Page 60 of Senseless
I ran through without another word, jumping and climbing over counters and machinery that had clearly been pulled out to slow me down. Fuck, I hated that I fell for such a simple trick, and now Jen would be the one to pay for my mistake.
When I burst through the door, he was already across the dining room, dragging Jen across the floor with a length of rope that bound her wrists together.
“Ivan!” she cried with body-wracking sobs as she struggled and kicked for her life.
“Stop!” I fired a single shot that would have hit if he hadn’t suddenly crouched low, wrapping one arm around Jen’s middle as he hauled her up to use her as a shield.
“Shoot again and she dies, Tonto.”
I raised both hands, holding my finger away from the trigger. The fucker kept his eyes on me, walking backwards as he dragged Jen out the front door, but my gaze was rooted on her. I recognized the stricken fear in them and hoped she understood that I wasn’t surrendering, just buying another opportunity.
He shut the mangled front door and I didn’t wait a second longer, crossing the room as fast my legs could carry me. I heard a thump and another cry of pain as he dropped Jen and proceeded to drag her again. When I touched the doorknob, four shots fired in rapid succession, each of them filling me with cold dread.
Fuck, Jen!
I pulled the front door open, weapon raised, to find Jen’s abductor dead on the ground.
And Mari standing a few feet away, her gun pointing at the bleeding man on the ground. She didn’t see the guy running up behind her.
“Mari!”I bellowed.
He fired, the shot low and clumsy, but it hit.
Shock and then pain spread across Mari’s face as she went down, blood quickly spreading up her pant leg.
He shot her.
She got hit.
She was hurt.
Someone hurther.
I didn’t know when I lost control. The whole event seemed to play out in slow motion, and then fast-forward in a senseless blur, to the point where I was looking down at a misshapen mass of flesh and blood. I blinked several times, realizing I was sitting on top of an unmoving body. The bloody, fleshy blob in front of me had once been a man’s face. My fist was bleeding and clenched tight, a few teeth embedded in my knuckles.
I scraped them away with my other hand and took a careful look at my surroundings.
“Mari!”
“Shadow,” she whimpered, still on the ground a few feet away, pale and clutching at her bloodsoaked leg.
It was impossible to tell, but my disassociation must have only lasted seconds. I scrambled over in a panic and went to hold her, but immediately froze. I didn’t know what to do here.
“I…I need to wrap something tight around my leg,” she explained through pained, wheezing breaths. “I’m…I’m bleeding a lot.”
“Okay, just tell me where.” I tried to keep my voice calm as I shrugged off my holsters and pulled off my shirt. But my hands shook as I tore down the middle of the garment to make it a longer piece of fabric.
“Around my thigh,” she told me. “It’s—ah! It’s…just above my knee.”
She ground her teeth and did her best to sit still as I wrapped my shirt around her leg, but every whimper and wince cut through me worse than any blade.
“I’m so sorry. Am I hurting you?”
“No, tighter,” she hissed. “Make it tighter, you have to cut off circulation.”
Doc finally stumbled out the front door, followed by a few of the service girls who quickly rushed to Jen’s aid. She was still tied up on the ground, but otherwise uninjured.
“Doc, please tell me you have actual medical knowledge,” I growled at him, pulling tighter on the knot around Mari’s leg.
