Page 134 of Every Broken Piece
His head lolls. “Leg.” He starts crying. “Sorry. So...sorry. I...tried.”
“We need to get him to the hospital,” the medic next to me says. “Looks like it went straight through, but we won’t know until he can be examined.”
“I’ll go.” Jack appears next to me, on his knees too, his face rigid with anger and worry. “I’ll go with Pax. You talk to the police. Find Tess.”
“Dad.” Pax grasps my sleeve, leaving a smear of bright red blood that I can’t stop looking at. “She went...with them. They...threatened me. She s-saved m-me.”
Tears spill from his eyes and all I want to do is gather him in my arms and rock him like I did when he was little and had a bad dream. I want to make all of this go away for him, but I can’t because my son has a fucking bullet in his leg and my girl is missing because she saved him.
I choke on a sob and press Pax’s hand to my face. It’s warm. His hand. It’s warm and full of life and he’s full of life.
“Find her, Dad.”
I can’t leave him, but I can’t leave Tess to whoever took her. She sacrificed herself to save Pax and now I have to save her.
“Go,” Pax says. “Find Tess. Please. Please. Find her. Okay?” His voice is fading and I’ve never been more terrified.
The medic puts a stethoscope to his chest and listens, then pulls back. “We gotta go.”
I do the hardest thing I’ve ever done. I let go of my little boy and watch them lift him onto a gurney. A strangled sound escapes me.
Jack squeezes my shoulder. “I’ll be right there with him. I’ll text you everything I know as I know it.”
I grab Jack’s coat sleeve. “You watch out for him. You protect him, Jack. He’s...everything.” My voice breaks.
“I know, brother. He’s everything to me too.”
The doors shut Pax and Jack into the ambulance and with the wail of the siren, they take my boy away.
Chapter fifty-nine
Gabe
Hours later Jack meets me outside the emergency room doors.
“He’s out of surgery and doing well,” he says as we hurry through the ER and turn down a darkened hallway. “The bullet lodged in his upper thigh.” He stabs the elevator button and turns to me. “It was inches from his femoral. It could have been really bad, but it wasn’t.”
I sag against the wall as the blood leaves all my extremities. Femoral artery.
Femoral artery.
Femoral artery.
Fuck.
The elevator doors slide open. Jack pulls me in then pushes the button for the floor Pax is on.
“Itcould havebeen bad, but it wasn’t. He’ll make a full recovery. Are you hearing me, brother?”
I nod because words are beyond me right now.
“Tell me what you know about Tess,” Jack says.
I’ve spent the last few hours with the Denver PD detectives who're looking for Tess. Since her abduction is more than likely linked to drugs and drug distribution, they called the DEA.
I run a hand through my hair and over my beard. “They don’t know where the hell she is. They pulled up footage of the red-light cameras at the intersections.” Four. There are only cameras at four intersections. Why aren’t there cameras all over the whole damn city? “They saw the van heading north, then they lost it.”
“Did they get a license plate?”
