Page 62 of Defenseless
Two seconds later, his cousin was with them, but Chad held his position until Ethan moved in to take his place. Then scooting farther into the room, he flipped over and got his first look at the damage to his leg. The bullet had ripped a long hole in his jeans, and the denim was dark and wet with his blood. He knew enough about gunshot wounds to know this one wasn’t serious, nothing more than a deep graze, but it hurt like hell.
“You need stitches,” Kara said. Chad looked at her. She made a face. “Okay, maybe notright now, but you do need stitches.”
“What can we donow?” Sabina asked. Chad switched his focus to her. Her fair skin had gone even more pale, and he thought she was muttering something about three bullet wounds.
“I’ll be fine, Sabina,” he said, almost smiling. The first two bullets from the ambush really had just grazed him and he’d all but forgotten about them.
She didn’t bother responding. “Kara?”
“Sabina,” he said, then waited until she looked at him. When she finally did, he reached for one of her hands and curled his around hers. “I’ll be fine. It hurts and it’s bloody, but it’s not deep and didn’t hit anything major. Believe me, I’d know.”
Her blue-green eyes studied him, and she bit her lip. She must have come to some conclusion in her mind, because she nodded. “Okay, fine,” she said, sounding not that fine. “Let’s get something tied around it. Can you walk?”
“Yes.”
“Good, then we stick with the plan. Ethan, you good with that?”
“Yep,” he responded, not leaving his lookout spot.
“Killian should be here any minute,” she said, as she and Kara started digging through the drawers. Kara withdrew a clean dishtowel from one, looked at it, then grabbed a second.
“I’ll tie these together and then it should be long enough,” Kara said. Sabina nodded but kept looking. When she pulled out a pair of scissors from another drawer, he knew what she intended. Quickly, she cut away his pant leg, then Kara moved in and wrapped the dishrags tightly around his calf. Electric pain shot through his body as she tied off the makeshift tourniquet. Not wanting to further worry Sabina, though, he bit back his reaction.
“Ready?” Ethan asked.
Sabina and Kara helped Chad stand, and he tested his leg before putting all his weight on it. He wasn’t worried about it buckling, but he didn’t want the pain to catch him by surprise. When he was firmly on both feet, he motioned the women toward the hall that would lead them to the garage.
“We’re on the move,” Chad replied.
As planned, Chad stopped at the edge of the hall and called to Ethan. His cousin glanced back as a round of bullets came flying through the doorway to the kitchen. From where Vitor was positioned, his range was limited, and Ethan had good cover. Chad wasn’t worried. Well, not too much.
But then once again, he heard something that gave him pause. Ethan must have heard it, too, because his head snapped up, even as he continued toward Chad’s side.
“That wasn’t the UMP,” Ethan said when reached Chad. It wasn’t. There’d been several shots fired, but not from Vitor’s weapon. “Killian?” he asked.
Chad hoped so. Only the shots hadn’t come from the front of the house, and the plan had been for him to circle around to that part of the property. Then again, Vitor had moved from his original position; it was possible Killian had needed to adapt his approach.
Another blast from Vitor’s weapon echoed through the house, followed by a deafening silence. Chad was pretty sure he’d heard the second weapon fire but couldn’t be certain in the cacophony of noise.
Ethan looked to Chad for orders. It was possible the second gun was Killian. Likely even. But he wasn’t going to take any chances. Motioning Ethan toward Sabina and Kara, who were huddled in one of the three doorways that lined the hall, he spoke. “We stick with the plan.”
With a nod, Ethan took off. Rushed footsteps echoed down the hallway, letting Chad know that the three of them were on the move. In the distance, he also heard sirens. Violence wasn’t uncommon in São Paulo. But even so, the volume of gunshots in the neighborhood they were in wasn’t something neighbors would ignore.
Despite knowing they should stick around for the authorities, Chad wanted to be far away from the house by the time the police arrived. Evidence of their presence was all over, so it wasn’t as though he thought they wouldn’t be tied to the events of the past fifteen minutes. But he’d prefer for it to come out when they were in the relative safety of the United States.
Walking backward down the hall, he joined the trio as he motioned Ethan to clear the garage. Sabina and Kara stepped into the final alcove along the hall, while Chad moved in front of them. His cousin slowly opened the door and when no sound came from within the space, he opened it more fully before stepping through.
“We’re as clear as we’re going to get,” he said. The open-air garage was protected on two sides, but left them exposed on two.
“Slight change of plans,” Sabina said. He glanced back at her to see her holding her phone before returning his attention to the mouth of the hallway. “Ava texted and the neighbors aren’t home. We can go over the side fence into their yard, rather than drop down into the waterway that runs behind the houses. Once we’re there, they have a gate out the back that we can use, which will make it easier to keep our feet dry.”
And it would. The original plan had them going up and over the fence at the back of the property. It wasn’t a difficult maneuver, but it put them smack in the middle of the runoff waterway that ran behind the houses lining this side of the street. With the rain the city had had over the past week, it would have been soggy going. But the waterway didn’t bump right up against the neighbor’s property in the same way it did Benicio’s. They’d be able to pick a trail alongside it and down to Teague.
“Ready, E?” he asked.
“Ready,” he called back. Less than five seconds later, Sabina and Kara had followed Ethan out the door and into the garage.
Chad didn’t know what awaited them outside, and he hoped Killian had done his job. The house was beginning to feel as if it was closing in on him, and fresh air sounded heavenly. With that thought firmly in mind, he started to move toward the door to the garage.
