Page 62 of Tasting Fire
The teenager put his hands up and slid bonelessly from a computer chair in front of a monitor and onto his back on the floor. The headset he was wearing unplugged from the computer and slipped off one of the kid’s ears.
Noise canceling. Probably the reason he hadn’t heard them call out.
“Turn over. Hands behind your back!”
“Don’t you fucking move.”
The conflicting instructions from two different operators seemed to paralyze the kid.
From his crouched position by the front door, Cash scanned the room for any sign of the threatened sister, but no one else was present.
“He’s reaching for his belt!” Emmy yelled.
McGarvey, the newest SWAT operator, whirled around toward the kid, and the sound of gunshot was muffled inside Cash’s radio headset.
No bean bags this time. The operators were carrying rifles with live ammo.
“Shit.” Cash lunged inside the room and went for the kid’s leg where blood was blooming on his thigh. His right hand was splayed at his side and in it lay a small plastic container filled with green candy.
That was what the kid had been reaching for. Breath mints.
“Teenage male with a gunshot to the left thigh,” Cash spoke into his radio. “Requesting ambulance backup.” He looked over to find Emmy kneeling on the other side of the kid, as frozen as if she’d been dropped into a cryogenic chamber.
“Oh, God,” she said. “It was just candy.”
“Not now,” Cash snapped at her. “This looks like an arterial bleed.”
That was all it took. She went to work applying a tourniquet to the leg while Cash checked the kid’s ABCs.
“Where’s your sister?” one of the SWAT guys asked the kid.
“This isn’t the time,” Emmy told him.
“Who?” the kid asked.
“The sister you threatened to kill.”
“Dude…” The kid’s words were starting to slur and his eyes were going glassy. “I don’t…have a …a…sister.”
Emmy, hands moving quickly but methodically, nodded toward the workstation. “He was playing Call of Duty. They’re probably recording us.”
“Who?” Cash asked.
“Whoever the hell he was playing with. I think we’ve been swatted.”
“Who…did this?” the kid asked, voice shaky with tears.
“What’s your name?” Emmy asked him.
“Jesse…Giddings.”
From the computer speakers came the panicked voices of several other teenagers. “Shit, man. There are cops in Jesse’s house. With guns. I heard a gunshot.”
“Wasn’t…me,” Jesse insisted from his prone position on the floor, becoming more and more lethargic with each word.
“It’s okay,” Emmy soothed. “We’ll get this all straightened out.”
“Wasn’t m…” The kid’s eyes rolled back and he passed out cold.
