away, and for the first time in Woodley’slife, instead of wishing his mutation never existed, he wished he’d heal even faster.

CHAPTER TEN

Harris

“What do you mean there’s nothing we can do?” Harris asked edgily. “We can’t sit around and do nothing while he bleeds out.”

“We have no choice but to allow his body to heal itself,” Jennifer said. “Other than keeping him comfortable and watching over him, we must wait. If we take him to the hospital, they’ll know something is different about him when his wounds start healing on their own.”

“Will he be able to heal an injury as serious as this?” Brick asked as he paced the floor.

“I’m not sure. Has he ever been so severely injured before?” Jennifer asked as she laid another cold cloth on Woodley’s forehead.

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