Page 66 of Cognac Secrets

Chainsaw, Axeman, and a couple others gave a combination of ‘ooo’s’ and rowdy cheers in counterpoint to some of the girls’ ‘awws’ and I have to say, it was Sandy’s love that saved my life.

I was just clearing the corner to catch up to Louie who was behind the bar when the cacophony started. Windows shattered, the booms and rattle of gunfire loud and right outside. I saw it happen. Louie was turned sideways to say something to me, his profile to the front of the club, when a bullet tore through his neck, side to side.

Bottles burst, alcohol flowed, and it was spattered with a great arc of Louie’s warm, rich, wet, and thick blood as he collapsed into an almost instant death shudder.

I knew what it looked like. I knew he was gone the second he started writhing like that. I knew it because I wasn’t in the club, or the bar, or anywhere in New Orleans when I hit the deck and scrambled toward him.

I was back in some distant battlefield and I was screaming the same fucking thing I would scream back in the litter box.

“Fuck! Medic!” I put my hands to Louie’s throat and applied pressure as he looked up at me wide-eyed and helpless, the pop and shatter still going on around us, the booms deafening.

“Medic!” I screamed again, and I know I was screaming into poor Louie’s face, but I needed him to know.

“You’re okay! It’s going to be okay! I got you, man. Just hang on for me.”

I gripped tighter, probably choking off his fucking air, but it was either risk that and try and stop the warm sticky flow or run the bigger risk of not using enough pressure to stop the warm, sticky flow out around my fingers and having him bleed out –but who was I honestly fucking kidding?There was no stopping this kind of catastrophic damage. I knew that. Ifucking knew that, but damn if I didn’t fucking try to stop it anyway.

Louie’s mouth opened and closed like a landed fish, his eyes wide and showing way too much fucking white as his body gave up the fucking ghost. The shudders stilling to a quiver and the light leaving his fucking eyes even as the silence rang in deafening on the heels of an angry squeal of tires from outside.

I hated watching the light die in his eyes. Hated even more, that I couldn’t answer the silent pleading in them to not let him die with anything but futile efforts.

I didn’t take my hands away, not yet. The rest of our crew came pouring out of the back with guns out and shouting that I couldn’t hear above the ringing in my ears, then hands were over mine and I turned to look into Sandrine’s flashing emerald eyes close to my own as she shouted something I couldn’t hear above the ceaseless ringing and the roar of my own blood rushing in my ears.

I stopped trying to hold Louie’s ruined neck together and sat back on my haunches. Sandy’s hands fluttered near my face and I was only vaguely aware of my breath hitching as I wiped my bloodied hands down the front of my shirt and reached for my woman.

She wrapped her arms around my shoulders tight, her hand stroking the back of my head, as I buried my face into the side of her neck and my hearing came back into focus.

“I’ve got you,” she said, her own voice starting to crack. “You did everything you could, baby. I saw. I saw you. You did everything you could. You’re okay, you’re alright? You aren’t hurt?” she pushed me back and looked over me and I managed to get out.

“I’m okay. I’m not hurt. I promise.”

I wasn’t okay, but I wasn’t hurt and that last part was because of her… because she just had to have that one last lingering kiss from me.

I was alive because this incredible, beautiful, wonderful woman for some crazy fucked-up reason couldn’t get enough of me.

I pulled her back against me and held her tight. Squeezing until I could swear her diminutive body creaked like a tree limp about to snap and only then, did I back off, but still only marginally. I twisted my body to face her away from Louie’s dead one, and held onto her like she was the last hold I had on my fucking sanity – because right now? She was.

CHAPTEREIGHTEEN

Sandrine…

The EMT’s all but had True breathing into a paper bag. I was standing by the back of the ambulance, a blanket wrapped around me, but definitely not because I was cold. No, I think it had more to do with hiding the blood stains on my clothes away from True who was past hysterical by the whole thing.

I loved her. I really did… but she honestly and truly didn’t grow up with the physical violence that I had. When her parents had gotten angry, they’d screamed and yelled. Has used guilt as a weapon and threatened True with the wrath of God – but they’d never hit her.

Me? Screaming, yelling, having things thrown at me, physically menaced, threatened, and damn near beat to death a time or two by my daddy. Let’s not even get into the punching, poking, slapping, hitting, and sometimes spitting my older brothers got up to.

I was used to violence more so than my best friend. I was… sadly… but still – I don’t think anything really prepared you for the level of violence I’d just witnessed.

I’d never seen anyone die before. Let alone a death as bloody, awful, and assuddenas Louie’s… but I was numb, almost. Something like indifferent – which was bad, which was really bad, I know – and I feltsomethingat least. Something akin to guilt, maybe? A guilt aboutnotfeeling anything about that part. About Louie being dead.

No, honestly, the only things I felt besides the desolate and pervasive numbness spreading out from the center of my chest was a seedling of relief, and what had to be a whole ass sunflower stalk of worry… you know, like one of those Halloween decoration sunflowers with the skull face in the middle of them or something.

True had a death grip on my hand, her mascara running down her face in muddy tracks. Her car was bullet punched and riddled and sitting on at least two flat tires off to the one side of us and the coroner’s van was on the other side, backed up and the back doors open, but sitting empty for now.

“Need to talk to these two young ladies if’n you’re done with ‘em,” a cop materialized out of the dark and the medic looked back over his shoulder from where he took True’s vitals one more time after getting her calmed down.

“Yeah, just try to go easy, yeah. Don’t undo all the hard work I just did.”

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